I didn't have too much time to process Hong Rei's gender change before she pulled out a long coil of rope and started to wrap it around my arms. Evidently, her intent was to tie me up.

  —Not again.

  I rolled my eyes.

  How many times was it today, already?

  Being the helpless captive got really tiresome really quickly, and nobody had told me that this was going to be a BDSM story.

  "Erebum, eba yada lemuco..." (Please, you don't need to...) I told the foxgirl in Galuterican.

  "It's okay! It'll be fun!" Hong Rei responded to me cheerfully in Mandarin.

  Kang Jiesu had said that the pn was to 'interrogate' me, after which they would erase my memories. However, they they didn't have access to a transtor at the moment, so this meant they meant that they intended to abduct me and keep me tied up in a closet indefinitely until they found a beastkin who could communicate with Hong Rei? Was that the gist of the pn?

  But what about my job? I still needed to report to work tomorrow morning, or else my pay would be docked. Moreover, it would only take a day or two before people started asking questions. There would surely be some kind of investigation, and they'd retrace my steps with dogs and trackers. I wasn't sure how carefully my cssmates had scrutinized this reckless pn.

  This was actually quite troublesome.

  + + +

  Incidentally, the foxgirl was really struggling with the ropes. It had gotten twisted into a few knots in a few areas, which meant that she had to stop and untangle the entire length periodically. Her biggest mistake, however, was attempting to pull on the rope when she hadn't figured out the configuration of the loops, which certainly made the mess of spaghetti far worse than it originally was before we started.

  Needless to say, Hong Rei was clearly an amateur.

  She definitely had no clue how to tie up a girl (...not that I had ever been tied up before), and she mostly just wound the rope around my upper body in circles as if she was wrapping tape around my torso. It was a fairly cartoonish way of tying up a person, which was exacerbated by the fact that conventional rope wasn't sticky and you obviously couldn't use it like duck tape while expecting that it would stay in pce. The tension wasn't consistent, and it was probably as secure as a ball of a yarn.

  + + +

  "Ming-Ming, what did you think of the Archbishop's offer?" Kang Jiesu asked, continuing the prior conversation with his cssmates without noticing Hong Rei's shenanigans in the corner of the room. "Would you become a noble of this kingdom and accept a title of nd?"

  "M-me?" Ming Lina stammered, surprised to hear Kang Jiesu address her.

  "You don't say very much when we're in a group, so I thought you'd talk more when there's less of our css around."

  Ming Lina shuffled uncomfortably in her seat and twiddled her fingers.

  My childhood friend must have known that she liked him. Practically the entire school knew that Ming Lina had a massive crush on Kang Jiesu, and it was more-or-less public knowledge ever since sixth grade. As a matter of fact, they had actually gone to multiple school dances together, although Kang Jiesu never agreed to it twice in a row. Virtually everyone knew that Kang Jiesu didn't really have feelings for her, and in fact he had said it openly a few times. However, Ming Lina never gave up on trying and Kang Jiesu was too nice to be anything but cordial, friendly, and diplomatic.

  —'I don't hate you', Kang Jiesu had told her once before.

  And Ming Lina practically glowed like a hot air balloon soaring to the heavens with overflowing happiness.

  It was really a disastrous retionship, although my childhood friend did not seem to mind her glue-like presence.

  "Well..." Ming Lina began, "I don't really know if I want to run a territory on my own. It seems like a lot of work to be an administrator, and I don't know if I could do it well. Like in the Otome Isekai stories, there's a lot of politics or the protagonist is basically a genius, but I don't think I'd be good with either of those things."

  "You could appoint a governor to do all the work for you," Kang Jiesu suggested.

  Ming Lina shook her head.

  "I'd rather if we could share a territory as a css, or something like that. I don't want to be alone."

  "This universe isn't really good for women, even for aristocrats," Hong Baiye added in from the side. "From as far as I can tell, it looks like a noblewoman's property becomes her husband's after she is married, so it's really only painting a big target on the girls' backs if we accept nd or wealth from the king. Haven't you noticed all the people swarming around us like vultures? They want to take advantage of us."

  Ming Lina's face flushed a shade of pink and she buried her face in her knees.

  Something must have happened with her st night.

  "Hm... so it sounds like we should refuse then," Kang Jiesu said, summarizing the feedback.

  "I would definitely be against it," Hong Baiye said.

  + + +

  "What are you even doing?" Lu Liwang finally noticed the mess that the Hong Rei was getting into in the back corner of the room after stepping away from his work on the unconscious guard.

