“Try replacing the words ‘it hurts’ with something else, Elijah.”
One day, he made a suggestion. It was in the middle of intercourse. With his face buried in the pillow, clutching the arm that held his waist, Elijah panted and thought.
What else could he possibly say? Telling him to stop or that it felt strange only stimulated him more—those words were like magic spells that only made the act last longer.
“It hurts, so I say it hurts…”
Elijah choked back the surge of misery and whimpered. Soon Rose’s sweat-soaked body covered his back. In the lukewarm warmth enveloping his body, Elijah briefly forgot the pain and quietly received his kiss.
“You should also know how to say when it feels good.”
“How would you know, hnngh…, if I feel good?”
Elijah mustered what little energy he had left and snapped. He resented Rose for not listening to him. The hand that pushed forward gripped his sensitively erect member.
“Hng, mmph…”
Elijah’s waist trembled with a jolt as he grabbed Rose’s hand, overlapping it with his own, trying desperately to stop its movement. His member, which he thought would be wrung dry and shriveled up, was instead swollen and plump as if soaked in water, seeming ready to burst.
“Ah…!”
Elijah shuddered at the climax that was rapidly building. The grip, hot with his own heat, moved rapidly up and down as if it didn’t know how to stop.
The flesh pillar pounding inside his belly poked at a spring hidden deep within. For Elijah, there was no other way to describe that spot but as a spring. Whatever had been precariously filled rippled with Rose’s movements, finally bursting forth.
“Hng, ah, mmm…”
Once touched, the spring surged uncontrollably like a flood bursting through. A tingling thrill drenched his entire body. Elijah trembled as clear liquid poured down from below. The bed, already damp with his fluids, became soaked again.
“When the sheets are this drenched, it means you really enjoyed it…”
That can’t be true. Elijah didn’t believe his words. Rose was really terrible. Unspeakably wicked. He couldn’t help but cry from the sheer humiliation.
Even if I don’t know much, I’m an adult who’s lived over 200 years… I know my own feelings well. It’s not good, I’m telling you it’s not good! Elijah shook his head while trembling and squeezing out the remaining moisture in his body like wringing out a rag.
“Just say it once. It’ll definitely feel good.”
“No, mmm, won’t, say… hurts, it hurts…”
“Try saying: ‘I like it, Rose. Do it more.'”
Rose urged gently while rotating his hips. Squelch, squelch—wet sounds came from where they were joined below. As the blunt tip of the glans pressed firmly against the spring that had been exposed to its depths with nothing left to come out, rubbing dully against the inner walls, Elijah convulsed, not knowing what to do.
“It’s not… good…”
It felt good. So good it drove him crazy. Inevitably, the heat that kindled smoothly inside his belly caused a sweet shudder like Rose’s breath.
“Good, it’s good…, hic, so…, good, Rose.”
Like someone pushed to the edge of a cliff, Elijah urgently repeated his words.
“Do it more.”
“More, hnnph…, do it, it’s good, Rose…, ngh, good…”
Each time the blunt tip of the glans pounded inside his belly, the wrung-out spring pooled up again with a splash. The inside of Elijah’s thighs trembled.
“It feels good, right?”
“Good…, ah, hng, mmm…”
It was strange. They were just words, yet the pain receded and an inexplicable, mysterious ecstasy that even he couldn’t understand welled up. With his mind half-dazed, Elijah reached climax while repeating the words Rose wanted dozens of times.
As such days continued, now instead of saying it hurt, saying it felt good stuck to his lips. He couldn’t tell whether his body was following the words he spoke, or if those words naturally leaked out because it really did feel good.
Eventually, Elijah became surprisingly willing to engage in acts he thought he’d never get used to. His body didn’t hurt anymore either. He even reached the point where, when Rose began to feed, he secretly hoped he would thrust into him below instead.
He hadn’t known he was this weak to pleasure. As time passed, he even felt a familiar sensation, as if he had been intimate with Rose for a long time.
And Rose too, despite it surely being his first time, was skilled as if he had known his body for a very long time.
Thinking about it now, he had felt pleasure from the very first time they were intimate. He simply hadn’t known it was pleasure at the time.
‘Is it okay for things to be like this?’
Since there was no great inconvenience living inside the house, he hadn’t said much until now, but Elijah knew well that this daily life continuing for long was never a good thing.
