The Reason I Could Keep Living
Ever since I was little, I had hated fighting with anyone. Hurting another person was something I had never even imagined.
The villagers, though, seemed to see me differently. They looked at the cheerful girl who was always leading the others and decided I was the right fit, and so they put my name forward as a guard. In a country village short on men and shorter still on hands, it was a job someone had to do. A place like that, where everything was for the village's survival and the good of the group, had never put much stock in what any one person wanted.
But I was the sort who went cold with fear at the mere sight of a sword, so I gathered my courage and said no.
That was when one of the villagers spoke up.
"Then who else is going to do it, if not you?"
A great many words turned over in my mouth. None of them came out. I couldn't tell them that the cheerful temperament, the way I seemed so good at leading people — all of it was only ever a sense of duty.
I was pushed into becoming a guard, and it did not suit me in the least. Every morning I woke wanting to quit that very day. And yet I stayed, and the reason I stayed was one man.
Captain Karlson.
An outsider who had settled in the village after years as a mercenary. He had lived among us so long by then that calling him an outsider hardly felt right anymore. He took villagers who had never had anything to do with fighting or war, built something like a proper system, and trained them.
At first the training — so utterly unsuited to me — was brutally hard. I clung on through it anyway, stubborn as a weed, and in time I earned the captain's recognition and was made vice-captain.
The day he acknowledged me, I could have leapt for joy. Because the captain was the reason I could keep being a guard. The reason I could keep living.
In the beginning it was admiration. Watching him lead the guards with that upright gaze and that commanding presence, I had wanted to become like him. But as the days went on, my eyes kept finding him, and I realized that the feeling had turned into love.
There was a considerable gap in our ages, but that was neither here nor there in a country village. Even if it had been a problem, I was certain that as long as the feeling was there, such things were meaningless.
Someday…
Yes. Someday I would tell the captain — tell him how I felt. And then, like anyone else, we would share an ordinary love, and we would make love so that we might have a child—
"…Nnh."
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch…
Consciousness came back with a hot, stabbing pain below. It hurts. That was the first thought I had upon waking. A headache pulsed behind my eyes, and the blur of my vision slowly gathered itself into a single shape — and there, in front of me, was a face I knew, a face I had missed so badly it ached.
"Cap… tain…?"
The man I had admired, the man I had adored, was holding my body against his, and he was naked.
Captain Karlson… Why?
"Ah…"
I let my gaze drop. Between my spread legs, the captain's cock was sliding in and out of me. The moment I understood what I was looking at, I understood the pain that had been prodding at me down there from the instant I woke.
At first I was thrown. But the fact that I was joined with the man I loved turned the pain into something else entirely. A bright, overflowing joy welled up inside me.
I had dreamed of this day my entire life. The one reason I had found to keep living, while I forced myself through work I never wanted. Now the thing I had dreamed of every single day was here, real, and an emotion I had no words for rose through me. There was arousal in it, too.
There was no woman in this world who disliked sharing her body with the one she loved. There was no woman who disliked being gathered into a man's body — so different from her own, so solid — and being made to feel, in her bones, that she was a woman.
The pain, already fading, gave way to pleasure. The muscles I had locked tight went slack. The knowledge that I was skin to skin with the man I loved sent a warm wetness trickling down from between my legs.
An emotional fullness. A physical heat. I felt as if I were drifting through the sky.
"Kikiki!!"
"Kehehehe!!"
Vulgar, grating laughter pulled my eyes to the sides. We were in someplace like a cave. And things — monster-like, wrong-looking things — had ringed the two of us, looking down with smiles that made my skin crawl.
I did not know why the captain and I were making love in a place like a cave, or why those monster-things were watching us. But that didn't matter.
…Yes. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that I was joined with the man I loved. That we were sharing our bodies. That was all.
"Does it feel good?"
The captain, buried between my legs, asked it with a crooked grin. For some reason his voice was thick, muddy. Even his laugh was not the one I knew.
But that still didn't matter. It couldn't be allowed to matter.
"Y-yes… it feels good, Captain."
I had gotten what I had dreamed of. I smiled, happy, and cupped his cheeks in both hands.
"Kik!"
He let out a sound that might have been a sneer.
"Cute Cecilia… cute, pitiful little female."
The hand that stroked my cheek was cold. A human hand was supposed to have warmth in it. The captain's was cold as winter.
"Captain Karlson…"
I pushed the wrongness aside as hard as I could and let myself savor the touch, telling myself it was his. He watched me the way a man watches a pet doing tricks, and then he drew his hips slowly back.
A thick, wet sound — and then he drove in.
"Hhk—!?"
