Gloomy Devotion (4)
"What?"
I doubted my own ears.
I'd just watched her coughing and wiping tears and snot from her face, and it reminded me of the moment I'd been strangled to death — I was actually starting to feel guilty, wondering if I'd come down on her too hard.
And yet the words that had just left this woman's mouth were—
"I-it's just... the moment you were choking me... it was terrifying, but at the same time, I was trembling so much, how do I put it..."
The eyes peeking through her bangs had already gone glassy, and the fingertips touching the back of her own neck were shaking.
That wasn't the touch of someone checking a wound. It was the touch of someone savoring a freshly carved mark, cherishing it over and over.
'Ha.'
The one who'd felt guilty was the idiot here.
'Fuck. Seriously.'
Little Red Riding Hood was the kind of woman who'd put a collar on a person, shoved him in a dog bowl, and strangled him to death.
And this time, she'd gone tumbling in the exact opposite direction. Burying her face in someone else's clothes and sniffing at them, masturbating next to a sleeping man, and after getting choked — actually begging to be choked again.
'Straight from S to M. Talk about spreading yourself evenly across the board.'
Since falling into this world, I'd only run into two people, and both of them, without exception, didn't have a single shred of common sense between them.
'What the hell did I do so wrong?'
I read books. I looked up editions nobody else bothered with. That was it. I never killed anyone, never hurt a soul. And what I got in return was being thrown face-down into a forest floor without knowing why, collared by a raving lunatic I'd never met, having my toes licked, dumped into ice-cold water, begging for my life — and strangled to death. Then I opened my eyes to a thatched-roof hut, where a woman who'd just masturbated to the smell of my clothes was begging me to choke her.
What made it even more fucked up was that there wasn't even anyone around to blame for this situation. If I had some bastard to resent, I could've at least grabbed him by the collar — but all I knew was that I'd opened one old book and wound up in this shitshow.
The woman in front of me was still looking up at me with expectant eyes.
'...You want it that badly?'
Something in my head snapped clean off.
'Fine. I don't get it either.'
"Hey."
"Y-yes...!"
"Your name. What is it?"
Caught off guard by the unexpected question, she fidgeted for a long while before finally managing to speak.
"Should... should someone like me even be allowed to tell you my name...?"
"I'm asking, aren't I?"
"...Euna. My name is Euna. 'Eun' as in 'hidden'..."
She trailed off and buried her face, apparently embarrassed now that it had actually come to this.
"Euna?"
"....!"
At the sound of her name, Euna flinched.
"Y-you said it... you called me..."
"You react like that just because someone said your name?"
"Mmmh... no one... no one has ever called me by my name before..."
I reached out and took her chin, tilting her face up.
"Mmh...!"
"I'll give you what you want."
"But don't get the wrong idea. I'm not cutting you any slack."
"Yes... yes, I understand..."
I pushed Euna's shoulders down, pressing her flat against the floor.
"Huh?"
"Hips up."
".....!"
Her whole body flinched hard once, but soon enough she did as she was told.
Face buried in the blanket, hips raised high. The inside of her thighs was already soaked and glistening — the mess from what she'd done to herself earlier hadn't even had time to dry.
"Haa... wh-what... what are you going to do...?"
"What you did earlier — rubbing one out with my clothes in your face. You should start paying for that."
"P... punishment...?"
Expectation, more than fear, was dripping from her voice. Instead of answering, I raised my hand and brought it down on her ass.
SLAP—!
"Hngh...!"
"Face down in someone else's clothes, doing that kind of thing next to a man while he slept. Huh? Got anything to say for yourself?"
SLAP—!
"I'm... I'm sorry...."
"Sorry for what?"
SLAP—!
"Ahhn...!"
Every time my palm came down, her arousal trickled down the inside of her thighs. And the more I struck her, the harder she pushed her hips back toward me, lifting her ass higher all on her own — it was mind-boggling.
"M-more... please hit me more..."
"You're truly hopeless, you know that?"
Even clicking my tongue, my hand didn't stop. After a few more blows, her skin flushed scarlet, and each time it did, her moans filled the room.
"This is what happens when I hit you?"
"Yes... yes, it does.... Every time the farmer's hand lands... I keep......"
Without breaking her posture, I settled in behind her and pushed my hips forward, sliding inside.
Thud—
"Hngggh...!"
"Hah...! Your fingers were... nothing like this... it's so... so big..."
Euna clutched the edge of the blanket, her back and shoulders trembling — I couldn't tell whether it was from the pain or something else entirely.
"I haven't even started yet. Don't pass out on me already."
"I-it's... it hurts more than I thought, b-but..."
Even as her words trailed off, she was pushing her hips back toward me on her own.
"If it hurts, why are you pushing into it?"
"I-I don't know... it hurts but... knowing you're inside me, Farmer... it feels so good..."
Over the curve of her swaying back as she knelt there, I caught sight of her ponytail — normally tied so neatly — swaying back and forth.
'That.'
My hand moved before my brain did. I grabbed a fistful of that hair.
"Hyah...!"
Her hair pulled taut, and Euna's upper body lifted off the blanket.
"Hnggggh...! Th-that...!"
"You like that too?"
"I-I love it...! Pull... pull harder, please..."
I tightened my grip on the hair coiled around my hand and yanked.
