Chapter 32
The sound of knocking came, and Mary entered.
Pulling in a serving cart, she seemed different from usual.
Her body was trembling violently, and her face was streaked with tears.
“Mary…?”
“Aria. Do you know what this girl did?”
…
“That’s right. She helped you escape. Then she must be punished.”
My head seemed to go blank at his words.
I momentarily forgot both the pain in my nipples and the discomfort of the plugs.
She helped me.
Because I had coaxed her into it.
I asked her to bring me clothes, tell me the escape route, and even ask for money.
Because I asked her to.
“No…please…I’m the one at fault. Mary only did it because I threatened her…”
“That’s right. It’s your fault. But Mary is at fault too. In my world, the only person you should depend on is me.”
Leaving me on the bed, Kaelan turned toward Mary.
I hurriedly planted my feet on the floor and tried to stand to stop him, but a pain that seemed to crush my thigh shot through the entire thing.
Before my body could fully leave the bed, I lost my balance and fell to the floor.
The wound he hadn’t treated.
The bandage had turned red once more, as though the wound had split open again.
By then, Kaelan had already reached Mary.
“Please…Lord Kaelan…”
Mary’s trembling voice.
Even if I couldn’t stop him, I had to do something.
“Please! Punish me—punish me instead. It’s all my fault, isn’t it? Please…”
“Aria, you’ve already been punished. Now it’s Mary’s turn.”
His hand seized Mary’s chin.
I remembered my first day here.
His hand gripping my chin.
And the pain of having the untouched mucous membrane invaded.
The light that had gone out on one side.
I couldn’t let Mary suffer the same pain.
“Please! Lord Kaelan, I’ll do anything!”
His rising hand suddenly stopped.
“Hmm…I’ve changed my mind. Aria, choose. Will Mary be punished? Or will you receive a greater punishment?”
“…Me. Punish me—”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Please, Mary…”
“Good.”
Unlike the guilt in her eyes, relief brightened Mary’s face.
I felt relieved for a moment, but it didn’t last long.
Kaelan’s hand moved.
Fast, yet precise.
Still gripping her chin with one hand, his other moved over her eye.
“Wait…!”
I cried out urgently, but it was too late.
“Aaaaargh!”
His finger dug into the eyeball.
Mary’s scream, and the sound of tearing.
Kaelan’s hand came back out.
In his hand was a brown iris.
Blood flowed from Mary’s empty eye socket.
With his hand gripping her chin, Mary’s body went limp.
My breath stopped.
I couldn’t even scream.
“…Wh…why…when I said I’d take more punishment!”
“I respected your choice.”
“What…what does that mean…”
No words came out.
I had chosen.
I had clearly chosen to be punished.
And yet Mary’s eye had been gouged out.
“Since you chose to receive more punishment, Mary received less. I was originally going to gouge out both her eyes.”
…
“Aria. Mary was hurt because you tried to run away and because you made the choice you did.”
It…seemed to make sense.
No.
It was strange.
Something was wrong.
But I didn’t know what was wrong.
My mind wouldn’t work.
I no longer had the presence of mind to distinguish what was wrong.
Mary’s empty eye socket.
The flowing blood.
The eye in Kaelan’s hand.
I knew all too well what kind of pain she must have felt.
Mary…while helping me.
“It’s all your fault, Aria.”
…
That’s right.
It’s my fault.
Because I tried to escape.
Because I dragged Mary into it.
Because I chose.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
“If you try to depend on someone else, that person will get hurt. You must always look only to me, Aria.”
The door opened cautiously.
A red-haired girl poked her head inside.
She looked around the room, then went deathly pale when she saw Mary.
“Ma…Mary…”
“Hey, you. Take this too.”
“…Y-yes…”
With both hands trembling, the girl carefully accepted the eye.
Her hands clenched desperately so she wouldn’t drop it.
As she dragged the brown-haired girl sprawled across the floor out of the room, her eyes met mine.
Fear, disgust, and wariness filled her eyes.
I couldn’t keep meeting the gaze that seemed to say Mary had ended up like this because of me.
I turned my head away from her.
That girl would hate me too.
Of course she would.
Everything that happened today was because of me.
“Do you understand now?”
Tears streamed from my eyes.
“Don’t depend on anyone else. Trust me—trust only me.”
Kaelan’s hands lifted my body into his arms.
My body went rigid, but his bloodstained hands were still warm.
My mind still wouldn’t function properly.
It felt as though everything was my fault.
He laid me down on the bed.
His hand stroked my head.
“Good girl. Now go to sleep, Aria. You can eat later.”
I didn’t want to think anymore.
I had only been awake for a short while, but I was utterly exhausted.
_______
Noah appeared before me.
“Ella! Run!”
His body was stained red.
An arrow.
“Noah!”
I ran toward him, but couldn’t reach him.
Noah collapsed.
I saw Mary too.
Blood flowed from her empty eye socket.
“I only helped because you asked me to…Now I can’t see anything…because of Ella…”
Noah and Mary stood side by side.
They were both looking at me.
“I died because of you.”
“My eye…because of you.”
Kaelan’s voice.
