A Date with Death
"I... I..."
Just as I tried to put distance between myself and that bewitching ring of the girl's laughter, a sweet scent came worming up into the tip of my nose. At once my head went softly numb, and a strange, illicit sensation came pooling down into my groin. My heart hammered — like a boy catching his first glimpse of a woman's bare body on a screen, I had no idea what to do with this unfamiliar excitement or the want that welled up along with it.
"What on earth did you do with that doll, I wonder...? Did the two of you play some naughty game only grown-ups are allowed to play? Kikik, kikik... But oppa... why... is it all hard and swollen down there?"
At the girl's observation, a crack split open through my hazy consciousness, and I could feel how much I'd grown down there without ever having noticed.
Swish.
When the girl in front of me pressed firmly against my chest with her palm, my body — drained of strength to a shocking degree — sagged back until it rested against the bench behind me.
Before I could make a move, she flashed a seductive smile, swung a leg astride my seated thighs, wrapped her hands softly around my neck like a caress, and met my eyes dead-on.
Skin like flawless white jade, silver hair swaying in the moonlight. Her ruby eyes, as if she wore colored contacts, hung half-lidded and sly, as if measuring something; beneath them, the corners of her mouth — curled the whole while in a little devil's smirk — held the shape of a brazen, shameless grin.
Inside that angelic, unspoiled image coexisted the face of a succubus who looked ready to wring a man dry, and the two together wove a strangely unsettling air.
"Don't tell me... you got worked up because I pressed my nose against your... thing and took a sniff? Kikik, kikik... Pervert. Or... could it be that you're a lolicon, oppa?"
The girl's teasing voice — she looked like a middle schooler on a generous day, an elementary schooler otherwise — rolled out round and clear, like jade beads.
"Th-that's, not, true, ugh...!"
I tried desperately to deny it, but the girl pressed her body in closer, and a pleasant yet indecent fragrance came pulsing through the air, thick and heavy. It wasn't perfume; it was the pure scent of a human being — that particular scent only an untouched girl gives off — and I fought, ceaselessly, not to lose my mind to it. When she dipped her head to hold my gaze squarely, her long hair spilled forward and swayed, tickling maddeningly across my skin.
"Really~? Hmm... I don't believe you~? Then look at this."
Srrk.
The girl gathered the front hem of her snow-white dress in both hands and lifted, and — as if putting it on display — what had been hidden underneath came into view. Astonishingly, there was no cloth beneath where there surely should have been; instead there was only the pure part of a woman — no, of a girl — kept exactly in the shape she'd been born with.
Beneath her flat, still-undeveloped stomach lay a hairless, straight-lined crease that seemed, going by appearances, not yet to have met puberty at all. That unspoiled, innocent form, in the shape of two pitifully modest little hills, cutely insisted on the womanhood it claimed. And then, belatedly, I realized her upper half was bare as well — two more hills, small but softly swelling, peeked out near her chest, borrowing their shape from the folds of the gathered dress.
Seeing me hollow-eyed and dumbstruck, the girl laughed even louder, then cupped my cheeks in her soft hands, turned my gaze down toward her exposed lower half, and whispered, sticky-sweet.
"How is it... oppa? In here, you see... there's something pure that no man has ever trespassed upon — just as it was the day I was born. So wouldn't you like to make it yours? This place that could still be dirtied by someone's hands someday — this unopened flower bud, this place still too unripe to hold a man's thing... Don't you want to see a being shaped like a little girl, all defiled, wailing that it hurts, screaming and sobbing as she clings to you? Aah... honestly, oppa."
Hoooh...
At my ear, the girl let out a single low, hot breath, then pressed her lips close and murmured.
"You're about to come already, just from imagining it? How pitiful... men really are such pitiful creatures... like this."
Flick.
When the girl playfully snapped her index finger against the thing that had swollen for reasons beyond me, it flinched in pure reflex. At some point, fluid born of excitement had leaked out and was soaking a dark stain into my pants.
"Ready to go crazy the moment a young woman so much as touches it — ready to sing hallelujah from one little stroke. Such stupid, pitiful... and yet adorable little creatures. Kikik, kikik..."
My mind was mush. The girl's words reached me as if from far away — distant and yet impossibly clear — and I found I couldn't refuse them.
"So, oppa. Who is it? That dangerous doll, the one who bent you all out of shape like this."
