Chapter 402: Benjamin, the Accused
Sakura was now more visibly pissed than she had been before, since her being ignored earlier by the intruder was probably out of belittlement and not because of any tactical reason.
The fox queen’s amber eyes were narrowed, her fox ears flat, her tail twitching with irritation.
"Benjamin, I will never accept that arrogant and selfish creature as one of your women," she shamelessly exclaimed, forgetting that she herself had once been dubbed the PRIDEFUL Beast Queen by her own people and allies, "someone like that who believes they are above the entire world cannot communicate with the rest of us properly or function as part of a group!"
"Do not listen to the bad woman, Master! She is just trying to turn you against me with her poison words!" Rahab turned to cling even tighter to Benjamin, pressing her body against his, her yellow eyes wide and desperate. "I will try my very best to tolerate all the disgusting swines, bugs, and fleas you choose to conjoin yourself with, even if they are beneath me and unworthy of my attention. I am your lowest servant after all, so I will serve you by accepting your other companions. But you definitely have to take responsibility for what you did to me and my reputation!"
"Uhm... I am sorry, but who are you again? I do not remember meeting you before today," Benjamin raised a brow and asked the clinging woman, genuinely confused by her accusations and her demands.
"!?!?" She reacted with shock from Benjamin’s question, her yellow eyes widening even further as she trembled slightly against his chest, her pale face going even paler. "I cannot believe this... So that was all I was to you? Just a forgotten memory, an after thought? You used me and discarded me from your mind like I meant nothing at all?"
Benjamin still made a puzzled face, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together, clearly confused by her dramatic words and her wounded expression.
But the other women gathered there were starting to smell meaning from the stranger’s accusations, their eyes narrowing and their postures stiffening as they connected the dots.
She continued, looking visibly—or perhaps exaggeratedly—hurt by his lack of recognition, her voice rising with emotion:
"When you were penetrating me with your big thing, ravaging my body like an animal in heat, you were happy and satisfied! You made sounds of pleasure and called out with joy! But now that you have gotten what you wanted from my body, you do not even register me as a person anymore? That is horrible behavior! Take responsibility for your actions, please! If you will not marry me, very well, I will accept that. But at the very least, make me your dear pet so that I can stay by your side forever!"
Before Benjamin could see where this train wreck was going, before he could defend himself or explain anything, he fell under immediate attack from the other women surrounding him.
"Benjamin... I am very disappointed in you right now, more disappointed than I have ever been in my entire life," Sakura held her arm and looked away from him, her amber eyes cold and distant. "To visit a brothel and pay for sex when you had so many faithful and willing women waiting for you back home... I never expected this from you. I thought you were better than that."
"So this is your true beastly form revealing itself, is it?!" Tamar roared from the side, jabbing an accusatory finger at him, her face red with anger. "You just like mating with everything that has a hole and a pulse, you immoral beast! You have no self-control whatsoever!"
"What?! Guys, please calm down and listen to me for a moment!" Benjamin raised a hand to explain himself to the now sulking mass of women who were glaring at him with various degrees of hurt and anger. "The novel never gave me that kind of liberty or opportunity! I have been kidnapped and transported against my will across royal palaces and fairy kingdoms, I have not had the freedom to find a prostitute anywhere!"
"But you wanted to find one, is that what you are saying?" Titania folded her arms across her chest, her violet eyes narrowed. "You sound like you wanted to visit a brothel but simply did not have the chance yet."
"I think we are all missing the point here, entirely," Benjamin sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
"No, you need to answer Lady Titania’s question first before we move on to anything else," Tamar pressed even harder, stepping closer.
And as Benjamin was getting more lost for words, drowning in the accusations and the assumptions, Sara spoke up, her voice cutting through the chaos.
"Enough of this, my sisters and mothers. This is not productive or fair to him," she walked closer to Benjamin and stood beside him, then faced everyone with authority in her posture, her leather and metal armor clattering with each step, a spear held firmly in her hand. "Benjamin was left with very little choice in many matters when he first arrived on Verdant Spire. He also had little choice when he was kidnapped to the beast kingdom against his will.
"As a god-touched from another world, a place where violence and coercion are not the primary methods of social interaction, violence in Elyndor was not part of his natural arsenal of thoughts or responses. So when he was kidnapped again to Fairylynch, he had to use complicity and cooperation to work things out..."
The women started understanding what Sara was saying as she spoke, their angry expressions softening, and they started feeling a little guilty for jumping to conclusions so quickly.
They scratched their heads and looked everywhere else, avoiding Benjamin’s eyes.
Sara continued, her auburn hair fluttering in the soft morning breeze, her silver slick armor glistening from the emerging sun as it rose higher in the sky:
"We are as guilty as Benjamin is, if we want to start pointing fingers and assigning blame. Benjamin is not our possession or our property to control. He is a unique individual with his own desires and his own history. He can bring whomever he wants home to our village, and we should accept them with open arms and warm hearts, just as Benjamin accepts all of us regardless of our deficiencies and our flaws.
"So what if he visited a brothel at some point in his journey? Though I believe that particular fact to be untrue based on what I know of his character, even if it were true, it would be wholly our fault for not pleasing his desires enough to keep him satisfied at home."
It was becoming canon that Rahab was a prostitute now, when there weren’t any evidence, but okay...
