Deception Woven into Hypocritical Pity
Hypocritical pity forged from deception.
“......What?”
At my bombshell declaration, Karin’s fierce resistance—snarling like a beast ready to tear me apart—halted in an instant, as if it had all been a lie.
“What... what nonsense is this. You’re the victim? You filthy piece of trash, who the hell are you trying to fool now...!”
Karin ground her teeth in denial, yet her trembling crimson eyes already betrayed uncontrollable turmoil. Leaning against the firmly shut door, I let out a bitter, resigned smile.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it. That the infamous scoundrel Edric Blake was nothing more than a puppet under his father’s complete control.”
“Yeah! Don’t lie! You think I don’t know all the disgusting things you’ve done?!”
“Ha! They were certainly disgusting. But were they truly my own will?”
Meeting Karin’s gaze, I began turning the gears of the ‘perfect lie’ I had assembled in my mind.
“I’ll say it first. While it was indeed I who commissioned that hypnotist to take you and your mother, the one who planned from the beginning to make you both his complete possessions was my father... Before this terrorist incident, that man intended to kill me by staging an accident and take you for himself.”
I pulled out the note I had once extracted from Carna and waved it.
“And what about me laying hands on the maids in the mansion? All of that was him using the President behind the scenes to plant suggestions in the maids he had touched, pinning his own sins on his son—me.”
“......!!”
Karin’s breath caught at the shocking information spilling from my lips.
“Then... how do you know that? No, if you were under hypnosis, how could you even be aware of it!”
“The President’s hypnosis may look perfect, but it wasn’t flawless. Yes, the one who revealed these truths to me... was my mother.”
“Carna... Aunt?”
I nodded, layering the most sorrowful performance across my face, and handed Karin the documents I had received from Carna. As she sat on the bed and read through the fragmented papers under my permission, her crimson eyes began to waver. Even as she inwardly doubted the documents I had given, Karin—who could fully feel the raw emotions contained within Carna’s writing—listened to my words amid uncontrollable confusion.
“...Do you remember the day not long ago when your mother, Commander Camilla, beat me half to death?”
Karin’s shoulders flinched. She would remember it clearly—the day this body, which had lived as a scoundrel, was beaten bloody by my knight-commander aunt and left hovering between life and death.
“The moment she saw her son reduced to that bloodied state... my mother Carna, who had lived as a doll for twenty years, miraculously regained her consciousness.”
“That... is that true...?”
“...In that fleeting moment of awareness, Mother secretly wrote down the secret dealings and vile truths she had overheard between Father and the President, and passed them to me. Then she returned... to being a perfect doll. To deceive Father and save her son.”
At my words, Karin’s crimson eyes shook violently. Even Carna, who had lived as a flawless doll for over twenty years, had broken the hypnosis through love for her child. This mixture of truth and falsehood—that love alone could overcome hypnosis—was more than enough to plant a fatal, sweet illusion in Karin, who was now drowning in the depths of despair.
“Thanks to those writings, I too was able to become aware of and break the suggestions Father had planted in me since childhood.”
Karin chewed her lips with a confused expression. In her clever mind, the puzzle pieces of the past were being reassembled anew around the false information I had fed her.
“There’s much more to say, but there’s something we need to address first. It’s about the incidents where I laid hands on the maids who came to work at the count’s estate... Father, claiming to stand in for my mother who had become an imbecile, provided me with hypnotized maids as early sex education material. I grew up believing they were all whores paid by Father to serve me.”
“You thought that was normal? Does that sound like something a sane person would say?!”
Karin cried out in horror and disgust. I gave her a bitter smile and confessed.
“Do you really think something like normal ‘common sense’ could exist for someone raised in such a grotesque environment, practically brainwashed from childhood?”
When I shouted, unable to contain my momentary resentment, Karin—who had only shown hostility—flinched.
