“…Hah.”
In that instant, Avelos’s thick fingers came to rest on the button between Uriel’s left and right nipples. The pressure of pressing down on the button made Uriel suck in a sharp breath. Avelos frequently found fault with Uriel’s clothing.
The clothes provided to slaves were not tailored, unlike those given to servants or attendants. What was provided were basic shirts and cotton trousers — things that servants or attendants had worn until they were too worn out to be used anymore. Because of that, most of the clothes didn’t fit properly.
If a top was too large it was uncomfortable to work in, and if the bottoms were too large they sagged down enough to hinder movement. A size slightly too small was preferable. And not only for that reason — among the slaves, those who were considered strong tended to claim the more generously sized clothes first. That left Uriel with only the sizes too small for those others to wear.
Working in clothes like that meant, just as before, buttons came off, or the shirt tucked into his waistband would come loose and expose his skin. Even after being reprimanded by Avelos several times and making an effort to stay tidy, it still happened. The clothes were simply too small for Uriel’s body — there was nothing to be done about it.
If it truly bothered him that much, he could simply provide tailored clothing to the slaves — but no such consideration was ever made, and Avelos only ever scolded Uriel. His method of scolding was mainly this — toying with him and humiliating him, just as he was doing now.
“Wh— why today of all days….”
The fingers pressing against the button dropped away from it and rubbed against the thin fabric of the shirt beside it. Because of that, Uriel’s words couldn’t make it to the end.
“Hmm. Do I need a reason to touch what belongs to me?”
“Pl— please, just a moment….”
Lightly dismissing Uriel’s small resistance, Avelos took hold of Uriel’s stiffened bud between his thumb and forefinger. The shirt, made of fabric that hadn’t been thick to begin with, had grown thin from repeated washing until it could no longer hide even Uriel’s small nipples — leaving them plainly visible through the cloth.
As though something displeased him, Avelos furrowed his brow slightly, and twisted his fingers just a little.
With a sharp jolt of pain, Uriel’s lips fell open.
“Ah— ngh….”
“Even someone who doesn’t know you would think you were a pleasure slave. With it showing this clearly through your clothes, doesn’t it look as though you’re begging to be touched?”
“Th— the shirt is thin, that’s why—”
“Is that so? Saying that while having it stand up this stiffly — I find it hard to believe.”
Avelos made no sign of listening to a word Uriel said. He rolled the nipple — slightly larger now from the pinching — slowly across the fabric of the shirt.
“It hurts. Your Majesty.”
“Does it really hurt, Uriel?”
Uriel trembled at the unfamiliar sensation rising from below his waist. It was a strange feeling — something like a tickle, something like a numbing tightness. If he stayed like this, he felt he might make a strange sound against his own will. As Uriel tried to step to the side to escape the odd sensation threatening to overtake his body, Avelos extended his left arm.
Avelos pulled Uriel by the small of his back into his arms, and flicked the nipple he had been toying with playfully.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Ah— ngh!”
Already sensitive from the rubbing and pinching, the nipple had then been rolled slowly — and on top of that, flicked — and Uriel felt as though he might lose his mind. Without meaning to, his hips jolted back halfway.
Uriel’s lower body made contact with Avelos’s firm thigh.
“Ha…?”
In that instant, Avelos let out a laugh of disbelief. At that sound — a laugh that was quite literally incredulous, mixed with a scoff — Uriel’s face turned scarlet. The skin that had been pale as anything flushed red all the way to his ears and throat.
“Don’t tell me — you got aroused from just this much touching?”
Yuri had never once been interested in men, originally. It was simply that his only close friend liked BL novels, and he had read a few of that genre together with her. He had only first come to understand that a man could be attracted to another man of the same sex through listening to that friend talk about the novels she was absorbed in, and then reading them at her recommendation.
That had been the case, clearly — and yet…. The change that had just happened in Uriel’s body was far too unfamiliar. For just a brief instant, Uriel had thought I want them to keep touching me — and the strangeness of that thought frightened him.
In all the times Avelos had played with him before, there had been moments where he felt a tingling below his stomach or along his lower back. But that was all it had ever been. His body had never responded this clearly down below — not even once.
