Chapter: 296
When I came to, it was already afternoon.
Maybe the effects of the medicine had worn off, but Lily was groaning from the terrible pain that was pounding throughout her entire body. After a while, she managed to raise herself up.
At that moment, she accidentally caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror placed in the room.
“Ugh… A bruise…”
The marks of last night etched into her once flawless white skin, carefully maintained for her beauty.
As Lily brushed her hand over her skin tinged with purple, she stared blankly at the ugliest bruise.
On her neck, a large purple handprint left by a man was fully covering her slender neck.
Just like the marks that the women of the brothel, unlucky enough to catch the wrong customers, wore.
“If this is the case, I’m no different from them…”
As if the mark was telling her she was no different, Lily unconsciously scratched her neck with her nails.
Desperately trying to erase the bruise and return to her special existence.
But all it did was create a few more wounds on her already bruised neck.
Eventually stopping her scratching due to the sharp pain, Lily covered her face with her hands and muttered.
“I hate this… I really hate this… Ugh, sob…”
Tears streamed from her eyes, and blood dripped from her neck.
After a moment of sorrowful crying, she wiped her face and neck with the blanket underneath her.
Then she blankly looked at the floor.
The clothes she had worn yesterday were torn apart by the man, making them impossible to put on.
Still, she had to go.
This wasn’t right; with this, there was no way she’d be happy.
She had to tell her sister.
Then she could return to being her special self.
“Let’s go back to my sister. To her…”
It was as if that was her only escape, and Lily repeated those words.
Wrapping herself in the blanket stained a disgusting pink with mixed blood and tears, she left the room.
*
Only dressed in a filthy blanket, the short walk to the brothel felt unbearably difficult for Lily.
The people who always eyed her with envy and jealousy now stared at her with what felt like pity, as if to say, “So it’s true. You’re just like me.”
The humiliation and shame were overwhelming, forcing Lily to almost bury herself in the blanket as she ran.
Thus, the sorrow that had piled up since last night exploded when she met a woman at the brothel.
“Lily…? What happened to you?! Did you get attacked on the way?! Are you okay? Come here, let’s put some medicine on those wounds!”
“Sister… Sister… Waaaah…!”
The moment she saw the woman, she burst into tears.
She couldn’t hold back her tears at the sight of her sister worrying about her injuries unlike others.
Feeling touched by her sister’s gentle hands applying medicine to her wounds, Lily thought to herself.
Indeed, my sister is the only one.
The only one who truly cares for me.
Because she wants me to be happy, she will save me.
In those thoughts, Lily poured out her grievances.
“Sheesh… Sister… That man was a bad person. He hurt me really bad and left these bruises… I… I can’t be happy if I’m sold to him… So please make it like it never happened, sister…”
Lily said, waiting for a reply from her sister.
She hoped to hear an apology, a realization that she had thought wrong, that they could give the man his money back and wipe it away.
But,
“Ah… So that bruise was from the prince, huh? Phew, what have I done…”
The response she got from her sister was completely different from what Lily had expected.
…Why? Why?
Why did her sister look relieved instead of upset when she heard that man had done this to her?
Confused by her sister’s reaction, Lily said to her.
“Th-that person treated me so harshly?!”
Isn’t it normal to be angry?
Shouldn’t she be heartbroken that someone precious suffered like this?
“Well, he bought you. What he does to you is his choice.”
But why?
Why does she act like it’s nothing…?
When that man was carving these things into me, I was in so much pain…
“How can you say that? It was unbelievably painful…”
Lily exclaimed with a face of betrayal, tears welling up.
And her sister replied,
“Huh? You felt pain? That’s odd, you must have taken that medicine.”
“…Huh?”
She said it as if it were completely normal.
“Oh, I can see from your reaction that you did take it. Isn’t it amazing? I suggested a really good medicine. It’s expensive, but it has almost no side effects, and no matter how severe the experience, it makes you feel good. A lot of girls go through their first time without it and just suffer pain. You did pretty well, all things considered, right?”
Hearing that, Lily realized something.
Her sister had already known that she would go through something terrible.
She had sold her knowing everything.
Somewhere, she felt something crackle and break.