“That’s right. It’s all your fault.”
Kaelan was smiling.
“Because you resisted. Because you tried to escape.”
In his hand were Noah’s heart and Mary’s eye.
“Who’s next?”
“No!”
I woke with a scream.
My body was drenched in cold sweat.
It had been a nightmare.
I was alone in the bed.
My thigh hurt.
My chest hurt.
I was alone.
The previous day’s memories came rushing back.
It was my fault.
But.
With my mind working better than the day before, I shook my head.
No. It was Kaelan’s fault.
It wasn’t me; he had gouged it out.
But.
Because I had tried to escape.
Because I had dragged Mary into it.
Kaelan’s malice and my choice.
My thoughts were tangled.
I couldn’t clearly tell what was right.
One thing was certain.
Kaelan had to die.
The paper knife was still on the table.
I couldn’t afford to fail next time.
I didn’t know who else might get hurt.
But.
My hand trembled.
The disparity in power between him and me was enormous.
Even if I ambushed him while his guard was down, could I succeed?
Could I really kill him?
If I failed.
It felt as though I could hear Mary’s scream again.
Even so, I had to do it.
To avoid failure, I had to act even more cautiously and plan even more thoroughly.
“Ngh!”
Suddenly, a stabbing pain struck deep in my lower abdomen.
It was difficult even to breathe, as though a hot, heavy, liquid-filled water pouch inside me were swelling to the point of bursting.
My lower abdomen was visibly swollen as if it were about to burst.
When I cautiously touched it, it felt hard, and immense pain surged through me.
The urge to urinate sent signals stabbing directly into my brain.
Only then did I realize that I hadn’t urinated in over a day.
But the beads had firmly blocked my urethra.
Urine wouldn’t come out no matter how hard I strained.
I had to find Kaelan somehow.
But my pride wouldn’t allow me to call for Kaelan.
My thoughts turned to the beads blocking my urethra.
I reached out and touched the ring.
If I pulled the string attached to the ring protruding from my vulva, the pain would end.
But the fear that the consequences might fall not only on me but on Mary as well if I pulled it out myself brought my body to a halt.
I took my hand off the ring.
My bladder felt ready to burst.
Was I going to die?
No. I couldn’t die like this.
If I died, I would have neither revenge nor my father.
Mary and Noah came to mind, but I had no choice.
No matter what price I had to pay, I had to survive and take revenge.
I bit my lip.
I had to call him.
This was no time for pride.
“Ka…Kaelan!…Lord Kaelan!”
It was the first time since coming to this estate that I had called for Kaelan.
The man who had always been at my side, playing with me as he pleased, wasn’t beside me when I needed him.
At that thought, I twisted my body to get down from the bed.
“Ghk…!”
The pain grew even more violent when I twisted my body.
But I couldn’t stop.
I fell to the floor.
My side, rather than my abdomen, struck the floor, but it felt as though the entire impact had been concentrated in my lower abdomen.
The pain made my vision go white, and I wondered if my bladder had truly burst.
Every time I braced a hand against the floor and dragged myself forward, bent the knee that hadn’t been struck by the arrow, or pulled myself along with my arms, excruciating pain tormented me.
I could feel my bladder sloshing with every tiny vibration.
Each time I moved, the urge to urinate grew maddeningly stronger, but my urethra remained firmly blocked.
Cold sweat poured down like rain.
As I moved forward little by little, I desperately prayed that Kaelan would appear before my eyes.
The door opened, as though he had truly granted a wish of mine he had never once granted.
Kaelan entered through it.
He was drenched in sweat, as though he had come from training, and held a sharpened sword in one hand.
“Aria?”
“Lo…Lord Kaelan, please…the plug…My bladder feels like it’s going to burst…”
“Ah.”
He looked at me.
At me, lying on the floor, drenched in sweat and convulsing.
His expression seemed flustered.
But I had neither the time nor the presence of mind to question it.
“Wait.”
After flinging the sword to the floor, he hurried to my side, and I felt his finger hook through the ring.
The beads slid out quickly, scraping the inner wall of my urethra.
But I had no attention to spare for that sharp pain.
In that instant, the hellish pressure vanished as if it had never existed.
My lower abdomen, swollen to the point of bursting, seemed to collapse in an instant.
Then a hot, powerful stream burst out of my body, filling the space that had been empty.
“Hngh!”
This sudden release from the agony felt like a violent kind of pleasure.
My back arched like a bow.
The sharp urge to urinate disappeared, leaving only profound relief behind.
Every muscle in my body trembled as though convulsing, and hot tears flowed from my eyes.
Not from the pain, but from the relief of having survived and the exhaustion of finally reaching the end.
And from the afterimage of that strange, intense sensation that had just overwhelmed me.
My body was a mess of sweat and tears, and the floor was covered in released fluid, yet my mind was strangely calm.
But hidden within that calm was an unpleasant seed.
The confused sensation of knowing Kaelan was the one who ended the pain, and that the moment of release had disgustingly resembled pleasure.
I tried desperately to shake off that sensation, but it clung to me as tenaciously as Kaelan’s gaze now fixed on me.