The Grotesque Sanctuary
“Karin… Are you seriously trying to seduce me into doing this right here, right now?”
I feigned surprise as the knightess, sprawled across the mattress, pulled me toward her. Karin stole a quick kiss from my lips, then glared at me with flushed cheeks.
“Hmph! Did you really think I’d just let myself be led along by your schemes at the villa? This is… this is nothing more than a process to overcome hypnosis through my own will!”
Karin pressed her hand against my firm chest, breathing roughly. “I’ve regained some freedom by resisting that president’s hypnosis all this time, but in the end, it was just me dancing inside his damned design.”
Technically, it was my design she was dancing in, but her crimson eyes already burned with the mad conviction of the tragic romance she had spun for herself.
“So I’m going to do it in a way that bastard never planned… Not some doll offering her virginity at her master’s command, but me giving mine to you of my own free will. That’s how I’ll solidify my autonomy! Only then can I truly break free from the hypnosis that binds me!”
It was insane sophistry, yet her logic did not stop.
“Besides, you said the first time hurts…! That pain will become the antidote that severs the chains of hypnosis. Even if my body screams, my soul will use that agony as a beacon and flee only to you!”
Listening blankly to her bold self-justification, I smiled bitterly inside. She’s not wrong.
After all, the novel I had possessed was a hypnosis romance fantasy. In the original story, the heroines who became the protagonist’s main love interests resisted at first, only to fall in much the same way Karin was now—rationalizing their surrender not as hypnosis, but as “love.”
In the end, the original heroines weren’t broken by forced training, but by the vicious self-justification called love.
So the knightess clinging to me now, calling pain an antidote, was proving her own qualification to be my heroine rather than a doll.
“…Karin. You’re determined to become my heroine after all.”
I smiled softly and pulled her slender waist into a tight embrace.
“Fine. Since your desperate resolve is admirable, I’ll love you from now on as my one and only heroine. I’ll fill the deepest parts of your body with the poison of my pleasure, melting even the hypnosis that once bound you, and make you my perfect wife.”
“Hey! Call it an antidote, at least! That… that sounds like I’m just falling in love with you…”
Karin shouted like an embarrassed, angry beast, but soon nodded.
“Yeah! If this fate is unavoidable, then instead of some romantic trip for love… let’s go to that villa to make a baby! We’ll tell that disgusting count we’re newlyweds now and that we’re going to make a child in a place his voyeurism can’t reach!”
Already drunk on the tragic romance she had completed herself, she clung to me even more passionately. I smiled at her bold confession, but did not accept her right away. Instead, I turned my gaze toward the glass wall that showed the next room, looking troubled.
“…But Karin, as happy as I am about your fiery resolve, your mother and mine are watching right now. No matter what, doing this in front of our mothers feels wrong, doesn’t it? You’re a proud knight of the Empire.”
When I deliberately prodded at her remaining moral awareness, Karin’s eyes wavered for a moment. No matter how much her brain had melted into romance, offering her virginity in front of her own mother and future mother-in-law was something her reason could not easily accept.
I drove the point home.
“Besides, you said it yourself—the count might be watching too. We were going to the villa to avoid his voyeurism throughout the mansion, but doing it here would just give that old man a good show.”
Karin’s shoulders flinched. But the tremor was not from fear—it was the final runaway of reason pushed to its limit.
Karin soon looked straight up at me with burning red eyes and shouted.
“Fine, I don’t care! It doesn’t matter! That nauseating count is probably too busy with that commoner maid to even look this way anyway!”
Karin shook her head sharply and glared at the glass wall that reflected only our images like a mirror. Reminded that the mothers were beyond it, her sophistry finally exploded into fanatical conviction.
“And so what if Mother and Mother-in-law are right there! Both of them are trapped in the doll’s curse, so they won’t feel shame or disgust at us mixing our bodies!”
Wow… she’s completely lost it.
I could not hide my inner shock. To think that knightly pride and moral principles could shatter so grotesquely once self-justification reached its peak. Karin’s “romance-fantasy brain,” completely fixated on Edric as her “gentle savior,” was now creating terrifying logic that could even destroy moral shame.
“If anything, this is the very climax of the tragedy that bound us! Right now, inside this hellish sealed room created by that demonic old man… we are pledging our true love beside our mothers who have become dolls, receiving their silent blessing!”
Completely intoxicated by her own sophistry, Karin cried out with tears welling in her eyes. Oh, she had gone thoroughly, spectacularly mad. Because the mothers, being dolls, could not feel shame, she overlaid our union with the label of a “blessing” they would cheer for. This was the most perfect and depraved corruption—far beyond the gaslighting I had planted—completed by Karin herself.
