I slowly parted my lips.
So, a nightmare. He was asking if I had a nightmare I wanted to forget.
I was about to answer that I did, but my voice wouldn't come out. Xenon's lips were too close; if I tried to speak, his hot breath would inevitably reach me first.
While I stood frozen, speechless, it was Xenon who moved first.
"Lie down for now."
The lips that seemed about to touch moved away.
Xenon, who had stepped back as if to ask when he had gotten so close, pushed me toward the bedding. Propelled by his force, I plopped down onto the bed in a daze and frowned.
It was because I had just realized that Xenon's tone a moment ago was as if he were handling a child.
"Like coaxing a disobedient child……."
Just as I raised my head to express my disgruntled feelings, Xenon gripped the headboard with one hand and bent over me.
"If you desire something else, say so now."
Perhaps because he was looking down from above, Xenon's shadowed face felt peculiarly unfamiliar.
If Xenon pushed me just a little like this, I would be helplessly pushed back, and our positions would transform into a rather indecent shape.
As I was just blinking and staring up at Xenon, he tilted his head.
"Or should I take a hint?"
It was an almost bland question.
With my mouth agape, looking at Xenon, I climbed onto the bed with the most composed face I could muster.
As I slipped under the covers, lying down with only my head peeking out, Xenon, who had been watching intently, let out a deflated laugh.
"Lady Anelli, you seem quite experienced at times, yet you are oddly adorable."
Xenon, who said this, was usually so clumsy yet occasionally brazen to a surprising degree.
'Perhaps the story about me being his first love is a lie.'
With a sulky expression, I forced myself to speak nonchalantly.
"If we delay unnecessarily, you'll get tired too."
"Staying up one night won't be a big deal. Though, you must be tired, Lady Anelli."
"What? Why would I……."
Unthinkingly about to question him, I soon closed my mouth. Xenon chuckled as if he had expected that, his face relaxing as he sat down beside me.
"Was this nightmare similar to the previous ones?"
"……No."
I pulled the blanket up to my chin. The sensation of being snugly buried in the soft blanket wasn't bad.
Of course, that wasn't all. Xenon's gaze, looking down at me from close by, calmed my unsettled heart.
It was absurdly ridiculous. To be so frightened by mere illusions. To shrink like this, startled by that nonsensical dream of being left alone in a vanished world.
I was even ashamed to explain it in detail to Xenon.
"The Rusalka's final attack was the problem, wasn't it?"
Surprisingly, Xenon hit the mark in one go.
My eyes widened involuntarily, and he clicked his tongue softly as if he had known.
"How did you know?"
"I said your expression was bad. What kind of dream was it to make you like that? Did the Rusalka transform into some trashy human and spout nonsense again?"
"……Maxel didn't appear."
It seemed he had naturally expected me to talk about Maxel. Xenon raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Staring at Xenon's face, I blurted out.
"This time, it was imitating you."
"Me?"
"It put a sword in my hand and told me to stab it."
To be precise, it induced a situation where I had to stab it.
Groping through my memory, I sporadically repeated the Rusalka's words.
"It said I had allowed the extinction of all living things. Ah, it also called me a monster. Said I would fall ill and die alone."
The more I spoke nonchalantly, the more Xenon's expression changed moment by moment. His initially puzzled face later turned to shock.
"That insane Monster, using whose face to say such things……! So, did you kill it?"
His voice was as full of tremor as his violently shaking pupils.
With a placid face, I answered.
"I didn't stab it."
Xenon closed his lips with a subtle expression. After a brief silence, he asked in a lowered tone.
"……But wasn't it a situation where you had to stab it?"
"Right. The Rusalka imitating you had swallowed what I desired. I had to slit its belly open."
Xenon's face turned pale. Without a doubt, he had just imagined the exact situation I described.
Seeing Xenon's expression, I chuckled softly.
"But if I killed that thing resembling you, I……."
If I killed the Rusalka imitating Xenon, I felt I would be left alone in that desolate plain.
「You will end up alone, abandoned by everyone, and fall ill and die in loneliness.」
The Rusalka's whisper, filled with malice, came to mind.
That was what Lilia had said to me.
The words I heard from Lilia before being dragged to prison. The situation I faced when I ascended the execution platform. The dream was utterly fantastical yet subtly realistic.
The nightmare the Rusalka showed me was an ending I had already experienced once.
It seems I was still afraid of those things I thought were all in the past.
"In the dream, the Dullahans left me, and the only thing left by my side was the Rusalka imitating you."
Trailing off, I rubbed my cheek against the blanket.
Was it because the blanket was soft? Or because my whole body was warmly enveloped?
Or perhaps because of Xenon, who showed such interesting reactions yet never took his eyes off me.
My body, stiff with tension, relaxed languidly, and my sharply alert nerves felt like they were loosening.
