Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 64: A Fortunate Misunderstanding for Joji

"Joji, she can undergo the same procedure, can’t she?" Duchess Rosalind asked, her tone outwardly composed, almost clinical.

Then the composure softened, just a little.

"My girl works very hard, you know."

"I know," Joji said.

Something in his voice made Daisy lift her head at once.

"I know how hard she has pushed herself to reach the peak of Rank-3 as a mage," he went on. "I know she has mastery over earth, wind, and fire as well."

Daisy gasped. Even the duchess looked surprised, but not for Daisy’s sake.

Daisy’s breath caught because that was no small noticing. That was attention. Care.

The kind that watched quietly and kept count without making a grand display of itself.

Joji had been keeping track of her all this time, not with the hollow noise of a man pretending concern, but in silence, in memory, in action.

Her eyes stung. Then she ran to him.

Despite Joji being damp with sweat, she threw herself into his arms and began to cry.

"I’m sorry I doubted you," Daisy said, muffled against him. "I’m so stupid. I should have just asked."

She even stamped her foot in frustration at herself, like a girl angry at her own foolish heart.

Rosalind, however, arrived at an altogether different misunderstanding.

She had not known Daisy was the one who had doubted Joji. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

All this time, she had feared something else entirely. She had thought Joji might secretly resent her daughter for what had happened back at the academy, not in the sense of blame for an assault, but in the crueler way society often judged such things.

A woman whose garments had been torn by another man, even without her chastity taken, could still find herself marked by rumor badly enough to ruin her chances of marriage.

Some never wed at all after such disgrace touched their name.

And now here was Daisy, crying in relief over a misunderstanding of her own making.

For one sharp moment, Rosalind thought her daughter both shameless and witless.

Then, just as quickly, she felt like a fool herself.

She had treated Joji coldly while knowing only half the matter.

Worse, she had long entertained the fear that he might one day cast Daisy aside because of that incident at the academy.

Now, seeing the girl sob against him while he held her without hesitation, the duchess could only let out a quiet, rueful chuckle.

The Lady of the Swamp, who felt enough of their thoughts to grasp the shape of the drama, watched all of it with keen amusement.

Humans truly were entertaining creatures.

Joji and Lena, meanwhile, had both seen enough spy series on streaming platforms in their former lives to know the value of not thinking too loudly in front of someone dangerous.

Lena had become especially good at it.

The Lady of the Swamp turned her attention toward her first and found only the most ordinary stream of thought.

’I’m hungry. Should I get turkey or regular ham? And what juice? There are too many fruits in the pantry. What a pain.’

The witch narrowed her eyes.

This maid was either unfazed by the greater dramas of the world or unexpectedly gifted at being empty-headed exactly when it mattered.

Then the Lady of the Swamp shifted her gaze toward Joji’s mind.

’Are those who sneeze a lot the most blessed?’

’While we sleep, our brains make up stories and then get scared of them.’

’When you give someone food, you’re feeding them. But when you give them water, you aren’t watering them.’

The Lady of the Swamp drew her hands back and stared at Joji with new interest.

She had not known the man was this deep.

The questions moving through his mind were the sort scholars spent their whole lives circling, chewing over them day after day until thought itself became prayer.

Stranger still, Joji was not dwelling on them with the dry reverence of a cloistered sage. He turned them over the way some men toyed with riddles in idle moments, as if they were no more than troublesome little curiosities meant to tease the brain.

To Joji, they were only shower thoughts.

To the Lady of the Swamp, they were enough to make her amazed.

After the embrace, Duchess Rosalind change into a fresh set of pajamas, then said only.

"Daisy. We need to talk."

Mother and daughter left the room together.

When they reached the duchess’s chamber, Rosalind sat upon the bedside and patted the space beside her.

Daisy obeyed at once, though she already felt as though judgment were waiting for her there.

"Daisy, why did you let Joji down like that?" Rosalind asked.

Daisy’s face crumpled almost at once.

"I... I didn’t know," she said, tears gathering again. "I thought he hated me. I kept telling him that I had only been dragged there in my sleep, that it was not my fault, but every time I looked at him, I kept thinking maybe he still saw me differently."

