“How’s your body?”
“I’m okay……”
He quickly swallowed the answer that had popped out habitually and shook his head.
“Still hurts.”
Perhaps a bit surprised by the answer different from usual, Rose, who had bent his waist, met his eyes. His face full of tender concern seemed like it would grant anything Elijah requested.
“You know.”
Looking at those eyes that were always endlessly kind to him, Elijah barely scraped up courage.
“……Why did you fasten this?”
The sound of the chain dragging clanged from the slightly lifted foot. As if he had no idea what was being said, Rose opened his eyes round with an innocent face. Elijah timidly shook his ankle.
“It’s too uncomfortable. It makes noise every time I walk.”
“The noise has to be there so I can tell where you are. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s true but……”
Since it wasn’t wrong on the surface, there was no room to refute. Elijah, who lightly gripped his sleeve, swallowed dry saliva.
“Anyway, I’ll keep staying here, so there’s no need to know where I am.”
Rose, who exhaled a small sigh, bent his knees and sat down.
“Elijah.”
Just having his and Rose’s eye level become different gave Elijah some stability.
“Do you remember when you tied me to the bed when I was young?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Why did you do that then?”
“I just……, I was worried about you.”
“It’s the same for me too.”
“But I’m not a little kid. I, I absolutely won’t go out now if you don’t allow it……, and I don’t even want to go out.”
He shouldn’t have said the latter part. He wanted to go out. Elijah realized for the first time that he was someone who liked going outside this much.
He wanted to go out freely even without Rose’s permission, take walks, and if only that young man didn’t come again, he wanted to float letters too. He hadn’t told Master anything particularly important, yet his heart felt stifled that he could no longer do it.
“How can I believe that? Even now you want to go out.”
“……”
Could Rose be completely seeing through his inner thoughts? Elijah had well-founded suspicions.
“What if you go outside alone without me and vermin swarm like last time?”
Elijah understood a beat late what vermin meant. He was talking about the young man he had encountered last time. Long hands affectionately swept down the disheveled brown hair.
“You were really scared then, right?”
He was scared. However, compared to what happened after, that young man was nothing. Yet Rose spoke nonchalantly as if nothing had happened after that.
“You were completely terrified, gripping my arm tightly and trembling…… You were really cute then.”
“Th-, ……that person won’t come anymore.”
“……”
Rose suddenly closed his mouth. Silence that seemed to tighten his skin continued for a few seconds. Elijah looked at Rose’s face slowly tilting sideways.
“How does Elijah know that?”
“Huh?”
“How do you know whether that bastard will come again or not?”
His expression was so innocent that he couldn’t tell whether he was angry or just purely questioning.
“That person, wh-, why would he come here again……”
Clearly the beginning of the conversation was about the shackles wrapped around his ankle, yet not once did the topic of shackles actually come up. Elijah, whose heart became impatient, grabbed Rose’s arm.
“No one will come anymore. If they come again, you can chase them away. So, so……”
The heart pounding with fear seemed to block even the inside of his throat, so Elijah, who swallowed dry saliva, barely continued.
“Release this, Rose.”
Red eyes widened. Rose made a surprised expression as if he had heard unexpected strange words. That expression change was so dramatic it looked like a mask.
“Elijah, what are you saying……”
Rose casually took out a key from inside his shirt.
“Did you think I wouldn’t release it?”
The key hanging on long fingertips glinted. It was an object that didn’t fit at all in the cabin where everything was rusted and faded.
“……You’ll release it?”
“You don’t trust me that much? If you want to release it, you can release it yourself anytime.”
He placed the key on the table as if showing off. It was a distance Elijah could reach immediately if he stretched out his hand.
“But you said you don’t want to go out now.”
The fingertips that had moved toward the key flinched and stopped.
“Is a key really necessary when there’s no reason to go out?”
“……”
The green eyes looking at him trembled left and right. Meeting eyes with Rose, who was innocent and clear without a single grain of malice, Elijah had a premonition that he would absolutely never release this restraint.
