I felt stiff.
And very, very short of breath, as though a crowd of people had been piled on top of . I also felt warm. Way too warm, like I was buried under a dozen blankets...
"Gaaa— Ahh!"
I jolted awake with a gasp. My eyelids flew open, and my blown-out pupils frantically swept around to study my surroundings, desperately trying to make sense of where the hell I was.
I was in a... room?
Everything around — the bed, the walls, even the roof — was made of crude, unpolished wood.
There was no mattress beneath , only so coarse cloth serving as a bedsheet, and even that felt unpleasantly rough against my bare skin.
Because the so-called bed was nothing more than a rigid platform of saplings lashed together over thick wooden logs. Uneven knots pressed straight into my spine through the thin, scratchy fabric.
To make matters worse, it didn’t seem like I was wearing anything except my underwear shorts.
But what left speechless, what truly left speechless, was the fact that there were two living and breathing people sprawled on top of !
One of them was a black-haired young man, undeniably a catch thanks to his annoyingly charming face and the washboard abs on full display since he was shirtless.
At least he had the decency to be wearing pants, which already made him more dressed than I was.
Then there was a pretty-faced girl with hair as orange as ripe tangerines, long and lush strands of which were splayed across my uncovered torso.
She was also modest enough to be wearing a loose beige shirt and slacks... though both those articles of clothing were bunched up in places, exposing far more skin than they probably intended to. Undoubtedly the result of a night filled with a lot of tossing and turning...
So that explained the suffocating heat, I supposed.
...But what it didn’t explain was why Michael fucking Godswill was wrapped around one side of , while Alexia goddamn Zynx was draped across the other?!
Or why she was using my chest as her personal bolster while his face was buried into my shoulder like it was the last safe haven on earth!
"What the— excuse !" I yelped like a chaste maiden whose chastity had suddenly beco a matter of public concern after a very confusing night.
I tried to sit up. Keyword: tried.
Alexia tightened her arms around my torso in her sleep, mumbling sothing incomprehensible as she burrowed her face deeper into my chest.
Michael, on the other hand, shifted and threw one long leg over my thigh like he was claiming territory.
I froze.
Slowly and horribly, I looked down at myself. My sleepy mind finally shook off the grogginess and caught up to the scandalous reality of the situation.
Two people. A girl and a boy. On . One on each side. Both breathing heavily. Both sound asleep. And both smiling in a way that suggested they were very, very content.
It was obvious what had happened here!
"...My dignity has been stolen," I concluded solemnly, a single tear sliding down the side of my face.
Aghh. What a tragic way to finally achieve my dream.
You see, as much of a life of debauchery as I had led in the past, there was still one thing I had never done.
A threeso!
To be clear, it wasn’t because I was incapable of pulling two girls at once... or a guy and a girl, in the case of a devil’s three-way — which I preferred to avoid but had no particular moral objections to, provided I remained the center of attention.
It also wasn’t a problem of persuasion. I don’t rember if I’ve ever told you this or not, but I was, and still am, considered ridiculously attractive.
There had never been a shortage of girls lining up to let be their ’mistake’ for the evening, all more than willing, so even begging, to fulfill whatever questionable kinks I happened to possess at the ti.
But sohow, so-fucking-how, the world always found a way to sabotage my pursuit of this fantasy.
Always!
Without fail!
And now, when it finally fulfilled it... it did so while I was unconscious!?
When I couldn’t even rember anything!?
I let out a long, mournful sigh and shoved aside the two idiots using as their body pillow. "Wake the fuck up, you predators!"
"Mmm... five more minutes..." Alexia murmured against my ribs. It tickled. She was pressed so firmly against that I could feel the steady thump of her heart through her chest.
"Nooo... wait... I mnghh still haven’t finished cooking..." Michael groaned into my shoulder, his grip on my leg tightening.
Apparently, even in his dreams, the man was a workaholic.
I rolled my eyes and tried to free my hands from under them... only to realize there was nothing on my right side to free.
"Oh, fuck... yeah," I muttered as a sharp ache flared near the place where Michael’s head rested.
I didn’t have a right arm to move.
Suddenly, mories of my battle against the God Who Eats Is, and its dramatic conclusion, ca flooding back into my mind.
I gazed down at my chest, and beneath the dense curtain of Alexia’s hair, an ugly scar was clearly visible.
