CHAPTER 46
Azra'il - POV
The production consumed exactly three hours of effort.
Not because the formula presented high complexity. It was a theoretically simple process, restricted to the precise dosage of components and the chronological order of incorporating the ingredients. Time slipped by because I prepared five distinct variations, testing the concentration of coconut oil, the amount of wild honey, the viscosity of the olive soap, and the proportions of the lavender and rosemary extracts until I achieved the physical balance I had designed.
[Formula number five consolidated. Excellent cleaning efficiency, without stripping away natural protective oils. Pleasant aroma, without saturating the olfactory channels.]
<Satisfactory. The chemical refinement was worth the investment.>
[You've spent an entire afternoon locked in a room producing artisanal soaps.]
<It's called commercial portfolio diversification, Eos.>
[A convenient definition to conceal the domestic manufacturing of cosmetics.]
The test I conducted on my own body confirmed the calculations. My white strands responded immediately with that typical flexibility of fibres that have received the correct nutrients: a deep cleanse without the pillage of hydration. The hair exhibited an uncommon shine and softness.
However, I required a second field test.
A test that involved a hair structure that operated as the absolute opposite of mine in every measurable parameter. A dense, thick, and dehydrated mane.
I took the ceramic flask, left the room, and knocked on the door of Ghislaine's quarters.
She opened the door after a few seconds, displaying the countenance of someone who had assessed the visitor's physical signature before undoing the lock.
"Azra'il."
"Ghislaine." I raised the ceramic flask to her eye level. "I have developed a hair hygiene compound and require a control subject for the test. May I enter your room and give you a bath?"
The silence that settled in the corridor possessed a palpable texture of awkwardness.
Ghislaine's ears twitched in that same instant, responding to the acoustic stimulus even before her brain processed the semantics of the sentence.
"I'd expect a line like that from Rudeus," she said, with the tone of someone reaching a conclusion they had preferred not to reach. "Not from you."
"It's for the ha—"
"Oh, right! You're Paul's daughter," she continued, with that quality of a verdict already delivered and without appeal. "I should have remembered that before being surprised."
"I have nothing to do with—"
"Paul also always arrived with proposals that seemed reasonable in the opening sentence." Her ears lowered to a position of unsolicited memory. "And they ended in ways that were… ahem… inappropriate for minors."
I felt the temperature of my face rise with a speed that was uncomfortable and highly inconvenient for my dignity of a thousand lives.
"I am referring strictly to capillary structure," I retorted, keeping my voice under firm control. "To your hair. Which I intend to wash. With the compound I have formulated. For reasons of a scientific nature that bear no relation whatsoever to Paul's habits or to the deviations of that chubby-cheeked pervert of my brother."
Ghislaine stared at my face for a long second.
The left corner of her mouth sketched a slight elevation.
"Come in," she replied, making room in the doorway.
Ghislaine's room displayed the simplicity of one who had not cultivated the habit of accumulating unnecessary belongings over their travels. It was a clean, functional space, with the large wooden bathtub in the back that the Boreas family provided in every chamber. I approached it immediately.
I channelled mana into the palms of my hands, activating a continuous flow of water heated to the temperature I had calculated as ideal.
Ghislaine remained motionless, observing the silent control of magic with curiosity.
"It's a practical method," she commented, after the tub was filled. "Saves the effort of waiting for the servants to bring the buckets."
"Indeed. I can teach you the mechanics of this flow in our next lesson. It's merely a matter of coordinating the hydraulic output with heat regulation. It presents no technical complexity."
Her ears tilted forward, showing genuine satisfaction with the offer.
While the water settled, I organised the oak bowls, the flasks of the hair compound, and an artisanal soap I had produced with the residual ingredients.
"You may get in," I advised. "With clothes on if you'd prefer to be more at ease."
"That would be odd," Ghislaine responded, with the naturalness of a veteran of adventurers' camps.
"Why?"
"The clothes would get wet."
"..."
"Makes sense," I replied, dryly.
I turned my back at once, whilst she shed her clothes with the naturalness of someone who has spent years in places without privacy.
I took a deep breath, concentrating, as she removed her clothes. <I am the very bastion of professionalism.>
[Curious. That exact phrase was uttered by approximately ninety-three per cent of protagonists in questionable anime seconds before a disaster of dignity.]
