Eva's Plea (1)
With this, I can take Eva out of here.
I had managed to persuade her. Once we escaped, the magic shrouding the mansion would dissolve on its own.
She shouldn't spiral out of control for a while now, at least.
We'd only exchanged a few words, but even that must have been a real source of strength for her. I once read a study saying that living alone raised the risk of depression, and Eva's environment was practically designed to breed a sense of social isolation.
Loneliness, isolation, and a sickness of the heart. Everyone was different, of course, but simply reaching out a hand and showing her that someone cared would go a long way. Rather than droning on at length about how I understood everything she was going through, I was there beside her. A single promise of I'll help you when things get hard would land far deeper than any lecture ever could.
"Let's go out. Together."
Just as I'd hoped, my words gave Eva courage. She was a brave woman. She stumbled now and then, but she always knew how to turn her failures into stepping stones for success. She worried about the friends she'd once shut away in her room, and she didn't want to be a burden on the ones who had charged headlong into her barrier for her sake. And somewhere in a corner of her heart, the guilt over her father's death still lingered—but that could wait for now. Time heals all wounds, as they say. Someday she would overcome it.
After all, she was the protagonist of this world.
"Uwaaagh!"
Thud!
"What now?"
Why did she stand up halfway and then just fall over?
"My… my legs… they won't move."
Eva was trembling all over, flailing her arms like a drowning woman.
"Gah… did you sit at your games for too long?"
"Let me see."
Squeeze!
"Yeeeaagh!"
"Wow, would you look at that. Solid as a rock. Knots everywhere."
The same hardness as grabbing a log, these lumps all mashed together. Her legs really did need tending to.
"I'll loosen you up. It might hurt a little, so bear with it."
"Wh-what are you going to do to… aaahh!"
From her ankles up to her thighs, I began working through them in order, carefully seeking out each hardened knot and massaging it like kneading dough, and slowly the bunched-up muscle began to melt away.
"Ngyeet! Aah, it huuurts!"
"Don't make noises like that. Anyone listening would get the wrong idea."
Thank God no one was around to hear. What had just come out of her mouth was, by any measure, nothing remotely close to the sounds a person makes while getting their legs massaged. A voice that went beyond suggestive and straight into obscene—if Chloe had heard it, there would have been a beating. In more ways than one.
"There, all done. Can you move now?"
"Uuuh… I-I think it's a little bett… ughk!"
Crash!
Good grief. That was a severe case, no way around it. Watching her face-plant and kiss the floorboards, I concluded she wasn't going to be moving anywhere for a while. Nothing for it, then.
"Hop on. I'll carry you."
"I'm… sorry."
"No need to apologize."
Heave-ho! I hoisted the frail girl onto my back, loaded both hands with a full stack of garbage bags, and strode out the door with my head held high. Passing through the living room and opening the front door, I felt the flow of air shift. The illusion-wrapped space of the mansion had restored itself to its original state. The Divine Artifact had probably responded to the strength of Eva's wish to leave.
"Eva!"
Chloe sprinted over the moment she spotted us. Ter, Arlan, and the rest of the group followed close behind her. Their appearance was a total disaster—hair in tangles, skin scraped raw, clothes torn in patches. As I'd suspected, they'd been put through the wringer by Eva's illusions.
"Good timing. I've got trash to throw out, so take over for me here."
My role ended here. Time to pass the baton. I handed Eva off into Chloe's waiting arms.
"Are you hurt anywhere? Are you okay?"
"Ah… ah. I'm… I'm fine."
"Thank goodness!"
Chloe wrapped her up in a fierce embrace. It was tight enough to squeeze the air from her lungs, and for an instant Eva's expression twisted—but she must not have minded, because she soon hugged her back warmly. The two women held each other through their emotional reunion, and their friends looked on with relief washing over their faces.
I'd better not interrupt this.
Leaving that heartwarming scene behind, I headed off alone toward the recycling bins, garbage bags in hand.
