By Zephyria 
Together, we brushed the dirt off the tombstone and went back inside. The sun was starting to set, so Aska decided to brew one more cup of tea with some tea leaves he’d somehow acquired before leaving.
Thankfully, this one wasn’t as bitter as the first.
“You said you read that book earlier, right?”
“The one about stitching? Yeah. Why?”
“Do you understand what it’s about? There were a lot of strange sentences.”
I asked, recalling the odd grammar and word choices. Aska tilted his head, seemingly not having read it very closely.
“Isn’t it a book about sewing?”
“Well, yes, but…”
I flipped through the book again and said, “There’s something similar to what I heard in my dream the other day.”
“Dream?”
I described the scenes from my dream to Aska: the bizarre figure and the Magical creatures gathered under a crimson sky, chanting incomprehensible words.
“Now that I think about it, it seemed like some kind of ritual. When they finished speaking, the skin of the long-haired person in the center started peeling off. Is that magic?”
“Oh…”
Aska nodded, seemingly impressed by my words. He seemed intrigued, but his reaction was lukewarm. I narrowed my eyes and looked at Aska.
“Didn’t you say you’ve been having strange dreams too?”
“Not recently.”
“What kind of dreams did you have?”
Aska seemed reluctant to talk about it, but he eventually opened his mouth under my gaze.
“I had something similar.”
“Similar? Similar or the same?”
It wasn’t a difficult question, but Aska hesitated for a long time before answering.
“The same.”
“…”
There were more than a few things that seemed suspicious. I had been leaving it alone, thinking he would tell me when the time was right, but I was starting to feel uneasy.
“What other dreams did you have besides that one?”
“Remember when we went to the Ruins the other day? There was a scene of some kind of surgery there…”
“Surgery?”
This was a scene I hadn’t seen. Aska nodded at my question and described the scene in great detail.
“They were transplanting Magical creature organs into people, or cutting off limbs and reattaching them. They were all wearing necklaces. But the Magical creatures looked a bit like people. We haven’t seen any Magical creatures that look like people among the ones we’ve seen so far.”
“…”
“They looked so much like people that you couldn’t tell them apart unless you looked closely. If it weren’t for the different smell, I would have thought they were people too.”
He spoke as if he had been there in person, not just in a dream. And how could he smell anything in a dream? I frowned, puzzled, then paused.
Come to think of it, I had a similar experience. I was affected by the surrounding environment, felt emotions, and experienced pain and hunger as if I had become Aska.
“Why are we having these dreams? Did we pick up something strange from entering the Ruins without permission?”
“Maybe?”
Aska also looked serious. But I couldn’t shake my suspicion. He was completely different from his usual self, when he would make a fuss over even the slightest abnormality in my body.
How could he be so uninterested when these unidentified phenomena kept happening? Every time we had this kind of conversation before, something strange would happen or the topic would naturally change, so we had never been able to finish the conversation.
Besides, he must have known that my gaze was unusual, but Aska didn’t say a word. If it were any other time, he would have glared at me and asked why I was staring at him like that.
I stared at Aska for a long time before finally sighing.
“What’s the worst that could happen besides dying?”
“Why would you die? Don’t say such unlucky things.”
He wouldn’t tell me anything, but he didn’t like it when I said I would die. I clicked my tongue and shook my head, then took a sip of tea. It tasted stronger as I kept adding tea leaves. It wasn’t sweet at first, but now it had a slightly sweet aftertaste…
“…”
I was drinking it in gulps because it was delicious when I was suddenly surprised. Sweet? I stared blankly at the tea before turning my head. Aska was frowning deeply, flipping through the pages of the book and reading.
“To mend the pale time, the first needle is needed. The first needle is buried in the middle of the dry sea, guarded by a scaled tail.”
It tasted so bitter earlier, but when did I start being able to taste things? Now that I think about it, I think I’ve been tasting things little by little since before. It was so faint that I might have mistaken it for a smell.
“Could the scaled tail be…”
Just in case, I took Aska’s tea and took a sip. Aska tilted his head, surprised that I suddenly snatched his drink.