<Unlike those protagonists, I have self-control. Besides, I am not the Chubby-Cheeked Pervert of my brother.>
[Your pulse showed an eighteen per cent increase in the last few seconds.]
<It's called a thermal reaction. The bath water is hot.>
[We are in autumn. And the ambient temperature of the room is stabilised at twenty degrees.]
<Silence.>
[Archival curiosity: your history indicates that you have previously performed capillary hygienisation on approximately seven hundred and twenty-nine wives in former lives.]
<Seven hundred and… Eos! Be quiet!>
I heard the sound of water displacing as Ghislaine's robust body settled into the tub. Immediately afterwards, her voice echoed through the room: "You can turn around."
I turned. Ghislaine was immersed up to her chest, displaying the mien of someone who was satisfied with the temperature. I handed her the artisanal soap over the wooden edge.
"For corporal hygienisation, should you so desire. It presents emollient properties distinct from the acidic substances that the Boreas house provides."
She accepted the soap, bringing it closer to her muzzle to inspect the aroma with that olfactory acuity typical of her race. Her ears rose a few millimetres.
"The scent is more pleasant than the soaps Eris uses."
"High-purity ingredients and calculated proportions," I explained, organising the bowls. "But the main focus of our experiment lies here."
I drew closer to the edge and inclined my head so she could examine my own strands. "I tested the formulation on my own hair first."
"It displays an uncommon shine," she observed, touching one of my damp locks with her fingertips. "I noticed the difference earlier in the corridor, but I assumed it was just the lighting."
"The guarantee of efficacy lies in the product's chemistry, not in the lighting, Ghislaine."
I used the oak bowl to wet Ghislaine's 'mane'. The hot water ran down the grey locks, which revealed the stiffness of strands that had grown exposed to the elements, without ever receiving any care beyond common soap.
<Eos, capillary analysis of Ghislaine.>
[High-density fibre, thick diameter, and a natural tendency to curl, severely suppressed by decades of dehydration. The potential for a reconstructive response to the compound is 98%.]
I opened the flask and distributed a generous amount of the compound into the palms of my hands, calculating the necessary volume for the density of her hair.
I applied the product, starting the massage directly on Ghislaine's scalp.
The technique of cranial pressure-point massage was one of the skills I had honed over past existences for reasons of pure diplomatic convenience. I had learned early on that stressed queens and warrior wives slept much better, woke with less inclination towards tyranny, and proved to be noticeably less prone to hurling bronze objects in my direction before breakfast if they received the correct stimulus to the meridians of the head.
I applied pressure to the correct geometric points of Ghislaine's skull, performing continuous circular movements that stimulated the local blood flow.
Ghislaine remained motionless for the first thirty seconds of the massage.
Her feline ears began to move. First, they rose slightly. Then, they tilted to the side. Next, they quivered rapidly.
<Eos…>
[The specimen's ears have entered a mode of absolute bliss. I recommend continuing the stimulus at the same rotational frequency.]
Suddenly, she let out a low sound. A guttural murmur that soon transformed into a shaky sigh and… a troublingly sharp keen.
"Ah… hnnn…"
The sound echoed off the stone walls with disastrous acoustic clarity.
I ignored the noise and maintained the rhythm of my fingers, trying to focus my brain on complex equations of magic graphs and topological meshes of bodily meridians…
"Hnnn… yes… right there…"
Another sound, this one with a note of satisfaction so explicit and profound that it made me miscalculate the mana flow for a full second. Ghislaine's tail, which had been resting inert on the outer edge of the tub, began an involuntary response movement.
As my fingers found the correct points of tension at the base of her ears, the speed of her tail increased drastically.
Toc-toc-toc!
CLANK!
The tail collided directly with the empty wooden bucket beside the tub, sending it flying against the opposite wall with a metallic clang.
…analysing how the connectivity of the nodes determined the maximum mana flow under physical stress…
"Ah… there… again…"
The tail whipped and entangled itself in the clean towel I had hung on the edge of the tub, pulling it into the water, soaking the fabric immediately. Suddenly, Ghislaine's left leg, immersed in the water, began to twitch rhythmically and involuntarily, thumping against the inner side of the tub in a manner identical to that of a hound when it receives a scratch at the base of the ear.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
I stopped the movements of my fingers.
Her left leg stopped thumping instantly. The compromising sounds ceased.