"Ahhn...! Hah, hnn...!"
Matching the rhythm of my thrusting hips, my other hand pulled her hair harder and harder.
At first she'd tried, in her own way, to hold back her moans — biting her lip or burying her face in the blanket.
But after a few more hard drives of my hips, even that was gone.
"Haaah...! Hahh, hnn...!"
Her fingers, which had been gripping the blanket, went slack and scratched uselessly at the air.
"More... do it more...! Like before... harder!"
"You're good at begging, I'll give you that."
"Hahh...! I did... I did something wrong, so... punish me... punish me more..."
Even while speaking, I could feel her pressing her body toward me. The woman who'd been whimpering about the pain just moments ago was nowhere to be found — now she was trying to take me deeper.
"Ahhn...! N-no, I can't... if you do this..."
"Can't do what?"
"My head... I can't think... at all..."
Her tongue was starting to fail her. The polite speech remained, but her sentences kept breaking off, her pronunciation slurring at the edges.
And then, without warning, a strange emotion welled up inside me.
In the forest, I couldn't move so much as a finger. Stripped of the strength to resist, of any control, of my dignity as a human being, I was treated like an animal and killed.
But right now, I was the one on top. Her neck bent where I pulled it, her body jerked where I struck it, and she collapsed where I thrust.
"Pull this and you just... do whatever I want, huh."
"Yes...! I'm... I'm yours, Farmer.... Do anything you want with me...."
I yanked her hair and drove my hips into her, and Euna's whole body shuddered violently as an animalistic cry tore from her throat.
"Ahhhngh...! Th-there...! Just a little more...!"
I pounded into her even rougher, and her speech began to fall apart at the seams.
"Haaah...! My head... my head's going white...!"
"Shut up and take it."
"Ahhngh...! Hahh, hngg...! It's... it feels strange... I'm really getting strange..."
How much time had passed? The sound of our bodies slapping together grew more and more frantic until, at last, the limit arrived.
"Hahh...! I-I'm gonna come...! I really am...!"
One last time I pulled her hair with all my strength and drove deep inside her—
"Ahhhnghhh...!"
—and Euna's body convulsed hard as she peaked. I too let out everything I'd been holding back, spilling into her in heavy waves.
"Haa... haa..."
The moment I released her hair, Euna collapsed limply onto the blanket.
"Mmmh... hahh..."
Drool pooling at the corner of her mouth as she stared blankly into space with unfocused eyes — she'd clearly had every last thread of her sanity fucked right out of her.
After gasping like that for a long while, Euna finally rolled over and looked up at me. Tears still brimmed at the corners of her eyes, but her expression, more than anything, looked satisfied.
"Farmer..."
"What."
"Thank you... for accepting... someone like me..."
Not knowing what I was supposed to say to that, I stayed silent, and Euna carefully reached out and buried her face against my side. Not long after, her breathing evened out into a soft, steady rhythm.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, my mind blank. Along with the drowsy afterglow, the feverish heat that had been burning through my head was slowly cooling.
'What the hell did I just do?'
Only days ago, I'd been nothing more than a man who read books.
And now I'd bent a woman I'd never met over, hit her, and yanked her around by the hair.
Sure, Euna had begged me for more.
Still, the aftertaste wasn't exactly clean.
Warmth radiated from her face pressed against my side.
The woman herself was sleeping there looking completely satisfied — so why was I the only one lying here agonizing over it?
'Enough. Stop thinking about it.'
That wasn't what mattered right now anyway.
Like I'd confirmed earlier, asking this woman anything was a dead end.
The things living here didn't even know where they were. In the end, I had no choice but to figure it out myself.
Staring at the ceiling, I began to sort through my thoughts.
In the forest, I'd been dragged around knowing nothing, and died. When I opened my eyes again, I was here.
So I'd figured dying was just how you moved on to the next place — but judging by the situation now, at least it didn't look like I could die here.
'So why the hell did I die back then, anyway?'
It was a question that kept nagging at me, fresh all over again.
'That bitch was insane,' would've been the end of it. She really was insane, after all.
She killed me because she didn't like the way I puked. Look at it that way, and it all hangs together.
But something about that explanation didn't sit right.
'...What if.'
What if I hadn't thrown up? Would I still be alive?
If I'd played to that woman's tastes perfectly, would I be living comfortably right now, playing the dog in that little hut?
Somehow, I didn't think so.
Vomiting or not, I had a feeling I would've pissed her off eventually and died anyway.
The moment my thoughts reached that point, something about it felt off.
In every version I knew, the wolf doesn't die.
It's the opposite, in fact.
He deceives the girl and devours her, and that's where the story ends. There's no huntsman coming to the rescue.
The wolf dying — that's the tale as it was rewritten for children to read.
The good girl gets saved, the bad wolf gets punished and dies, and from then on the forest lived in peace — that trite, hypocritical ending.
'And yet the one who died was me.'
Everything that happened in that forest, from start to finish, was filthier and crueler than any version of the story I'd ever known.
And yet the ending itself had followed the sanitized children's version. The wolf dies, and Little Red Riding Hood lives.
'So the process runs however it wants, but only the ending of my role has to follow the children's story?'
It could've been a coincidence.
With only one experience to go on, the evidence was far too thin to draw conclusions — but it was the only thread I had to grab onto right now.