By Zephyria 
After carefully dressing Aska in a shirt, pants, shoes, and even a gown to cover every inch of skin, I sat him down on a chair and asked again.
“So, you feel pain sometimes?”
“Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“I never used to, but it’s been happening often since I slept with you.”
“……”
Having washed up, Aska seemed to want a snack. He took out a jar of dried fruit, popped some into his mouth, and chewed. Usually, I’d scold him for eating junk food, but I didn’t have the energy to care right now.
“And I feel it a little when I drink blood, or when I smell you a lot… The other day, I was alone, lying in bed, and it happened too. Your scent was strong on the blanket.”
“Ah… I see.”
“I told you before that it hurts a lot when I drink blood. This hurts too, but it feels a little different. But it still hurts.”
“……”
“I kept meaning to tell you, but it goes away quickly… I thought it wasn’t a big deal.”
My head was spinning, and I paused for a moment, and Aska added defensively.
“I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret or anything. And I lied about not going out earlier because I was surprised, not because I was trying to deceive you.”
“Okay, calm down for now.”
“You calm down.”
I thought I was acting like it was nothing, but Aska seemed to see right through my panic. I chose my words carefully several times before opening my mouth with a hesitant expression.
“So… why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you know?”
“No… I’m asking if you know why that is.”
I asked back in a dazed voice, and Aska looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“I told you, I don’t know?”
“Why? What were you saying when I first met you? Something about being promiscuous, sleeping around, and so on.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“……?”
He didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about at all. I looked at Aska with a bewildered expression and asked again.
“What do you mean by ‘promiscuous’?”
“Like…”
Aska started to speak but then stopped. He began to glare at me with a clearly unpleasant expression.
“Like what? Finish what you were saying.”
“Why are you asking all of a sudden?”
“Answer my question first. What do you mean by ‘promiscuous’? And you heard all that in Calderia before coming here, right? I bet. They probably told you weird things, just like when they said I split people’s heads open and sucked out their brains.”
As I spoke, things started to fall into place in my mind. As I rambled on, Aska, who had been frowning, stammered.
“Sleeping around is something you’re not supposed to do with family, but you guys do it even with family, with animals, with children, with old people, anyway, you do it a lot, so everyone’s scared of you. Because you don’t have any common sense.”
“……”
“It’s just all mixed up, with lots of people and knives…”
Honestly, even if I gave him a hundred concessions, I didn’t know about the animals, but the other things might be true. Because Khalifa really did touch anyone he felt like, regardless of age or gender.
But what Aska said after that was shocking. It wasn’t a description of promiscuous sex, but rather of torture that could only happen in a dungeon. And the torture wasn’t just pulling out fingernails or whipping, but elaborate and professional methods using tools.
It was so disgusting that even listening to it made me feel nauseous again.
“…so, I saw it, and it was so weird…”
“Wait, you saw it?”
Aska nodded at my surprised expression.
“In person?”
“A person suddenly came out of a round bead and did all that, and then disappeared when it was over.”
Was it a video recorded with a Magical tool? No, that wasn’t the point. What the hell were those bastards teaching a child? This wasn’t education, it was abuse. But it was pointless to think about it, since they sent Aska to die in the first place…
“Ha…”
I couldn’t help but sigh, thinking how unfortunate his life was. Aska seemed to read something in my expression and muttered in a slightly dejected voice.
“This is all a lie too, isn’t it?”
“……”
“Like when they said they’d come to get me in a year.”
To foster animosity towards the Actan royal family, he might have been exposed to quite a bit of misinformation besides this. It all happened because Aska didn’t have common sense, so I thought I should make him study hard in the future.
Aska didn’t eat any more dried fruit and just blinked, his eyes downcast. I felt sorry for him and wondered if I should comfort him, but I asked out of pure curiosity.
“Do you still have things to be disappointed about?”
He lived in the slums for a long time and then stayed in the castle for a while to get an education. Did he develop some kind of attachment during that time? Even though he knew they didn’t care about him and had called him in to die, he seemed to be hurt again.
