When he fumbled to move his hand to grasp it, he could feel the member, not even fully erect yet, filling his palm snugly.
When he clumsily stroked down the shaft with his fingertips, a teasing sexual sensation tickled his lower abdomen as if that wasn’t nearly enough. When he rubbed with a bit more force, despite the clumsy hand movement, a sultry heat was added to his breathing.
His vision felt dizzy.
“Kgh.”
When he rubbed the tip of the glans, he could feel slick pre-cum smearing on his hand. As he spread this on the shaft and moved his hand quickly, excitement gradually overtook him.
Sweat trickled down his broad back exposed under the moonlight. Chris, propped on one hand gripping the bed frame to support his body while face-down, persistently rubbed his lower half with the other hand.
Chris had no idea why all the cells in his body were crying out as if in heat. He just wanted more stimulation. An inexplicable desire to fill some deficient part inside his body overwhelmed Chris.
“Not enough, ah… this isn’t, no…”
Chris shook his head while burying his forehead in the sheets and let out groaning sounds.
He felt like he was going crazy.
Or perhaps he had already gone crazy.
The desire with no way to relieve it only heightened his sexual sensation, but didn’t allow Chris its end. From the tip of his penis that was reddened and engorged as if swollen, only pre-cum kept dribbling out, but there was no sign of reaching climax at all.
Unless he had taken an aphrodisiac, it made no sense. Chris felt physiological tears welling up on their own.
It was agonizing. Because it was agonizing, he wanted to be freed from this feeling quickly.
Even when he moved his hand wrapped around his penis to clumsily stimulate his testicles, nothing changed. It felt like fire was rising inside him, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t extinguish it.
Was this what it felt like to drink salt water for momentary relief?
Chris, who barely got up from his position, staggered toward the bathroom. Moving frantically in the darkness, he did bump his thigh against the corner of the desk, but he didn’t care. Propping against the cold tile wall as he walked, Chris pushed his body into the shower booth and turned on the cold water to stand under it.
Water so cold it made his mind snap alert poured down on Chris like lightning. However, only his fully aroused lower half showed no sign of calming down.
Chris gritted his teeth while barely swallowing the moan about to flow from his mouth. Hadn’t he experienced just the other day how terrible the soundproofing of this bathroom was?
Water flowed down his broad shoulders. Chris, who endured the ice-cold water to somehow cool the heat, was able to turn off the water only after quite a while.
Returning to the bedroom wearing a bathrobe, Chris could confirm the bed that had become a mess in the dim dawn light. The sheets, with dried pre-cum that had dribbled out, were thoroughly crumpled, and the books used as a footrest had all collapsed. Dracula, which he had been reading, and the two books he bought this time had also fallen to the floor.
Chris, who was bending down to pick up the books one by one, confirmed that Northanger Abbey had been pushed further inside the bed and reached out his arm.
At that moment, something protruding caught on his fingertips. The smooth metallic texture wasn’t like a nail. Because the size was very small, he wouldn’t have noticed it if coincidence upon coincidence hadn’t overlapped.
Chris, who carefully extracted it, opened his eyes wide.
This was…
‘A bug…!’
As if a light had suddenly been turned on in his mind that had been suffering from unresolved sexual sensation, Chris was shocked. He hadn’t found any traces of someone coming and going from the house, so when on earth was this device installed?
Chris took off his robe, hung it to the side, and lay face down to use his ability. As the back of his hand gradually became covered with fur, his nose simultaneously became more sensitive.
Several scents caught in his sense of smell. However, there was nothing he thought was an ‘outsider’. Just Chris’s own smell, the smell of snow from the northern November Continent that had followed him in, and Yuri’s scent emanating from the bookshop’s books.
For a moment his head throbbed. Was it because he had acted as if in heat from smelling Yuri’s scent? Feeling that scent strongly made his judgment hazy.
Chris first confirmed there were no other bugs under the bed and hurriedly came out of the bedroom.
Although dawn was approaching, darkness that hadn’t yet receded filled the surroundings. However, this wasn’t much of an obstacle to a wolf’s vision.
There were things he could see better on four legs than when walking on two. Chris’s eyes found a second bug with a dull luster under the chair. Instead of removing it, he memorized its location and continued moving.
There was also one bug in the bathroom. This time behind the sink. The bug installed in the gap created behind the round sink was in such a cunning position that he wouldn’t have been able to notice it if he hadn’t transformed into a wolf.
Someone was monitoring him.
It wasn’t difficult to narrow down the range of suspects. If it was an organization that would monitor Northern Light’s agents on November Continent, it could only be the mafia.
When had the safe house directly provided by Northern Light been discovered by the enemy? Chris felt newly relieved that Team Crow’s dwellings were scattered throughout Aurum City as he returned to his original form.
After returning to human form, Chris put on his robe and decided after a moment’s consideration. Rather than immediately removing the bugs, he would leave them as they were and use them.
He didn’t know when they were installed, but the enemy probably hadn’t realized the bugs had been discovered. If he used this in reverse to leak false information, it could be used as a useful diversion tactic for the mission.
