Sylvain tries an apology and an explanation.

Sylvain gulped, looking at Ingrid's indignant face. "Okay... First things first. Sorry." He bowed his head, then bowed it even deeper to try and show sincerity. "Really sorry! I definitely didn't mean for things to end up like that!"

Ingrid kept her eyes fixed on him, but, to his surprise, seemed to calm down a bit at his apology, apparently taking him at his word. That didn't mean she was happy, though. She let him hold his bow for a period before finally speaking. "All right. If you didn't mean for things to end up like that, what did you mean for them to end up like, Sylvain? Wait, no. Before I hear why, I want to hear how. I think we both know I didn't choose to begin making a fool of myself. I was compelled by something... This box, I assume. Explain it to me."

"I'd be happy to, if I could, but there's a lot I don't get about it, myself. It would be faster to show you then to tell you-"

"Show me...? Do you intend to compel yourself to dance for me?" Ingrid couldn't help but chuckle at the idea, but when Sylvain shook his head, she didn't find it funny. "You intend for me to dance for you again?!"

"I swear, no tricks this time! On my life. Look, you can... put your hand around my throat as you do, if you like. All I want to do is show you how it works. Maybe then, the two of us can get to the bottom of it."

After some hesitation, Ingrid took him up on the offer, but instead of one hand, she used both. "Very well. You're on very thin ice right now, Sylvain. Don't test me."

"Yes ma'am," he agreed, slowly taking the box into his hands. "I'll keep it short. I got this box from Anna when she all but **** it on me. She told me it has the power to make women dance."

"And women only? It's like the fantasy of a perverted, immature schoolboy!"

"I don't argue that, but as you've seen, it's no fantasy. It's also no technology I've ever seen before. If I press that bit there, the part with the green triangle, the music starts again. It'll keep going until I press the pause lever next to it. The one with the two triangles seems to shift to another song. Finally, and this one's important: the wheel here controls the volume. I can't say for sure, but I think that the louder you hear the song, the more strongly it affects you. I'd like to test that now, if you're okay with it?"

"I'm far from okay with it! If I don't make an effort to understand now, though, I fear what your idiocy may lead you to do when I don't have you held to point. So... yes, I'd prefer to test it. I think you've seen enough for one life time, though, so I'd like you to keep your eyes respectfully on my face. Are we clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sylvain said again. He had to admit, it was an effort: Ingrid's saying that reminded him that, Boom Box aside, she still hadn't remembered to fix up her uniform. It was a hellish task not to cast his eyes down at her chest once he realized it. "One demonstration, chaste as a sermon, coming up. You'll note I'm turning the wheel all the way left... Now, I'm hitting 'play.'"

Ingrid continued to fix him with her eyes. "It's silent."

"Yes, the noise is all the way off. But as I turn the wheel right... You can hear it now, can't you? The drumline, softly?"

Ingrid nodded. "That's right. It's an undeniably catchy tune..."

"Is it, though?" Sylvain asked, smiling in spite of his situation. "See, for me, it's interesting, but hardly something I'd dance to. How is it to you? Seems like you're already enjoying it!"

The young man was referring to how Ingrid, still crouched to face him sitting on the ground, had shifted onto her knees and was now pumping her hips back and forth in time with the drumline. She tightened her grip to make him focus on her slightly red cheeks and creased brow again. "I am not enjoying it! Anyway, this disproves your theory. Even if I'm only barely able to hear it, it still affects me."

"Well, we're all learning something here. Since you're in a position to do so, however, why don't you do your best to describe how it feels?"

"It sounds like you're fishing for something lewd..."

"I'm not, honest! I just think if you could describe it, we could get some valuable insight. Is it like an involuntary spasm? Or more like someone grabbing your body and moving you like a puppet?"