  By this point, I was certainly incapacitated, but it wasn't because the rope was tightly wound or properly secured. I mainly couldn't move because I would definitely trip over myself if I tried to stand up, particurly with the way that there was essentially a rge tangle of rope all around my arms and legs. Hong Rei essentially compensated for quality with quantity, and the sheer volume of rope was basically analogous to a massive web of string.

  "Well... it doesn't really look right," Hong Rei finally admitted.

  "To be honest, it's a little doubtful that it's even functional," Lu Liwang remarked.

  The otaku knelt down right next to me and examined my hands. He ran his chubby fingers across the crusted line of red that had dried across my palms, and he muttered a few incomprehensible words until a faint green light illuminated in my peripheral vision.

  The shallow cut on my hands slowly faded away until it fully disappeared.

  This made me realize that Lu Liwang was a healer. The reason why nobody overreacted when Hong Rei smashed the guard on the head was because Lu Liwang could restore any injury that his cssmates inflicted. It was almost a perfect combination. As a collective unit, my cssmates had a very impressive set of overpowered abilities that compensated for each others' weaknesses. It was almost like they had coordinated with each other in advance.

  I was surprised that Lu Liwang would pick a support ability, though. It didn't really fit the mental image that I had for him, since I figured that he was the type of otaku who would choose something perverted, sexual, or nasty.

  Although, maybe healing could be a NSFW ability?

  The Redo of Healer anime did exist, after all.

  (...Not that I would know what that anime is, of course.)

  Hong Rei's attitude was defensive in response to Lu Liwang's criticism.

  "Well, can you do better, then?" Hong Rei retorted.

  "What? Me? Well..." Lu Liwang reacted awkwardly. "...I wouldn't know anything about tying people up."

  "If you don't know, then don't compin!" The foxgirl chided.

  Flicking her tail in irritation, Hong Rei stuffed a knot of cloth into my mouth and secured the gag with a decent knot.

  —Mpmph!

  Did they really have to go that far to me?? I really hadn't put up any resistance...

  "Are you guys finished over there?" Hong Baiye called from across the room. "I want to move the guard somewhere else so that when he wakes up, he won't be anywhere close to here."

  "Yup! We're finished, sis!" Hong Rei responded affirmatively.

  The foxgirl had evidently gotten tired of her job as a rope rigger, and she looked eager to do something else.

  Ming Lina peered over with an apprehensive look in her eyes.

  "What were we doing with the maid, again?" She asked.

  "I was going to leave her in Kang Jiesu's bathroom and lock the door," the foxgirl replied.

  "...Oh." Ming-Ming said. "Will that really be okay?"

  Suddenly, I felt a pair of arms lift me up from the ground.

  It was Lu Liwang. Surprisingly, he was stronger than he looked.

  "I have Kang Jiesu's other maid under direct mind control, so there shouldn't be issues." Hong Baiye replied. "At the very least, I don't think there should be anyone else wandering around Kang's room."

  "...Okay." Ming Lina gave in meekly. "If you say so..."

  + + +

  I felt the room swirl around me as Lu Liwang promptly carried me over to the private bathroom in the Emerald Room. His movements were heavyset but firm, and he didn't show any sign that he struggled with the cssic princess carry.

  The bathroom, incidentally, was quite sparse. According to cultural norms in the Kingdom of Galuterica, bathrooms were primarily used as a toilet, and there weren't any showers or bathtubs. Wealthy families owned a separate bath house on their estate, and commoners visited a public bath house in order to wash themselves. Since the Emerald Room was a VIP suite, the bathroom was actually quite luxurious.

  Lu Liwang pced me on the cold marble floor.

  "Sorry," he said apologetically. "I just need to fix this a little bit."

  He didn't expin himself any further before I felt another loop of rope wrap around my wrists behind my back.

  Apparently, he had taken some of the excess cord to finish Hong Rei's sloppy work.

  He pulled forcefully, and then I winced from discomfort.

  —So tight!

  He did the same with my elbows, ankles, and knees.

  To my dismay, he did some kind of strange maneuver behind me, and I couldn't see exactly what he was doing with the ropes. After a few seconds, he did another firm pull on the rope, which forced my back to arch backwards quite distressingly.

  —Fuck. What the hell?!

  All of sudden, I felt like I couldn't move at all.

  I tried to speak out, but a bunch of muffled noises came out of my mouth.

  "Sorry," Lu Liwang repeated apologetically. "Hong Rei couldn't do it correctly, so I didn't have a choice."

  ?