Sinister Devotion (3)
I scraped my bowl clean with the spoon.
So... what do I do now?
It was still hours until nightfall, so I decided to organize my thoughts one more time.
Yesterday I'd racked my brain over what the hell this world even was, and come up empty. Maybe it made more sense to prepare for what was coming instead.
Either way, this is definitely the Snail Bride story. If it follows the original plot, the farmer marries the snail bride, and then the magistrate shows up and tries to steal her away.
Up to that point, the original and the sanitized fairy tale run about the same. After that, the story splits—either she really does get taken, or the farmer beats the magistrate and wins her back.
I had no idea which way it would go, but sorting out at least this much was the only way I could plan ahead.
With Red Riding Hood, I only transferred to the next story after she strangled me to death. But there was a sliver of hope here—if I somehow reached a happy ending, maybe I could leave this insane world for good.
Alright. Step one: catch the snail bride tonight. Once that's done, we'll see where the story goes.
I decided to operate on the assumption that she was watching me. That would make it easier to lull her into letting her guard down.
I shoved the table into a corner of the kitchen and let out a big, theatrical cough.
"Ahhem! Nothing like a full belly. Time to head out to that far field and work until sundown!"
Deliberately stomping my feet loud enough to be heard, I walked out the door—then, just like yesterday, crawled into the shadowed gap beneath the floorboards and hunkered down.
If I repeated this ridiculous pantomime every day, she'd keep underestimating me. And tonight, she'd crawl out without a shred of suspicion.
"Thank you for the meal."
The moment that hearty farmer's voice brushed her ear, she trembled inside the water jar, biting down hard on her lip.
Mnngh... "Thank you for the meal"...
Of course, the spread she'd laid out was nothing but a fig leaf—her clumsy attempt to smother the filthy guilt of having touched herself with him as her centerpiece.
But he, knowing none of that, had offered his thanks with such simple, wholehearted sincerity that her head flooded with happy chemicals and wild fantasy.
He said it to me, didn't he...? That greeting was for me...?
Just watching him scrape his bowl clean down to the very bottom made her ache between the legs. When he finished eating, the farmer sat quietly at the little table, chin propped in his hand, lost in thought—a serious, sharp-eyed frown creasing his brow as he stared into empty air.
Even like that—solo, hunched over the problem of how to find her—he looked dependable. Irresistibly so.
Even the way he frowns like that is so unfairly handsome...
Then the farmer, as if on cue, announced loudly that he was heading out—and just like yesterday, made a show of leaving through the door before doubling back, creeping inch by inch into the shadowed gap beneath the floor to curl up and hide. Watching the whole spectacle through the sliver of the jar's lid, she couldn't stop her lips from curling into a giddy smile.
Heehee... silly, silly farmer.
For all his intense brooding, his grand strategy was "peek at her in secret"—and somehow that only made him cuter. To think that after spending an entire day wedged under the floorboards groaning in agony, he'd crawl right back into the dust all over again today.
It's because he's desperate to see me, isn't it? He wants me that badly...
He'll be even more exhausted than yesterday... which means tonight, he'll be dead to the world...
Just picturing his face—drenched in sweat, completely spent, fast asleep—sent a jolt through her lower belly she couldn't suppress. Sure, a farmer vaguely sensing her existence and trying to catch a glimpse of her was, in some lights, a red flag. But so what? Tonight, like every night, the exhausted man would sleep like the dead.
And above all, touching herself while savoring that danger was the single most delicious thrill there was.
"God, my whole body aches... I might genuinely pass out the second I lie down."
I made a show of yawning loudly from the doorway as I shuffled into the room. After peeling off my dirt-caked outer clothes, I flopped face-first onto the worn bedding.
In the far corner of the room, where no sunlight ever reached, the water jar sat sealed and utterly still.
Figured as much, but that thing really doesn't move an inch.
I rolled toward the wall, breathing rough and ragged, then gradually settled into the slow, even rhythm of a man sinking into deep sleep. But my right hand, hidden beneath the blanket, stayed coiled like a spring—every muscle tensed, ready to launch at a moment's notice.
I kept up the charade, easing my breathing into calm. The moment she showed herself, I wanted to grab her by the collar and fire off a mountain of questions—but pouncing too soon would ruin everything.
The brief window after she decided I was truly asleep, when her guard dropped—that was my one chance to observe what she actually did. What she actually wanted.
Confirm she's there first. Then, when she's completely relaxed, reel her in for good.
How much time passed, I couldn't say. Long past midnight, the air in the room turned cold and heavy, and something wrong began to drift through it.
Sliiiide... pop.
The jar's lid, eased carefully aside in the darkness. Then came the wet, secretive patter of dripping water, trailing across the floorboards, inching toward my bedding.
Here she comes.