"... Neither. How to describe it? It's more like..." Ingrid clammed up. From her funny, pensive expression, it was a coin toss as to whether she couldn't explain it or just didn't want to. "Ordinarily, you'd expect being **** to do something so foolish against your will to be a cold, terrifying feeling, wouldn't you? At first, it was. But as you grow more familiar with it, it's more like... how, if you're bitten by a bug, you'll want to scratch at it, only your every body part and every action is covered with the bug bites, itching to different levels of severity. Obviously, the worst part is the buttocks," she elaborated, removing one hand from Sylvain's neck to give herself a firm slap on her own ass with a wince. When she put her hand back, it joined her other on his shoulder instead of the former threatening position on his neck. "As you've surely seen, however, it isn't all that's affected. Your entire body, and even your choice of actions... There's a marked uncomfortable feeling if you don't scratch the itches. And..."

Sylvain raised an eyebrow, still struggling to keep his eyes only on her face in the foreground with all the hard work her ass was doing in the background. "...And if you do scratch those itches?"

Ingrid glanced sidelong to avoid meeting his eyes, now looking sorry she'd **** him to hold eye contact. "It feels... um... perhaps 'comfortable' is the word. That's...! H-hold on, Sylvain, you need to turn off the box. Or, um, you need to stop looking at my face."

"I thought you wanted me to-?"

"Sylvain!" she hissed, wrenching her eyes shut with a flush spreading across her face. After a moment, she re-opened her eyes to a seductive, half-lidded expression. She grinned at him, winked, then smooched the air teasingly.

Feeling his heart in his throat, Sylvain quickly pressed the Boom Box's pause button.

Immediately, Ingrid's butt stopped twerking. Her hands flew from his shoulders to **** his throat, and her face had fixed itself, returning to its earlier fury. "Sylvain, you promised no more tricks!!"

"What- ghk- tricks?! I... turned it off... like you said!"

Ingrid continued to grip his neck like a vice for a moment longer before relenting, still sourly frowning. "Well, I suppose this makes clear another point we should mark: a distinct itch that needs to be scratched when the music is playing is... Goddess, telling you this feels like handing an enemy archer a bow and begging him to shoot me out of the sky! That itch is... like feeling you need to work your hardest and have your effort recognized. So, just now... it quickly became impossible to only move my buttocks as I'd previously done. Even before it happened, I felt my body was going to manipulate itself to do something more eye-catching, in the only place that could catch your eyes."

"Huh... incredible." Because Ingrid's hands had relented from his neck, Sylvain was free to put his hand thoughtfully to his chin. "So it's not just making you dance, but, really, making you put on a proper show."

"There's nothing proper about it, obviously!" Ingrid complained. "I've never performed like that for anyone in my life. I've never seen anyone else do it, either. It's as though, through the music, the ideas and impulses come naturally..."

"Yeah... And again, so we're clinical and clear on this, when you do the things the music wants you to, it makes you feel good?"

"Comfortable!" Ingrid corrected him, although she looked defensive. "The word I used was 'comfortable.'"

"And again again, just so we're clear... does it make you feel aroused?"

"Comfortable!" she shouted again, now looking legitimately upset.

"Okay! I can read your reactions, and I'm going to put that down as 'scratching the itch does make you feel good, but doesn't necessarily make you feel aroused.' Is that accurate?"

Ingrid only sighed, looking suddenly exhausted. "Does it matter? I hope it goes without saying I'm never letting you use this thing on me again. Speaking of which, let's circle back to that. Why did you use this thing on me in the first place? This seems an exceptionally cruel prank to play on someone with as much history as you and I!"

Here, Sylvain paused. Answering how he'd made Ingrid do what she did was impossible, but answering why he made her do what she did might be dangerous. He tried to put a rare amount of caution into choosing his words. "Well, why indeed..." he muttered, scratching at the back of his hair.

"That's what I'm asking." Ingrid crossed her arms severely. "Even if you act like a buffoon, I know that somewhere, deep down, you make your choices for a reason. You must have some reason to do something so mean-spirited."

"Mean-spirited? I mean... I see this as more of a hilarious prank-"

"A hilarious prank?!" Ingrid yelled in disbelief. "Is that what you thought?"

