Ep.8 - Silence
Ep.8 - Silence
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Humans must keep their mouths shut.
The mouth is a hole that spews painful truths and sweet, ruinous lies—a gap that rattles off words meant to wound. For everyone's sake, we must each live with our own traps sewn shut.
How many are hurt by another's thoughtlessness? How many fall into despair?
Human speech possessed a potency its own creators could never properly gauge, and so everyone who opened their mouths and spoke had to live ever aware of that danger.
Once you close your mouth, everything grows still.
No need to get heated, no cause to wound each other, no room for misunderstandings to sprout...
"Delin, are you alright? Just a little further and there will be a stream. I can sense the water. Once we wash up there properly and rest well before setting out again, we'll surely be able to walk much faster, you know..."
Everyone becomes happy.
There were only the three of them in that place.
No one else existed on the path they walked.
Delin couldn't tell if Neva was deliberately choosing such a route, or if other things were sensing her bloodlust and staying clear.
Slung onto Neva's back, Delin found himself towed along as he watched the scenery shift moment by moment.
"Eva, do you remember? When you were little, your big sister used to carry you piggyback to the hills behind the house like this, too. Mother and Father always scolded us for it. Saying we had no concern for our safety when magical beasts might show up..."
Among the three, Neva was the only one who opened her mouth and spoke. From the mouths of the other two, only moans spilled out, and the entire conversation was carried forward by Neva's words alone.
"And then you would always step in front of them and throw a fit. Saying it wasn't that your sister took you, but that you wanted to go so you went... Ever since you were tiny, you were always adorable. You still are now."
In this one-way communication where not a single reply came back, the two small, frail figures—a man and a woman—gradually wore themselves down.
Under the pretext of keeping their mouths shut, they had been walking for a full day now without being able to eat or drink properly.
In the lengthening evening glow, they were simply dragged along, unable even to clutch their starving bellies.
"Ah, there! I knew there was a river..."
The swaying of her body quickened. Neva's footsteps had picked up speed.
Delin couldn't properly face the sight Neva was looking at, but upon seeing them finally emerge from the forest, he let out a sigh of relief.
At last, the long, long,
torturous journey of the day had come to an end.
Listening to Neva's monologue all day while bound at every limb had been nearly unbearable.
But now that they had reached the river, they could finally rest, wash, and eat...
"...First, I'll have to strip the clothes off both of you. If I wash them well and hang them near the campfire, they'll surely dry quickly."
...All of those routines would be carried out by Neva's hands, of course, but in any case, the long, tedious journey was, for the moment, as good as over.
———————————————
The river water was quite cold.
However, the coldness was only momentary; soon, the soft, yielding warmth of Neva pressed wetly against Delin's back, sharing its heat.
"Hnng! Heeuup!"
"Delin, stay still. Eva is watching, and yet you make such lewd sounds... I'm only washing you. Nothing more."
The problem was that the part sharing its warmth was, of all places, her lower half. Neva washed Delin first. Especially his cute little thing that would have to keep taking responsibility from now on.
"Washing thoroughly is how you avoid illness and maintain your health. Understood? The more precious the area, the more meticulously it must be washed, I say."
Thanks to the knightess's thorough handiwork washing every nook and cranny, Delin spat out water several times,
but in the end, his cock, thoroughly coated in that white fluid, was simply washed all over again from scratch with the greatest care.
By the time his bath was finally finished, the little witch's face was also dyed as red as a carrot. The suggestive acts of the two, packaged under the word 'bath,' must have been quite a shock to a haughty witch raised in a culture that deemed only intimacy between women proper.
"Eva, you come too. You have to wash."
"Hiiieup! Hiic!"
Eva, ashamed of her shamefully exposed, defenseless body, desperately rejected her sister's hands touching her bare skin,
but Neva, as if soothing a fussing child, pulled Eva into an embrace, led her into the river water, and began carefully washing her.
