Chapter 312
Chapter 312
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 312
Chapter Title: Closer Than a Distant Love, My Disciple (2)
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1.
Siu crossed Eloa's wrists and pinned them above her head.
Her hands, which had tried to fend him off, were subdued as easily as a child's.
Even standing, there was barely any space between them—their bodies pressed tight.
Soft lips met, filling her lungs with the scent of alcohol and thick cigarette smoke mingling with his natural aroma.
"Hmph... mm...!"
Her mind went blank.
Their lips were surely pressed firmly together.
Yet as Siu gently tilted his head while caressing her upper lip, a soft, pliant tongue slipped inside.
Even more astonishing was how her clenched teeth—biting down hard enough to grind—parted like magic.
The intruding tongue filled her small mouth, coiling around hers slickly like a serpent.
"Chup... mm... fuum..."
Saliva mixed with the sticky, sensual sounds.
Their ragged breaths tickled her flushed face.
Between her trembling legs, the presence of his knee grew ever more intensely felt.
Her hands bound, his body invading even the most intimate places she shouldn't allow touched, his mouth sucking her tongue like candy.
Memories resurfaced.
The day Eloa had first clung to Siu.
That searing memory.
An experience that hadn't faded with time at all, stirring her instincts as a woman before anything else, setting her body ablaze.
Her lungs, which never tired no matter how long she ran, heaved erratically now, as if malfunctioning.
Drained of strength all over, Eloa leaned half her weight against the wall and the other half on Siu's knee.
She was pinned like a mounted butterfly, utterly immobile.
"Puha... haa... haa..."
The kiss, which had felt eternal, finally ended.
Siu's lips pulled away from hers—lips that had invaded her mouth like it was his own, sucking her small tongue like candy.
More.
Pushing aside all reason, the first thought was thick regret.
Followed by sorrow at the distance opening between them.
Then her common sense and awareness stirred guilt and a sense of depravity.
"We... can't do this..."
A lie.
Her words said no, but she offered no real resistance to Siu.
"I don't want this... please, let me go..."
Another lie.
Deep down, she wanted him to hold on.
To embrace her without letting go.
Eloa finally wrenched her wrists free from his grasp.
Unable to meet his eyes squarely, she searched for an escape.
She was far too conflicted to pretend nothing happened or simply give in to her heart's cries.
Summoning strength into her completely limp legs, she steadied herself and slipped out from Siu's shadow.
As she straightened her disheveled clothes, she told herself:
Well done, Tiphereth.
You refused properly.
Ignoring the inner pleas to yield and compromise, Eloa returned to her stern voice.
"...If you desire my help, I will gladly become your strength."
Siu, who had pulled her from despair and grief in the darkness, becoming her pillar.
"Even if you seek my life, I would give it without hesitation."
For him, she could discard her own life like so much chaff—that was how deeply Eloa loved Siu.
"But even you cannot have everything."
"Master..."
"Siu, never do this to me again..."
Yet if she truly loved him, someone had to pull him back when he strayed from the right path.
This refusal wasn't for her sake.
It was to keep her beloved disciple Siu from betraying the natural order.
"Master."
Siu approached cautiously.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped the corners of Eloa's eyes.
"Don't cry."
"Wha...?"
Only then did Eloa realize tears were streaming down her cheeks.
A stinging pain bloomed belatedly from her bitten lip.
She glanced at the mirror beside the grandfather clock.
Her reflection stared back, smooth and pristine.
She looked endlessly sorrowful and fragile, as if she'd cast away a precious treasure she'd never regain with her own hands.
No.
Once tonight passed, she'd be his master again, and he'd be her cherished disciple.
She had established the proper relationship.
Eloa had achieved what she desired most.
She deserved self-praise, so what was with this pathetic, wretched appearance?
"You know it too, Master."
Such was Eloa when Siu's broad chest enveloped her once more.
Siu hugged her.
"That we can't just pretend otherwise."
The desolation and sense of loss, stark as a wasteland, seemed filled by a mere embrace.
Her freshly steeled resolve and heart crumbled powerlessly.
"Ugh... sniff... you're so cowardly..."
It felt too underhanded.
She'd resisted so hard, tried to pull back, yet one hug crumbled her will like a sandcastle.
"I must have been too considerate before. I'm sorry."
"No... it's not your fault... you have nothing... sniff... to apologize for..."
If she'd drawn a clean line after their intimacy in the rainwater tunnel and treated him solely as a disciple, none of this would have happened.
It was all her own weakness.
Had her resolve been firmer from the start, this awkward mess never would have arisen.
She'd left room for Siu.
Thus, he'd come to see his master Eloa as a woman, leading to tonight.