"Listen, Ingrid, I swear... I just meant to test the thing. I was definitely going to hand it over to someone far more responsible than I once I was sure it was safe! I mean-"

"So you used unknown magic on me without knowing it was safe? Ah, please, do continue!"

Sylvain clicked his teeth, as frustrated at himself as he was Ingrid's nagging. "I felt a responsibility to deal with it, and I had no evidence it did anything but make a woman lose control of her body and do a goofy, sexy dance, which, by the way, was basically correct. And I tried it on you because... I thought it would be funny!"

"How can you be so bad at choosing the right words to say to a woman, Sylvain?" Ingrid groaned, looking more disappointed than she was angry. "You thought it would be funny to make me humiliate myself to a song about fornification? The things you made me do...! Do you understand that if it had gone any further, or if word got out even about the... the part where your face touched my... d-do you understand I wouldn't be able to get married?! You'd doom me, my house, and my family, along with the lineage of my Crest! The Kingdom-"

"Woah, woah, woah." Sylvain couldn't help but dig his hole deeper by laughing in disbelief. "Ingrid, let me correct a couple of things there. First, you are aware there is no written contract of nobility stating that a noblewoman must not sit on the face of a nobleman before marriage, correct? I'm sorry if I'm undoing some of Count Galatea's hard work as a protective father, here, but acts of fun and foolery like that are done all the time, between unwed nobles and commoners alike. I won't say you can do it in church, but it's hardly a scandal to get knotted up over, especially done in private! Second, and not that I'd expect a cold rag like you to understand, but that 'Cherry Pie' song isn't explicitly about the act. It's more like... the singer is boasting about the attractiveness of his lover, her sexual readiness and desirability which leads him and her to do the deed anywhere and everywhere."

Ingrid had stayed quiet and let him hold the shovel, digging his grave as deep as he wanted, but she did seem to have been given pause. "Your disgraceful views on romance and confusing, meaningless distinctions aside... Did you really just play a song like that for me, one with romantic and sexual sentiments, knowing it would make me do a... provocative dance... because you thought it would be funny?"

"Not quite. I did it because I thought it would be funny instead of being dangerous. I thought to myself, 'if I do this with any other woman, why, anyone in the world would think I'm doing it because I'm a hopeless horndog. But, if I do it with Ingrid, nobody would!'"

Ingrid looked more shocked by this than Sylvain expected. "... Why would nobody think that with Ingrid?"

"Come now! Imagine, me wanting you to seduce me with a sexy dance! Nagging Ingrid, my longtime childhood friend who constantly beats me around the ears for my behavior? You, I, and everyone else knows there's no sexual intention there! It gives me a defense I wouldn't have with anyone else. That, and I figured you had the character and resiliency to take it in stride, and- Ah. Ingrid...?"

The young woman seemed to have heard enough, and had swiped up the Boom Box, turned on her heels, and started walking away. Just watching her body language, Sylvain didn't think he'd seen Ingrid so furious before, and he'd seen Ingrid terribly furious over both his years of living in general and the last thirty minutes in particular. He couldn't understand why his explanation had backfired so badly.

Ingrid spoke to him without facing him. "I'm going to get this to someone I can trust with it. Meanwhile, you can clean up the equipment and the stable before you retire. Did you pay for this music box?"

"Ah... actually, Anna ended up giving it to me for free. To be rid of it, I think."

"Good. You can't claim I'm robbing you of anything, then." With that, she continued her fast-paced exit.

Sylvain sighed, stood up, and dusted himself off, half-heartedly grabbing the lance that still stood in the dirt next to him. He watched Ingrid's blonde braid and newly memorable ass as they disappeared around a corner. Now, the out-of-place training weapon was the only remaining piece of evidence that what he'd just seen was reality and not an insane dream. Well, that and the goofy scarecrow clothes he still hadn't fully removed. With another big sigh, he set about making the field and stable right again, the least he could do after his misadventures that day. "I guess that's the end of that, assuming she isn't holding me accountable for it the rest of my life... This time tomorrow morning, my old friend Boom Box will be reclaimed scrap for the blacksmith, I bet."