Chapter 183: Unique Taste 2
Chapter 183: Unique Taste 2
At some point, we ended up sitting across from each other at the table in my quarters instead of out on the city streets.
The rowdy canine beastkin who had been chattering behind us were gone. Only the female Incarnation with a taste for furries remained, staring at me with a dazed expression.
I figured she might just be groggy from waking up out of the lucid dream, but her gaze kept drifting up toward the top of my head. Fluster and delight were warring in her eyes.
Why the hell is she so thrilled about waking up?
I had pulled myself out of the lucid dream because I had no idea what the hell to do after getting the guy's number. It was not quite as cruel as waking Han Ye-ji right before sex, but still—kind of a sad moment for a woman, was it not?
Maybe her furry kink came with a streak of masochism. Some freakish fusion of Nightmare, a master of the whole SM spectrum, and a woman who calls beastkin men her kings—
Twitch?
My ears quivered.
Not the human ears on the sides of my head. The ones sticking up from the top.
I lifted my hand, following the Incarnation's stare. There was no fur thickening on the back of my hand, but as I traced my sideburns upward toward the crown of my head, my fingers brushed against soft, fluttering animal ears.
"What the...?"
Did I catch the furry bug?!
I flinched and grabbed an ear—hard. A bolt of lightning shot straight from my crown down to my tailbone. The kind of jabbing, electric shock you get when you slam your funny bone or kneecap into a desk corner. No, not just my tailbone—the jolt of pain raced all the way into an actual goddamn tail.
I forced back the reflexive tears and craned my neck. There it was behind me: the same tail I had seen in the lucid dream, every strand of fur bristling straight up from the shock.
"Ears and a tail... Could it be you are not a Dream Demon, but a Beastkin, my Constell—"
"I am a Dream Demon, so I can shift species. What are you on about?"
The sudden ears and tail had definitely rattled me, but I got a grip fast. I was a Dream Demon who could swing between a 150-centimeter elf boy and a 190-centimeter slab of human muscle. Why would a little thing like an animal tail faze me now? In terms of sheer mass, packing on muscle and flesh was a far bigger shift.
"Well, if you win, I will transfer the familiar to you."
"Ah! Yes! Thank you!"
The Incarnation I had all but forcibly dragged into a lucid dream finally snapped out of her daze and bowed in thanks. Though her next words came with a fresh dose of tension.
"In exchange, though—"
"Yes?"
"You will let me observe your Origin."
"My Origin...? What do I have to do?"
"Just meet me like we did today."
"Ah, back then, that was—"
She must have retained some hazy memories, even after getting ejected from the dream. A pink flush spread across both cheeks as she nodded rapidly. From her perspective, she was not losing a thing. There was no reason to refuse. Sure, it might waste a little time, but if she considered a private audience with a Constellation a waste of time, she would have been better off never signing an Incarnation contract in the first place.
She ducked her head one more time and stepped out the door, vanishing between the beastkin guards. Just before the door clicked shut, I caught their sharp stares flying in my direction. Still, if the Constellation inside their ward had suddenly turned into one of their own kind, they would have to stare, if only out of sheer curiosity.
Anyway, how the hell do I undo this?
I was in a pretty good mood, probably from getting a look at something novel. The problem was that my good mood was making my tail swish back and forth. Elf-to-human transformation followed my will freely—I could shift at my own discretion—but becoming a Beastkin had happened like catching a disease, as if her magical energy had rubbed off on me. For some reason, manipulating my magic power would not undo the change.
If shifting between human and elf was like tying a shoelace, shifting back from Beastkin was like trying to unravel a knot someone had tied a dozen layers deep. Meanwhile, my sharpened sense of smell kept feeding me a stream of information. I gave up trying to focus and just sprawled flat on the sofa.
"...This tail is fucking annoying."
The tail pinned under my back and ass was so uncomfortable that I immediately flipped over. As soon as I gave up on undoing the transformation and just lay belly-down on the cushions, my newly sensitive beastkin senses began mapping out my surroundings.
The faint body scents of the beastkin guards posted outside the door. The sweet snacks Lee Ha-rin had set out for me before leaving for work. Scents from beyond the door, through the walls, outside the window—all flooding into my brain through my nose. Since no one was exactly spreading foul odors around a Constellation's quarters, I found myself luxuriating in the drowsy pleasure of being a beastkin.
Nothing special, but this lazy feeling is nice.
Maybe it was the Academy's perfectly tuned climate-control system. I was just lying there on my belly, doing nothing, and I felt great.
