Chapter 62

Isaac suddenly sat up, realizing he was in his dimly lit, silent room. He sighed, feeling utterly exhausted. He had eaten a late lunch, finished his chores, and taken a short nap, but it turned out to be much deeper than intended. Then—

“Dear God.”

Even during naps? Isaac groaned, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. Horden, who had entered unnoticed and was adjusting his uniform in the mirror, turned to him with concern.

“You’ve been having nightmares frequently lately. You were groaning in your sleep last night too.”

“…You should have woken me.”

“You would calm down, frown for a while, and then calm down again. I decided to let you be. Why? Is something wrong?”

“I suppose I’ve been physically weak lately. Did you just come in? No, wait—are you going out?”

“Mm. I’m off duty tomorrow, so Aire and I are taking an overnight trip. I booked a beautiful inn by the lake. We plan to spend the entire night burning through flesh and bone against a magnificent scenic backdrop,” Horden chuckled with a cheerful, lewd glint in his eye.

Isaac stared at him in stunned silence. “Didn’t you say you spent last night burning through flesh and bone with Aire too? Then you worked all day, and now you’re going on a trip to stay awake for another night? You possess remarkable stamina.”

He was genuinely impressed.

I become this exhausted merely from dreaming. Merely from dreaming.

A dream.

Dear God.

Isaac covered his face with one hand.

Horden ignored him and continued humming happily to himself. “There truly must be such a thing as compatibility between people. No matter how often I do it with Aire, I never grow tired. If anything, I wake the next day feeling wonderfully refreshed. You should stop caring so much about faces and find a woman who suits you. It will change your life.”

“…”

Isaac’s face twisted in distaste. Horden paid no attention, continuing to admire himself in the mirror. Isaac checked the clock; he was not due for his evening shift yet, so he collapsed back onto the bed.

Horden finished preparing to leave and put on his shoes, still casting concerned glances back at him. “Are you unwell again? You look perfectly healthy, yet every so often you collapse like this. You should visit a physician.”

“It’s fine. I’m simply tired. You should be careful not to exhaust yourself and collapse. Have a pleasant trip.” Isaac waved one hand lazily from beneath the blanket.

“Aire has collapsed a few times,” Horden laughed with renewed, ribald confidence before exiting the room. His footsteps faded slowly along the corridor.

A heavy silence descended upon the room.

In the awkward, stagnant lull of mid-afternoon, the building felt entirely deserted.

SWOOSH

Through the stillness came the soft, rhythmic patter of paws as something alighted on the bed.

「Ugh… the stench.」

One of the cats wrinkled its nose, letting out a sharp, indignant huff. Despite its obvious revulsion, it padded toward Isaac’s pillow, nudging its face firmly beneath the blankets where he lay curled in hiding.

「They say late-blooming lust is the most dangerous of all. Look at him, acting out in broad daylight.」

「He must have been starving for far too long. His desire is spiraling even in his sleep.」

「With whom, though?」

「Who knows? At this frequency, it must be someone he sees every single day.」

「Ah. Then I know exactly who it is.」

「Yes. It has to be him. It will be him.」

“Be quiet!”

Isaac threw off his covers and bolted upright, sending the trio of cats scrambling for cover.

「Ugh, the smell. The scent of rut is practically suffocating.」

Their senses were unnervingly acute. Yet, as Isaac tossed the blanket aside, even he caught the faint, lingering odor—fresh, metallic, and musky. It was the undeniable aroma of unspent desire.

“God… I can’t keep living like this,” Isaac muttered, burying his face against his knees. The full moon was approaching, making his body feel heavy and lifeless, his heart equally drained. It seemed the memory of that day had left a deeper mark on his mind than he had ever admitted to himself.

Night after night, he was tormented by the same dreams. In them, the prince appeared, naked and uninhibited, holding a lover in his arms. Kaiyan’s skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat as he moved with his usual, expressionless detachment—as if he were merely performing a physical exercise.

Isaac found his gaze fixed on the sinewy, shifting muscles beneath that sweat. Then, without warning, Kaiyan would turn his head, meeting Isaac’s eyes directly. Isaac was ensnared, transfixed by the simmering, dark heat rising behind those icy, blue eyes. It was impossible to tell whether that infernal warmth belonged to the prince or to himself.

By then, a molten heat would have already surged from the depths of Isaac’s pounding heart, wrapping around his limbs and leaving his breath ragged. It was an unfamiliar sensation, one he had recognized but never truly experienced. As the intensity mounted, his confusion spiraled.

