Pherenike - Chapter 38

The man she loathed had left his seed trickling down her legs. She looked at it as if she were about to vomit.

“…I’ll enter the water with a clean body.”

Yes. She had to be cleansed immediately. He had to disappear from inside her. The thought of possibly conceiving his child in Geotil gnawed at her. The sickness she felt on the return journey was likely due to anxiety about a possible pregnancy.

Already, something felt off in her body. Thoughts she had never considered before kept surfacing.

That’s why Pherenike thought of the worst. Like she was already carrying a child. Like she had already gone through despair and resignation. Yes, she thought about the child. About ways to terminate a pregnancy while it was still in the womb.

While conjuring such cold plans as a facade, she moved towards the curtain at the edge of the bath.

Her nervous fingers reached between her legs, where traces of him were visible.

Scratching away felt the same. It was the same nauseating feeling. The only hope was that the medicine she had swallowed so far had already ruined her womb. Even without the medicine, her body was already badly damaged.

The times Pherenike easily saved Actor’s men with her undying Althea had left many internal injuries in her body.

When using her Althea now, she felt a pain akin to suffocating, even though the goddess’s Althea was still abundant within her.

“Pherenike.”

“I don’t want anything left inside. You…”

“I know. Come to me.”

Hidden behind the curtain, the woman’s figure might have seemed like she was indulgently satisfying herself, but Actor had long since stopped to misunderstand it.

“Kybellaune.”

He called her formally, as if she were not his wife.

Sturdy arms pulled Pherenike’s waist from behind the curtain. His larger hands gently removed her thin fingers that were haphazardly scratching below.

Then his much longer and thicker fingers slowly probed below. Pherenike bit her lip as she weakly pushed him away. The tips of his fingers brushed and then gently scraped the inner walls down. Actor’s remaining traces were scraped off.

Showing it to her, he lazily rolled it between his fingers.

“It seems like you’ve already removed everything that was mine.”

“……”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

Since the beginning of their physical relationship, Actor noticed her occasionally behaving finicky like she had lost her sanity. She couldn’t hide her foolish self-loathing from him, even after already sleeping with him.

She knew he had caught her. There was no room for denial. It was natural, expected. After all, she married him for his brother, as he knew best. She couldn’t just flip her attitude overnight before such a man.

Time only dulled the sharpness in the air between them. Now, she seemed to have settled into her place, somewhat.

“You’re already clean.”

“……”

“Even if I torment you, even if I defile you.”

He seemed to think her finickiness was just a habit, not for Deucalion, not because she hated him.

She was a woman of high birth, status, and pride, so she might regard a man’s traces as unclean for a lifetime. Of course, Actor sometimes resented the sight of her scraping off his seed immediately after their affair.

He had mocked her once saying how comical that she, who seemed incapable of touching herself in such a manner even after death, was trying to cleanse herself by such a manner. It was a few years ago. Just once.

After that mockery, he mostly overlooked it. But there were also times he’d pin her down without a word right after.

Their third encounter earlier began just like that – because she had immediately removed his seed, as usual.

He was silent, but she knew he sometimes reacted twistedly to certain things.

“Do you not want a child yet?”

So this reaction was new.

He had gently removed his own traces from her that Pherenike considered ‘unclean’. He held her gently at a slight distance, and asked quietly. As if he had already understood what troubled her.

The man who had forcefully taken her with a ferocious face just earlier was nowhere to be seen, as if they were still in the forest on their way back to Lykke.

Like that night when he had tenderly held her as carefully as if he were holding a child and moved towards the water’s edge.

He had changed since that night.

Actor’s hand gently stirred inside her again. Pherenike grabbed his forearm and shook her head.

“This is the last time.”

“……”

“Look. There’s nothing left now.”

He calmly licked his fingertips, now only shining with her fluids.

Pherenike’s face contorted in a surge of emotion.

Actor lowered his head as if to kiss that distorted face, then pulled away without making contact.

“Pherenike. Did you know?”