## Chapter 84 – Changing Emotions
Back in his room, Twenty-Fifth locked the door tight and tossed his clothes haphazardly.
The pleasure Rowe gave was nothing more than a facade, built layer upon layer with loneliness and longing mixed in.
He wasn’t some low-grade male who would accept the touch of any woman, not his beloved, just to satisfy his raging lust.
He couldn’t betray the people he loved by getting caught up in a vortex of carnal desire.
As if to prove it, Twenty-Fifth stood frozen in place and began to masturbate.
The meaningless, cold repetition of movements didn’t last long. Even after just a few motions, it was clear.
Masturbation, with its weak stimulation, had long lost its original meaning.
The pleasure she had just given him was in a realm he couldn’t reach on his own.
It was the truth, an inescapable path with a predetermined answer.
Even so, Twenty-Fifth repeated in his head, over and over.
I can’t accept it, I can’t accept this. I can’t accept this outcome.
Only two women could give freedom to his body, to the body that was slowly rotting away in the small world he harbored, and freely release the pleasure it held.
There was no room for Rowe in that place.
As he repeated those thoughts, Twenty-Fifth settled into a corner of the darkened room, endlessly fiddling with the two rings, the last gifts he had received from them, lost in a deep reverie with no end in sight.
●
Twenty-Fifth, having slept poorly, left the tower with dark shadows under his hollow eyes, and for some reason, Rowe followed behind him.
It was rare for Rowe, who usually appeared leisurely after the hunt was over, to follow from the beginning.
Before Twenty-Fifth could even speak in surprise, Rowe examined his complexion and asked in a worried tone.
“What’s wrong with your face…? You look more tired than usual….”
Her cold fingers, moving slowly, touched Twenty-Fifth’s face.
The moment her touch landed, the memories of yesterday, which he had barely forgotten at the cost of exhaustion, rushed back in an instant.
Twenty-Fifth tightened his lower abdomen and tried his best to calm his lower body, which was about to have blood rush to it.
Is she really asking because she doesn’t know?
Seeing Rowe’s innocent expression, which showed no hint of lust, made him even more drained.
He didn’t even feel like pushing away her hand, which was stroking his cheek as she pleased, as he usually would.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Twenty-Fifth said, relaxing his body and answering honestly.
Important details were missing, but he couldn’t exactly say, ‘I can’t get the handjob Rowe gave me out of my head,’ in front of her, could he?
The worry disappeared from Rowe’s face like snow melting, confirming that there was no particular reason.
Like snowflakes clinging to the world even as spring arrived, Rowe’s concern for Twenty-Fifth hadn’t completely disappeared either.
Rowe continued to stroke Twenty-Fifth’s cheek, speaking again.
“If you’re tired, go to bed early today. Hunting can wait, and if it’s urgent, I can take care of it….”
The moment Rowe said that, Twenty-Fifth frantically waved his hands, declining.
“It’s okay!”
He had only seen Rowe personally deal with a monster once, shortly after arriving in District 2.
A mangled corpse, flattened beyond recognition, with shattered bones sticking out, and organs scattered everywhere as a result.
The trees were covered in blood, and the festival of pink, slimy entrails was still vivid in his mind.
Twenty-Fifth had vomited everything he had inside on the spot, and even then, he couldn’t bring himself to touch his favorite meat for a while.
Rowe carefully examined Twenty-Fifth’s still dark expression, then made a suggestion in a quiet voice.
“If you don’t want to hunt… would you like to take a walk with me today…?”
“A walk? Can we really?”
She had never suggested going for a walk before.
The forest, teeming with monsters, was a problem, but Rowe herself rarely took personal time in the first place.
Without waiting for Twenty-Fifth’s answer, Rowe started walking ahead and said, “Come on, let’s go.”
Following the sweet scent flowing from her pipe, he walked closely behind Rowe.
Her body, which usually evoked no emotion, was different now, perhaps because he had briefly faced her naked yesterday.
His gaze inadvertently went to her voluptuous hips below her slender waist, and her breasts, more than 70% exposed thanks to the clothes that barely covered her nipples.
Once he had recognized someone as a woman, it was not easy to erase them from his mind.
Twenty-Fifth lowered his gaze and began to walk, staring only at Rowe’s shoes sinking deep into the mud.
Erase it, erase this lewd thought from my head.
Twenty-Fifth pinched his thigh tightly, barely holding back the painful groan that escaped between his teeth.
But Rowe, as if she had eyes in the back of her head, thwarted Twenty-Fifth’s efforts.
“Why are you pinching your poor thigh…?”
Twenty-Fifth, startled, took his hand off his thigh and blurted out a random excuse, mentioning a bug that wasn’t there.
“There was a bug.”
“Is that so?”
After the brief exchange, the two resumed walking.
The forest, densely packed from the entrance of District 2, didn’t even have the sound of common birds.