Eva's small, animal-like body splashed water in every direction in defiance, but in the end, it was useless resistance.
Having one's older sister knead and wash one's body was surely a hard thing to accept between any pair of sisters.
Even so, as if it were nothing, Neva diligently washed Eva, and at last, carefully poured water over her own jewel-like body, finishing her bath...
The day had begun to darken before they knew it.
The red sunset was slanting down upon them as they faced each other after finishing their bath.
Their dinner consisted of five fish Neva had scooped up while bathing, along with tree berries that looked like wild strawberries,
and even during the process of preparing them to be easy to eat, Neva spoke to her younger sister and her lover as if reminiscing about old memories.
"Delin, when we were young, Father would occasionally catch fish like this and bring them to us. And then he'd say: 'I like this single fish better than the finest cuisine they make in the kitchens!' Ahaha! At the time, I wondered what he meant, but now, gathered here as three, catching fish and eating them together, I understand Father's feelings."
Most of the stories she told were tales of the past. Things she had experienced up until now, especially things related to family...
"Father must certainly have been longing for his youthful days, too. Surely..."
"Mmph..."
But neither Delin nor Eva had any leisure to focus on those old tales.
Because the woman right in front of them, with no apparent intention of loosening their mouths, was simply and neatly deboning the fish and placing it directly into their mouths.
———————————————
After feeding them by mouth, it was time to sleep.
Or so it should have been, but none of the three could sleep.
"Kkup... heugup..."
"Delin, stay quiet. At this rate, Eva will wake up... haah..."
Like a wanderer searching for a place to rest,
Neva collapsed onto Delin as if toppling over, taking his warmth and life force entirely into her own body.
Thanks to the obscene and suggestive sounds the man and woman produced, Eva beside them also lay awake through the night with her eyes open,
but whether Neva didn't notice, or noticed and chose to ignore it, she simply pulled Delin into an even tighter embrace and held him.
From her body, washed clean in the river water, rose a scent both sweet and bitter. Pinned beneath her form, which was steeped as richly as dark chocolate, Delin became a man existing solely for her.
Soft, and tender,
yet well-trained, firm muscles rubbed against Delin's body.
The day slowly died down.
The moon also slowly took its rest,
and the three quietly passed the night...
The man's seed that breeds children was packed without a gap into Neva's deepest parts,
and in that swelling feeling of fullness, Neva whispered love,
and the two became three again, falling asleep together in one place.
Neva closed her eyes with Delin and Eva held firmly on either side of her.
Delin and Eva, breathing in Neva's body scent, waited for sleep that would not come...
...But Delin did not let go of hope.
Because even this would inevitably come to an end.
If he died, he would soon Load to his save point, and if that happened, other noonas would rescue him.
"..."
No.
He knew the truth, too.
That even if he went back to the past in this state, only a bitter future awaited him.
Neva would surely end up dead.
There was no reason to take a spouse along.
She would certainly fall behind alone and return to the queen's side. Of course, unable to return on her own two feet, she would be dragged there with her limbs torn off, and all manner of brutal things would be...
"..."
He didn't want to imagine her suffering.
But if she did not leave the group, she would surely be killed by the other noonas.
"Heuup..."
Delin agonized over how things had turned out this way and squeezed his eyes shut.
Had it all started from those days and nights spent tied up in Neva's house?
When she had saved him from Riko, she had definitely felt like a matchless savior,
but now...
"Hiic, kkup..."
Between the soft, sleeping breaths of Neva, the sound of Eva's sniffling drifted over.
Sensing the small girl's tears, Delin briefly opened his eyes,
then soon closed them again and turned away from her crying.
Silence is benevolent.
In the stillness that quietly seeps in, we at last find peace.
But Delin's night was full of mournful tears and the chirping of night birds.
In that place, only tear-soaked wails and stories remained,
and a melody without a single lyric flowed on, sending the moon far, far away...