The Weight of Shared Desire
Only Sylvia, full of resentment, and Owen, wearing a faintly sinister bulge below, remained in the room after the strange thrill had washed through and passed.
Owen was still aroused, so Sylvia’s body had been left in much the same state.
It felt as though a sticky, ticklish current had clung to the most sensitive parts of her body and refused to let go.
“That thing.”
Since Owen had fallen silent, Sylvia was the one who finally spoke first.
“Why don’t you go handle that and come back?”
She couldn’t even bring herself to look properly below his waist, only glancing vaguely at his chest as she spoke, and he let out a small laugh.
“How? Want to touch me like you did last time?”
Her eyes immediately narrowed to sharp little slits. He leaned back, thinking she’d start huffing at any moment.
“Ah, or do you not remember because you were drunk? Back then, you—”
“I remember. So you don’t need to say it.”
The voice ground out through clenched teeth, and the corner of his mouth lifted in clear amusement. Even now, he was so handsome that it was impossible not to have her attention dragged toward him.
After a moment, he spoke in a gentler tone, as if to soothe her.
“If I want to deal with it, I’d have to shake it out, and then you’d be panting here too. And if I go to the bathroom and take my clothes off and splash cold water on myself, it’ll be uncomfortable and take too long. No matter how I look at it, it’s all bad options, so just bear with it.”
Sylvia didn’t agree with a single word of it. She wanted nothing more than to escape this arousal even if she had to freeze to death, but separately from that, she couldn’t understand why he looked so calm while she was falling apart. He was the one who’d gotten himself hard, after all.
“How are you so fine?”
She sounded offended, and he tilted his head.
“I’m not fine.”
But just looking at his face, no one could have guessed that anything below it was standing at full attention.
Sylvia let go of the struggle over whether he was fine or not and shut her mouth. Talking about this would only poison the air between them.
Worst of all, it brought back the memory of the day she’d slept with him. If only she didn’t know what his real face looked like when he was aroused, she wouldn’t be burning up inside like this…
Sylvia swallowed hard. Pressing her thighs together as tightly as she could, she joined her hands and called to mind the pious words of the God.
“So what you’re saying is, when you’re aroused, I get aroused too.”
The God’s words worked. She managed to say it in a reasonably steady voice. Owen nodded in agreement, then added one more thing.
“And if you cry or get angry, or whatever else, then I do too.”
“What?”
She looked startled by the unexpected statement, and he furrowed his brow.
“Then why do you think I sat there like a madman, crying over a wooden doll?”
“A wooden doll? During training? That was two days ago. So you knew about this from then?”
He didn’t answer, but the silence was confirmation enough, and Sylvia rolled her eyes.
“Then why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I was going to. But you ran away.”
“You didn’t seriously— you knew, and you did that?”
Her voice had grown darker than ever.
The painful memory of this afternoon, when she had spent half a day gripping the bedpost and gasping for breath, flashed through her head.
“Don’t get worked up. It looks like it’s getting harder.”
As if he knew exactly what image was passing through her mind, he frowned and said it. The shamelessness of it sent blood rushing to Sylvia’s head so fast she felt as if she might faint.
“Who’s worked up? I’m angry right now, okay? You—why would you dump something like this on me all by yourself?”
Reclining so far back that his elbows touched the armrest, Owen dragged a hand through his hair roughly.
“Fine. Whatever, let’s stop talking about this.”
“Stop talking about it? What do you mean, stop talking about it? You knew everything like some pervert and still provoked me?”
“I did it to call you over. And you came running, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean by that—!”
At the sound of someone passing in the hallway, she hurriedly lowered her voice.
“You could’ve just contacted me! Like a normal person would.”
“What, and say, ‘I’m suffering terribly every time you laugh or cry, so please come here’? With the difference in our status, do you really think my letter would have reached you untouched and unread by anyone else?”
He was right, so she shut her mouth, but that didn’t stop the irritation sizzling in her chest.
After a moment, Owen, who had been watching her in silence, asked in a softened voice, “Was it that hard?”
Those words, spoken in the quiet room, struck somewhere deep in her heart. Was it because he’d suddenly sounded gentle, almost comforting? Or because of the thin layer of arousal still hidden beneath that voice?
Sylvia found herself wondering all at once.
When she had yielded beneath his arousal, had he heard the moans she had let slip too?
“...Yeah. Let’s stop talking about it.”
At her agreement, he only shrugged, as though he had expected this all along.
In the silence, Sylvia pieced together what she had learned.
So ever since we slept together, we’ve been sharing each other’s emotions and arousal.