For the time being, the enemy would be fooled. Hadn’t he whimpered as if in heat without even knowing he was being monitored?
Chris, who ran his hands through his hair in shame, lay his body on the clean part of the mattress with his eyes tightly shut.
It felt like not just his body but his mind was completely exhausted.
Nevertheless, Chris got up from his position. Now he had to move with the existence of the bugs in mind, so he needed to keep his wits sharp.
***
Chris, who left the apartment, sent a message to Yont. It was content saying he had discovered three bugs in the lodging. He also added that the safe house’s location appeared to have been exposed. Whether Yont made the same judgment as Chris, he conveyed to leave the bugs alone but refrain from staying in the safe house for long.
<It would be good if there’s an opportunity to use this in reverse, but your safety comes first. Each and every agent of Northern Light is an important talent. We’ve already lost Gillian and Aparna. We can’t bear to lose you as well.> At Yont’s message, longer than usual, Chris felt his mood become somewhat gentler. The reason for not immediately removing the bugs was because the enemy, upon learning the surveillance had been discovered, might act extremely. Chris had the confidence to protect himself, so he had proposed the idea of using this in reverse.
Chris’s ability as a B-rank enhancement-type Esper wasn’t enough to kill all enemies, but if he fell into crisis, it was enough to escape the encirclement and flee.
It was reassuring to see that Yont, who likewise knew this fact well, was more concerned about his personal safety than the mission. At least it was better than a superior who said one should sacrifice even their life for mission success.
Before entering the Reeducation Center, Chris received a message from Andrea on his terminal. Chris clicked his tongue after checking its contents. It was content saying she had secured a list of addicts who had been sent from the Reeducation Center where she had infiltrated to the hospital, but one out of about a dozen had disappeared without a trace.
It came with an addendum that while she had confirmed records of hospitalized addicts receiving meticulous addiction treatment before returning to the Reeducation Center or daily life, records about those who disappeared couldn’t be found anywhere.
Chris clicked his tongue, as his guess was roughly on the mark.
Chris turned his terminal offline and hid it meticulously.
When he entered the lecture as usual, there were several people who came to ask about his father’s well-being, perhaps because word had spread through the grapevine. Nasthenka was one of them.
“You smell like disinfectant.”
“Because I came from the hospital.”
Chris smiled awkwardly at Nasthenka’s words as she sat beside Chris, who had settled in a corner of the practice room. To give the impression that he had come from the hospital, he had used some alcohol disinfectant before coming to the Reeducation Center, and Nasthenka was the first to notice it. Her senses seemed sharp.
“Is your father alright?”
“He passed the critical point, but it seems I’ll have to leave the dormitory after all. Completing the Reeducation Center is important, but… this might be his last moments.”
“Yeah, you should.”
Nasthenka nodded as if in sympathy and patted his shoulder.
“This is all because of the mafia.”
Chris spat out as if chewing. Still unable to feign convincing hatred in his expression, he bowed his head deeply.
“What? Don’t tell me you have a grudge against the mafia?”
Nasthenka asked in surprise. Chris shook his head.
“The painkiller my father had been using had drugs mixed in. Since he lived hand to mouth, he couldn’t even dream of visiting a hospital, so he bought painkillers from a neighborhood retail store, and that turned out to be something the mafia had brought in pretending to be harmless to increase addicts. He stopped taking the painkillers for a while, saying the dependency seemed to be getting gradually worse, but then he had a seizure. The doctor said his organs are a mess…”
Chris trailed off and clenched his fist tightly.
“I had no choice but to return to the Reeducation Center, but my insides are boiling when I think that this place was also established by the mafia.”
Though he had talked with several people at the Reeducation Center, there was no one as well-informed about the surrounding circumstances as Nasthenka. She had wide connections and good sociability, and whether she had a favorable impression of Chris, she readily rattled off the knowledge she knew.
That’s why he was putting on a passionate performance in front of her with a plausible scenario about the circumstances of his father’s collapse.
For the acting not to be discovered, he had to stimulate Nasthenka’s emotions. So rather than creating an overly dramatic story and acting contrived, it was better to reduce his words.
Perhaps Andrea would have handled it more skillfully, but Chris found it quite difficult even to play the role of a son whose words had decreased, crushed by grief and despair.
“If it’s about drugs, it wouldn’t be Yuri Sobolev.”
Chris felt puzzled at her confident tone.
“You mean he’s a mafioso who doesn’t deal with drugs? I heard that the largest organization on November Continent is Yuri Sobolev’s White Night…”
“It’s something only those in the know are aware of, but Yuri Sobolev hates drugs. That’s why there aren’t any humans who survived distributing drugs on November Continent. There are even stories going around about subordinates getting caught secretly distributing drugs and being torn to death on the spot. Well, it’s probably half true.”
Nasthenka said, wrinkling her nose.
“Right now at the Reeducation Center too, there’s a separate place that rounds up and treats drug addicts.”
“That’s…”