"You nearly lost someone because you chose assumption over truth," the duchess said, not cruelly, but with the weight of a mother who knew how close such foolishness could come to ruin.

That was enough to break what little composure Daisy had left.

Mother and daughter folded into each other then, holding fast in the quiet of the room.

Bit by bit, Daisy began to speak more openly.

She told Rosalind of the promise she and Joji had made to be honest with one another.

She spoke too of their agreement on family planning, that they would not bring children into the world merely because passion was warm and love was near, but only when the time was truly right.

Rosalind listened. Yet even as she did, she saw it plainly.

Daisy was holding something back.

The duchess studied her for a long moment, then asked, softer now but no less direct.

"What are you hiding from me?"

Daisy lowered her head at once, her face turning red.

Rosalind saw enough in that alone to understand that whatever lay between Daisy and Joji belonged to the two of them.

Her own husband had never been a passionate man, only a careful one, dutiful and gentlemanly in the old way.

There was comfort in that, certainly, but little fire. Such was hardly strange in Primeria, yet it left Rosalind with gaps in understanding she had never truly acknowledged.

Daisy felt heavy in her heart for keeping things from her mother, but she was not dumb enough to see that she would give Joji a hard time if the duchess discovered the debaucheries Joji was doing with her that were worse than those of a whore.

"Mother," Daisy said meekly, "that is time meant only for me and Joji."

However, Duchess Rosalind had never taken pleasure or orgasmed during sex before, which is why she did not know that when Joji fingered her, it was sexual pleasure.

What’s more, the duchess was a boyish woman, and she grew curious.

"Then give your mother one tale," Rosalind said. "Only one."

Daisy thought carefully.

She couldn’t tell of how Joji was making her spread her legs in her own study.

She could tell how Joji flipped her all over his room and filled her to the brim.

She could tell about herself.

"Mother, I acted like a dirty whore for Joji and Joji treated me like the bitch I am," Daisy said.

The duchess gasped, her face full of shock. In this day and age, whores were notorious for spreading their legs in bed and having sex fully unclothed.

That was already considered extremely vulgar, yet to think her daughter was such a person.

Still, Joji was Daisy’s future husband. What concerned her was Daisy’s chance to remarry.

"Daisy," Rosalind said, concern overtaking shock, "you do understand that once you have given yourself so fully to one man, there may be no easy path to another?"

"I know, Mother," Daisy said softly. "I know it well and I only want Joji in my life. Joji works so hard to grow stronger. He wants us to be able to see the world together."

Elsewhere, Joji felt spent. Not in body, but in mind.

The duchess had exhausted him in a way the others had not. Daisy was a creature of appetite, quick to feel and quicker still to drown in it.

The Lady of the Swamp was sensitive in an altogether different fashion, strange and instinctive, like some ancient thing too honest with its own flesh to bother hiding it.

But Rosalind was neither. She was almost innocent in that one narrow, unbelievable way.

Oblivious to the shape of desire, to the common grammar of sex, as though the late duke had handled her with such care all her life that she had passed from girlhood into womanhood without ever learning what fire truly was.

On the other side of the room, the witch had fallen into a light doze.

Lena had served her some modern imitation of a martini, and the drink had done its work well enough.

Then Lena turned to him.

"Joji, come with me. I need to tell you something." Her face, usually bright with mischief, had gone flat. "Take this seriously."

That alone was enough to make Joji rise.

He followed her out of the room and down the corridor to her own quarters.

It was only a servant’s chamber, a fraction of the size of his, yet still spacious by any common standard.

The place bore her touch everywhere. Handmade stuffed toys sat upon the shelves and by the bed, each one crafted with surprising care.

Joji sat on the bedside and picked one up, turning it over in his hands and admiring the neatness of the stitching.

Lena sat beside him then, closer than before, her face stripped of all teasing.

Hope was written plainly there.

"I have a secret," she said. "But I need your cooperation."

Joji looked at her and nodded once.

"Alright. How can I help?"

Lena drew a breath.

"I have a system," she said. "And it can help me gain power."

The words struck Joji to the core.

For an instant, true shock broke through him, because he had guarded that same secret within himself and never once imagined he might hear it spoken aloud by another.