My Beloved, Whom I Desire to Kill - 309

The kind of sex we had just moments ago is a full-out sprint, aiming only for the finish line of climax. In the process, all the minor, fleeting moments pass by, unnoticed, like scenery blurred by speed.

The climax achieved at that finish line is overwhelming, but it’s like a firework—burning up all its light in an instant, then vanishing quickly. Once the pleasure subsides, all that remains is the dark night sky, or a complete, empty void.

Because of this, one is tormented by an unquenchable thirst, like a person who drinks seawater, driving them to wildly race for more, more, more climax, until their body breaks.

But Edwin Eccleston’s way of making love has its goal not in the result, but in savoring the process. He’s like a traveler who foregoes the car and journeys on foot, believing that the true delight of the trip lies in the scenery observed along the road and even the subtle breeze that brushes the cheek.

The moment he pushes himself into Giselle, he observes precisely how the man’s solid frame and strong muscles move like flowing water. How the fine muscles tremble when Giselle holds onto him as he pulls back.

How the breath that invades her ear grows ragged and rhythmic as their bodies rub against each other slowly but steadily. When this refined man finally can’t contain the moans, so filled with a seductive color that they send a shiver down the listener’s spine.

What Giselle has done to make this man clench his eyes shut and furrow that otherwise perfect brow. Even the trajectory of the sweat drops that bead up on his goose-pimpled nape, flowing down until he swallows a gasp while looking down at a shuddering Giselle, and then finally dropping from his Adam’s apple to roll over her nipple, mixing with hers beneath her breast.

Edwin seizes each passing second, imagining what he might be feeling from her. These seconds accumulate and become a memory. This is how they etch one more unforgettable night into their lives.

To call Edwin Eccleston’s method —sex— was an insult. No matter how vulgar the act they committed in between, it could only be called love.

Every journey has its phases. So does their lovemaking.

The yearning before the act, the tension as their vulnerable naked bodies intertwine, and the sheer elation when they feel trust and affection in each other’s movements.

Just as a story that slowly builds emotion leaves a lasting impression, the climax that follows this unhurried journey is one that will not release Giselle for a long, long time.

—Ah, what am I going to do…….

The climax approaches slowly. The premonition alone is so overwhelming that it’s already suffocating.

The version of herself that was fearlessly racing toward climax just moments ago was nowhere to be found. Edwin comforted Giselle, who was sobbing, terrified of the ecstatic pleasure that was so deep it burrowed into her heart, tearing it into a disarray.

—It’s okay. I’m here.

If she had someone eternally on her side, there was nothing to fear. As Giselle ceased her resistance and nodded, he whispered sweetly into her ear.

—I love you, Giselle.

—Me too, gasp……

The moment Edwin penetrated the deepest point, the climax swept over her.

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

The sea churns.

Even to the frozen seabed.

As the rough currents lashed at him, Lorenz curled his body into a fetal position.

Of course, since he did not exist, this was merely an act of concept. Thus, no warmth melted his chilled chest.

The woman’s cry, signaling climax, and the man’s soothing, caressing voice resound faintly even to this sea floor. The tower trembles and shakes him with the boiling, hot sensation every time the man violently thrusts into the woman.

Why does the body react the same way to both ecstasy and terror? Perhaps it was designed this way, since humans feel life most intensely when facing death.

Why was he even entertaining such a thought? It was ridiculous.

Even if he felt things like a human, it did not prove he was one. A human who observes and understands an insect does not become an insect, and the reverse is also true.

The sickening declarations of love passed back and forth. What had he expected that made him not block his senses, even though he could?

In the very moment he was mentally cursing himself, the ocean’s turmoil ceased. Simultaneously, the trembling that felt like it would tear everything down intensified. Ejaculation was imminent.

His entire nervous system was focused on the peak of the sexual sensation. Lorenz, as a part of that system, was also swept away, with all his senses directed there.

Flesh was lodged in a narrow gap. He could feel the two masses of flesh throbbing and surging. One was not the man’s.

