It happened before Belle understood what was going on, yet it was such a slow, sluggish movement. The world tilted, and her back hit the soft bed. Belle found herself looking up from the bottom of a dark valley in the sheets, Adonis pinning her arms from above with his elbow. If she wanted, she could have pushed him away at any time.
A hollow feeling overcame her as she realized.
He’ll never touch me with his hands.
It was a realization that saddened her. His hands were forever covered in the gloves of his curse.
“Stop it.”
Belle glared at him severely. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to hold back the tears.
Adonis peered silently into Belle’s eyes.
Is he trying to possess me with his cold eyes…? she wondered.
The lonely patter of rain reached Belle’s ears.
“Are you scared?” Adonis asked, his voice so chilling it cut into Belle’s heart.
Adonis’s eyes were full of the same frigid darkness she saw when he’d trampled the black petals earlier.
“Do my hands scare you?”
A bloodcurdling aura hung over him when he asked her that question, as if to say that, depending on her answer, he might use those same hands to choke her. Belle thought that if he did try to reach for her neck, she would have to start resisting for real. She had the brute strength to lift Runding, so she should easily be able to snap Adonis’s arms and strangle him instead.
It made her feel wretched. Everything about it filled her with sorrow.
“I ain’t scared of you!” she said, her words brimming with genuine anger—enough to want to kill him right then and there. Yet even so, a lethargic pain spread throughout her whole body. Her hands were going numb, like she couldn’t muster any strength.
“Then…”
“I don’t love you,” Belle said.
“What…?”
“We’re not in love yet. I don’t love you, and you don’t love me.”
For a moment, Adonis’s expression warped in pain.
“…I don’t care. I never had a Motif like that for as long as I’ve lived.” Adonis’s bare hands slowly moved down to Belle’s collar. “I never even considered it. Is there anyone—”
“Adonis!” Belle growled, low and rebuking.
But it was drowned out all too easily by Adonis’s scream.
What…?!
It took Belle a moment to realize what she’d just heard.
There had been the sound of fabric tearing, followed by Adonis’s voice:
“Is there anyone else but me who’d see you as a woman?!”
It felt like burning tongs had just been thrust into her ears.
What just happened…?!
Her eyes widened, and something fluttered through the air, reduced to tattered shreds. A chilly breeze touched her skin. The youth’s—the man’s face had disappeared from her field of vision, and she was looking up at the filthy ceiling.
Is this…pain…? What is this…?
The man’s smell seemed to melt together with a sour stench, filling her nostrils. In an instant, Belle was overcome by a feeling like her sanity was hanging by a thread, ready to snap at any moment. But where had it come from?
She was too nervous to even lift a finger. It felt like if she so much as stirred, something awful would pounce on her. Yet despite that, her mind felt terribly numb, which then spread to the rest of her body.
Everything’s falling apart…
Some part of her heart appeared now, after the fact, to whisper if there was any reason to feel this hurt.
You already knew this. That’s right. It’s only natural…
Smooth. Lacking any racial signifiers. Other. Featureless. In both her face and her body. Only ever seen as a curiosity at best.
That’s who I am…
A voice rose in her mind, teasingly calling her “Featureless.” She couldn’t remember who had said it or when. The image of a beautiful songstress flashed through her mind. Who was that beautiful woman?
Oh. It’s so quiet…
Adonis suddenly put his cheek close to Belle’s face. He’d already let go of his grip on her arms. Belle’s dazed silence, however, stood for neither resistance nor acceptance. Adonis one-sidedly took it as consent, though, and brought his forehead closer.
Belle bit her lips unconsciously, and Adonis’s lips traced her closed ones in vain. They then crawled down to her neck, and from there, lower.
The singed smell in her nose suddenly grew stronger. For a fleeting moment, Belle saw her clothes decay out of the corner of her eye. The fabric dried, unraveled, and broke apart, revealing her supple bosom. The absent thought that she, too, had breasts, crossed Belle’s mind like it was all happening to someone else.
Her nipples stood upright, exposed to the cold air, their pink hue symbolizing they were indeed a part of her body. The man pressed his red lips to them softly, toying with them. His pointed, rough tongue—a characteristic of his race—slipped out from between his lips, slowly licking the entirety of her breast.
Each time he licked her, a stabbing pain went through Belle’s mind, accompanied by an emotion she couldn’t define. But even that soon melted into her fading consciousness, and she felt nothing.
Some part of her mind whispered that he knew women. That he’d touched many women before, not out of any goal, but to quench a thirst. And now he was doing the same to her.
And I feel nothing…
He dragged his tongue across her body, kissed her neck, then moved down to her shoulders, her chest, and her stomach. As he did, Adonis tore apart the bedsheets and covered his hands with them.
It struck Belle as a horrifically obscene act. He touched Belle’s arms through the fabric of the sheets, tracing her shoulders before roughly grabbing her breasts, only to suddenly let go. As the sheets crumbled away, he wrapped a new piece of cloth around his hand and sluggishly resumed probing Belle’s body.
Oh, Belle thought. He’s touching me with his lips because he’s afraid of touching people with his hands.
She felt like her tears would leak out any second now.
That’s the only reason he has…for kissing me.
It constantly felt like her body had just remembered the discomfort it was in and was about to scream out in agony. Each time Adonis moved over Belle, the strange image of countless silver needles flying about crossed her mind. It made her body squirm and jolt, but she was powerless to even stop that, and all sensation was gone behind the haze of numbness hanging over her. At this point, there wasn’t any clothing left to cover Belle’s body.