“I didn’t even know hypnosis existed... I was nothing more than that man’s long-term pawn. While Father made me pick up and ‘eat’ the maids he had used and discarded to satisfy his own vile desires, he spread rumors outside that his son was a beast, pinning all the blame on me.”
Swallowing the words ‘all the sins Father committed,’ I continued while staring directly into Karin’s eyes.
“So this time, before Father could violate Lady Elizabeth—who came to care for Mother—and pin the blame on me again, I violated her first to spite him... As a result, Father, whose possessiveness over his belongings was abnormally strong, used you to create a pretext to punish his son—me.”
“What...?”
Karin’s pupils quaked as if in an earthquake. Her lips trembled.
“Then... my accusation and Mother’s punishment were all... the Count’s scheme to strike at his son? Don’t make me laugh! Now you’re blaming everything on the Count, you pathetic scoundrel!”
Karin shouted, tears welling in her eyes. But I didn’t deny it; instead, I calmly nodded.
“That’s right. I am a pathetic scoundrel.”
Looking down at her with the eyes of the most forlorn and broken beast in the world, I drove the wedge deeper.
“But what could I do? A man raised like trash his entire life under Father’s suggestions... the only rebellion possible within those chains was this pathetic, vulgar act of ruining Father’s favorite toy first.”
“......!”
Karin’s lips pressed tightly together. The meager sense of justice and anger she had been pouring toward me crumbled helplessly before the perfect ‘victim’s shield’ I had presented.
“Then... why did you reduce us to this miserable state? Ha, it must be because you hate us. It was my mother who turned you into a cripple, and the cause, one way or another, was my accusation!”
“Hate? Ha, you’ve got it all wrong.”
I let out a dry laugh and slowly sat down on the sofa in the room where I could face Karin directly.
“Ever since childhood, I’ve been tormented by guilt that Mother became an imbecile because she gave birth to me. So I sought the affection I never received from her in older maids, and until puberty, even from my aunt, Commander Camilla. Resentment toward my aunt for beating me bloody while trying to discipline me? There was none. Rather, even that rough violence was the only touch of affection I had.”
At my grotesque confession, Karin’s mouth fell slightly open.
“But... honestly, it was a bit annoying when my distant cousin, weaker than me, would arbitrarily judge situations with that flimsy sense of justice and nag.”
At my provocation, Karin flared up and shouted.
“....Damn bastard. So stop changing the subject and tell me why you did this to us!”
I slowly rose from where I had been leaning on the sofa and met Karin’s gaze.
“At first, when Father presented that horrific commission, saying to take possession of you and your mother who had tarnished the family’s honor, he revealed to me the truth about Mother—who was known as an imbecile—and the existence of a living doll. At that time... to be honest, I was still not completely free from Father’s suggestions, and I was tempted by that sweet offer.”
“......”
“A ‘mother-like existence’ who could love me sincerely, unlike my imbecile mother. And you, with a personality like hell but looks that were outstanding—I was drawn by that shallow scoundrel’s instinct to make you completely mine.”
Karin ground her teeth in disgust, but I continued without concern.
“But I harbored a sliver of doubt about whether hypnosis even existed. So, just in case, I secretly inserted a ‘poison pill clause’ into the contract that others wouldn’t notice.”
“Poison pill clause?”
“Yes. And the very next day, the President who had broken the contract came to me personally and bowed his head. He offered to pay ten times the commission fee he had received for Camilla as a massive penalty, and proposed new contract terms for you and your mother.”
Karin’s eyes shook greatly. To her, I revealed a truth known only to a select few.
“Karin. You and your mother are not blood-related, are you?”
“......!!”
Karin’s breath caught. My short statement was a clear declaration that I already knew the truth—that Camilla, the empire’s knight commander, was a ‘pure virgin’ who had never taken a man in her life.
Turning to Karin, who had turned pale and speechless, I gave her a cold yet mad smile.
“The moment I learned that fact... I felt an unbearable sense of humiliation. The noble aunt who had turned me into a cripple but given me the only affection I knew had lost her purity to those disgusting men because of a mere piece of paper—I was driven mad with rage. But at the same time... an ugly desire to make the now-defiled Aunt Camilla mine welled up as well.”