I tried to sit up again, but only managed to pivot slightly, wedging myself upright by a miserable inch.
The star-shaped mark of raw tissue where the obsidian stake had pierced was a vivid indication that I should be a corpse right now.
My right shoulder ended in a clean stump. I had no doubt the rest of the arm was currently sinking into the cold depths of the Lake of Grief.
All at once, the weight of it all — Vahn’s tragedy, my conversation with Asmodeus, the myth he had told , and the Spirit King’s goal — crashed over like a bucket of ice water.
And yet, at the sa ti, I felt an inexplicable sense of relief.
Because at the very least... all of us were alive. Or so I hoped, considering how carelessly these two fools were sleeping on top of a recently dismbered man.
Okay. This was okay.
This was... acceptable. Very, very acceptable.
My head fell back against the wooden bed.
Drip. Drip. Drip—
Genuine tears began to fall from my eyes this ti. They slid down my temples and soaked into the scratchy cloth beneath .
I was alive.
I was really alive.
For a mont, I didn’t care about the missing limb or all the cosmic secrets I had started to unearth.
I was just so fucking happy.
If I had been religious, I would have been thanking a god right then.
...But since I wasn’t, I decided to thank the only person who truly deserved my gratitude.
myself!
"Very good, Samael~!" I cooed to myself, closing my eyes. "Ahh~! You’re so good, Sam! There’s no one better than you! Never let anyone tell you otherwise! Say it with now! Say I’m the best! Yes! Yes! I’m the best! I’m the best!"
Okay, so maybe I was going a little crazy, so what?!
"Yeeaaah! You are the best! That’s right! You areeee!" I continued, cheering for myself like a deranged one-man stadium. "Fuck the Spirit King! Fuck the gods! There’s no one above you! No one—"
I don’t know how long I would have continued that if, at that exact mont, the tarp draped over the empty door fra of the room to act as a separation curtain hadn’t been whipped aside with sudden force.
I stopped mid-cheer.
My one remaining hand, which had been pumping the air in a victory dance, froze.
My eyes locked onto the figure standing in the doorway, and in that instant, I deeply wished the God Who Eats Is had just gone ahead and finished the job.
Because the person who had entered the room was Juliana.
She stood frozen in the doorway, her snowy white hair tied back in a ssy bun, dark circles beneath her eyes suggesting she hadn’t slept properly in forever.
Her gaze scanned my tear-streaked, ecstatic face... then fell to the tangle of limbs pinning to the bed.
She stared at . Then at Michael’s face buried in my shoulder. Then at Alexia’s orange hair spread across my chest like a tangerine rug.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
After a few uncomfortably long seconds, Juliana slowly began to back away, carefully drawing the curtain closed behind her.
"Juli, wait! It’s not what it looks like!" I squeaked, desperately trying to shove Michael’s face away. "I an— okay, it is what it looks like in terms of proximity, but there was no— I was unconscious! I don’t know what happened! I’M THE VICTIM HERE!"
But my Shadow didn’t wait.
"JULI! GIVE ONE MORE CHANCE!"
The curtain fell back into place.
"DON’T LET THIS BE THE LAST THING YOU REMBER!"
Though my scream achieved what my thrashing could not.
Michael bolted upright, his eyes wide and unfocused, nearly headbutting in the process. "The dough! It’s rising— wait, what?"
He blinked down at his shirtless torso, at his scar, then at , and finally at Alexia.
"Sam?" he croaked. "Why are you screaming? And why am I... why are we..."
"Because you’re a predator, Michael!" I hissed, shoving his leg off . "You call yourself chivalrous but this is your true nature, you fiend! The first chance you got to take advantage of my vulnerable, passed-out, irresistible body, you committed unspeakable acts to ! Didn’t you?! Is this what they teach you at the Academy? Tactical snuggling?!"
"Huh?" He looked genuinely baffled, his hand going to his hair.
Then his rationality seed to click into place, and his face shifted from sleepy to painfully solemn.
"Sam! You’re awake... The Ring... it worked! You’re really awake!"
"I am! And I was having a very intimate mont of self-appreciation before you and redhead over here destroyed my reputation!"
Alexia let out a mumbling breath. "Mmm... shut up... too loud..."
I finally smacked her in the head.
THWACK—!!
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