Elijah, wrapped in a blanket, hugged his knees. The chain hanging below the chair swayed slowly back and forth. He was watching Rose through the small window.
Rose was making new table legs to replace those that had collapsed due to their recent intense lovemaking. Elijah had twisted his back from the impact and still couldn’t walk properly.
The steady noise of hammering echoed loudly through the forest, following the downward strikes of the hammer.
For someone so accustomed to labor who could skillfully make anything, Rose didn’t quite suit the work. His movements as he positioned nails and hammered were so graceful they looked somewhat sloppy in their discord.
His delicate hands, which looked like they had only touched clean and pretty things their entire life, never having held a hammer before, contributed to that discord. His appearance, smooth and white as if dusted with light powder, truly didn’t belong in this forest either.
If it were before, Elijah would have joyfully gazed upon such beauty in Rose. But now, somehow even that flawless, perfect appearance gave him an odd sense of dissonance.
He stood out alone, like an existence that shouldn’t be in this forest.
He didn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed that sense of foreignness before. Like oil and water, unable to mix with the surrounding objects, standing apart so alone…
Clang, clang—the wind chime swayed slowly. Even though the window was firmly closed, Elijah felt as if a lukewarm breeze was brushing against his body. Rose, who had put down the hammer he’d been holding, disappeared from view.
The frame, barely half the size of a head, was all that Elijah could see. He rose from the chair and approached the window. Pressing his face close to the glass, he searched again for Rose who had left his field of vision.
Igrit was lying beneath the table with one broken leg. He must have been there, as he hadn’t been visible for a while. As if he’d been in that spot for quite some time, his body and head were covered in dust.
He should tell Rose to bring him inside. It was just as Elijah was about to open the window. Igrit caught on the tip of Rose’s foot. His eyes glancing down at his feet were utterly indifferent.
“…”
Before he could even grasp the identity of the strange sense of dissonance he’d felt momentarily, Igrit’s head was placed beneath Rose’s shoe. Shock spread across the green eyes that had been gazing at him.
Crack—the sound of the round head being crushed seeped through the thin glass. Elijah covered his mouth. Red brain matter burst from one crushed corner of Igrit’s head, staining the wooden floor of the terrace.
Crunch, crackle—the sound of the hard shell breaking soon turned into a wet noise. Igrit’s scattered remains were gruesomely crushed beneath Rose’s feet, his face still indifferent.
Elijah couldn’t tear his eyes away from that horrific scene. It was an unspeakably cruel and vicious act.
“H-how…”
The fragile stuffed body was carelessly kicked by Rose’s foot. Elijah’s body, having bolted up from the chair, swayed and buckled. The chain pulled to its limit caught his ankle. His thin body made a loud noise as it struck the window frame.
“How could he do such a thing…”
Elijah, suppressing the rising nausea, soon looked at the figure entering through the open door.
“…Elijah?”
Rose, discovering Elijah collapsed on the floor, approached. The moment his hand touched his body, Elijah recoiled as if pricked by a needle.
“Hic…!”
“What’s wrong?”
Due to the inertia built from intimately mingling their bodies countless times with Rose over the course of a season, Elijah never got angry at him. However, inside he was already screaming silently with fury and fear that had been thoroughly stirred up.
How could you do that? How dare you trample my Igrit? Igrit, who has been with me all those long years, with such an indifferent face…, so easily…
Suddenly, a terrifying doubt arose.
‘Was this really the first time?’
Elijah recalled the moments when Igrit had occasionally felt unfamiliar. A similar but completely different face. The expression he had drawn with his own hands, which he had seen consistently for 200 years, yet was strangely misaligned…
“Ah.”
Rose sighed lightly. Sweeping back his disheveled silver-white hair with one hand, he asked nonchalantly.
“You saw it? Just now, that thing.”
“…”
Elijah felt as if something remaining inside him had been greatly carved away. The remnant of trust toward Rose, which had already been carved away so much that hardly any remained.
He was a species that could commit terrible acts without a care. Just because he was affectionate toward him didn’t change that fact. And if Rose set his mind to it, treating him like that Igrit would be no problem at all.
Hadn’t he nearly crushed his body before, unable to contain his joy? Whether happy or angry, Rose’s emotional fluctuations were a lethal threat to him.