With the barrier over the mansion gone, the incident came to a close. Eva bowed her head and apologized to the friends she'd worried, then asked them to head home for now, promising she'd be careful not to let anything like this happen again. Seeing how much brighter her face had become, they accepted her request, exchanged a few quick goodbyes, and departed.
She was alone again—but it didn't hurt the way it had before. She had realized that there were people who cherished her. She made their devotion, their hearts, the engine that drove her life forward.
Shhhh—
Warm water from the shower head drenched Eva's body from head to toe.
So refreshing.
How long had it been? She'd spent days cooped up in her room without so much as a wash, so she scrubbed every spot that could possibly smell—armpits to groin—thoroughly with shampoo and body wash, leaving not a trace of grime behind.
Creak.
She shut off the water, toweled herself dry, and stepped out of the bathroom. When she pulled up the calendar on her phone with damp fingers, nearly two weeks had passed since she'd shut herself away.
So I really did live buried inside this house for that long.
Now she understood why her friends had made such a fuss. To Eva it had only felt like four days or so, but time inside the barrier apparently flowed far more slowly than outside.
Everyone was so worried about me.
She thought back to when she'd finally emerged from her room. Chloe bawling her eyes out. Arlan's face caught between worry and relief. Ter… had worn an expression of vague displeasure, but he'd still come, and that was enough. And then there was that man, too.
That mister.
"That's what friends are for. What's the big deal about showing your face when someone's going through a hard time?"
When they'd first met, she'd thought no one could be scarier.
He was a rather strange man, though.
A man who had appeared like a comet just as she was being swept away by the crowd, at a complete loss. Wrapped head to toe in light-element mana so brilliant it threatened to blind, he had radiated an indescribably menacing aura. The others had instinctively backed away from that pressure too.
But above all, it was the dissonance. A body that reminded her of an arrogant young man fresh out of school, and a mature soul dwelling within it—the two drew a clear boundary. Now that he'd awakened his Divine Artifact, that boundary showed even more sharply.
Unpredictable in so many ways, and his actions were no exception. He could flip from tossing out frivolous jokes to giving his utmost, dead serious, the moment duty called—a man of two faces. Honestly speaking, in a small way, it was cool. He was dependable. He'd become something to lean on.
Take her father's temperament and shave off exactly the parts where he tripped over his own clumsiness, and wouldn't you get this man? If it weren't for Chloe, I might have even dated him. He was that kind of charming—a man so magnetic that even she, a lesbian who loved women, felt something devilishly alluring about him. Only up to that point, though.
Time to sleep.
Things would get busy starting tomorrow. Backlogged online classes, calls to check in on acquaintances—beyond all that, a mountain of problems still needed solving. Eva surrendered to the wave of drowsiness and flung herself onto her bed.
Knock, knock!
Huh?
A knock sounded at the door. The timbre coming through it made her startle.
Who…?
Someone knocking on her bedroom door—not the doorbell installed at the entrance—meant someone had broken into her home. She stiffened with alertness and stayed on guard.
"Coming in."
But the voice was oddly familiar.
The mister?
It was Solis. Eva let out her breath in relief. If it was him, casually breaking into a house without a sound was no big deal at all. It was an absolutely senseless thing to do, sure—but she reasoned that if it was him, he surely had a reason good enough to justify it.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm a bit late."
"…Eh?"
But the moment he opened the door and stepped inside, Eva's eyes went wide as saucers. His naked body, without so much as a pair of underwear. He was walking toward her with his cock proudly, fully erect, and words failed her completely.
"Wh-what do you think you're doing?!"
"What do you mean, what? I came to have sex, like you wanted."
"S-s-s-sex?! When did I ever say—!"
"You don't exactly look reluctant, though? You're completely naked."
"Ah!"
At his words, Eva belatedly took stock of her own state. The fact that she'd showered and then lain down on her bed without putting on a single thing. She was just as bare as he was, not a thread on her body.
"Th-this is, um… I just showered!"
"It shows. You smell wonderful."
Before she could utter a word of protest, Solis closed the distance, climbed onto the bed, and pressed his body over hers.
