The Gutter
Sniff. Sniff, sniff.
The stench of a gutter—every kind of filth stewed together—hung thick and choking in the air.
Ugh… what is that? What smells like this? …Did somebody take a shit outside? Ah… damn it… just a little more sleep……
Grrrrrrgle—!
"??"
His eyes snapped open.
Something rotten and decaying came at him from every direction, aggressive and foul, and with it a hunger so vast it slammed down on him all at once. The boy woke.
Blurred vision. The feel of a hard, thin mattress.
"Kugh!"
On reflex he tried to clap a hand over his mouth and nose.
What? Why won't my strength go in? Ghk! This insane, beggar-rotten stink!!
It felt as if he had lain in a bed for years and never once gotten up.
"Uah… uuhh…"
A twitch. Another twitch.
Are you kidding me, why won't my voice come out either? What the fuck is this!!!
A squirm. A jerk.
The boy threw everything he had into moving, and still his body would not obey a single thought in his head. Even rolling over, the way a newborn might, was beyond him. After a long, useless thrashing he gave up on all of it and stared at a ceiling furred with mold.
As time passed, his sight sharpened, and the room around him began to come clear.
Haa… goddamn it… I can't put any strength into it.
A place you could hardly call a house—more a hut on the verge of collapse. Filthy. Damp. Reeking of the gutter, thick with a stench that turned the stomach.
What is this place?? Where even is this falling-down hole? Why am I here?
He was still turning it over when a wooden door creaked open.
Screee—thud! Click!
Footsteps. Footsteps, wet ones.
The sound of the door locking behind them, and something damp crossing the floor.
"Y-You've opened your eyes?"
A young woman's voice, thin and trembling.
"It's been three whole days since the ritual ended, and I thought something had gone wrong… It was so hard…"
She stumbled over the words as if the feeling welling up in her was more than she could hold, and then she broke, crying like a child.
"I'm so glad, sob… Everyone else died like that… I kept thinking maybe it had all been for nothing… Waaaaah!"
Ritual? Three days have passed? What is she talking about?
He rolled his eyes this way and that and worried at it for a long while, but nothing came. His head felt packed with fog.
"…… Hero?"
"!!"
For an instant his heart seemed to drop straight through him, and his awareness was sucked away somewhere else.
Hero… hero… I'm a hero? What……
A moment later, as if someone had thrown open a dam inside his skull, memory flooded in and drowned him. Neuron by neuron, the overload caught fire. Pain washed over him in a burning sheet.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The convulsions would not stop. Past the nerves at his extremities, out through the skin itself, he felt his body taken apart and put back together again.
The memory of his second life played itself out—the life in which he had been stabbed in the back and killed inside a Demon King's castle out of some medieval tale. Then time reeled further back, and his first death, on an Earth that had still looked modern, began to run through his head.
Ah… right. I died twice, didn't I?
Inside a vision gone dark, the memories that had been flooding him began, little by little, to line themselves up along the flow of time.
Goddamn it. That crazy bitch strung me along forever—almost, not quite, wait till we kill the Demon King—and the second he's dead she kills me? The Domine Church! Rotten bastards!! I never should've trusted those cultist pieces of shit from the start!!!
Drip. Trickle.
What is this? It's… good. Sweet…
While the information in his head was still sorting itself out, something sticky and sweet pushed into his mouth. Slowly, the filthy room he had seen before—eyes only, unable to move—swam back into view.
"Nnnh…"
Unlike a moment ago, he could make a sound.
A squirm… another squirm…
"Khh—!"
His body hurt like hell, but he could sit himself up.
"Haa… ha…"
"A-Are you all right?"
The woman who had been sobbing looked at Han Dojin with eyes brimming over.
"Wh… what? You. Who are you?"
A cracked voice scraped, weak, up his throat and out.
The woman brought her little finger—dark blue blood welling from it—to her own mouth, sucked on it for a moment, and answered while she watched him.
"I'm Kelly. You are Hero Han Dojin, aren't you?"
"Huh…? Han Dojin… Yeah, that's me… But I died. So why am I here?"
Han Dojin said it while he groped back through his memory.
"Th-That's… because we brought you back to life."
"What? You did what?"
"We. Brought. The dead. Hero. Back to life!"
She spoke it out piece by piece, as if she thought Han Dojin might have something wrong with his language, or his mind.
We? There's somebody else besides this woman? And they brought me back? How? Looking at the state I'm in…
Dumbfounded as he was, Han Dojin tried to push himself upright.
"Oh! Hero… right now you need to rest—"
"No! Just—hold on a second……"
It hurt, but Dojin managed to sit up straight…… and for the first time he could see his own small palm. Small as it was, dark blue vessels writhed across it, a little grotesque.
"Haa… haa… what is this? Why's it small? Why is it squirming?"
"That's… I don't really know that part either…"
Kelly ducked her head as if she were sorry, then leaned carefully forward and spoke, clear and deliberate.