"The dream I had from that Rusalka's final attack was the process of becoming utterly alone like that in a ruined world."
As I explained in a whisper-like small voice, Xenon narrowed his brow.
"Good thing we dried up that Rusalka's spawn."
"Yes."
"Rare Monster or not, they're things that should just be made extinct."
Xenon calmly reached out his hand. He naturally brushed back my disheveled hair.
As the hair clumsily obscuring my vision disappeared, Xenon's face came into clearer view.
"So how did you wake up in the end? You said you didn't slit its belly."
I knew that what was before me was a Rusalka imitating Xenon's appearance, and I knew that even if I killed it immediately, I wouldn't be left utterly alone.
Yet, I couldn't put strength into the hand holding the sword. At first, I was truly at a loss.
It was terrifying how, more than wandering unaware it was a dream, I couldn't muster the courage to wake up even knowing it was a dream.
"You don't necessarily have to slit the belly to get what's inside."
A flicker of puzzlement passed through Xenon's eyes. I gave him a slight, squint-eyed smile.
"You just have to make it vomit everything out."
"How……."
Xenon couldn't continue. It was because I reached my finger toward his twitching lips.
Xenon had leaned his upper body toward me, listening intently. So I could stretch my arm and touch his face.
Tracing the creases of his lips caught on my fingertip, I delved a little further inside.
"Here, like this, I put my finger in. I forced it to vomit."
I felt the moist, damp inside of his lips. Since Xenon had his lips slightly parted, it wasn't difficult to stroke the smooth inner flesh.
Xenon, who had been obediently offering his lips, began to move when my fingertip bumped against his firm lower teeth.
His lips parted a little wider, and then he gently bit my finger. Two knuckles of the finger that had been teasing from the outside were sucked in.
My shoulder shuddered involuntarily from the sensation brushing between my defenseless fingers.
I ultimately couldn't bear the ticklishness and quickly pulled my hand out. But before I could move it far from Xenon's lips, my hand was caught by him.
"……To think you'd be this fearless."
Xenon, who had lightly licked his lower lip, sighed with narrowed eyes. He showed no intention of letting go of my hand.
Frankly, it was all too obvious to me. For someone pretending to be composed and drawing out his voice, Xenon's gaze had become quite intent.
"Should I be afraid of you?"
"Of course not. But I am a little afraid."
"Of me?"
"Yes."
Xenon gently kissed the hand he was firmly holding. His lips pressed or nibbled on my fingers, the back of my hand, my palm, and such as he pleased.
A ticklish sensation traveled up my arm and spread throughout my body.
I let out a small laugh without realizing it, and Xenon spitefully bit the tip of my thumb.
"I am afraid of myself too."
His low voice sounded like a confession. Letting go of the hand he was holding, he this time grabbed my wrist.
Just as I thought he was pressing his thumb firmly against the inner wrist where my pulse was beating, his lips soon touched there.
A damp trace remained where his tongue tip had brushed as if tasting the skin. Upon contact with the air, the sensation of that part felt particularly pronounced.
Letting out a trembling breath, I spoke.
"Your breathing… seems like it would help with sound sleep."
At those words, Xenon, who had been burying his lips against the inside of my arm, laughed lowly. Then he suddenly leaned in.
"Then I suppose I can let you hear more."
A large hand burrowed into the hair at my temple, gently cradling my cheek and ear.
Our parted lips met. It was a somewhat hurried movement, as if all the previous consistently relaxed and slow pace had been a pretense.
Each time our rubbing lips slipped, shallow moans of unknown origin were heard. That guttural-like sound heightened my mood and spurred the pounding of my heart.
It was pressed so strongly that I truly worried I might be devoured. Only when my lips grew numb to the point of losing sensation did I finally get a chance to catch my breath.
Of course, pulling apart didn't mean we had moved far away.
From a distance close enough to touch again at any moment, Xenon, with a flushed face, let out a groan.
"Lady Anelli, you are difficult."
The words he barely uttered in a husky voice were oddly mixed with complaint.
Gazing at his trembling eyelids from up close, I raised my arm.
As I swept back the messily disheveled red hair, the smooth forehead and eyebrows hidden by the curly locks were briefly revealed before disappearing again.
The once cool room now felt hot. Or perhaps my body temperature had risen too much.
My rapidly beating heart showed no sign of calming down. To a degree where I could no longer pretend not to know.
Ah, I have grown weak again.
Even after experiencing the foolish and stubborn Anelli Roam, I have once more.
"Emotions will become a weakness, and they might return as a dagger at a critical moment."
Xenon frowned. As I gently rubbed it with my thumb, Xenon soon relaxed his expression and obediently softened his look.
I laughed hollowly. Pretending to be docile, this man was seducing me.
"But that's not so bad."
Perhaps it might even be a good thing.
I couldn't utter the last words.
Because with our lips urgently meeting again, I was soon left breathless.