Chapter 17
Kaelan came into view through my vision split in two.
He quietly peered into my eye as though appraising the finest jewel.
His eyes held nothing but pure curiosity and aesthetic appreciation.
“Perfect. This is the color. I thought it was mine alone. Tell the marquis it’s a very satisfying gift.”
He was holding the eyeball up to the sunlight filtering through the window.
The hand that had been holding my chin rose over my head and slowly stroked my hair.
I still couldn’t keep my body under control because of the pain that had begun in my eye.
Hot blood ran down my cheek like tears.
“Oh, dear. I mustn’t dirty the carpet the count cherishes.”
He shifted the eyeball from between his thumb and forefinger to his other three fingers, then slowly ran his thumb back up my face along the blood flowing down it.
His fingers touched the inside of the membrane that was now completely empty.
The tremendous pain came again.
“Ah… ugh.”
A scream that could not properly continue.
At the edge of my vision, I saw a faint white light.
The bleeding stopped, though much more slowly than when the priests had treated me.
I had to escape from his grasp.
My plan to seduce him and find freedom had been reduced to scraps of paper from the moment I first met him.
For the sake of revenge, I had to escape, even if it meant killing this man.
As I racked my pain-stimulated brain to revise my plan, I realized that, at some point, an enlarged pupil had begun staring directly into my eye.
“Those eyes are beautiful. Hatred, anger, murderous intent… You’re mine. Mine—not something to be buried beneath my father’s name…”
The hand stroking my hair suddenly clamped around my wrist.
Still gripping my wrist, Kaelan rose and began walking.
“Gh… Lord Kaelan… at least tie a rope around my legs…”
My body was dragged along helplessly.
Because I was wearing a thin dress, the words I got out about the pain of my legs and buttocks scraping against the floor were dismissed without a thought.
I struggled desperately, but the hand gripping my arm did not move even an inch.
He soon entered a room.
My body was thrown onto the bed, accompanied by pain that felt as though my arm were being torn off.
The world flipped halfway over.
Perhaps it was because my field of vision was different from usual.
It was difficult to remain conscious.
My swinging gaze landed on a cabinet.
Countless shades of blue.
Eyes were staring at me.
Countless eyes floated in the liquid inside glass bottles.
“You’re different from those. You’re the most perfect navy blue I’ve ever seen. So don’t hide from me.”
The hand gripping my cheek tightly forced my head to face forward again.
When my pain-twisted expression met his gaze, he smiled as though satisfied.
His lower garments had already disappeared as he slowly climbed onto the bed.
Between his legs, his penis was fully erect.
“Ah…!”
Though I had never masturbated since obtaining this new body, I still remembered countless encounters with prostitutes from when I had been a man.
What was about to happen was as plain as day.
I was going to be raped.
Cold sweat trickled down my back.
“Wait—”
“Shh. Don’t ruin the overture. Beautiful music must begin with silence.”
His body covered mine.
My feeble resistance was stifled by the hand covering my face.
I felt hot air against my throat.
Something hot and throbbing pressed down on my lower abdomen through the thin fabric.
‘I… can’t breathe!’
As I struggled for breath, I twisted my body wildly, but he only gazed into my eyes.
My vision gradually darkened from the edges inward.
In his navy-blue eyes, I saw my own eyes, greatly dilated and unfocused.
Just as my consciousness was about to cut out, the hand covering my mouth and nose was removed.
“Cough! Haa, haa, haak!”
I felt my lungs, desperate for air, expand with all their strength.
“This is a flaw that will ruin the finished piece.”
Humming a tune that wormed its way into my ears, he tore my dress apart.
My heartbeat quickened.
My body trembled every time his callused hand touched my bare skin.
It was utterly disgusting.
However, I couldn’t resist, thinking that resistance was meaningless now.
A rash attempt at resistance would only heighten his vigilance.
Because he was obsessed with my eyes, I couldn’t even avert my gaze.
Kaelan’s hand moved toward the backs of my knees.
Since I had not been given underwear when I entered the box, my vulva was left completely exposed.
I felt his hand grasp the backs of my knees and spread my legs apart.
I instinctively squeezed my legs together in shame.
Suddenly, his grip loosened.
“This… This look is boring. Show me the look you had earlier.”
He thought for a moment, then smiled like a child and began applying force again.
I felt the rope around my ankles straining fiercely against the greater force than before.
Each time the rope pulled taut, it dug into my flesh.
“W-wait! If you use any more force—!”
Along with the sound of the rope snapping, a cracking noise that should never have come from an ankle burst forth.
The noise sounded immensely loud, and I could no longer exert any force with my ankle.