If she left it as it was, something would shatter.
With her last shred of hope, Lily asked her sister,
“…Sister. To you… What was I?”
“…sigh.”
The woman didn’t answer her question.
Only letting out a small sigh.
A sigh like when she encountered a rude customer at the shop.
A sigh she often uttered when dealing with something bothersome.
In that sigh, Lily felt that something that had been cracking inside her had completely shattered.
She suddenly looked at her sister.
With a newfound objectivity, Lily realized that her sister’s gaze was not that of a precious family member, but one of someone looking at a product displayed in a shop.
She thought of herself as family to her, but to her sister, she was nothing more than one of those products.
Something beautiful, therefore more expensive than the others.
What she had called special, the way she had treated her specially.
That was simply an intention to make a rare product that had fallen into her hands more valuable.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
When she came to that realization, Lily had no idea what kind of expression she should make.
“…So, how about this bruise? Did you do that to yourself?”
The woman asked.
Lily nodded silently.
The woman sighed and pulled out a choker that looked like it belonged on a dog.
Adorned with various complex patterns, it was the same as the kind of thing that slaves sometimes wore.
An item imbued with magic to prevent a slave from self-harming or committing suicide without their owner’s permission.
The woman fastened it around Lily’s neck and said,
“…Your body isn’t yours anymore; if you do something like that, you’ll just have to wear this. It’s not a pretty thing, and I wish you didn’t have to wear it, but it’s unavoidable. Take care. Don’t come back again.”
With that, the woman closed her mouth, as if she had nothing more to say.
Lily too had no more words, so she left the shop without a sound.
Before leaving the shop, she took one final glance at the woman.
The shopkeeper no longer seemed to have an attachment to something she had already sold, as if she were no longer looking in this direction.
Feeling strangely empty inside, Lily stepped out onto the street.
She felt like people were whispering about her as they looked her way, causing her to lower her head.
The medicine applied to her neck felt itchy, and she tried to scratch it, but the item around her neck wouldn’t allow her to do even that.
A symbol of someone who had no freedom to scratch their neck or hang themselves.
The realization that she was no longer the special person she once was hit her hard.
It was indeed a miserable feeling.
*
That night too, Lily was summoned by the man.
Seeing the item fastened around her neck, the man laughed in disbelief and said.
“That woman. She said you wouldn’t have to wear it, yet here you are. Did you hurt yourself because you were upset I held you?”
“……”
“Ha, don’t make me laugh. Don’t get it twisted; just because you look decent doesn’t mean you’re a tragic heroine. You’re just an expensive whore.”
Lily was aware that she was no longer special, but the man’s words severely wounded her pride.
Her pride was already hanging by a thread; the injury was even deeper.
So, Lily attempted not to act in a way that would delight the man as an act of rebellion.
“Are you trying to rebel? Ha, this will be interesting. Let’s see how long you can last.”
With that, he injected a syringe into his arm.
Twitching.
It felt as if a bug was crawling inside her body along with the drug.
Disgusting, repulsive.
The man above her who was groping her and rocking his hips felt like a bug too.
It was utterly revolting.
But then,
“Ew… Haah… Ahhh!!”
All that disgust turned into pleasure.
Her mind flooded with ecstasy.
Lily could no longer resist.
She was, after all, covered in overwhelming pleasure once again.
After a short encounter that was even less than the last,
“……”
Buried in the bed, Lily shed tears with dead eyes.
She wanted to resist but hated herself for being unable to fight against the pleasure.
“Oh my, your eyes are completely gone. I paid good money for you, and it would be a problem if you broke so soon.”
Seeing Lily cry, the man chuckled.
“Well, don’t worry too much just because things didn’t go as planned. It’s a natural thing; a person can’t resist pleasure.”
His words were meant to comfort her, but they didn’t reach Lily’s heart at all.
They only made her feel more miserable.
To her, not being able to endure even pleasure meant she wasn’t a special person at all.
As she cried, morning came.
Lily, in the room where the man had left, spent the time blankly staring.
She hated this place filled with nothing but bad memories, but now she had nowhere to return to.
Was she destined to spend her life as the man’s plaything?