After a few seconds of silence, eventually he had to give the answer Rose wanted.
“……Not necessary.”
It seemed begging more would only have the opposite effect. If he confronted him more here, even the key that had been dangling before his eyes might disappear forever.
Rather, let’s obediently do as he wants…… Then Rose wouldn’t continue this absurd act either.
Elijah still believed in the goodness existing within Rose. He had seen and was much more familiar with the appearance that always worried about him and treated him affectionately than the appearance with eyes turned from strange madness.
In truth, the restraint wasn’t to an unbearable degree. The sound dragging on his ankle was just a bit bothersome, but the chain length was long, so there were no major restrictions on movement. For instance, though he couldn’t go to the entrance, he could sit in front of the dining table.
If he endured a moment’s inconvenience, someday he might obtain freedom like before.
Strong arms embraced Elijah’s waist. Elijah, who naturally sat on top of Rose, wrapped his arms around his neck and embraced him. A light kiss touched the corners of his mouth.
Elijah also gently lowered his lips to him. With less than half a span of distance between them, the red eyes staring at him sank endlessly, cleverly hiding their inner thoughts.
There definitely was a time before when he thought his eyes were beautiful.
In just a few days, the relationship between Rose and himself had changed too much. The eyes that had seemed like brilliant jewels sparkling had now become an abyss with an unknowable bottom, seeming about to swallow Elijah at any moment.
“It’s not enough, Elijah.”
Cold fingertips crept into his shirt. The hand that had been densely stroking down his waist went further down and gently gripped his buttocks.
“Do more for me.”
“……”
Perhaps it might not be just a few days, Elijah thought. Such change might have been foreshadowed from very long ago.
Little by little with each day Rose grew.
From the moment he offered his neck to him, and every moment he had to beg for his permission while engaging in meaningless arguments every time he went to float letters—changes that occurred very little by little, which he simply hadn’t noticed.
Fingers that flowed between the moist valley lingered as if about to dig into the split gap at any moment. Though Elijah now knew exactly what his actions meant, it didn’t mean wisdom to escape this situation arose.
“……Igrit is watching. Do you, ……do you have to do it now? You can do it at night.”
Elijah tried passive resistance as if presenting his last bastion. The first moment when he wasn’t in his right mind couldn’t be helped, but doing such things in broad daylight with Igrit clearly watching seemed so shameful he felt he couldn’t endure it.
“Take it off, Elijah. No one’s watching.”
Eyes overlaid with affection looked up at Elijah from right before his nose. Clearly his eye level was higher, yet Elijah felt like he would be crushed by that gaze.
His fingertips unbuttoning his shirt trembled faintly. Elijah, who had slowly unfastened the front, embraced him and tilted his neck. Things like the sound of skin being pierced no longer bothered his ears. Only the sharp pain striking his nape was vivid.
Clearly he had given everything to Rose unconditionally from the beginning, yet grown Rose didn’t easily allow him anything, which felt unbearably unjust.
“Mmng……”
As the pierced skin was sucked hard, simultaneously the heat pooled in his lower abdomen slowly rose. Elijah embraced the silver-white head and let out a faint moan.
“Spread your legs more, Elijah.”
With anything, if repeated, one becomes numb. His body, pressed against the hard wooden floor under Rose’s weight, obediently lay beneath his fangs.
Afterward too, the next day too, the day after the next too, the shackles continued to remain on Elijah’s ankle.
* * *
If repeated, one becomes numb. And strangely, a moment comes when it even feels pleasant.
Since he didn’t write letters, the days passed without knowing how dates flowed. During one season passing, Elijah spent time mixing bodies with Rose throughout. It didn’t take long to understand that the act wasn’t one of being penetrated but of mixing.
“It hurts……, it hurts, Rose.”
Elijah lived habitually saying those words in bed. In the whirlpool of strange sensations brought by unfamiliar heat, the most familiar sensation he could find was pain.
Perhaps thinking that much didn’t even qualify as exaggeration anymore and was meaningless, Rose didn’t even pretend to hear his appeals.