I resumed the hair massage experimentally.
Her left leg immediately restarted its rhythmic drumming against the wood of the tub, and she let out a new, long, almost tearful sigh of relaxation.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
"Ah… hnnnn… Azra'il…"
I stared at that biomechanical movement and listened to that symphony of highly suspicious noises in absolute silence for a few seconds. Outside the room, anyone with functional hearing would assume we were acting out a forbidden Asuran romance.
[The specimen's nervous system is operating at a level of relaxation that ignores the protocols of voluntary motor control. I recommend logging the phenomenon as an absolute formulation success.]
<I appreciate the laboratory analysis, Eos. But these sounds are drawing more attention than I would like.>
"You…," Ghislaine murmured, her voice emerging in a tone of pure torpor. "You're very good at this. Paul never knew how to do it like this. He has a heavy hand. He never calibrated the pressure in the right places."
"I don't know if I should take satisfaction in the comparison to Paul's massage technique in this context, Ghislaine," I commented, keeping my voice as flat as my pride would allow.
[The system has detected that the hormonal fluctuation of Ghislaine Dedoldia at this instant presents an eighty-eight per cent correlation with the relaxation data of your past wives.]
<Shut up, Eos.>
[Temporarily silencing data channels.]
Ghislaine let out another long and profound sigh of satisfaction, her head lolling completely back on the wooden edge of the tub.
"Ahhh… yes…"
It was at that exact instant of scandalous sounds and thumping in the tub that the door handle turned and the oak door swung open abruptly, revealing Rudeus's countenance in the doorway. He had entered with a red face, accelerated breathing, and eyes bulging like someone who had heard the forbidden symphony from outside and had come running to check on the action.
Rudeus froze in his tracks immediately. His pupils dilated as he registered the actual scene: Ghislaine immersed in the water with her ears horizontal, her left leg rhythmically thumping against the tub, her tail on the edge of the tub, and me, massaging her soaped hair with the utmost calm in the world.
Rudeus stared at Ghislaine.
He stared at my face.
He looked back at Ghislaine's exposed shoulders under the bathwater.
"I've been called a pervert for far less than this!" he exclaimed, his voice laden with a deep and wronged moral indignation.
I didn't move my body from the wooden stool. My right hand moved with surgical speed towards the soaked towel that Ghislaine's tail had pulled into the tub. I applied a pulse of non-chant magic to the structure of the damp fabric, launching it in a perfect, straight-line vector towards the doorway.
SMACK!
The heavy, waterlogged towel hit Rudeus squarely in the face with the force of a catapult projectile, causing his head to collide against the doorframe.
"Spying on women during their bath remains a severe violation of ethical conduct, you Chubby-Cheeked Pervert!" I stated, keeping my voice perfectly frigid.
I used a second pulse of wind magic to push his body into the outer corridor, causing the oak door to slam shut with violence. Then I stood and locked the door for good measure.
I turned back towards the wooden tub.
Ghislaine hadn't even opened her eyelids during the noisy interruption, displaying only a slight twitch of her horizontal ears that indicated she had registered the noise, but had concluded that thermal relaxation mattered infinitely more than Rudeus's intrusion.
"Where did you learn to massage like that?" she asked, her voice still under the effect of the torpor.
"I've practised exhaustively before," I answered, evasively, restarting the rinse with the oak bowl.
"On which volunteers?"
"On whomever was necessary for the development of a useful technical skill," I said, with the chill of one ending the line of questioning.
Ghislaine processed the response in silence, emitting only one more long sigh of approval while her tail maintained its constant oscillation on the edge.
She rose from the water with the typical slowness of one making an immense concession to exterior reality, making a point to show that she would much rather remain immersed.
I gathered the flasks and bowls while she dried herself with a coarse linen towel.
"Take a seat in this chair before the dressing table," I directed, indicating the wooden seat. "The process still requires the drying stage for the stabilisation of the hair fibres."
Ghislaine sat down with the docility of one who had concluded that temporary obedience would demand less effort than any argument.
I channelled mana into the palms of my hands, activating a continuous flow of heated air and low-pressure pneumatic movement. The warm wind left my fingers with temperature precision, distributing itself through Ghislaine's grey hair in such a way as to dry the fibres in concentric layers, rather than applying heat in a disorganised fashion.