“Come, Edric… take my first time. At the climax of this tragic story, hold me now and complete me as your perfect heroine! And let us reach our ending at that villa.”
At last, Karin was drenched in the liberating feeling of having cast off all shame and guilt. She stole another greedy kiss from my lips, then looked up at me with wet eyes and pleaded. She looked exactly like prey that had climbed onto the cutting board of its own accord, flipped its belly, and handed over the knife while begging to be cooked.
But in this moment, I did not see her as prey to be turned into a heroine or doll to fill my story. For her alone—who had offered both body and heart to me—I recognized her purely as a woman, with nothing but my own perspective and will, as the highest form of devotion.
“Karin, you really won’t regret this?”
I exhaled a trembling breath and gently cupped her cheeks.
“Yes… Because you’re the only antidote that can wash away my poison. Edric, please… save me.”
At my gentle question, Karin wiped the dew from her eyes and gave a bashful smile. It was the face of a pitiful woman in love, having shed the hard shell of the Empire’s greatest sword’s daughter.
We kissed without either of us leading. It was fundamentally different from the coercive, shameful training kisses that had taken place in this grotesque sealed room until now. I held her trembling lower lip as carefully and gently as if handling the most fragile glasswork in the world.
“Hnn… mmh…”
The moment my lips touched hers, a sweet, hot breath rushed in between them. I did not rush. When I lightly tickled the tightly closed seam of her lips with the tip of my tongue, Karin opened her mouth as if she had been waiting and carefully welcomed my tongue. Our saliva mingled, soft tongues entwined, producing wet, sweet friction sounds. Though clumsy, she wrapped both arms around my neck and clung to me desperately, trying to match me in every way. I gently held the back of her neck with my large, firm hand and tilted the angle of our kiss to explore her more deeply.
“Haa… Edric, hng, ah…”
When our lips parted slightly, a silver thread of saliva stretched and broke. Breathing heavily, Karin pressed her forehead against my chest. I whispered into her ear in the lowest, gentlest voice in the world.
“Breathe, Karin. Slowly.”
“Ah, haa… This is strange. We only kissed, but… my heart is pounding like it’s going to burst, Edric. My head feels like it’s melting white…”
“Me too. Your lips are so sweet… They feel so delicate, like sugar sculpture, that I’m afraid I’ll break you if I hold you too tightly. I think I’m really going to lose my mind.”
At my sweet words, Karin’s cheeks flushed like rubies. I slowly climbed over her body as she lay fully on her back against the mattress. My gaze traced affectionately from her forehead, down her straight nose, her swollen red lips, and along her long, elegant neckline. To see the naked body of the young knightess who had always hidden herself inside cold armor and crisp uniforms, I gently undressed her. The body that had always been upright and cool now trembled helplessly, melted only before me, like a gentle lamb.
I lowered my head and buried my nose in the nape of her neck. Her characteristic fresh scent mixed with a faint trace of sweat and the thick aroma of an aroused female, stimulating my brain.
“Ah, hng… Edric, there, it tickles…”
When I planted small kisses along the delicate line from her nape to her collarbone, Karin twisted her body while clutching my broad shoulders. I caressed the faint muscles beneath her collarbone—developed from harsh sword training—and the small and large scars faintly left upon them with a tender touch.
“These scars…”
“Ah… Those are from when I went to subjugate magical beasts and got clawed by a demon. Over there is from an arrow that grazed me during a rebel suppression… Do they look ugly…? I thought it was fortunate they were covered by my uniform, but in front of you… they’re too rough for a woman’s body. I’m… a little embarrassed.”
Even though my hands had touched her body many times before, the wounds she had never paid attention to now made Karin avert her gaze and shrink her shoulders in unfamiliar feminine shame. I pressed my lips firmly and hotly onto her scars.
Chu, chu.
“Ah…!”
“No, they’re not ugly at all. If anything, my chest hurts like it’s being torn apart. You have such a slender, beautiful body… yet you’ve been carrying such a heavy burden alone all this time, enduring these wounds.”
“…That’s unfair. If you say such gentle things, I really have nowhere left to run.”
I carefully wiped away the small tears that began to roll down her cheeks with my thumb and met her eyes with the most affectionate, devoted lover’s gaze. While kneading her soft, full breasts that filled my palms, I carefully bit and licked her red lips again. Instead of violent pleasure, a tender stimulation rose secretly within the gentle comfort, making Karin’s waist twitch and jump.
