Anyone would be flustered hearing such words.
“……”
Slowly, he withdrew.
I spoke urgently.
“—I misspoke.”
Moreover, Benedict was one of the most noble people in the empire.
“I…… said it wrong.”
I was the one who was wrong.
It was because of me. Not being able to express myself clearly……
Nevertheless, the prince looked down at me in silence as if demanding an explanation. I averted my gaze. The insides of my thighs, which had been held fixed for so long, ached painfully.
“……I’m sorry.”
A heavy silence settled over my shoulders.
The stillness lengthened again.
Since I was the one who made the atmosphere like this, if I had the energy, I’d want to bang my head.
“Just—”
I wanted to say it was okay to do it, but it didn’t come out well.
My head dropped.
I hesitantly pulled my knees in and hugged them.
No matter how carefully I moved, I could feel it leaking from inside where it throbbed. I wanted to get up, worried about dirtying the furniture in this room that I had liked so much, but I didn’t want to move.
I just curled up more and crossed my ankles to cover there. I dejectedly rested my chin on my knees.
I wanted to cover my body.
It was pathetic.
“……”
Prince Benedict, who had been watching me stay still, pulled over a blanket. The blanket wrapped around my startled shoulders.
The prince brought another blanket. After wrapping me up, he sat quietly beside me. Having been in the sunlight, it was warm as if imbued with his body heat.
Suddenly my eyes grew hot and my throat tightened completely.
Under his heavily pressing gaze, I opened my trembling lips.
“Just…… I was a bit surprised.”
“……”
“……”
“……”
“……It’s daytime now, and it’s not even a bedroom,”
I opened my mouth with a grimace.
“Just, even though I don’t want to. I have to keep doing it.”
“……”
“Anytime, anywhere…… ugh,”
My throat choked up a little.
I took a deep breath and grimaced again. I don’t want to speak while crying disgracefully. I pulled my knees closer.
I originally can’t speak well, but trying to speak suddenly made me ramble even more. Even as I spoke, I was confused about whether this was right.
“I…… um, tell you to stop, but, um, you keep going,”
Benedict frowned slightly. His lips parted slightly as if he had something to say, then I saw them close again. As if telling me to continue, he entered into silence again.
Benedict sat calmly silent within arm’s reach.
That sight of him watching without saying anything overlapped with that image from 5 years ago.
My face contorted completely and my throat clogged with moisture. I bit my hand and tilted my head back. I glared at the ceiling that warped with tears, when Benedict reached out his hand. My shoulders stiffened, but I stayed still at the body heat that very slowly embraced me.
“Continue.”
“……That day—,”
He carefully pulled me into his arms like that. His large embrace was surprisingly broad and warm.
“—I woke up, and Your Highness, ugh, wasn’t there—”
The moisture that had been rising precariously surged up and overflowed the surface.
Benedict falls asleep in the same bed with Rilke. At dawn, the two wake up together. Rilke sees off his lover with a kiss. Throughout the dawn, Rilke had been asleep with the prince.
Rilke must have really liked that.
Worth bragging about like that.
The prince’s embrace was really warm like a lie, and because it was so warm, it felt like everything would be okay and better like a lie.
I wanted to fall asleep with a happy face together with him too, but like a fool I only shed tears.
* * *
Even when priests came,
Even when mages came,
The wounds burned by ancient magic did not disappear.
The words that the scars would last a lifetime stuck painfully even in my dazed state.
Other than the mage hired for treatment and the occasional maid who came and went, no one came to my room. But I learned when they whispered thinking I was asleep. The scandal had already spread uncontrollably.
The earring that punished a lewd omega.
And, to the room of that scandal’s protagonist
Only one person came to visit.
‘…….’
Even Mikhail came only once, looked at my condition as if frozen, and never came again without saying a word. Even the people treating me only clicked their tongues pitifully and didn’t want to be by my side.
Prince Benedict’s excuse for visiting the sick was the pretext of being childhood friends.
Why on earth? In fact, he and I had no connection at all. It’s ridiculous.
After that day, I didn’t say a single word.
I just lay there like a patient. No, I was a patient.
Even when the burns on my face stiffly healed and I could speak, I didn’t speak. The pain disappeared but there was no world I wanted to fully feel.
As I did to everyone after the incident, I didn’t give the prince a glance either. Beside me lying blankly staring only at the ceiling, Benedict was generally quiet. Sometimes he offered a few everyday words. When I kept not answering, he stopped trying to talk.