More common than ordinary flowers were the bones of other races, the half-eaten corpses of animals, and the occasional death throes signaling the end of life.
In many ways, the atmosphere was different from the mountain behind Acer’s castle.
It wasn’t a good forest for a walk, but how long had it been since he had walked around so peacefully, looking around?
He looked around at his surroundings with a feeling quite different from when he was hunting.
As he walked along the mountain path through the bushes, something caught Twenty-Fifth’s eye.
A mushroom with a dark brown color, about the size of an adult male’s thumb.
It was a mushroom that often appeared in the meals Rowe made herself.
He remembered it as a fragrant mushroom with a good, crunchy texture, so it was one of Twenty-Fifth’s favorite ingredients.
Could he use it for today’s meal? As he thought that and reached out to pick the mushroom, Rowe immediately stopped him.
“That’s a mushroom that will kill you if you eat it.”
Twenty-Fifth withdrew his hand, which had been about to pick the mushroom, and immediately straightened his bent knees, rising from his spot.
Rowe came to his side, pointed to the mushroom with her finger, and added an explanation.
“You might mistake it because they look similar, but if you look at the end here, it’s a little different, isn’t it…?”
“It is.”
Rowe gently stroked Twenty-Fifth’s hair and said, “It would be a problem if something happened to you because you ate something like this.”
Of course, it would be a problem; Twenty-Fifth clearly had an owner.
It was only polite to return something as it was after using it.
After giving a brief warning, Rowe resumed walking.
They walked and walked, but there was no end in sight.
The deeper they went, the more the sunlight gradually disappeared, and only a thick darkness closely followed behind.
Even when he looked around, the scenery didn’t change. The leaves were blackish, as if they had never existed from the beginning, and only the rough, outstretched branches greeted Twenty-Fifth.
How much further did they have to walk before it ended?
Just as he was starting to get tired, Rowe finally opened her mouth.
“Um… let’s rest here for a bit.”
“Here?”
Twenty-Fifth asked back in a puzzled voice, looking around.
The tall trees that had stretched high into the sky were lying down, their massive bodies obscuring the surrounding view, as if they had been violently shattered by something, and there were no suitable stumps to sit and rest on.
He could rest if she told him to, but why in this place?
As if blowing away the questions Twenty-Fifth had in his mind, Rowe gestured, and the rough cross-section of the tree was instantly cut, revealing its smooth flesh, and the cumbersome trees obscuring the view were all compressed into small pieces with a cracking sound, concealing their appearance.
“Is this okay…?”
Rowe finished speaking and sat on the stump, crossing her legs and putting her pipe in her mouth.
Twenty-Fifth sat opposite Rowe, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
The woman sitting in front of him wasn’t particularly good at talking either, and Twenty-Fifth had nothing to say to her.
Silence was approaching, but Twenty-Fifth was the only one who felt awkward. Rowe had a comfortable expression on her face as she smoked her pipe, her gaze lowered.
Looking at that expression, as if she were detached from the world and alone in another realm, he felt as if he would be drawn into her eyes without realizing it.
Twenty-Fifth shook his head from side to side to clear his mind, and looked around with a bored expression.
It was Rowe who broke the silence that seemed like it would last until the end of the walk.
She tapped her pipe against the stump, making a sound, and said to Twenty-Fifth, “Why don’t you take a look around nearby for a bit? If a monster attacks… it would ruin our walk.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He was getting tired of just sitting still. Twenty-Fifth got up from his seat and headed in the opposite direction from where they had come.
Although the sun didn’t shine properly in the forest, it wasn’t enough to obstruct his vision.
But the darkness itself evoked a fear that it held something within. With an expression clearly different from before, an expression filled with tension, Twenty-Fifth searched his surroundings thoroughly.
Fortunately, there was nothing unusual.
There were no traces of monsters, and the occasional animal cries sounded peaceful.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t had a proper rest due to the battles with monsters lately.
Thinking of enjoying the rest he had finally found, Twenty-Fifth stretched and returned to where Rowe was.
As if she had been waiting for Twenty-Fifth to return, Rowe called him with something hidden behind her back.
“Come here.”
As Twenty-Fifth approached, Rowe proudly revealed what she had been hiding behind her back.
A small flower crown made of red, yellow, and white flowers, something Twenty-Fifth had never seen before.
“What is this?”
“It’s a flower crown.”
Rowe raised the flower crown above Twenty-Fifth’s head, who had come right in front of her, and made a move to put it on him.
Was it because he hadn’t been able to sleep because of the thoughts about her acting as she pleased, regardless of his feelings?
His nerves, more sensitive than usual, made him see each of her actions as unpleasant.
The lust he had felt when he started the walk was, after all, just a false emotion built on loneliness.
“It’s okay,” Twenty-Fifth said in a cold tone, pushing away the flower crown she offered with the back of his hand.
But was it because his emotions were running high? He put more strength into his hand than usual, and as a result, the flower crown Rowe offered fell to the ground with a thud.