Her seductive fingers grazed the tip of my chin, and my filterless mind, without a flicker of doubt, readied itself to answer her question obediently —
"Ughhh... cough, cough!!"
At the sound of someone coughing in repeated, wracking agony, my eyes rolled aside on reflex. And there was Arin — hemmed in by the maids, tentacles buried in her body, dangling limply in midair as though nailed to a cross. My eyes widened slowly at the sight, and my drifting consciousness clawed its way back into place.
"Ah..."
I started up off the bench in shock, and the girl pressed down on my chest once more, forcing me back into my seat. Under a pressure that could never have belonged to a child, my body couldn't move so much as an inch. For the first time, the girl put her laughter away.
"You were almost all the way over. What a waste."
Slurp.
Watching her lick the sticky fluid from her lips, I had the sudden sense that the girl was not a child but an adult. Why on earth had I gone on mistaking her for a girl all this time, judging by nothing but her looks?
"Honestly, I could force you to spit out everything I want to know. But I don't want to do it that way. Know why?"
Glaring back at her with a frozen stare was all that my listless body could manage — no answer.
"Yes, that look. Those eyes. You resemble my real brother, oppa. Not your face, and not your personality either... how should I put it... you're alike somewhere at the root, maybe? Have you ever heard the name Sahyeon?"
I rifled through my memory for a celebrity or anyone I knew by that name. Nothing came.
"Kikik, kikik... Don't look so disappointed — I figured you wouldn't know it. I asked for no particular reason. Anyway, you resemble my real brother, so... I'd like to treat you a little... specially. I am curious what that dangerous scent really is, but savoring a mystery slowly has its own charm, doesn't it? It's gotten quite late tonight, after all."
That phrase — savoring it slowly — sent an unpleasant chill of unease through me.
"You want to save that Knight, don't you, oppa? Then choose. In exchange for sparing that Knight, go on a date with me sometime."
"...What?" The words were out before I could think — nothing she'd said was anything I'd expected.
"No? If it's no, I'll kill her."
"N-no, no, no, no!... Just... a date? That's all? Really?"
It was a baffling offer, but it was also the only option on the table that saved Arin, so the words tumbled out in a rush. Still, I couldn't shake my suspicion, and I had no choice but to press on carefully.
What on earth was she thinking...? However hard I turned it over, it seemed unlikely that a mere mortal like me could unravel whatever the girl was scheming.
"A promise."
For the first time, the girl wore an innocent smile that suited her apparent age, and held out her little finger to me. It was a form of contract I hadn't made since I was a child; I stared at her outstretched finger as if beholding some curious relic, then cautiously hooked my own pinky around it.
"And if you break the promise, what then?"
"...I'd have to grant that person one thing they want?"
Even as I answered her, I thought, what kind of lame answer is that? — but the atmosphere had gone soft, nothing like before. Or maybe, from the very start, I had been the only one feeling horror and dread — maybe to the girl, it had felt like this all along.
"Kikik, kikik... Deal."
The girl tightened her pinky around mine, then turned away from me, and the maids surrounding Arin fell in at her back. I could see Arin collapsed on the ground, holes punched clean through her body, utterly drained — but I still couldn't bring myself to approach her.
"My name is Sawol, oppa. We'll be seeing each other again soon."
Hands clasped behind her back, the girl spun around and said it with a bright, guileless smile. I thought how Eastern a name it was for such an exotic face — and then the moon hanging behind her caught my eye.
"Oh, and oppa — I'm only saying this so you don't go feeling guilty, but I'm a legal adult. So putting it in there... inside me, where my hymen is... that's all legal, you know? Kikik, kikik..."
The girl — Sawol — left those lingering words hanging in the air and, little devil's laugh trailing behind her, slowly melted into the darkness of the park. When even the maids vanished after her, the park lay empty, as if by magic, of everyone but Arin and me.
I stood there dazed by the dreamlike turn of reality for a long moment; then, seeing the blood running down onto the ground, I came to my senses and hurried to Arin's side.
"Snap out of it... no, wait — 911!... no, not that either — ah... seriously!!"
Clutching my head, I floundered helplessly as Arin lay unconscious, blood seeping out of her without pause. Taking a monster to a hospital run by humans made no sense at all — and leaving her just like this made even less.
"...Damn it!"
After agonizing over it, I did what I could: covered Arin's wounds with my coat, hoisted her up with difficulty, and started the long walk home.