Instead, he read books or handled work he brought from beside me. It was quite a long time.
Even amidst the bleakness in my head, what I found interesting was that he faithfully filled about two hours as if it were firmly set. Sometimes he concentrated too much and stayed longer than the allotted time.
Thus began the strange sick visits.
Actually, I don’t have many memories of him. Because my insides were so dark at that time, it was hard to remember my surroundings.
At some point I lay like a log. Benedict worked on his tasks.
At some point I turned my head forcefully and turned away. I only heard the quiet sound of pages turning behind me.
At some point tears came. Benedict tried to wipe them and I resisted roughly. He let me cry and read his book again.
At some point I suffered phantom pain. I was engulfed in complete agony and he embraced me as I tried to harm myself. He wrapped his arms strongly around my neck and back and awakened me to reality with a low voice. He pressed his lips to my ear and quietly recited poetry.
Before I knew it, I could wait for him as if waiting for the next sonnet.
I could lie quietly as if opening a window toward the clear dawn.
I could watch as the door opened and my quiet dawn walked toward me.
He stayed by my side as I faded away. Always with the same face.
It must have been uncomfortable.
I touched Benedict’s pheromones remaining in the air.
Now I can sense pheromones, so I know.
In the past, my room must have been full of uncontrolled, raw pheromones. My pheromones that made others terribly uncomfortable, as much as the terrible burn scars covering my face in patches and the marks of self-harm from when he wasn’t there. That thing I couldn’t even sense in the past.
It must have been really uncomfortable.
That’s why this summer morning, even when I woke up left alone in his pheromones each time, I thought it was okay.
Like 5 years ago, when I left the door open and waited for him, I could stay still for a long while.
* * *
I leaned my head carefully on Benedict’s shoulder as I held him. I cried loudly. He might push me away in disgust later, but at least in this moment I felt instinctively that I could definitely be comforted, so I cried endlessly.
Really like a fool and an idiot.
He said to continue, so I kept going.
I said all sorts of things,
And now I had nothing left to say.
“……”
I felt both relieved and embarrassed, so my tears just stopped.
We said nothing but just held each other tightly without letting go. I thought I liked this situation where he was holding me with all his might after I stopped crying. It felt like an illusion of being hotly cherished.
Leaning there wrapped in the blanket, I fell asleep like that.
“……Uh.”
I had slept deeply.
I blinked my unfocused eyes. I saw the canopy bed before my eyes.
It was the room where I had been staying, and it was morning. I had been sleeping together with Benedict.
Under his disheveled hair, I could see his long eyes, slightly sunken, blinking slowly. His half-awake appearance looked somewhat tired, yet my heart fluttered and murmured severely. I opened my mouth in a daze.
“Did you sleep well?”
Benedict didn’t answer. He just smiled weakly and sat up in a daze. Then he lowered his head and returned the greeting with a light kiss on my cheek.
The face that kissed and pulled away looked somewhat pale. But my heart fluttered at that complexion too.
Am I a bit strange?
He seems to be having a hard time, so why do I like it?
Is this why Benedict tormented me?
Even after sending him off, I just sat there in a daze. I came to my senses when Miss Sana came to visit. She healed me today as well and tried to show me illusion magic.
“Where is His Highness always during the day?”
Yesterday was the first time I saw him during the day.
Miss Sana before me also only came when I woke up in the morning. If I woke up in the afternoon because I was too tired, I couldn’t see Miss Sana. Instead, I only felt from my body’s condition that she had been by while I was sleeping.
“Didn’t I tell you? This place is as harsh as the northern gateway.”
“The islands?”
“There are many monsters.”
Between pretending to be Lute and the monster talk. There seem to be many secrets between Benedict and his close aides.
“Don’t ask further. It’s classified.”
While saying that, Miss Sana, who had been concentrating on creating something round, went “Oh,” and relaxed her hand. Whoosh, the illusion between her small hands disappeared smoothly.
“You’re short on mana again, I see.”
“That too. But thinking about it, the fact that I use illusion magic is also classified.”
I had ended up learning classified information from Prince Benedict’s side.
“Then am I now to you……?”
When I pretended to be afraid, asking if I was being silenced, Miss Sana said expressionlessly,
“That could happen. Let’s ask His Highness and decide.”
I was joking though.
“……”
“……”
“If it’s going to be like this, why did you show me?”
“You like puppies.”