“Do you want more?”
“Does this taste sweet to you too?”
Aska’s eyes widened at my question.
“You can taste it?”
“Yeah. I said the tea I drank earlier was very bitter too.”
“I thought you meant it was astringent. You hate astringent things.”
As Aska spoke, his expression gradually brightened, and he eventually smiled as if he was very excited.
“Let’s go eat something right away!”
“Suddenly? I’m not that hungry right now.”
I was a little surprised by the sudden change in emotion and spoke with a dazed expression. Aska jumped up from his seat and grabbed my hand. The book, a memento from my grandmother, fell to the floor with a thud. I quickly picked up the book and placed it on the table before being dragged away by Aska.
“Let’s go before they close.”
The forest was dark because the sun had almost set. But it wasn’t completely night yet, so it wasn’t so dark that you couldn’t see an inch in front of you. I was dragged along the forest path by Aska, looking around.
I knew there was no one there, but there was still a chance. And after confirming that we were really the only ones here, I grabbed Aska’s wrist and pulled him back strongly.
Aska, who had been walking ahead, turned around in surprise and looked at me. I pulled the back of Aska’s neck to make him lower his head, then kissed him right away.
I had been wondering about it for a while. What does Aska’s lips taste like? What I was most curious about was not something like food, but the taste of Aska.
I licked his soft lips, sucked on his tongue, and tasted all the delicate membranes inside his gums and mouth. I even took the saliva pooled under his tongue and swallowed it, but it only tasted sweet, probably because I had drunk the tea earlier.
I tasted him to my satisfaction, smacked my lips, and pulled away. I thought he would ask me what I was doing in a daze, but Aska’s cheeks were flushed. Aska stuck out his pink tongue a little and rubbed his upper lip before narrowing his eyes and asking.
“Is it good?”
He knew exactly why I suddenly kissed him. I carefully evaluated him like a food critic appraising a dish.
“It’s a taste I’ve never had before in my life.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Aska frowned and asked anxiously. I wanted to tease him even more because he was acting like that, so I put on a serious face.
“Well… it’s a new taste.”
“Do you want to eat it again next time?”
But I unintentionally revealed my true feelings at the unexpected lewd question.
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s delicious.”
“…”
Aska smiled and kissed me on the lips with a smack. I stroked Aska’s butt and whispered in his ear.
“Take off your pants.”
Aska tilted his head and asked again, thinking he had misheard me at first.
“What?”
“I said take off your pants.”
“…Here? Suddenly? Why?”
In the meantime, the sun had already set completely, and the surroundings were pitch black. I sucked on Aska’s earlobe before kissing along his neckline. I strongly sucked on the flesh of his neck at the end, bit it with my teeth, and then raised my head.
I stared at his already moist and reddened eyes and said,
“I want to taste your semen too. What does it taste like? You eat mine every time. You didn’t eat it because it was delicious?”
“You eat that for the taste?”
“Then why do you eat it every day if it doesn’t taste good?”
“It’s not that it doesn’t taste good.”
I burst out laughing at his hasty excuse.
“We’re outside.”
“What does it matter? There’s no one here.”
“What if someone comes? And it’s a bit much here…”
Seeing Aska hesitating, I somehow felt more of a reaction between my legs. Not knowing my feelings, Aska kept whining as if he was tempting me.
“What if Grandma sees us?”
How could a dead person see anything? Should I teach him the extremely common sense that you become a corpse when you die? Even if the corpse came back to life, wouldn’t it be unable to see?
But no matter what, I couldn’t say anything too strong about my grandmother’s death, so I tried to explain it in a roundabout way.
“She’s not here.”
“What if she’s a ghost and watching us?”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts in the world.”
“There are gnats that look like people, so can you guarantee that there are no real ghosts?”
“…”
I was momentarily speechless because it was such a plausible statement. Come to think of it, considering the bizarre things that had happened in the past few days, I couldn’t just dismiss the existence of ghosts as absurd.
“Let’s go inside somewhere else.”
Aska whispered in my ear as if he was telling a secret, even though there was no one around.