Pop!
"Nuuueeegh!"
Solis bit down with his teeth on her plump, pale-pink bud.
"No matter how often I taste these, I never get tired of them."
"Hiiiugh! S… stop it!"
From her nipple, a tingling jolt of electricity raced up her spine and slammed into her brain. It hurt. It was mortifying. So this was the kind of man he was. Barging into a woman's room and forcibly sucking on her chest—and she'd thought he was a good person. It had all been an act. The wave of betrayal made her teeth chatter.
I have to push him off right now, but…
"Hnnnngh! Haaah!"
Why does it feel this good?
Strange as it was, her body was heating up. Her mind went hazy as though drunk, her consciousness blurring at the edges.
Th-this isn't supposed to happen…
That was a sensitive spot. A precious part of her body that shouldn't be toyed with casually even by people she knew. Chloe had never even touched it. And yet her chest was pounding, hard, even knowing that—and then the thought surfaced, unbidden: it's a small mercy that the man I actually have feelings for is the one ravishing me, and not a stranger…
N-n-not that it's a mercy at all!
She had to stop this here. She had to put an end to his atrocity before she lost her mind completely, Eva resolved. Her lips trembled with pleasure, the words refusing to come easily, but after straining with everything she had to focus her scattered mind, she finally forced out the sentence she so desperately wanted.
"R-really now. Acting like such a child. There's no need to be so hasty."
Eh?
But the content was strange. Her tone just now—it had sounded almost like she was saying he was welcome to keep sucking? Words that had absolutely nothing to do with her own will had tumbled out of her mouth.
And the strangeness didn't end there.
"This springy, bouncy texture clinging to your tongue is the best."
"Aah, I'm not going anywhere, so take your time."
Eva grabbed the back of Solis's neck and pulled him harder into her chest, whining complaints against his ear like a needy thing, letting out sulky little moans. Spurred on by those words, Solis threw himself into it with even greater enthusiasm.
"Then I won't hold back."
Shlurp!
"Uuuaaaghh!"
Solis's practiced tongue drove Eva relentlessly toward the edge. A lewd blend of screams and moans filled the room, and her back arched like a drawn bow.
"Hnnngh! It hurts… it hurts! But it feels so good!"
"You can go harder… harder if you want! Hnnnaaahn!"
Vulgar words beyond counting poured from Eva's mouth without end. Worked up like a beast in heat, she finally couldn't hold back any longer—and crashed over the peak.
Spurt!
"What the—you came already, and I only sucked your nipples?"
"Ooooohk!"
Clear nectar streaming down her thighs, a tide bursting from her quivering, twitching lips like water from a broken dam soaked the bed sheets through and through. Her body convulsed, her eyes rolling back. Brain paralyzed by pleasure, she lay limp and drained like a machine that had run out of power.
"Our Eva is a total pervert, isn't she?"
"Th-that's… that's because you kept touching me, mister."
"Well, I did spend every chance I got grabbing and sucking on them."
Solis nodded with the gravity of a man who completely understood, then sprang up from the bed. Along with him, his cock stood straight up toward the ceiling, veins bulging angry red.
Huuuah!
It was a weapon of terrifying menace. In both girth and length, it was massive—rivaling a knight's sword. Eva found herself gulping down a breath.
"Now then, next… you know what you have to say, don't you?"
"Wh-what… what is it?"
"Why are you playing dumb? You have to beg for my cock, like you always do."
Eh…?
An incomprehensible demand. When did I ever say that? Eva wanted to argue. She should have said no right then, should have refused. Tears of shame welled in her eyes—and yet.
"P-please… please give me your cock!"
"Hm? What was that? Too quiet, I can't hear you."
"Pl-please put your cock inside me, Mister Solis! My pussy's already burning up!"
Her mouth wouldn't stop.
"Please stuff it deep into this poor little hole that can't behave itself and keeps squirting out tide after tide!"
Vile, vulgar words spilled out of her, utterly against her own will.