It was obvious since it was made by weaving flowers and grass, but the flower crown’s durability wasn’t very good.
The flower crown that fell to the ground scattered in all directions, and the fragile stem that connected the flowers broke.
“Ah….”
A small sigh flowed from her mouth a beat late as she looked at the flowers scattered on the ground. It was such a small voice that it would have been easily overlooked if you weren’t listening carefully.
He felt like he had done something terribly wrong.
A result of his emotions running ahead of his reason, Twenty-Fifth knelt on the ground with a flustered expression, picking up the scattered flowers one by one and apologizing to Rowe.
“I’m, I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t even grab the flowers properly because he was so flustered.
Rowe put her hand on Twenty-Fifth’s shoulder, who kept dropping the flowers, shook her head, and said in a bitter tone, “It’s okay, it’s okay…. It was purely my selfishness….”
Even at times like this, he sometimes resented her for not blaming others.
Why doesn’t she give him any room to hate her purely?
Why does she keep giving him reasons to look back at her?
Twenty-Fifth stared blankly up at her.
He couldn’t see her face properly because it was shaded, but she was bound to be making a sad expression.
The expression Twenty-Fifth made when he said harsh things to her from time to time, the expression that made Twenty-Fifth himself feel like he was sinking into a sea filled with sadness.
“Yeah… my selfishness….”
As she muttered those meaningful words, all the flowers she had woven turned black and crumbled like ash.
Twenty-Fifth looked at the flowers scattering like sand in his hands and reflected on his rash actions.
“Let’s go back.”
Unlike when they started the walk, he even felt like her shoulders were slightly drooping.
It was an atmosphere that made it difficult to even talk to her.
They returned to the tower without a word, and Twenty-Fifth was cautiously trying to head to his room on the lower floor.
But as always, Rowe called him to stop.
“Where are you going…? You still have work to do today.”
“Huh?”
He didn’t expect her to say that even in this situation.
Well, the bloodletting had never stopped for even a day.
Twenty-Fifth hesitantly entered her room, but what she wanted wasn’t bloodletting.
“I’m going to do the same thing as yesterday today, so take off your clothes.”
The first time is difficult, but the second time wasn’t.
However, he just couldn’t understand her saying that she was going to collect his semen even in this situation.
Does she know what this action means?
She probably doesn’t. That’s probably why she can do this even when their feelings for each other have cooled.
Twenty-Fifth complied with Rowe’s request, thinking of it as a simple experiment with no affection involved.
Unlike yesterday, Rowe grabbed his penis with a expressionless face that had lost interest and shook it quickly.
Unlike her expressionless face, her touch was definitely more skilled than yesterday.
Adjusting the pace, the subtle movements of her palm sweeping over the pleasurable areas, slightly closing her hand when stimulating the sensitive glans, giving stimulation and watching his reaction.
All of those actions were efficient movements to extract semen from his penis.
Rowe, who had made Twenty-Fifth ejaculate faster than yesterday, turned her back and said, “You can go now.”
Twenty-Fifth put on his clothes on the spot, bowed his head, and headed to his room.
He lay down on the bed after a long time.
Rowe’s bitter smile didn’t easily leave his head even when night came.
The sadness of others became a sharp dagger that mercilessly stabbed at his guilt, constantly tearing at his heart. He couldn’t fall asleep.
That wasn’t all.
His penis, which had just finished ejaculating with her hand, was still erect, as if it hadn’t been satisfied yet.
His penis, which had been trained through many sexual encounters, wouldn’t calm down easily with just one or two ejaculations.
He had already realized that his thirst couldn’t be quenched with his hands.
In fact, he vaguely felt the easiest way to quench this thirst.
Yes, it would be over if he asked Rowe upstairs.
If he went to Rowe and told her to use her breasts, genitals, and whole body, not just her hands, to extract semen from his body, she would do it without complaint. Maybe even more than that.
But he didn’t want to do that. It would definitely be good at first. He could relieve the lust that had been tormenting him for two years by just bowing his head for a moment.
But what about the pride, shame, and humiliation that would follow? If those emotions dominated his body, could he really endure it?
It was impossible; he knew better than anyone that if he, who had nothing to lean on, was caught up in a vortex of negative emotions, the end would be destruction.
That wasn’t the end of it.
Every time he thought of himself asking someone he hated so much, someone he had hurt today, to take care of his lust, he couldn’t stand it because it was disgusting.
Didn’t the fact that he was even having these thoughts mean that he had already allowed Rowe’s existence in one corner of his heart?
It was no different from betraying them.
Twenty-Fifth pulled the blanket over his head and went to bed, uttering a short curse that was unlike him.
May tomorrow be a better day than today.
May he be able to escape from these terrible emotions.
May he be able to be himself.
May he not forget himself.
Please, may he not forget them.
It was the only prayer that someone without power could offer before going to bed, and the answer he gave to his own existence.