If she had to sum up this bizarre situation in one sentence, that was it. The effect began after they had sex.
So-called Mana Exchange.
Her brow slowly furrowed.
Then she remembered something the palace physician had said when they met. Her mana was out of balance.
Sylvia stole a glance at Owen, who was still staring intently at her while leaving the lower half of himself completely unattended.
The moment their eyes met, he asked, “What came to mind?”
Reading her expression was easier than cracking candy with bare teeth. The look on her face suggested something had occurred to her, and though it didn’t seem like good news, he was still glad to have found even the tail end of an answer.
It couldn’t be compared to Sylvia, who was so frequently and sexually heated that she seemed on the verge of bursting into flames, but his own daily life had become no less of a disaster after that day.
Laughing without meaning to, feeling anger churn inside him—it was as though he’d been possessed.
And masturbating had been weirdly humiliating too.
It was probably because Sylvia’s shame at seeing her own aroused state had been conveyed to him intact, but in any case, shaking his lower body to get relief while caught in that feeling had been a fairly terrible experience.
And most of all…
Owen’s eyes drifted to Sylvia’s eyes. Her face and the skin around her eyes were stiff with thought, but showed no trace of gloom, and yet he kept studying that clear, untroubled face for a long time.
Was she crying like that because of Heston, after all?
The emotion he had felt when she had broken down in front of so many knights had been less shock than a deep, aching sorrow.
There had been a wash of grief, regret, loneliness, and sadness so intense it all seemed to surge together. Some of it had been so vivid it had made him feel sick enough to retch.
His own life couldn’t exactly be called easy, but he had never felt anything like that before.
Does she live carrying all that inside that small body?
Owen found himself thinking back, unbidden, to the night of Heston’s engagement ceremony.
Back then, at Heston’s request, he had been looking for Sylvia. He had been dragged to the engagement ceremony in name, but he hated places crowded with nobles, so searching for a person had seemed better and he’d agreed readily enough. Yet when he finally caught sight of that pink head suddenly popping up from the shrubs in the garden, he’d thought, Huh. Maybe I should just pretend I didn’t see her.
But in the end, he had been kind enough to squat down behind her and pat her back.
Sylvia. What are you doing here? Heston’s looking for you.
Since Sylvia was hopelessly devoted to Heston, Owen had assumed she would snap to attention and lift her head right away.
But Sylvia had only pricked up her ears, then buried her face back down again. The bare arms exposed by her short-sleeved dress were trembling.
I’m not going.
Why not?
I don’t want to see his face.
As if proving her resolve, Sylvia burrowed deeper into the bushes. Even with sharp branches scratching at her delicate cheeks and body, she remained unbelievably stubborn. Owen had nodded, more or less understanding.
If he had been her, he wouldn’t have wanted to see that bastard’s face either. After all that long-standing love, the answer was an engagement to another woman.
You really won’t go? He’s looking all over for you.
I won’t.
You’ll get caught if you stay here.
She should have gone home instead; crouching out in the garden like this was no different from begging to be found.
Muttering to himself, Owen looked around. If she stayed here, some stray drunk might stumble into her, so he decided he’d better bring her inside somehow.
Sylvia. Let’s go.
He used his hand to shield her from branches that might tear at her clothes or thin skin and tugged her gently. It was when he’d finally dug out half of that pink mass through sheer persistence that he realized something else.
Owen suddenly noticed Sylvia’s pale sky-blue eyes fixed on him.
Ignoring that gaze, he was in the middle of pulling her thin arm free when she suddenly spoke.
Summers.
What?
Can’t you hide me?
...
Maybe it was the cold night air, but she was rarely so childishly needy. Owen looked at the palm of his hand resting against her cheek, and at the pale strands of her hair scattered wildly among the bushes.
So this isn’t childishness.
But whatever it was, that was how it had felt to him then.
Want to go with me?
So he asked one last time, almost like a test. He even tilted his head slightly, as if he were trying to tempt her, and gazed at her through half-lowered eyes.
It must have worked even on the drunk Sylvia, because she carefully placed a hand on Owen’s smooth face.
Owen blinked slowly, watching her fingers brush past the corner of his eye, the bridge of his nose, and his cheek.
But that didn’t mean he thought she truly understood the delicate atmosphere moving between them. She was too drunk, and she had known only one person in her entire life.
That was why, when she closed her eyes and clumsily kissed him first, Owen could only blink stupidly and part his lips.
Smack.
He should have looked properly at her face then.
He clicked his tongue at the pointless regret and shook himself out of the memory.
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