“Y-you trash bastard...!”
“Yes, I’m trash. But afterward, while receiving written reports from the President about the process of you being brainwashed, I doubted and agonized countless times whether this was the right thing... No. More precisely, while Mother read those reports to me, worrying about me and revealing Father’s vile truths, only to become an imbecile again at Father’s command as if nothing had happened—the more I witnessed that with my own eyes, the more I realized late that this was wrong.”
When I said that was the moment I was liberated from the suggestions Father and the hypnotist had planted, Karin tightly closed her eyes. As if trying to deny the reality I was describing.
“Then, as usual, when I saw Father’s disgusting act of pinning the blame on me and trying to violate the new maid who had come in place of Lady Elizabeth... I judged that this was not right and tried to cancel the commission entirely.”
I clenched my fists and lowered my voice as if in frustration.
“But unfortunately, that very day, the terrorist incident broke out at the banquet hall. In the chaos of being bedridden with a broken body, when I learned Father was in critical condition, I was certain I could save Mother, who was in doll form nursing me.”
When I said that I had tried to flee this vile family with Mother despite my immobile body, Karin—who had opened her closed eyes—looked at me with trembling pupils.
“But, as you know, I couldn’t move due to the crimes of my scoundrel days, and ironically, I had to helplessly watch Mother—now a vegetable like Father—devotedly nursing both her son who loved her and her husband to whom she owed obedience as a wife.”
As if reliving the anger of that moment, I tensed my entire body.
“I made a vow then. Now that that man has become a vegetable, in this situation, I would quickly recover my body and swallow this family whole! And as if answering my prayer, God sent the Saintess, and when my body miraculously recovered! I believed I could seize the family in Father’s place and punish the nauseating mastermind who had truly been rotting our family and me and Mother!”
Before Karin, I acted as a son filled with ambition and longing to seize the family, along with anger and hatred toward Father. But soon I let out a long sigh filled with deep despair.
“Yes... right up until I realized the Saintess’s miracle was equal to everyone...”
As if the long-awaited opportunity for revenge had shattered before my eyes, I approached with hollow steps and collapsed onto the seat beside Karin.
“In the end, when I came to my senses... you and your mother had already been completed as perfect dolls in the hands of that demonic President.”
It was a perfect deception. A lie that thoroughly exploited Karin’s psychology of trying to grasp at any lifeline after seeing through the President’s shallow trick. With trembling eyes, Karin stared at me sitting beside her, falling into confirmation bias that my words must be true.
“So at this banquet, after confirming that you and your mother had become dolls because of my mistake, I made the only choice I could. The already irreparably broken Aunt Camilla, I would take in as my ‘pure blood relative.’”
I reached out and lightly grasped Karin’s stiffened shoulder.
“And you, who share no blood relation with me at all... I chose as a ‘pure comrade’ to drive a dagger together into the heart of this rotten count’s family and the twisted noble faction.”
Karin’s crimson eyes shook violently. This cunning gaslighting of mine planted in her the fatal illusion that ‘I recognized you not as a woman or a toy, but as a partner to share a great cause with.’
“Comrade... you say?”
Karin’s voice trembled finely. In her eyes, which had only seen me as a disgusting beast, a strange new light appeared for the first time—seeing me as a ‘wounded accomplice.’ Not a vile master trying to violate her, but a pitiful victim who had suffered under long suggestions and extended a hand of salvation to her. That perfect misunderstanding began to take root in Karin’s mind.
“Yes. But,” I released her shoulder with a deliberately serious expression and stepped back coldly. “To perfectly deceive Father and sever their leash, we must share the truth between just the two of us in this sealed room and find a way to resist the power of hypnosis they possess. But outside, we must pretend to be ‘master and trained doll.’ Yet... can you endure that?”
“...What do you mean?!”