She suspected nothing. Convinced the farmer had collapsed from the strain of his long daytime stakeout, she swallowed and padded silently to the head of my bed.
Rustle.
Unfamiliar fingers began carefully, tentatively, feeling along the collar of my shirt.
??? What is she doing?
Eyes closed, I couldn't see, but she was unmistakably feeling me up. Then, before I could even make sense of it, the hand went still.
I was still puzzling over what on earth she was doing when—
"Sniff... hnngh... haaah... this smell... it drives me insane, even more than yesterday..."
???????
A voice right beside my ear, saying things no sane person should say, hot breath spilling against my skin.
Smell? What is she smelling?
Then it hit me—the outer clothes I'd taken off before bed.
Don't tell me... she's sniffing my clothes right now?
A jolt of pure bewilderment locked every nerve in my body rigid.
"Haaah... mmm...! Dirt and sweat, all mixed together... my head's spinning..."
...She's actually doing it.
Thank God she wasn't another homicidal maniac like Red Riding Hood—but never in my wildest nightmares had I imagined she'd be the kind of pervert who smothers her face in a stranger's sweat-soaked clothes and inhales like it's perfume.
But things were escalating faster than I could process.
Swish—
In the darkness, the sash of her garment came loose and slithered to the floor, followed by the soft sound of skin sliding against skin.
Shlick.
...Huh?
I questioned my own ears.
That was unmistakably the wet, shameless, vulgar sound of membranes and flesh colliding.
Squelch, schlorp—!
"Ahhn...! Nnh, mmm...!"
Muffled moans she clearly tried to suppress, but couldn't. The wet, rhythmic sound of fingers plunging into a tight, soaked channel began to fill the room.
You have got to be kidding me... she's not seriously masturbating right next to my head, is she?
My carefully laid plan—bait her into a false sense of security, expose her true nature—got shoved, perfectly intact, straight into the trash can, buried under an act of unhinged female depravity that transcended every law of common sense.
"Nnngh... haaah... touching myself right beside my sleeping farmer's face... it's just... the best..."
Squelch, schlorp—! Shlick...!
As her fingers worked faster and rougher, the air in the room grew damp and heavy with the fishy-sweet scent of her arousal.
Finally, a few stray droplets of sticky fluid splashed out and landed—plip, plip—on my cheek and the back of my neck.
Past bewilderment, anger started boiling up in my chest.
I had fallen into some cursed book, gotten collared by Red Riding Hood, waterboarded, and strangled to death—and now, in this second insane world, I was lying here holding my breath on a bedding roll just trying to dig up some clue about the ending or the conditions for going home.
And this woman was—what, finger-fucking herself to climax at the head of my bed?
I was furious. At this shit situation, at this lunatic world. There was no more value in playing dead and quietly observing her.
Wham—!
I snapped my eyes open and seized the arm right beside me.
"Eep?!"
The woman, hovering right on the edge of orgasm and gasping for breath mid-thrust, froze solid as her breath caught in her throat.
I had zero intention of giving her time to collect herself. I sat up, pinned her head to the floor with my free hand clamped on the back of her neck, and fired off the question I wanted answered most.
"Hey. From now on, you answer only what I ask. Where is this—and how do I get out of this hellhole of a world?"
"Hiiik...!"
"Answer me. How do I get out?"
"I-I'm sorry...! I did wrong...! Farmer, please...!"
"What?"
"I'm sorry for spying on you... and sniffing you... and doing dirty things...! Nnnh, sob... I'll never do it again... please, just forgive me this once... sob..."
Watching her cower, blubbering confessions of her own sins, tears and snot streaming down her face, I realized I wouldn't get a single useful answer this way. I quietly eased my grip on her neck.
"...Khh, hack! Haaah... sob..."
"Forget all that. How do I get out of this world?"
"G-get out...? You just... open the door and walk out...? Nnnh... I'm sorry..."
"No, none of that obvious garbage—"
I stopped mid-sentence.
Ah. What did I even expect here?
Apparently, the characters in these stories had no awareness that they were characters in a story.
So in the end, I'm finding the answers alone.
While I stewed, the woman stayed face-down on the floor behind me, coughing raggedly over and over. For a long while she just sniffled, wiping away tears and snot, before cautiously tracing the handprint I'd left on the back of her neck with her slender fingers.
Seeing her like that brought back the memory of my own strangling, and a flicker of guilt crept in—had I been too rough with her?
"Um... farmer...?"
"What."
"Are you... are you angry with me?"
"Drop it."
I did snap for a second there because the whole thing was so absurd, but whatever. I'm not actually the farmer anyway...
Her shoulders flinched at my indifferent non-answer—then relaxed, and she broke into a shy, blushing smile, visibly relieved.
And then, buzzing with some strange excitement, she began creeping closer.
"Th-then, um... I was wondering... could you maybe... strangle me just like that... one more time...?"