Entropy's Servant

Chapter 40 - North

Hello everyone, Astaroth here.
While you're half-asleep, don't you find you have less restraint than when you're awake?
Conversely, you also have less of the mental capacity needed to come up with bad ideas in the first place...
Still, it's probably a good idea to be alone until you wake up fully, in most cases.

My consciousness couldn't be described in any way other than 'foggy' as I awoke, and it took a few seconds of blinking before I even remembered Lady Entropy's outrageous request from last night.

Looking to my left, I took note of the fact that Lady Entropy, with her eyes closed, her mouth slightly opened, leaking small, peaceful breaths, and her small hands holding on to my sleeve in her sleep, was even cuter than usual.

Of course, this impression was helped by the fact that, as loose-fitting as it was, the sleeves of her dress had managed to keep all but her fingertips covered.

Absent-minded, most likely still half-asleep and without putting too much thought into it, I started playing with her hair.

Eventually, this brought my attention to her pointy ears, and I made the half-aware decision to take one between two fingers.

It twitched as I touched it.

I didn't stop for several minutes, and my mental state made very little progress towards a higher level of awareness.

"... Astaroth?"

Her sudden voice shot me into full awareness with one word, but I possessed far too much pride to simply retract my hand, so I found myself forced to come up with something.

"You know, Lady Entropy", I said after several seconds of silence as I moved my hand from her ear back to her hair, "you really should be more careful with your requests in the future."

"... Nn?"

The noise of questioning she let out was so cute it almost caused me to lose my train of thought.

Almost.

"This time, I was able to control myself, so nothing happened, fortunately for the both of us", I said, moving my hand to her cheek. "But as expected, even I..." I paused momentarily, searching for the right words as a faint blush I paid no mind to crept onto my face. "Even I cannot make any guarantees when you make requests like that."

She made a motion as if to turn the other way and turn her back to me, but didn't end up actually turning around.

"That's... I wouldn't... That is... Well..."

After a few seconds of stammering, she seemed to give up on words entirely and closed her eyes, loosely pursing her lips.

Obviously, there was no way I would not notice the meaning of the gesture.

Slowly but surely, I moved in closer--

A knock from the door tore the two of us from each other, and before we knew it, we were sitting straight up in the bed.

"... Enter", I said after a few moments of silence, quietly hoping the one on the other side of the door would be a regular Ghost Maid.

Of course, my hope was in vain. The person who entered the room was a blue Ghostly Trickster Maid.

I only noticed after she'd entered that, in my rather... confused state, I'd forgotten to close the curtains around the bed the previous night.

"Oh my, oh my~?"

The smile on her face played between the feelings 'interested' and 'teasing', never solidly resting as one or the other.

Without much of a warning or a justification, she floated closer, inspecting us from various angles. I scowled at her with half-lidded eyes, waving her away whenever she got too close. Neither party spoke a word.