“Ah, aah! Haa… Th-this feels strange, Edric. Every time you touch me, it’s like a tingling current flowing from deep inside my body…”
“You’ve become sensitive, Karin. Because your soul is yearning for me so desperately.”
Stopping the kiss, I lowered my head and took one of her breasts deeply into my mouth. Rolling the peak with my tongue, lightly biting with my teeth before sucking hard, a suppressed moan burst sweetly from Karin’s lips.
“Haang! Hng, ah, hngh… No, Edric. If you… haa! If you suck so hard… I’ll make weird sounds without meaning to, hngh!”
“You don’t have to hold back in front of me. Every sound that comes from your body, every breath you exhale, even the tears of pleasure you shed—I’ll drink them all. You just need to entrust everything to me and feel.”
My lips passed her breasts and traveled down her flat, toned abdomen, lower and lower. When I licked around her navel with my tongue, her entire body trembled, soaked in pleasure. Her skin had already flushed perfectly from my caresses, dyed a soft pink like cherry blossom petals.
Finally, my gaze reached the most secret place between her thighs. The noble valley that had been tightly hidden within the knight’s strength was now drenched with her own love juices, transparent fluid trickling stickily down her inner thighs. When I stared at it, Karin reflexively tried to close her thighs in unbearable shame, attempting to cover her most private place.
“Hngh… D-don’t look. It’s so wet… It’s dirty. Showing this kind of sight to a man is… embarrassing.”
“Don’t hide it, Karin. Look at me.”
I grabbed her thighs as she tried to close them and spread them wide open with gentle yet unyielding strength.
“Dirty? It’s beautiful. This is the most honest and lovely proof that you desire me so desperately.”
“Ah, haa… Edric…”
Then I deliberately turned my head and looked at the transparent glass wall blocking one side of the room. Beyond that glass, which reflected us like a mirror, were her mother Camilla and my mother Carna, silently watching us. I brought my lips to Karin’s ear and spoke in a low voice, as if whispering our most secret secret.
“Look. The mothers beyond the glass wall must be watching in a daze at how dazzlingly beautiful you are right now. Even they, as women rather than dolls, must be feeling jealous inside. Because I’m monopolizing such a pretty, lovely daughter completely as my woman.”
At that secret, depraved whisper, Karin’s pupils shook greatly before beginning to burn with a strange heat. Even this shameful voyeuristic situation, which would have driven an ordinary woman mad, was nothing more than a perfect audience and dramatic stage device proving their great love to Karin, whose brain had already been overwritten with “romantic union with the gentle male lead.” Rather, the strange pleasure from her beloved man’s possessiveness and the mothers’ gazes burned away even Karin’s remaining shame.
“Yes… Ah, you’re right. I hope both of them watch closely.”
Instead of covering her face with both arms in shame, Karin spread her arms wide and pulled my neck tightly toward her. Her waist arched, pushing her most wet and secret place even more explicitly toward me.
“I want… the gentle man Mother approved of to show me how overwhelmingly loved I am right now. Love me so much that Mother will be unbearably jealous, Edric… Love me.”
Perfect devotion. Complete corruption. I sent both shock and admiration inwardly as I pressed a deep kiss against the tender skin of her inner thigh. Then I carefully slid my finger between her red valley drenched in love juices.
Schlick—
When I circled her narrow entrance with one finger and gently massaged the opening, Karin buried her face in my neck and panted out a moan that sounded like she was drowning. Just like the heroines in the third-rate romance novels she had devoured over the past few days, she was now lost in a trance, feeling as though she were the true protagonist receiving the most devoted and romantic love in the world. With only a few sweet pillow talks and tender caresses, her body had become perfectly aroused to the point of madness if she did not receive penetration immediately.
“Haang! Ah, ah… Hng! H-hot…!”
“Beautiful, Karin. You’re going to become my perfect wife.”
I brushed back her sweat-dampened bangs as she trembled in pleasure and finally aligned my heavy, hot presence before her most noble sanctuary.
“It’s going to hurt a little, Karin.”
“It’s fine… If it’s the pain of becoming yours, I’ll gladly accept it. So please… detoxify the curse of hypnosis carved into my body with your burning love.”
Soothing her trembling body, I slowly pushed my presence inside her. As the wall of virginity that had been firmly blocking the way crumbled, a single large tear fell from Karin’s eyes. Bright red blood flowers bloomed vividly on the sheets, and Karin’s body arched like a bow as she faced the pain.