Chapter 182: Drying Her Hair

When Giselle finished washing up and returned to the bedroom, she paused at the door.

The blanket on the bed had risen into a small mound. Elias had already tucked himself in ahead of her, with only half his face showing. His eyes were round and bright, fixed on her with the alert sweetness of a puppy watching its owner come home. Above them, his hair was a soft mess against the pillow, fluffy enough to make a person’s fingers itch.

The moment he saw her, he pushed his whole head out from under the blanket and smiled faintly.

"You’re done?"

Giselle came back to herself. "Mm."

For a second, she had almost lost focus.

The way Elias looked and sounded in that bed was too much like a husband waiting for his wife to come sleep beside him.

Then Elias noticed something. "Giselle, your hair’s still wet."

Giselle’s hair reached her waist. With hair that long, washing only her body was almost impossible. Water always found its way into the ends, and once the ends were wet, the rest followed.

Now her silver hair was damp all the way through. Even after she had dried it with a towel, it still held a glossy sheen. Small drops clung to the tips and slid down one by one.

It made her look less distant than usual. The cold edge around her softened, and for once, there was a rare vulnerability to her, as if she might be easy to bully if someone dared to try.

Giselle tilted her head slightly and lifted a strand between her fingers. "It’s fine. It’ll dry on its own after a while."

Elias’s eyes widened at once. "How is that fine? If you sleep with wet hair, your head is going to hurt tomorrow. You have to dry it."

Before Giselle could answer, Elias threw back the blanket, climbed out of bed, and rushed out of the bedroom.

"I’ll find the hair dryer."

He moved so fast she did not even get the chance to stop him.

A little while later, Elias came back with the hair dryer in hand. As he plugged it in, he muttered under his breath, "Seriously, with this much hair and this much water, how long were you planning to wait for it to dry by itself?"

Then he looked up at Giselle. His clean, harmless eyes held a rare firmness. He curled his fingers toward himself and said softly, "Come here."

Giselle said nothing.

She understood Elias well enough by now. In certain matters, he could become strangely stubborn. When he was like this, explanations were useless. Obedience was easier.

So she walked to the head of the bed and stopped in front of him.

Elias looked at her. His nose gave a small twitch, and then he smiled.

"You smell good."

Giselle realized what he was doing. A faint embarrassment stirred in her, unfamiliar enough that she almost did not recognize it. Nothing showed on her face. Her voice stayed even.

"It’s the body wash."

"It smells really nice." Elias leaned in and breathed in again. "I should buy a bottle later."

He said it so naturally that Giselle could not even step back. If she did, it would make her look guilty.

Elias looked at her steady face and snorted inwardly.

"Our little innocent ice queen can really hold it in. Let’s see how long you can keep acting calm."

System Theta sounded nervous. "Host, what exactly are you doing? Didn’t you say she was supposed to be the last one..."

"What am I doing?" Elias replied calmly. "Raising favorability. With a pure little novice like her, this kind of tension works better than sleeping with her."

Then he ran into a practical problem.

He looked at Giselle’s height, then tried rising onto his toes. Even then, the hair dryer only barely reached high enough.

Giselle noticed his troubled expression. She bent her knees and started to crouch. "I can stay like this."

"No, no." Elias shook his head quickly, stopping her at once.

He kicked off his bunny slippers, planted one foot on the bed, and climbed up with a soft little sound of effort. Once on the mattress, he crouched. With the added height from the bed, he was just a little taller than Giselle, which meant he did not even need to lift his arm too much.

Elias smiled softly, his cheeks still a little flushed.

"There. This works."

He adjusted his grip on the dryer. "Okay, turn around. I’m starting."

Giselle did as he said.

A moment later, warmth poured over her cool scalp, followed by the gentle touch of Elias’s fingers parting and smoothing through her hair.

Giselle stood still and looked straight ahead, slowly losing focus.

Ever since her father died, she could not remember the last time someone had dried her hair like this.

The hair dryer was noisy, but her heart felt quieter than it had in a long time. The sound filled the room, low and steady, while Elias worked with surprising patience behind her. He did not tug too hard. He did not rush. His fingers moved through her hair with careful attention, separating damp sections and lifting them toward the warm air until the weight of the water began to leave.

Giselle had always treated things like this as unnecessary.

Hair dried eventually. A body adapted. Discomfort could be ignored.

But Elias did not treat it as something small. He treated it like a problem that mattered because it belonged to her.

That was harder to dismiss.

After a while, the dryer clicked off.

"The back is done," Elias said. "Turn around. I need to dry the front." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Giselle turned.

Elias did not say anything else. He simply switched the dryer on again.

She looked at the boy in front of her.

So this was what he looked like when he was serious. His attention narrowed completely onto the task in his hands. His eyes held only what he was doing, as if the rest of the world had been pushed to the edges.

"Lower your head," Elias said, his voice half-swallowed by the noise.

Giselle heard him and slowly lowered her head.

Then her expression stalled.

Elias had been lying in bed already, so of course he was no longer wearing his full outfit. His lower half was covered only by a pair of shorts, leaving his long, pale legs exposed to the room.

His skin was startlingly smooth. There was no trace of hair along his thighs, nothing rough or careless. It looked almost unreal, as if he had been cared for too well by hands that had nothing better to do than make him dangerous.

He was crouched on the bed, thighs pressed close to his calves, his weight sinking into his own feet. The position made the lines of his legs tense in a way that should have been ordinary, but was not. There was softness there, but also the visual pressure of something held in place, something that invited a person to imagine hands closing around it.

His bare feet had lost the white socks from earlier. They pressed into the soft bedding, half-buried by his weight. The pressure brought faint blue veins up along the pale arches of his feet. His toes curled slightly against the blanket, their nails flushed a deep, vivid pink, like petals darkened by too much heat.

Giselle stared.

When she realized what she was doing, she turned her face away on instinct.

Elias caught it immediately.

"What are you doing?" he complained, a touch of petulance in his voice.

Giselle came back to herself and turned her head forward again.

This time, she closed her eyes.

She had never imagined that legs and feet could be tempting.

Elias asked inside his mind, "Did she close her eyes?"

System Theta answered, "Yes."

Elias gave a soft laugh. "Useless. She can’t even handle looking at my feet. If she ever gets the chance to kiss them, won’t she get so excited she passes out?"

System Theta hesitated. "Giselle... probably wouldn’t do that, right?"

According to its data, that kind of action was completely incompatible with Giselle’s personality.

Elias only smiled.

"She wouldn’t do it now. But who knows about later?"

System Theta went silent.

Giselle, please do not fall that far. Please, please, please.

Otherwise it would look so useless.