“No matter how excellent you think your will is, the reason your ego remains intact now is not because of your will. It’s merely the result of the commission I gave the President during my scoundrel days—when the hypnosis wasn’t fully broken—ordering him to leave part of your ego out of mere curiosity and shallow revenge.”
At those words, fierce anger flared again in Karin’s eyes. As the horrific and vivid memories of hell she had endured in this sealed room over the past week flashed through her mind, she cried out as if vomiting blood from injustice and shame.
“Don’t make me laugh! Everything you’re saying now is nonsense! Even in that living hell of hypnosis, the reason I didn’t lose my ego wasn’t because of your damn order! It was because I endured without yielding, biting my own tongue, with my strong mental fortitude and a knight’s will!”
“Hmph, then let’s say it was because of that. But what about your body? That body, thoroughly remodeled by the President over the past week, will react to Father’s or the President’s suggestions at the critical moment and succumb to the pleasure engraved in it. At that moment, my entire plan will come to nothing.”
At that cruel fact-bomb, Karin’s lips moved but she could offer no rebuttal. Her gaze turned miserably toward her lower body. Simply by being alone with me in this sealed room, her brain was already going into heat at the thought of the President’s training. Feeling the sticky fluid flowing down her thighs and soaking her dress, Karin let out a deep sigh with a devastated heart.
“Even if... the hypnosis on my body tries to bind me...”
“Hmph. Impossible. It’s domination that even the noble former knight commander Aunt Camilla couldn’t resist.”
At my provocation, Karin—who was now completely caught in my pace—shot back with fire in her eyes.
“Don’t insult me! My mind is perfectly fine! Hypnosis that’s nothing but a shell, like Aunt Carna... No! With a knight’s mental strength, I can overcome it anytime!”
“Really? Fine. If you’re so confident... let’s make a bet to prove whether that meager mental strength of yours can overcome the President’s vicious hypnosis.”
Declaring that I would check whether her mind could overcome her body’s domination and qualify as a true comrade, I sat on the sofa and leisurely crossed my legs.
“From now on, I’ll activate the ‘hypnosis switch’ the President planted and leave you alone. If you can endure for three minutes—only three minutes—without moaning or reaching climax, I’ll trust you completely and share the plan to strike Father.”
“...Fine. I’ll endure it, damn it. What if I can’t?”
“If you fail to endure and collapse like a beast... I’ll use you not as a comrade, but merely as a tool for revenge against Father and seizing the family.”
Swallowing the words ‘to bear an heir,’ I declared it, and Karin nodded with a resolute face, biting her lips until they bled. Then she stood up, her eyes showing a firm will to endure any torture with a knight’s pride. I gave her a mocking smile and whispered in a low voice the hypnosis keyword for manipulating Karin’s body that I had heard from the President.
“──From the bottom of the abyss, wag your tail for your master.”
At that moment.
“......Eut, ah, aaaaang!! Haaang!!”
Karin’s firm resolve was mercilessly shattered without even a second of resistance. Though her mind had clearly tried to endure, her body—developed to the extreme as a bitch by the President over the past week—reacted without the slightest error to her master’s voice.
“Haa, aah! Ah, no! My body, my body... Hik, hiiik!!”
Karin stood with her legs twisted together, trembling like someone struck by lightning. From her mouth, beastly aroused moans poured out without pause, and soon a tremendous amount of fluid gushed down her thighs. The dress that had seemed like an abyss instantly turned pitch-black, soaked with her own filthy fluids. Collapsed on the floor in an instant, unable to control her own body and twitching, tears of terrible despair and shame dripped from Karin’s eyes. Looking down mercilessly at her and the puddle soaking the floor, I let out a chuckle.
“The result has proven it. Karin... From now on, as a tool, you will...”
“Heuk, euheuk......”
“Haa... Tsk, so in the end, I really am my father’s son.”
After sitting the pitifully collapsed and crying Karin upright, I pulled her into my embrace with hypocritical pity.