A heavy, foreign thickness flooded my insides and my back arched. The sensation of being entered so roughly was unfamiliar, and it frightened me, but I found I could take it without much trouble. Because what had come into my body belonged to the man I loved. That single reason let me forget everything else.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch…
"Haa… nnh, hah, ah, haah—. Nngh—."
The thickness filled the empty space inside me and withdrew, over and over, and sounds I was ashamed to hear rang off the stone. Unfamiliar moans spilled from my mouth with every slap of skin, and I felt strange to myself — but I did not dislike it. I could not keep my burning body in check; the whimpering, breathless sounds kept coming. I did not think there was anything wrong in a woman making the sounds a woman makes.
It felt natural, the way following an instinct stamped into the body from birth feels natural. A pleasure far better than anything I had ever given myself crawled up through my hips and shook my brain. The pleasure of being skin to skin with the one I loved was good enough to drive every worry, every care, clean out of my head.
Slap. Slap. Slap…
"Ah, ooh, haah—. Hah, hah…"
The higher the sounds climbed, the harder my body shook. The moans that had come in fits and starts drew closer and closer together.
"This onahole — so good—. This bitch's hole, so good. Kihihik!!"
The captain let out a cheap, ugly sound. It was a laugh I could never have associated with the captain I knew. It didn't matter. The soaring feeling of being with the man I loved made a little thing like that easy to forget.
"Khh… I'm… coming…!"
He crushed his body against mine, and the thickness that had already been inside me shoved in deeper still.
"Ah…"
Something caught against the wall of my lower belly. My body clenched down below on reflex.
A thick, rolling gush—
"Hih!?"
Heat flooding my insides. A heat startling enough to make me jolt. The sensation of something surging in like a wave and filling me was frightening — but the moment I remembered it was the captain's seed, a sweet, pleasant fullness rose in its place.
"Kihiiii…"
Greedy drool ran from the corner of his mouth as his body shuddered. It was a face I could not reconcile with the man who had always been so composed, so commanding, no matter the moment.
…Yeah. It doesn't matter. As long as the captain is satisfied through me, it doesn't matter.
Gush—. Gush—.
His cock throbbed without end. Each pulse packed the empty space inside me with heat, leaving no gap at all.
"Nnh… it's hot."
I felt my lower belly swell taut and drew my brows together. It was a little like holding boiling water in my belly, if I stretched the comparison. It hurt — but the thought that I might bear the captain's child let me take the pain as joy.
With this… I can be completely joined with the captain. I'm happy…
The captain would be the same—
I pictured him wearing an expression like mine and lifted my eyes. Bloodshot eyes were looking down at me. There was something savage in them, something beastly, and they were full of a heat that had boiled over.
I was afraid. For the first time, I found the captain frightening.
A sudden grip.
"Ah."
He seized both my ankles and shoved them up. My hips lifted with them; everything shameful, my anus included, was laid bare, and in the split second the embarrassment hit—
He slammed in.
A wet burst—
"——!?"
Even spent, his cock was still rigid, and it stabbed straight down into me. The fluid that had been filling my womb burst out in a fountain. Thrust. Thrust. Thrust. Gravity made it even easier for him to violate me, and his cock hammered against my womb. It felt like a heated iron rod raking through my insides. I squeezed my eyes shut in shock.
"Kihek!! Hek!! Hek!!…"
"———!!!"
His breathing was grotesque, animal, and my body shook under it, limp. There was no care in the way he moved, no tenderness at all. A scream that never found a voice tore through me, and tears slid from the corners of my eyes. It was the opposite of the joy from before — a one-sided violence of pain — and a wet, broken moan leaked out of me.
"C-Cap… tain… a little gentler—"
I had endured being handled like a tool for as long as I could. I had no choice but to plead.
He slammed in—!!
"Guhh—uk."
His cock bore down the length of my womb as if to tell me to shut my mouth, and the sound that came out of me was only pain. My lips closed around it.
"Kihihi…"
He looked down at me like that. Looked down at me in my suffering, and under the shadow of his face a hideous smile spread.
I knew, in my gut, that something was wrong. I knew, and I still had no choice but to force a smile.
"I-it's okay… Captain, I'm… I'm okay."
"Is that riiight—?"
A sneer flickered across his face, and then the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Yeah. This pussy tastes so good. Feels amazing. The best. Taking a man's cock — you're the best at it. You were born a bitch."
"Th-that's a relief…"
"A relief, is it? Kikik!!"
He watched me force the corners of my mouth up into a trembling smile, and he smiled back. I could not read the contempt in that smile. I tried to be satisfied that he had smiled at me at all.
Because only then… can I keep living.
"Ye—heh. That's a relief…"
To wear a smile stained with tears. To take something hollow and believe it as truth. That was all a broken girl like me could still do.