But it did not last. The restless energy of a beastkin soon had a fresh wave of desire surging up inside me. More precisely, it felt like my Dream Demon curiosity had fused with a beastkin's drive to act. The urge to go out for a walk—to see, hear, and feel something new—lodged itself in a corner of my mind and refused to leave.
What if I went on patrol with Han Ye-ji? How was Lee Ha-rin's magic workshop coming along? What about Kim Ha-eun's dream-city and robots? And Song Ye-na—what did her remade body feel like after her rebirth?
Then one thought rose clear above the rest.
Let us go to the Garden of the Unfading Giant Tree.
The elf's garden, lush with every kind of plant. I shaped my magic without hesitation and slipped toward her Sanctum.
※
"A-are you okay?!"
"...Water. More water."
It was not the elven girl amid fragrant blossoms who greeted me when I arrived in high spirits. Before I could even register her face, I felt like I had taken a punch straight to the eyes and nose. She had been handling some kind of hazardous plant—gloved hands touching a fluorescent green sap, almost like carbonated soda.
The problem was that she had flinched in surprise and rushed straight toward me while still covered in it.
"Honestly, why did you suddenly turn yourself into a beastkin and barge in here?"
"Curious?"
"Even if a Constellation's body is made of magic, if you are a young man, you should be more careful with it. At least think about keeping up a permanent barrier of magical energy."
The slender fingers reaching toward me, brimming with concern, felt like Satan's grip dragging me by the ankle from the deepest pit of hell. Fortunately, the Unfading Giant Tree had spent long ages with the beastkin. She fetched something like a berry, squeezed its juice over me, and the agony vanished at once. But those brief moments of pain had been bad enough to make chemical and biological warfare drills look like a spa day.
What the hell is in that sap...?
My eyes streamed tears so thick I could not see. My nose flooded with a coppery stench, like I had blood pouring out. I had barely met her eyes before I was hacking and gasping, fighting down dry heaves. From her perspective, caring for her garden, this must have felt like a bolt from the blue.
Her nagging was laced with affection, and her voice was lovely enough that the words seeped right in.
"You are a Dream Demon, and you are still young, so I understand you might let yourself go a little, like the girls do... but if you wander around too carelessly, noona's going to worry."
A hand patting and stroking my back. A scolding voice that came out as soft and rhythmic as a lullaby. The elf's distinctive wild-grass scent and the crisp, clean fragrance of the garden I had been expecting. As soon as the eye-stinging, nose-burning pain faded, its place was taken by a pleasant drowsiness, like I was on vacation in a nature preserve.
"Oh my? You are getting happy even while I am scolding you?"
"Mm?"
And my good mood immediately showed in my tail.
The lushly furred tail—like a winter scarf—swished gently. It moved as naturally as blinking. The hand that had been patting my back began creeping downward. From back to waist, then toward my hips. Toward the spot where my tailbone used to be—now the root of my tail.
This is a cat thing, is it not? Not a dog.
Her hand drummed against the subtle borderline between my hip and thigh, firm enough to make my head bob slightly. A little more force and it would not be patting anymore—it would just be smacking my ass. But even with my head rocking from the rhythm, there was no pain or discomfort. Instead, a deep languor rolled over me, like I was sunk into a rocking chair by the fire. So I just surrendered to it, burying my face forward.
"Hk?!"
Into her soft belly, hidden beneath a single layer of white cloth. Tucking my face into her embrace, I filled my lungs with her faint, warm scent. The fragrance seeping in through my nose felt like it was saturating my brain. I pressed a light kiss to her navel and lowered my face a little further.
Is this what beastkin mating season feels like?
Or maybe I just could not keep a lid on my libido.
Her slightly parted, pale thighs brushed both my cheeks. That lewd smell, barely concealed by a scrap or two of thin fabric. If I was sniffing it this deeply, had my taste buds shifted beastkin-style too? It smelled like sweet tree sap, so I let my curiosity get the better of me and stuck out my tongue.
"W-wait a minute? I have not changed my clothes—"
My tongue met the white underwear, growing wet from the inside out. The soft texture of the cotton and the ambiguous, indescribable taste of the cloth spread through my mouth.
"Mm, does not look like my tongue got more sensitive."
"Is that why you are doing this?"
Her voice climbed a little, edging into a higher pitch. But my Dream Demon senses—still very much intact—picked up on the heat buried inside that flustered tone. Man or woman, who the hell hated it when their lover used their mouth on them?