And she'd left room for herself too.
She'd seen Siu not just as a disciple but as a man, committing various errors too hard to confess.
Ask whose fault was greater, and she'd unhesitatingly claim her own.
A master leads one step ahead of their disciple.
From the moment she'd forgotten that duty, she had no right to blame Siu.
Even now, she wanted to abandon all responsibility and obligation.
"Siu, bring the liquor."
Eloa sat down.
Siu meticulously wiped the last of her tears, then fetched a new bottle from the mini bar and prepared to pour.
"No need to pour it."
"Pardon?"
Eloa grabbed the bottle in Siu's hand.
She took a deep breath and chugged it down.
The whiskey Siu had brought was harsh stuff.
Room temperature gave a cool slide down her throat, but fire crackled to life in her belly.
"Master? What are you doing?!"
Siu paled and snatched the 42-proof whiskey bottle as she swigged like a sailor.
But already, half was gone into her stomach.
Eloa swayed, wiping liquor from her lips.
She swatted away Siu's concerned arm trying to support her.
"Siu."
Deep down, she knew.
What she wanted, what she'd longed for.
What she'd desperately averted her eyes from.
What she'd denied and rejected.
She'd known for quite some time.
"Yes, Master."
She knew.
That come dawn tomorrow, she'd regret this choice.
That they might never return to their old relationship.
She knew it full well.
Thus, this wasn't impulse.
Not surrender to momentary desire.
It was Eloa Tiphereth's long-held, precious, dangerous truth—like sweet poison.
"I'm terribly drunk right now. Not in my right mind."
Eloa said this as she sat on the carriage sofa.
She reached back, untied the waist knot, and slipped the straps off her shoulders.
The white dress cascaded down, baring her snow-white breasts.
Her smooth, flawless abdomen, shadowed like ripe fruit, was revealed too.
"Even if you come beside me and hold me, you'd surely mistake it for a dream and accept."
This meant permission for everything.
"By morning, I'll have forgotten it all. Forgotten even the memory of forgetting."
It was also a vow to bury everything that happened tonight.
Siu swallowed hard.
Under the crimson lighting, Eloa's curves gleamed.
Her eyes, brimming as if they'd spill tears at a touch, numbed his reason.
Eloa quietly slipped the half-removed dress off her feet.
Now in just panties, she looked at Siu.
As she shed her clothes, his gaze swept over her body in an instant.
"If it were you..."
Shame at acting spoiled.
Liberation at finally voicing it.
Guilt at crossing the forbidden line.
Anticipation and fear of what was to come.
Sorrow that tomorrow she'd have to pretend none of it happened.
A riot of emotions swirled in her mind.
Too complex for words—like dancing flames—yet passionately surreal.
"If it were you, what would you do with a woman like me?"
Eloa closed her eyes.
Each step of Siu's approach made her shoulders twitch.
Scary.
Frightening.
She wanted to flee even now.
Then Siu's hand slipped behind her back.
Joy mingled with fresh fear.
"I'd carry you to bed first, I think. And then..."
With Siu's gentle voice.
Eloa felt her body lift into the air.
Siu had scooped her up, one arm under her calves and the other supporting her back.
He opened the bedroom door and gently laid her on the bed.
With a snap of his fingers, the decorative lanterns throughout flickered to life in response to mana patterns, flames roaring up.
Eloa, who had relaxed slightly in the darkness, suddenly covered her chest and face against the bright light.
"I'd kiss my shy master's body."
Siu's form covered hers.
He turned her head aside and pressed his lips to her slender nape.
"Haah...!"
Eloa jolted like she'd been shocked.
A dizzying pleasure, separate from the alcohol, swept through her.
Goosebumps prickled and faded across her skin.
Siu slowly trailed kisses down her neck, showering her body.
Along her straight collarbone, between her breasts, over her twitching abdomen, to her cute navel.
"Haaang... hng... ng...!"
These weren't erogenous zones, surely.
Siu was deliberately avoiding them with his kisses.
Places that would have merely tickled laughter out of her in another moment, another way.
Siu pinned down writhing Eloa.
And slowly showered more kisses.
Her side, the pubic mound lifting her white panties like a great bridge, upper thigh, knee, shin, the top of her foot.
Even to her dainty toes, his tongue crept slowly downward.
"Si, Siu... there... that's dirty... haang..."
As Siu took each toe into his mouth, cleaning and sucking like it was natural, Eloa finally protested.
Embarrassing.
She hadn't washed there separately.
Fear it might smell, yet the realization of being loved even in such a trivial spot bloomed vividly.
"There's no dirty part on Master's body."
With lines like that, she could only surrender her body to him, twitching intermittently.