The Elf's Sudden Curiosity?
The Elf's sudden demand that I pull my cock out right in front of her left me more than a little thrown.
Not because of the order itself. In the years since I'd been sold off to her and put to work as her slave, I'd heard that particular command dozens of times—hundreds, even. Hearing it again barely registered. Hell, the very first thing she'd ordered me to do the moment she bought me was to show her my cock. I was long past being unused to that sort of thing.
"Well? What's the matter with you? Hurry up and present your penis!"
"Ahem..."
"How strange. Don't tell me you're developing a rebellious streak now, of all times? That can't be right..."
I'd been stripped bare in front of this Elf dozens—hundreds—of times over the past few years. I'd even stood there like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, arms and legs spread, and hopped in place for her. It wasn't as though I was suddenly going to clutch my dignity and protest that we weren't even like that. The reason I was flustered was the look in her eyes: she kept flicking them back and forth between my face and my waistband, lit up like she could barely contain herself.
Ordinarily, if she wanted to see my cock, she'd just point a gun at me, or activate the slave collar around my neck and treat me to a nice jolt—How about a little taste of electricity, you bastard?—and that would be that. There was no reason for her to go to all this trouble, patiently asking two and three times like some kindly schoolteacher. She'd seen my cock so many times she ought to have been sick of it. There was no earthly reason for her eyes to be sparkling the way they had the first time I ever dropped my pants in front of her.
More than anything, this reaction of hers was so unfamiliar it set my teeth on edge.
Should I just drop the act right now and tell her the hypnosis didn't take?
I was seriously weighing it when she spoke again.
"Hmm. Did I perhaps make some kind of mistake during the hypnosis process? If so, my research will be set back, and if even hypnosis doesn't work on you, I may as well just...!"
Click. The instant I registered that familiar sound—the hammer of the revolver, so carefully nestled in its holster, being thumbed back—my body was already dropping my pants. Shame had long since been left behind on a road I was never going to walk again, but more than that, the conditioned terror in my bones had sensed the threat and moved on its own.
Still, this was an Elf who could ricochet in any direction at any moment. There was no telling what excuse she'd invent to start emptying rounds around my feet.
Please. Just don't flick me in the balls like you did last year...
Contrary to my fears, however, she took her hand off the holster. Then she went right back to reading from the book she'd shown me a moment ago.
"Ah, here it is, written plain as day! It says one must begin gradually, with small commands first. The subject may not properly register the orders, so it may take some time, and one must continuously reinforce the suggestion... Aha, it was on the very next page. I got so excited I only read the beginning and completely missed it... Ahaha."
"..."
I wasn't sure whether to call it an unexpected salvation or not. There I stood with my pants around my ankles and my cock hanging out, and the Elf, who had been staring at me with those glittering eyes, promptly began inspecting my limp dick from every angle. The same cock she had already seen dozens—hundreds—of times, and which there was no reason whatsoever to find newly fascinating.
"Hmm. Or perhaps there's a specific season for it? At first, it was clearly standing at attention every time you stripped, all perky and—"
"Pardon?"
"Ahem! Nothing at all! And just who gave a mere Yellow Monkey permission to put questions to me?"
I shut my mouth at once. Her behavior today was even more erratic than usual, and the unease that crawled up my spine sealed my lips as automatically as a sliding door. She watched me through narrowed eyes, as if confirming something, then went on.
"You know, I've always been curious about something."
"Curious about... ahem. About what, exactly?"
"Well. When beasts go into heat, or when it's time to mate, the females swell up around their genitals, and the males, upon seeing that, become erect and couple with them, don't they?"
"...Yes."
Why was she suddenly talking about animals mating? Was this another one of her research projects—was she about to make me do something new and horrible? The longer she talked, the more my dread doubled down on itself. I had no idea what fresh humiliation was coming, and even though I knew I had to act like none of this bothered me, my heart was slamming against my ribs. I swallowed, trying to keep my throat from bobbing too obviously, and waited for whatever she would say next.
Then she shoved her face right up to mine, and her expression changed.
The wide-eyed, childlike curiosity of a moment ago was gone without a trace. In its place was a look more serious than I had ever seen on her. The kind of face that said she had something grave to tell me, and that I had better steel myself accordingly to hear it.
I swallowed again.
I knew I shouldn't—not in a situation like this—and I hated to admit it, but for a moment I was completely taken in by how deadly serious she looked, and by that face of hers.
If she'd just keep her mouth shut and tone down the viciousness a little, she'd be perfect.
Her manners were rotten and her temperament was worse, but when she closed her mouth like that, the Elf's beauty was a work of art. It was no exaggeration to say she had the kind of face that stopped your breath in your chest—the way Michelangelo's sculptures still overwhelm people even after hundreds and thousands of years. And that outfit of hers, with so much skin on display, was enough to stir up every filthy impulse a man could have. She was, in a word, a supreme female specimen, as if God Himself had designed her. But how many times had I already gotten myself into ugly situations by falling for that face?
Except for the day she bought me and the moments she was running some experiment on me, a serious expression on this Elf was a rare sight. Whatever was about to come out of that mouth might well decide the rest of my life. So I pricked up my ears, if only to stay in character as a man under hypnosis.
My hammering heart gradually found its rhythm again, as if to signal that I was ready to listen. She chose that exact moment to speak, as though she'd been waiting for it.
"This may be sudden, but did you know that I have been observing you steadily for the past three years?"
"Huh? Ah... yes."
Three years. It had been three years since I'd opened my eyes with no idea where I was, been hauled before an Elf, and been told I was going to be her slave.