The woman’s cervix.

The moment he recalled that sadly soft touch, Lorenz opened his conceptual eyes, which existed only as an idea.

He rose up from the seabed, where even his own presence felt faint. If this had been real flesh, bone, and blood, it would have been rotting and creaking from being still for so long.

He swam. Upward, upward.

Toward the surface.

It was not sexual desire that propelled him to feel her more vividly.

He wanted to be born.

What is the desire to be born called? The man climbed the tower, which mimicked an umbilical cord, and pondered this deeply, concluding that such a word does not exist.

The entity that creates language is the human, already born, and thus they remain unaware of the desire to be born until the moment they die. Concepts unknown to existence have no language.

Therefore, no one understands his suffering. Not even the woman who resembles him.

Lorenz found Natalia both a comfort—as she resembled him and felt familiar as his own body—and a source of overwhelming complexity due to their differences.

If there were a God in the world, She would be a woman. It is said that God created man, but is it not the woman who performs that miracle even now?

Lorenz enjoyed knocking on Natalia’s cervix while pondering such thoughts.

He wanted to enter past that narrow gateway to becoming human.

He does not harbor the desire to implant another man’s child in the womb of the woman he loves. He wants himself to take root in Natalia’s origin.

The only way to be liberated from the agony of being unborn is through birth, and birth must be achieved through a woman. Natalia had to be the woman who granted Lorenz life.

If you had given birth to me, you would have loved me no matter what I did.

She alone would have believed in him when everyone else pointed fingers. She wouldn’t be the one starting the stoning.

He prefers to be her lover rather than her child, but at least as the latter, he could be loved. As the former, there is no hope.

Furthermore, if he were born from the body of the woman he loves, Edwin Eccleston would no longer tell him to die. It goes without saying that he wouldn’t call him a maggot, a parasite, or anything less than human. The unneeded love could be given or not.

Lorenz needed only two kinds of love: Natalia’s and his own.

If the woman he loved were mixed into him and the man he hated were diluted, Lorenz might finally be able to love himself.

Suffering from this sense of injustice, he reached a conclusion. The reason he could never be loved and no one would ever take his side, no matter how hard he tried, was because he had no roots.

Therefore, Natalia, give birth to me.

Fighting his way through the turbulent currents of the stagnant sea, which flowed nowhere, Lorenz recalled the stupid question his indifferent body’s owner had once asked:

‘Why the sea of all places?’

Because it is where life was born.

Yet, it is only a fake sea that cannot give birth to life. He will leave here and swim in the real sea.

The surface, stained silver, begins to appear. The sensation and warmth of the entrance to the womb grow more intense.

Lorenz reached out his hand toward the fragments of light brilliantly breaking on the waves. He had to get out of Edwin Eccleston’s body and enter Natalia’s. Whatever he was, if he only had substance, he would use any means necessary to force himself through that narrow gate.

But he does not exist.

Therefore, his only fate is to meet death without ever being born for a single moment.

The more he thrashed, the further the light receded. Lorenz sank. Deep, deeper, to the bottom.

As the dregs, not even a maggot, let alone a human.

A one-person bed does not feel cramped for the lovers who have become one body. It is only hot.

Though the vigorous movements have ceased, their two naked bodies pressed together are thoroughly drenched in sweat. This was because the midsummer heat continued even at night. A rickety old fan valiantly struggled, laboring for the couple who would rather die of heat than sleep apart.

Still, it seemed to be doing its job. As Edwin’s fingers traced Giselle’s back, where the sweat had dried and the soft downy hair could be felt, they caught on a chain just as they reached the tip of her shoulder blade.

A trace of civilization remained on her, who was otherwise naked like an primeval woman. It was left there intentionally.

When making love, Edwin would strip Giselle bare, but he had a habit of leaving one gift he had given her on to admire. It was a kind of territorial marking, perhaps. He, too, was an unavoidable male.

Today, besides the necklace, he had left one more. He grasped the small hand resting on his chest and lifted it up into the shared line of sight between the two of them.