The One and Only Sami Chapter 57

Blink.

With great effort, I managed to lift my heavy eyelids. My vision was uncomfortable, blurry and swollen to the point where I could barely open my eyes.

The first thing I saw was the circular glow of a lamp. I stared blankly at the light for a moment before a short realization struck me. Ah. It’s night.

Is it really okay for a person to faint this many times in a single day? Every time I lost consciousness and opened my eyes again, my mind felt like a white, empty void.

Something was definitely broken in my head. Earlier, it felt like my brain was being scorched from the inside out, and it terrified me. That sensation of being slowly nibbled away, sucked dry, prodded, and burned…

“Ah…”

Slowly, I recalled exactly what—or who—was the culprit behind those sensations.

I didn’t blush, tremble with shame, or tear up. I just stared vacantly at the lamplight with a dazed expression. Both my focus and my thoughts were nothing but soft, indistinct clouds.

I couldn’t even fully process what had happened to me. I knew I had been pushed to the point of losing consciousness, but in the end, the only things I remembered were my reason flying out the window as I screamed and begged.

Wait, did that actually happen?

That pleasure—the kind that made me feel like I was literally losing my mind, like I was going insane—felt cruelly, hauntingly surreal.

“Ugh…”

It wasn’t just my head; my body felt sluggish too. I felt completely numb from the waist down and wanted to reach out and touch myself to check, but lying there on the bed, I couldn’t move a single finger.

Searching through the fragments of my memory, I remembered crying while soaking and staining the bedding where the Master usually slept. My skin, drenched in sweat and fluids, had burned hot, and the thick scent of a sexual encounter had filled the bedroom.

But now, I felt the touch of clean sheets without a hint of dampness. The bedroom didn’t smell of anything untoward, either. Only two or three wisps of pale smoke, as if from incense, swirled in thin, gentle coils across my line of sight. A sweet, fragrant aroma spread subtly through the air.

The room had been tidied up so perfectly, as if nothing had happened. This only made my memory feel even more like a fading dream.

Was it all just a hallucination?

I stirred slightly. My waist was too weak to let me sit up, but I wanted to at least move my hands. No matter how hard I tried to open my eyes, my vision wasn’t what it used to be; I wanted to touch my face to see just how swollen they were.

“…Hm?”

Suddenly, the bed dipped. I turned my stiff neck to the side and saw white fur fluttering like waves.

“Akum?”

Following the white lion, a large black paw stepped onto the bed with a soft thud. As expected, Ratun was there too. They must have been waiting under the bed the whole time, only hopping up once they noticed I was stirring.

Ratun and Akum each claimed a side of my waist—though they were far larger than me—and sprawled out on their bellies across the bed.

As I looked up at the beasts’ massive faces with just my eyes, they nudged my cheeks a few times with their noses. They were hot and damp. Their warm breath tickled my skin.

“That tickles…”

‘H-hic, it tickles, it tickles… I want to scratch it…’

I froze mid-motion, just as I was about to rub my cheek against their fluffy faces.

I had begged and pleaded using those words so many times that they had become carved into my mind. Even a short sentence uttered out of happiness because my favorite animals were cuddling me instinctively brought back the memory of my desperate entreaties.

“…”

I swallowed hard without realizing it. My throat hurt as if it were tearing open.

As my body slowly regained sensation, reality began to take hold of me again. I buried my cheek against the two purring beasts guarding my side.

Oh… the memories are all coming back…

I felt like burying my face deep into their manes and staying there. I desperately wanted to run away from the flashbacks that kept bubbling up, completely ignoring my feelings.

As I let out a sigh while rubbing my face against the ticklish manes, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

“Wait, if you guys are here…”

I muttered in a voice that was terribly hoarse. No matter how much the Master cherished his pets, they needed his ‘permission’ to enter the bedroom, let alone climb onto the bed. Which meant…

“Lying in bed with two other males while I’m right here. I think you need a bit of a punishment.”