Heat that began at my ankle traveled through my knee and reached my brain.
Every heartbeat sent blood surging backward, and it felt as though every nerve in my body had converged on a single point.
As the rope snapped completely, I heard a sound on an entirely different level from the one I had just heard.
A dull crack like a thick, green branch being forcibly broken.
It felt as though something that had been firmly lodged was wrenched out and torn free.
It felt as though a heavy stone had been tied to my ankle.
It was pain more intense than anything I had experienced in my previous life, even being stabbed with a sword.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
My vision flashed.
A scream tore up through my throat.
I felt something warm and moist against my widely parted lips.
Kaelan’s lips and tongue invaded my mouth, forcibly silencing the scream.
“Yes, this is better. Now, what kind of look will you show me?”
Only then did I feel something stirring inside my abdomen.
Contrary to his hopes, my consciousness could no longer hold on.
_______
Kaelan moved his hips rapidly back and forth like a beast.
The hot inner walls of her vagina greedily mouthed the cock thrusting up into her.
Overcome by the rising urge to ejaculate, he drove his cock in all the way to the root.
He felt the tip of his cock meet a soft, resilient wall.
Milky fluid flowed from her vulva along with red blood, as though he had already ejaculated several times.
His pleasure-clouded navy-blue eyes admired her snow-white naked body.
She was tall for a woman.
Faint abdominal muscles showed, as though she had trained her body.
His own handprints stood out atop them.
Her breasts were not large, but their gentle curves proudly proclaimed her a woman.
And within her finely featured face, framed by navy-blue hair, navy-blue eyes had lost their focus.
Her faint moans and his breathing mingled to create a single melody.
“I never made a habit of violating someone lying there like a corpse, though.”
Kaelan stroked her disheveled navy-blue hair.
It was like caressing a trembling string left quivering after a fierce performance.
He had slept with countless women, but he had never been this absorbed before.
“To think I could feel such ecstasy even from something broken.”
Even with an unconscious woman—one who wasn’t even human, but a slave.
“Honestly. The marquis’s request is beginning to frighten me.”
A man sent by Marquis Beaufort had arrived without warning.
Anyone who knew him knew he was a dog with Count Daker’s leash around his neck.
The man’s decision to send him a gift while bypassing his father had sparked nothing more than simple curiosity.
But what lay inside the box was nothing so ordinary.
Even after roaming battlefields for years.
Even after burning dozens of villages.
Even after killing countless people.
A color he had never once seen.
That color he had thought was his alone was right before him.
“Why did he send me a gift like this? Was he trying to keep my father in check? Or was he trying to draw me to his side?… Well, it doesn’t matter.”
He laughed.
He would never let anyone else take it from him.
“Whatever he wants, this work is mine. Not my father’s, and not Beaufort’s.”
Soon, overcome by the satisfaction filling his entire body, he stopped thinking and rose from the bed.
He gazed for a moment at her sprawled across the bed.
With the war over anyway, he had more than enough time to make arrangements going forward.
Leaving her behind, he headed toward the bath, savoring the afterglow.
“…I was so absorbed that I forgot.”
After returning to the room looking neat, he spotted the eyeball lying haphazardly on the table.
The eyeball glinted in the oil lamp’s light.
“…Strange… It doesn’t have the beauty it had just now.”
He looked back and forth between the table and the bed for a moment.
A bewildered expression.
“No. This is unfinished. True art only exists when the whole piece is complete.”
He sat in a chair and gazed for a long while before shifting his eyes toward the bed.
Kaelan lightly tugged the cord hanging beside the desk.
Soon, a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in.”
A girl in a maid’s uniform opened the door to his room.
“Yes, Lord Kaelan, you called—”
The room was thick with the scent of sex.
The gaze she had directed at Kaelan stopped on the bed.
Her eyes trembled violently at the horrific sight.
Sheets smeared with blood and semen.
A naked woman discarded on top of them like a doll.
One eye socket was completely empty, and an ankle was bent at a grotesque angle, its bone protruding through the flesh.
However, Kaelan ignored her faltering words and continued looking at the eyeball in his hand.
Without ever looking at the girl, he opened his mouth.
“Mary, bring a priest. There’s something that needs treating.”
“…Right now?”
The girl asked in a trembling voice, not daring to raise her head.
It was not even dawn yet.
There was no way it would be easy to find a priest.
Only then did Kaelan tear his gaze away from the eye and turn toward the girl.
In the girl’s mind, Kaelan’s gaze became violently entangled with the sight of the woman on the bed.
“I-I’m sorry! I’ll bring one immediately!”
The girl answered almost with a scream, then dashed out of the room as though fleeing.