"I read your file too, Hero. I… I understand this must be plenty shocking. First, steady your breathing… try to calm down. I'll explain everything I know, one thing at a time."
"You gotta be… fucking kidding meee!!"
Han Dojin thrashed with the loudest voice and the biggest motions a body that couldn't even clench its fists could manage. He didn't get far. The energy drained out of him, and he had no choice but to collapse back onto a thing it was embarrassing to call a bed.
Kelly waited until he showed some sign of settling, and only then began, carefully, from the start.
"First of all, I'm not human. My body is built exactly the same as a human's… but I'm Noctix. An alien. Oh! And Hero Han Dojin… you aren't human anymore either."
"Haa… fuck…"
According to Kelly, five hundred years had passed since Han Dojin took the Demon King's head. Other heroes had appeared several times after that, but from a certain point no more heroes came, and technology had surged ahead in a frenzy—only to stall out at a fixed level. And thanks to a civilization that had developed just far enough and then gone stagnant, the damp emotions and desires the Noctix called Malice, and lived on as their staple food, lay scattered everywhere in abundance.
Seeing all of that, they had taken the humans of this planet for easy prey. But five minutes after the invasion began, their mothership had dropped into the sea. Then the Battle Saintesses—no one knew where they had come from—appeared, and with overwhelming force began disposing of the Noctix who had survived. The clan's finest warriors had fought with their teeth clenched, and still, five years on, Kelly was the only pureblood Noctix left.
"Seriously, why do this to me… Revenge? Sure, I still want to wipe out those Church bitches who jerk Pan Island around however they please… but shouldn't you at least get the basics ready before you bring somebody back?"
"…"
Kelly's mouth worked, as if she badly wanted to make an excuse.
"You. Don't you dare start in on that oracle crap again…"
"Hiiing…"
Dojin, finding Kelly a little easier to deal with than he had a moment ago, turned only his head and asked, irritated.
"Kelly… if what you're saying is right, I'm basically about to starve to death."
"Yes."
"That Malice you mentioned earlier? That the word? Shady, negative energy? Desire? Anyway, that! I haven't eaten anything except the little bit of Malice you put in your blood, so…"
He asked it the way a man confirms a thing twice—the alien appetite Kelly had described, feeding on yin-dark energy and on negative emotion, or on desire.
"Right?"
Kelly nodded, very cheerfully, and answered.
"Then… why am I like this again?"
Han Dojin said it while he lifted only his head and looked down at his lower half.
"Ah… that's… because my tastes run toward sexual desire… You drank my blood earlier, remember? This is the effect of that."
"Being hard hurts a little."
"Maybe because it's your first erection?"
"I'm kinda dizzy."
"Maybe because your cock is so big that all the blood rushed there at once?"
Kelly pressed in close to where Han Dojin lay.
"Don't worry! This part, at least, is my specialty…"
The drooping air that had hung on Kelly until a moment ago changed all at once. And with it came a scent, faint and patchy, a little sticky and sweet… a scent that had no business existing in a place this close to falling down.
Flip!
Kelly stripped away the thin blanket she had laid over him, and a cock far too massive to belong on a boy's frame came into view.
"Hehe…♡"
Smack!
"Hello, handsome, enormous Mister Cock♡ Haa…♡ Haa…♡ I can't lose my head here… if I do this… those crazy bitches are going to come find us… Hehe…♡"
"Hey… Kelly? Your eyes are a little—"
Dojin saw the look in them—reason gone, a starved beast—and couldn't finish.
Aahm! Lick♡ Lick♡ Slurp!Mmph—suck!Slurp!Schluuurrp!♡
Kelly's tongue wound around Han Dojin's cock like a snake and started to work it. Instinct screamed at him not to come too fast; he tried, on reflex, to hold the urge back. It was useless.
Ngh!……… Ah…… I'm done for.
Spurt! Splurt, splurt! Gush!
Han Dojin shuddered, caught between the miserable knowledge that he had come far too fast, sucked off by Kelly, and the sharp, electric pleasure of the orgasm itself.
Gulp. Gulp!
"Haa…♡ I never knew a man's cum could be this pure and this thick♡ I think I could get addicted♡"
Slick! Schlick, schlick!
Kelly gripped the shaft in one hand and licked him clean, working her tongue all the way into the urethra, while her other hand started rubbing at her own cunt.
Whoosh!
In that instant Han Dojin felt something strange, as if even the air around them were being sucked into Kelly.
"Haa……♡ My first meal in so long…♡"
And then, in his sight, a strange band of light—purple tangled with pink—slowly soaked into Kelly's body.
That's supposed to be a meal?
Han Dojin stared at the scene, at a loss.
Ssshhh—
"??"
Stranger still: the odd ribbon of light Kelly had been devouring was, little by little, being absorbed into him as well.