Every time I'd tried to rest after a day's work, she'd call me over, strap a hundred-pound pack to my back, and make me run—day and night, summer and winter—until I dropped, pouring sweat.
"Give me a gun too! Give me the gun! You fucking bitch, I said give me a gun!!"
"Did a mere Yellow Monkey just call me a fucking bitch?"
"Is that what matters right now?! They're here! They're here, I said! Give me the damn gun already! Ah, you piece of—you're really not going to give it to me, all the way to the end?!"
"You insane little shit?!"
Thrown into a world that had already changed, with no time to adapt, I'd been sent out with a massive rucksack on my back and nothing but a sledgehammer in my hands, trailing after the Elf as we tore through packs of Walkers. I'd danced along the edge of life and death more times than I could count, scrambling like a dog just to keep my own hide intact. And for two of those three years I'd lived more or less as a lab animal. Forgetting any of it was not an option.
Come to think of it, this Elf was there for every last one of those incidents, without fail.
Memories that still made my skin crawl and my teeth grind just to recall. But I couldn't let any of that distaste show, so I quietly nodded and said,
"W-well, yes. The fact that I'm even alive today is entirely thanks to Lady Celestin's boundless grace."
"Heheh... That's right. Filthy mouth or not, at least this beast knows the meaning of gratitude!"
For better or worse, what she said was true, so I dipped my head in acknowledgment. She smiled at that, the corner of her mouth curling up, just a little. It was the kind of smile that almost made me feel guilty for the three years I'd spent harboring the filthy, impure ambition of one day getting my hands on those enormous breasts of hers and having my way with them.
The next words out of her mouth, however, were more than enough to take that guilt and throw it straight in the trash.
"That said, a dull-witted Yellow Monkey like you has no doubt been entertaining the most impure notion that, even as you feel grateful to me, I have been tormenting you out of some personal grudge! But that is not the case at all!"
"Pardon? But according to what Dyna said—"
"D-Dyna?! Why are you suddenly bringing up that here-knight?! Ahem. At any rate, it is not the case at all! Whatever you heard from her—from that person—was nothing but slander against me! So-called fake news! You must not believe a word of it!"
I haven't even said what Dyna told me yet.
She thrust her palm out toward me with a conviction that would have inspired trust in anyone watching and declared that it wasn't true. Then she cleared her throat and pressed on.
"Everything I have done to you over the years has been strictly in service of my great research—situations in which, for the advancement of scholarship, I had no choice but to treat you roughly. I have never once tormented you out of any personal feeling!"
"..."
"I-it's the truth, I tell you!"
What on earth had gotten into her today? Was she trying to plant the idea that she was a mistress I ought to revere? Since she was convinced I was under hypnosis, was she using the opportunity to deepen my obedience toward her?
A shiver ran through me. She saw it, decided all on her own that it meant Ah, you understand!, and was so moved she grabbed me by both shoulders.
"Anyway! In the years I have spent observing you, I have succeeded in collecting a great deal of data on the habits of the human species, and my research has advanced by leaps and bounds as a result. But there is one area that remains a complete unknown! I want to know so badly that I would even borrow the power of hypnosis to find out! So you'll answer me, won't you? You'll show me, won't you? No—you want to answer, don't you? You want to show me, don't you?"
"Huh? Ah, y-yes! I'm Lady Celestin's slave, so if you give the order, I'll do anything..."
She beamed at me with a smile as brilliant as the sun overhead. It would have been nicer if she hadn't just made me take my cock out, and if she weren't staring straight down at it as if to say, That's a good boy, keep answering like that. But I was supposed to be under her hypnosis—the kind that made me want to hear whatever she said—so I had no choice but to agree with everything that came out of her mouth.
"Heheh, excellent, excellent! Those books of the ancient ones! Terrifying creatures, humans! To think they could make even an insolent Yellow Monkey like you want to obey me without a fuss!"
"..."
I swear, if it weren't for that gun...
Oblivious to what I was thinking, she snatched up the hypnosis manual hanging at her hip and went bouncing around in circles, her breasts sloshing up and down with every skip. It didn't last long. After a lap or two she staggered, looking dizzy, then suddenly shoved her face in close to mine again.
"Yes! My mating season is—wait. My mating season?"
"Yes! Your mating season! I have been watching you this entire time for three years, and not once have I ever seen you suffer through a heat the way other beasts do!"
I was so startled I forgot I was supposed to answer immediately and ended up questioning her right back. But she believed without a shadow of a doubt that I was hypnotized, and she didn't seem to find my confusion the least bit strange. She hopped in closer still and asked again.
"Until now I've been too embarrassed to ask you directly, so I've put it off and put it off and waited and waited—but now that you're under hypnosis, that's a different matter entirely! So answer me honestly! Your mating season—when exactly does a human's mating season arrive?!"
Her gaze was unnecessarily bright, and there was a peculiar heat in it besides. But this was exactly the kind of moment that called for even more shamelessness, so I ignored the cold sweat sliding down my spine and answered, calm and brazen.
"There's no 'when' about it. I'm in heat right now."
"...What?"
As I said it, I gave my limp cock a lazy swing, like an elephant's trunk. She froze the same way I had a moment ago, blinking stupidly at me.
"I-I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that correctly... when did you say your mating season was...?"
"There's no particular when. Right now. Humans go into heat all year round, all four seasons. Male humans especially."
"...Huh? Eh?"
Her eyes flew wide, then dropped in disbelief toward the thoroughly unimpressive length of cock hanging between my legs.