FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife-Chapter 32: With my hand for her pillow

’Hmhmmm...’

I pried my eyes open, struggling to catch my bearings for a moment.

An unfamiliar ceiling, a god-awful duvet, a bed befitting the worst of the worst motels...

None of it made sense.

’Fuck, I really need to get some coffee started...’ I thought, yawning hard enough to close my eyes as I did so before pushing my chest up, opting to sit down on the bed rather than keeping myself laid down.

Doing so felt like cursing my entire lineage for eternal grief and regret... But if I wasn’t going to push myself, who else would?

Sitting on the bed, I took a few more moments to come to my senses. Yet, in doing so, I’d only plunged myself deeper and deeper down in the fantastical direction. And rather than looking around to see my own rented-out studio and then getting off the bed to go get some coffee started...

I was forcefully brought down to reality.

A reality where coffee was a precious commodity, getting boiling water required setting up a fire, and with dangers lurking within every single shadow around me.

But it was not all that bad, however.

Because there was no way in hell that, if it was my reality back on Earth, I would wake up to a divine, platinum-haired beauty sleeping just next to me while grasping at my arm. And what was even further down the realm of impossibility, that divine beauty was using my left hand for a pillow!

’Darn it...’

Faced with such an adorable sight, I could only hold my breath while clutching with my free hand at my chest, desperately stopping my heart from melting down with every beat it executed.

’Just how can she be so cute...!’

Still asleep, Selia lay down on her side, her silvery hair turning into a storm all around her pinkish-white face of no blemish. Her lips rested slightly parted, brushing against the outer palm of my hand with every breath she took, the tip of her tiny nose moving up and down to the rhythm of her breaths.

Prompted by an unavoidable obligation that came out of nowhere, I reached out and... chased away a stray strand of hair that fell upon her cheek, gently brushing it aside while taking care not to touch her face — an act that was sure to jolt her awake and leave me in quite the unexplainable, compromised position.

Gulp

Just the idea of Saintess suddenly opening up her eyes and catching me staring was what jolted yours truly awake, though, forcing me to face the unlikely odds of surviving such a scenario. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

To see Selia, a damned sword-saintess, sleeping with such a peaceful, vulnerable expression on her face?

It was more than likely that doing so constituted something between heresy and sacrilege!

Scared out of my wits, I attempted to gently pull my hand aside—

Only for Selia to wrinkle her nose as she grabbed onto my arm a bit harder than before.

That left me with absolutely no doubts — if I dared to pull hard enough to free my hand, I would be sure to wake her up.

As such, stuck between my inability to escape with my hand and the fear of what would happen if Selia woke up with me staring at her, I was left with only one choice.

A coward’s way out in a situation where I couldn’t be blamed, yet still feared it happening.

And so, I laid back down on the back, turned my head away from the Saintess and closed down my eyes, taking a moment to properly stabilize my breath.

A moment later, only an expert should be able to discern my act from someone that was actually sleeping. And if this world and whoever was behind the steer of fate had even a single iota of mercy over me... I could actually fall back asleep before Selia would wake up!

Which only made it clear that it wasn’t going to happen.

As if to confirm my thoughts — and through them, my assessment of just how favorable fate looked over me in this new life of mine — it took Saintess only a moment to start moving around a bit.

The slight shifts and turns of her body made it clear — she was waking up, yet still fighting off the notion of doing so, trying to keep herself comfortable enough to snatch just a few more seconds, maybe minutes of sleep.

Just like it was the case with me, though, once the process of waking up started, Saintess had no plans of putting it on hold.

Be it training, determination or whatever else might be pushing her, once her slight movements grew to a certain degree, her whole body stiffened for but a second before slowly relaxing as she froze nearly motionless on her spot.

Then, even though I couldn’t see, I could feel her opening up her eyes.

A moment of silence followed. Next, Saintess mirrored my own waking-up pattern and sat up on the bed. Then and only then, her attention moved to whatever it was that weighed down on her hand.

"Huh?" A small, melodic yelp caressed my ears right as Selia jolted and finally let go of my hand, only to then freeze again, her eyes staring so hard at my turned-away face, I could tell she was staring even with my eyes shut closed.

’Now, what should I do?’

I only had moments to decide.

Should I keep playing? Or pretend that her movements were enough to wake me up?

I only had a moment to decide. So, I made sure to make that moment count.

"Yaaaa-aawnn..."

I pushed my chest up, only to then let my head pull my shoulders down as it nearly succumbed to the pull of gravity now that it no longer had the bed to rest down against. For a moment, I fought against those changing forces before finally finding my stability, resting in place for a moment and then finally, slowly pulling my eyelids open.

I took several more seconds doing nothing but staring at the wall ahead, near perfectly mirroring my moment of daze from when I actually woke up, acting as if I was taking my sweet time to figure out where the hell I was.

All along, I could tell I wasn’t fooling anyone.

Hell, maybe if it was anyone else, a reasonably powerful powerhouse, a great mage, maybe even a damned sage... I could fool those.

But Selia?W

’Yeah, there’s no fooling her,’ I thought, fully aware how the true intentions behind my whole act couldn’t be any more obvious.

And yet?

Saintess silently decided to just play along as she quickly pushed her legs off the side of the bed and stood up, acting as if nothing had happened whatsoever.

"Good morning, kiddo," she called out while fixing her robes and making sure every part of her clothing rested exactly where it was designed to be. Then, she finally allowed herself to look over her shoulder, casting quite the intense glance back at me. "How long do you plan to laze around in the bed?" she then asked, quickly increasing the intensity of her words.

"Didn’t you have those experiments of yours to run?" she asked, only to turn her head back, shake it and then quickly fish out my backpack from the room’s secure box, tossing it my way right as I managed to pull myself together and start getting ready.

"Hurry up and let’s go. The sooner we start, the sooner we will know if that plan of yours will work!"