She remained motionless under the current of air.
Her ears moved subtly, adopting a posture of auditory attention. "You're using a comb to align the strands while you direct the air."
"Yes. The drying occurs more homogeneously when the fibres are oriented from the inside out," I explained.
"I noticed the air temperature varies between the ends and the root."
"The ends of the hair dehydrate more quickly, regardless of the thermal load. The root, however, requires a gentler and more tempered flow to avoid thermal damage to the scalp," I said, regulating the intensity of the mana. "Causing burns on the skin would nullify the efficiency of any treatment compound. There would be no logic in formulating a product to preserve the hair if we were to destroy the biological base where it develops."
Ghislaine fell quiet for a moment with that quality of silence of someone processing data soberly.
"You prove to be an extremely careful girl," she observed, sincerely.
"I merely dedicate the appropriate care to that which reveals itself to have real, practical utility, Ghislaine," I replied.
Her ears tilted slightly forward, the sign I had already catalogued as the honest approval of a warrior. It was a recognition she had not expected to formulate before a child, but which had been wrung from her by the efficiency of my method.
I ended the flow of hot mana, applying one last pass of cool wind to set the hair fibres definitively.
"The procedure is complete. You may inspect the result in the mirror."
Ghislaine rose from the chair and approached the polished metal of the dressing table that served as a mirror.
Her 'mane' presented an entirely new physical identity.
It was not a magical alteration or an artificial transformation. It was the appearance things take on when they finally receive the proper treatment and respond by revealing the potential they have always possessed. Ghislaine's hair had preserved its wild and imposing volume, but the strands now exhibited an organised structure of brilliant waves. The locks had established a mutual agreement of softness. There was a satiny shine where once the harsh opacity of the desert had prevailed.
She kept her eyes fixed on her own reflection with an expression that I had not yet registered in her behavioural repertoire.
It was not the countenance of a sword master, nor the cold mien of a bodyguard. It was the face of a woman who was staring into the mirror expecting to register the usual rigidity and was met instead with an image of softness she did not know she possessed.
Her feline ears rose to the maximum verticality her anatomy allowed.
Her tail assumed a posture of rapid oscillation that communicated a satisfaction impossible to be disguised by classic etiquette.
"This compound," she declared, after a long silence, without taking her eyes off the mirror. "This is a product you plan to commercialise?"
"Exactly."
"The wealthy women of Asura will pay any price."
"And the aristocratic families with enough income to flaunt status will do so as well," I agreed, organising the ceramic flasks on the side table. "Women desire the preservation of their visual aesthetic. It's an elementary truth that requires no further philosophical investigation to be proven. One only needs to keep one's eyes open and observe social behaviour."
Ghislaine glanced sideways at my countenance through the mirror's reflection.
"You can use my hair for the next experiments," she announced, with the tone of one establishing a new domestic security directive. "For the future formulations."
"I accept the offer," I replied.
She retired to the reserved area of her quarters before I could process the details of her concession.
I remained static for a few seconds near the tub, holding the ceramic flasks. I shook my head lightly to reorganise my thought channels.
It was a purely rational decision of chemical engineering. I needed a constant control variable for the tests of viscosity and refinement of the next shampoo formulations. Ghislaine exhibited the most challenging and dense hair structure in the entire Boreas mansion. Maintaining the same test subject would guarantee the stability of the experimental data and the consistency of the final laboratory results.
The logic was impeccable.
Furthermore, there was a detail of animal anatomy that I had not foreseen before starting the physical process of the massage.
Ghislaine's ears, when her nervous system reached maximum relaxation, would tilt with that mien of one who had let down their guard completely before another. And, when the tips of my fingers grazed the scalp near the base of her feline cartilage, a subtle, almost imperceptible involuntary movement was registered, of one who was appreciating the thermal stimulus, but who had not yet decided if her beastly pride would allow a public validation of that pleasure.
It was, in all practical aspects of biological observation, the mechanical equivalent of stroking a large feline of immense imperial pride who pretends to ignore the affection while its tail indicates the most absolute satisfaction with the process.
I had already managed the patience of many large felines throughout my past existences.
The physics of the process remained identical in this plane.
I organised my utensils with slightly quicker steps than my usual walking pace dictated.
That autumn afternoon had revealed itself, by any metric of diversion and commercial efficiency, to be very productive.