“I… won’t accept that.”
Just the thought of it made her sick.
The item around her neck also had a tracking spell attached to it.
Not to mention, she couldn’t even die if she wanted to, so there was nowhere to escape.
While feeling hopeless and crying, it was then.
“Ahahaha, hello?”
A woman suddenly appeared in the room that had been empty.
What did she care about how she had entered or why she was wearing such a suspicious hood? Lily was too exhausted to care.
But even though Lily did not greet her, she continued to talk.
Most of it was questions.
Asking for her name, what she had been doing until now, and whether she felt something from her.
Though Lily was blankly shedding tears in response to the woman’s barrage of questions, she eventually found herself speaking.
“Can you tell me why you were crying?”
“…Well, that is─”
Eventually, the persistent questioning made her reluctantly open up.
Or maybe she had wanted to vent.
And as Lily recounted her experiences,
“Ahaha, I see.”
The woman burst out laughing, as if she had heard an amusing story.
“…Are you laughing at me?”
“No, no, I’m just amused.”
“What’s so funny?”
When Lily glared at the woman, she smiled and said.
“It’s funny that you don’t even realize that you have become the special existence you always wanted.”
At that, Lily asked blankly.
“…Special, existence? Me?”
“Yeah, you’re not an ordinary human; you’re a special existence.”
With that, the woman brought her hand to Lily’s neck.
Suddenly, the choker that had been tightly fastened around her neck disappeared into the woman’s hand.
As she stared at it dumbfounded, the woman whispered softly to Lily.
“You might not have realized it, but you have a special power sleeping within you.”
“A special… power.”
“Yeah, think intensely about what you want the most right now. What is it that you desire?”
At the woman’s words, Lily closed her eyes and thought.
What came to mind first was,
“I want to make them feel the same…”
A thought of revenge.
The desire to make those who had made her feel miserable experience the exact same misery.
In that moment, black things began to wriggle and crawl out from Lily’s body.
From her eyes, her nose, her mouth.
The things that had crawled inside her the previous night were now crawling out.
Bugs crawled out, wriggling.
“Wow… that’s quite a disgusting ability.”
“…Ahaha.”
The woman said it was disgusting, yet Lily couldn’t help but laugh.
She instinctively understood what this meant.
And that evening, Lily created her first doll.
“So, what does it feel like when the bugs crawl inside your body?”
“Ahh… It feels good… So good…”
The man who had bought Lily received countless bugs through every gap in his body, rolling his eyes in sheer ecstasy until he finally bled profusely and died.
“Hahaha… Truly, when it comes to pleasure, humans become worse than bugs.”
Lily laughed at the sight and stepped out onto the street.
Watching people follow her orders and crumble before pleasure was rather delightful.
Especially when those with beautiful appearances ended up like that.
Seeing beautiful things struggle against pleasure made her realize that she was not alone in her suffering.
No. At least compared to those pathetic creatures, she felt superior.
She felt that she was much more special, and for the first time, she felt her lost pride being filled.
“Lily… You are special. My special, precious child.”
“…This is boring.”
While playing with her dolls, she tried to explore other options, but found no emotions arose, so she immediately stopped.
In the past, perhaps, but now, hearing such things from something worse than bugs had no meaning.
From that day on, Lily became obsessed with making beautiful things into dolls.
She realized that by deeming everyone else lesser than herself, she could make herself feel relatively special.
That was the only way to fill her now-diminished pride and empty heart.
*
“I… didn’t want to remember that.”
Upon recalling an old memory after a long time, Lily muttered unpleasantly.
“…Ah! This is all that damn woman’s fault! I’ll definitely get my revenge later—”
And just as she clenched her fist, thinking of the person who had made her recall such bad memories,
“…Huh?”
Something entered the view of the beasts laid out near the hideout.
A burning bird and a starry sky.
And among the humans sitting on top of it, she sensed the presence of her sworn enemy, whom she had just been cursing.
“What the hell? Are they seriously coming to attack me?”
What a ridiculous thought, Lily muttered.
“Just perfect. This time, I’ll make a doll that obeys me without question.”
With a twisted smile, she scratched her burn mark.
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