“While saying no with your mouth, it seems you were actually waiting to be touched like this.”
“No. No, I wasn’t….”
“After standing yourself up like this from just a bit of chest rubbing — and you’re going to claim otherwise?”
All at once, Avelos’s large hand tapped lightly against Uriel’s lower body. Uriel flinched, his body trembling. At that deliberate touch — clearly meant to humiliate — Uriel reflexively reached out his hand.
Uriel’s slender white fingers closed around Avelos’s wrist, which was more than twice the thickness of his own. That thick wrist, too large for Uriel’s fingers to wrap around fully, looked as though it could slip free from Uriel’s grip whenever it pleased.
“Do you think you can stop me like that?”
“My— my lower half… why are you—”
Squeezing his eyes shut or biting down on his lip was Uriel’s usual way of enduring things. It was rare for him to directly try to stop Avelos like this. Avelos tilted his head at the more intense reaction than usual. His narrowed eyes curved into a soft arc as his lips did the same.
“It’s only a light bit of teasing. What were you expecting?”
“Teasing…?”
The shoulders drawn up with tension, the pale slender hand stretched out in an attempt to stop him — they registered in Avelos’s eyes one after the other. And then the face flushed red with shame, and the reddened corners of those eyes. He had known Uriel’s face was pretty, but the expression it wore now exceeded his expectations.
He had heard that there were those who deliberately teased and reduced to tears the women they cherished — and at the time, he hadn’t understood it. Seeing Uriel’s face now, he felt he could begin to understand why people did such things.
Has he shown this face to others, too. The thought came to Avelos suddenly. He already knew from what Uriel had told him before that Uriel had been his great-grandfather’s pleasure slave. And so, that Uriel had abducted someone of that bloodline — him.
The pleasant mood he had been in until moments ago plummeted in an instant. It wasn’t the memory of what Uriel had done to him that caused it. It was closer to a feeling of displeasure — that someone else had first seen this face that he was now finding rather beautiful.
“What did my great-grandfather do at times like this?”
“I— I don’t know.”
He hadn’t expected a proper answer in the first place. Avelos gazed quietly down at Uriel’s face. When he had first learned where Uriel lived, he had certainly gone there with the intention of killing him. But strangely, the moment he saw Uriel’s face, carrying through with that plan had been difficult. To be more precise — he hadn’t wanted to kill him in a single blow.
He had thought, all this time, that the feeling back then had been in place of a comfortable revenge through swift death — that it was in order to keep Uriel close for a long time and return the humiliation he had suffered. But looking at it now, it seemed as though that might not have been it after all.
Continuing to look at the corners of Uriel’s reddened eyes — eyes that looked as though they might spill over with the hurt of it all — Avelos felt a strange sensation slip in between the displeasure. Something about Uriel’s appearance felt, for some reason, not unfamiliar.
Knock knock. The light sound of rapping broke through Avelos’s thoughts. One of Avelos’s aides, who had been waiting outside, had knocked on the door.
“Your Majesty, I’m informing you that the time to depart is drawing near.”
At the aide’s voice from outside, Avelos clicked his tongue briefly. It had felt as though something was about to surface — but once that flow was broken, it vanished entirely without a trace.
He couldn’t even recall what it was that had seemed about to come to him. Avelos cast a regretful look at Uriel’s slightly swollen lower half, then turned away.
“There are many budget-related proposals, so it seems I’ll be busy for some time.”
“Yes….”
At Avelos’s words — which sounded exactly like a schedule report — Uriel answered with a disgruntled expression.
It’s not as though I have to meet with the Emperor — so why is he telling me this. Uriel was puzzled, but he wasn’t foolish enough to come right out and ask. Besides, from Uriel’s perspective, Avelos being too busy to come was far preferable. Even now, he felt like going out to thank the aide who had knocked from outside.
Uriel quietly bowed his head and stared only at his feet. A pair of men’s dress shoes — flawlessly smooth without a single flaw — came into view. Perhaps because of his build, Avelos had large hands and large feet alike. Uriel stared blankly at Avelos’s dress shoes, contrasting them with his own shoes that were wearing down at the edges in a way that was a wonder they hadn’t already fallen apart — and then, all of a sudden, he swallowed hard.