“Razard…”

As expected, it meant he was nearby.

I shifted my gaze toward the sound and saw Razard sitting on the opposite windowsill, watching me.

On the window frame where he sat was an incense burner, its handle intricately carved with detailed patterns. Razard was breaking up hard, flat chunks of incense and dropping the pieces into the burner one by one. The charcoal inside must have been sufficiently heated, because as soon as he dropped them in, soft smoke began to rise through the grooves of the burner.

“Mm, almost done. Wait a moment.”

Saying that, Razard folded and intertwined his fingers in various ways. His fingers, with their elegantly prominent bone structure, created an even more mysterious silhouette as they curved into shapes I couldn’t understand.

Finally, he clasped his hands together and blew a light breath between them. At that moment, the pale smoke began to glow faintly, as if stars had been crushed and scattered into the air.

I just watched him blankly.

I thought he looked exactly like a Mage out of a fairy tale.

No, watching his sandy hair fluttering in the night breeze and his gold ornaments sparkling in the lamplight, he looked even more like a Mage than a real Mage would.

With the starry night sky behind him and the white, burning incense draped around him like a veil, how could I even describe Razard’s profile?

Right—it felt like a dream.

Even with my vision swollen and clumsy, I could feel the mystery of it. If I were to share this sentiment, Razard would probably give me a look of pure disapproval and say:

‘You might as well ask if I’m a Djinn.’

“You were supposed to sleep longer, but you woke up early. I’m surprised. You’re tougher than you look.”

He didn’t actually look surprised at all. If anything, he gave off an aura that was even calmer and more settled than usual.

I tried to wiggle my body, but it was no use. With my waist feeling like it had vanished and my body limp from exhaustion, I could barely even lift my head, let alone my torso.

I gave up and buried my head back into the pillow.

“Um… how long was I out…?”

“About half a day? You actually woke up too early. Just stay lying down.”

“Razard.”

“Go back to sleep, Sami.”

Razard closed the lid of the incense burner and gauged the direction of the wind. He reached his hand out the arched window and adjusted the burner to catch the breeze. After glancing at the stars in the night sky for a moment, he hopped down from the windowsill.

He walked toward the bed where I lay. With a light click of his tongue, the massive beasts that had been warming my sides retreated.

“I got a bit carried away and pushed you pretty hard. It must have taken a toll on your body.”

Razard reached his hand toward my face. Even though I was used to his touch by now, I instinctively winced. I squeezed my eyes shut. Perhaps because of my reaction, his fingertips paused near my face for a moment before he gently stroked my closed eyelids with his thumb.

“Your body needs to recover while you sleep, so lie still.”

I just nodded silently. To be honest, my head was still so foggy that I had no intention of being stubborn about getting up.

It was only then that I started to think, ‘Why did Razard treat me so harshly again?’

“…What about… the Marut?”

“Ah.”

That was the reason he had pushed my body to the point of fainting with those terrible tools. Razard reached into his clothes. He held something up close to my eyes so I could see it clearly.

“I haven’t set it in a ring yet, but…”

A black gem, polished into a sharp square, glittered between Razard’s fingers.

I remembered that Marut. It said it felt jealousy and envy and would act out of spite. So this is what it looks like as a gem… My rounded eyes stared intently at the jewel.

Even if Razard hadn’t explained it, I would have known. The piercing scent of acacia made it abundantly clear that this was the Marut.

It was a Djinn that had demanded harsh desires, but strangely, I didn’t hate or dislike it.

Since it had ended up turning into a gem, it felt silly to be angry at a stone that couldn’t even talk back.

Instead, I felt a little sorry for it.

‘You, too, are destined to become us soon.’

‘We are simply you. You, when you are not held by that fire.’

Was it because every Marut I met said things like that? I didn’t know why they said such things, but I felt a strange, inexplicable pity for it.