Aska frowned deeply, looked at me, and then turned his head away as if annoyed.
“Because they said they were family…”
“Family?”
“……”
“……?”
Without warning, his big eyes filled with tears. I hesitated for a moment, thinking I had misseen, but Aska started rubbing his eyes roughly with his arms.
“Why are you rubbing so hard?”
“Leave me alone!”
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone, so wipe gently. You’ll scrape all your skin off.”
I was horrified to hear the scratching sound, but Aska didn’t listen to me. I tried to grab his hand again, but Aska quickly got up and moved away from me.
He turned his back to me and rubbed his eyes for a long time, and when he turned back and sat on the sofa, his face was completely red.
“……”
“……”
I didn’t ask why he was crying because I knew he would deny it. I was about to change the subject, but I thought this might happen again someday, so I opened my mouth.
“Those people sent you here because they wanted you to die as a princess. That’s why they bothered to bring you here and educate you. They didn’t bring you from the slums because you were family.”
Before I could finish speaking, Aska was already stabbing me with his eyes. Seeing that, I could only sigh.
“So, there’s no point in you being sad. You’re the only one who thought of them as family in the first place. Why are you hurting over such scum?”
“……”
Aska didn’t answer my question, but the sharp look in his eyes softened. He didn’t seem dejected or sad, so I guessed he understood what I meant.
“Get angry instead. They’re not worth being sad over.”
“Why do you keep cursing other people’s families? Are you crazy?”
“Are they family? And don’t curse.”
“You cursed first.”
He didn’t give in and retorted every word. I was about to say something more, but I stopped. What was I doing arguing with a kid like that…? Anyway, he understood what I said, so that was enough.
“I won’t think of them as family anymore.”
Then Aska lowered his head and mumbled.
“I just… I wish I had known that sooner. If I had known, I wouldn’t have bothered trying so hard.”
I wanted to ask what kind of effort he had made, but Aska’s eyes were getting watery again, so I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“……”
“……”
A moment of silence passed. I stared at Aska, who had tears in his eyes, and asked.
“Do you want to drink blood?”
Aska looked at me with a puzzled expression at my question.
“It’s not time to drink yet, is it?”
“This is just a snack.”
Aska’s expression, which had been shrouded in gloom just a moment ago, brightened noticeably. Did he have some kind of bipolar disorder? I was glad he was smiling again, but how could his mood change so quickly…? Was it because he was simple-minded?
I took out a dagger and placed the blade on the inside of my wrist. Aska, who had come next to me, nudged me with his forearm.
“Not there, a little more to the side.”
“Does the location matter?”
“There’s a place where the blood comes out better.”
“You’re a anatomy expert. Where? Here?”
I moved the blade in the direction Aska told me and cut the skin a little. As soon as the blood droplets appeared, Aska lunged at the wound and put his mouth on it without me even telling him to drink.
As I watched him suckle, I slowly moved, and Aska followed, holding my arm with both hands and keeping his mouth on it. I sat down on the sofa next to him and brushed back the wet hair that was covering Aska’s face.
When my hand touched him, Aska looked up at me. Even at a glance, the color of his eyes was noticeably darker. As I stared into his blood-red eyes, which had turned dark red, I felt strangely dizzy.
Was it because I had just woken up? I closed my eyes tightly for a few seconds and then opened them again. Aska lowered his gaze and drank blood. The fog in my head had returned to normal.
I felt like I wasn’t in very good condition.
“Aska.”
I shook my head lightly to clear my mind and brought up the topic I had been talking about earlier.
“Do you know how babies are made?”
At that question, Aska took his mouth off my wrist and asked back.
“Babies?”
“Yeah.”
“……”
Aska, who seemed flustered for a moment, closed his mouth and rolled his eyes, avoiding my gaze. Aska, who had been looking elsewhere with his mouth closed, glanced at me and stammered in an unsure voice.
“At the market…”
“The market?”
“You can just buy them with money at the market.”
“……”
Yeah, I wasn’t surprised anymore.