He would try to turn away, to escape the endurance of it—only to find himself suddenly standing in the place of the lover held by the prince. Kaiyan’s blue gaze would lock onto his, and he would feel a cold, threatening shadow stir deep within those eyes. A crushing, possessive force would constrict around his body, and then, a searing pleasure would drive into him. The heat stirring within was far too vivid to be a mere dream. Everything else in his slumber was a hazy mist, yet that pleasure remained agonizingly, uncomfortably clear.

“All this does is leave me with more laundry.”

Isaac murmured the words into the void, collapsing back onto the mattress. He rarely dreamt; perhaps once or twice a year at most. That had to be why these nocturnal visions felt so searingly real.

But this was beyond absurd. What was he doing, acting like a lovestruck fool at his age, night after night? He could have excused the first few times as an accumulation of long-neglected desire, but this was becoming a daily affliction—even affecting his afternoon naps. What was more mortifying was the partner in his fantasies.

“…”

Isaac clutched his head, his body writhing. When he was awake, the mere thought of it left him gasping and hollowed out. Yet in the sanctuary of his dreams, his unconscious mind surrendered as though under a spell.

“It’s fine. They say heroes are always fond of beauties. It’s only natural for a man to love someone beautiful. Though, let’s be honest, he is certainly no hero.”

“Indeed, indeed. He is the greatest beauty in the kingdom. It is only logical.”

“Stop. Don’t say another word.”

Isaac scrambled to grab one of the cats by the muzzle. Unfortunately, he only had two hands, and one feline remained teasingly free.

“What is the problem? Our Muddlehead is a functioning adult.”

“He is allowed to have wet dreams and see to his own needs.”

“We’ve seen everything there is to see, so there is no need for him to feel ashamed.”

“Silence!”

Isaac lunged to capture the second cat as well, but the two he had already released began to murmur amongst themselves.

“Masturbation might be a bit embarrassing at his age.”

“Strange, though. Our Muddlehead might be a bit of a fool, but he’s a decent enough creature. Why don’t any women swarm him?”

“Should we find him a man instead?”

Isaac would rather die of sheer humiliation. He hauled the blanket over his head, retreating into the darkness. Several nights ago, he had jolted awake in the middle of one of these dreams, stranded in that agonizing, half-aroused state between frustration and relief.

For the first time in years, he had been forced to pleasure himself. In the darkness of that room, he discovered three pairs of luminous, unblinking eyes staring directly at him. He nearly lost the ability to rise again.

His strength abandoning him, Isaac let out a long, shuddering sigh. His mind was clearly fracturing. Those vivid blue eyes had branded themselves into his consciousness so deeply that he couldn’t scrub them away.

“No… this is fundamentally wrong.”

Isaac groaned into his pillow. Fantasizing about one’s superior was already a grave breach of decorum, but to do so with that man? It was unthinkable.

Kaiyan’s face fit Isaac’s aesthetic preferences far too perfectly. He had to lock his heart away and remain vigilant. If he kept this up, what if these feelings started to manifest in reality?

What kind of insanity is rattling around in my head?

Isaac began to rhythmically thwack his own head through the layers of the blanket. As if they could see right through the wool, the cats whispered in conspiratorial tones near the edge of his pillow.

“Has he decided to finish off the few brain cells he has left?”

“What if he ends up even more stupid than he already is?”

“That would be a disaster. He is already impossible to deal with.”

Isaac poked just the tip of his nose out from beneath the covers and let out a low, menacing growl.

“Tell me the truth. Have you been secretly summoning a dream demon every single night?”

It was the only explanation that made sense. The cats merely snorted in collective disdain.

“Do you honestly think the refined and noble heirs of an illustrious house like ours would deign to associate with such vulgar entities?”

“Besides, why would a dream demon waste their time on a half-blood when the world is crawling with humans? Your lust has simply stagnated because you have been starving yourself for too long.”

“You really should find a human to sleep with. You could relieve your urges and absorb some much-needed vitality at the same time.”

“As long as I exist in the human world, I intend to live like a human,” Isaac declared, clenching the blanket as if taking a sacred oath.

The three familiars chattered in high-pitched, mocking tones, yet Isaac steadfastly ignored them. To him, the very notion of siphoning a human being’s life force was inherently repulsive, much like the hollow prospect of dragging himself into a stranger’s bed simply to satiate a biological urge.

At this rate, I really will remain a virgin until my dying day, he thought, letting out a weary, jagged sigh.

***