If this wasn’t an all-ages story, there were enough events to gleefully write about for at least ten chapters.
I witnessed something incredible, and though I peppered him with question marks and exclamation points, it somehow all worked out, and we ended up having some time to build inner intimacy.
It was a tender time where body and mind connected, but it took quite a while to reach the period.
“…….”
I, with no strength left even to speak, stared intently at Masera, who had targeted only the unseen spots.
He was a man who worried about me breaking with his words, but his actions didn’t reflect that at all.
Masera, his hair all messed up and bite marks on his cheeks, gave a languid smile and gently kissed my lips.
“Please be gentler next time.”
“Yes…….”
I didn’t say much, but my throat was hoarse, and I nodded.
That man was bad, but honestly, I was a bit worse.
His eyes, after just washing and with his hair still wet, deepened and once again held the color of desire.
“Yes, then immediately for the next…….”
“No!”
Feeling a crisis, I cried out urgently.
I don’t want to synchronize for the sake of building inner intimacy anymore.
“Why.”
He, who was much more vigorous than I thought, let out a low chuckle with a subtly triumphant expression.
“Didn’t you say you’d see how well I do in the finals?”
“I think I can stop watching now.”
“I want to see more.”
It’s like a crazy man who keeps running even after crossing the finish line…….
Before I knew it, it was dawn, having passed through midday and leaped over the night.
The person who claimed to be tired was perfectly fine, while I was so weakened that my hands were shaking, and I couldn’t even eat properly by myself.
“Since it’s the first day, I’ll let you off this easily.”
He whispered like a kind training instructor.
“Ugh…….”
I groaned and fell asleep as if fainting.
No, I’m sure I fainted.
After losing consciousness, I was horrified to see Masera doing push-ups with only one hand on the floor.
“Don’t tell me, you didn’t sleep?”
To my question, he slowly raised himself and smiled gently.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Is he even human? He’s really got insane stamina.
Was he so full of energy even after using so much, or was it not enough to satisfy him?
But as soon as I saw his solid body armed with combat-compressed muscles, I was speechless.
“…….”
Is it because of the push-ups? Did his chest get bigger?
My gaze flowed along his broad shoulders and graceful waistline. It was like a masterpiece meticulously sculpted down to the tendons in his wrists.
I let out a silent exclamation as I watched his amazing back as he turned and headed to the bathroom.
Being attracted to a body optimized for combat, not for other purposes… that’s perfectly normal, right?
Soon, he returned, exuding the scent of soap soaked in steam, and laid his head on my shoulder.
Then, in a serious tone, he began to tell me about his nightmares.
“I often have nightmares. It probably started when I was a child soldier.”
Come to think of it, he wasn’t much of a sleeper. There was no way he wouldn’t have war trauma after wandering the battlefield for so long.
“Recently, I’ve started having dreams that aren’t about war. In those nightmares, I was a bad person to you.”
He continued in a low voice.
“In my dreams, I always regretted it. I couldn’t stop hurting you and regretting it, even as I repeated it.”
After explaining the dream in detail, he stopped talking.
A moment of silence hung in the air, and I could feel his hand, which was holding my shoulder, tightening slightly.
He was telling a story similar to the original work.
Before I woke up in the hospital, there was a particularly red aurora, and he said he started having nightmares after that night.
Did he connect to my memories when he came to call me as a young boy?
But his story was similar to, yet different from, the original work that my sister had told me.
He said that I in his dreams was still cheerful and confident.
The difference from reality was that Masera couldn’t trust me and hated me, but his heart kept leaning towards me.
“……So I lost you. I lived every night in a world without you, and it always ended with me shooting myself in the head with a gun.”
They faced tragedy because they didn’t have faith in each other, misunderstood each other, and went astray.
I couldn’t be sure if we had a failed past that we didn’t know about, or if we were seeing the fate of making a different choice.
I simply stroked his hair as he hugged me with his overwhelmingly large frame.
“That’s just a vanished story that doesn’t exist anywhere. We made the choice to trust each other…….”
I couldn’t see his expression because his face was buried in my chest, but I continued in a cheerful tone.
“We’re living in the world that choice created.”
I could feel the tension leaving his stiff shoulders. It seemed like he was finally relieved and letting go of his tension.
After a while, I listened to his breathing even out, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep as well.
In his dream, Masera was standing in a ruined, ash-gray city.
Blackened and abandoned cars, buildings collapsed and barely retaining their shape, twisted streetlights.
The city, dark without a single light, seemed to have died long ago.
‘Where is this? Was I in urban warfare?’
The horrors of war were familiar, but the place was very strange.
Wee-ooh- Wee-ooh-
A level 3 warning siren, signifying evacuation, echoed eerily.
Then suddenly, the chilling siren stopped abruptly.
Masera, who had been looking up at the night sky as fighter jets flew in from afar, looked forward again.
It was because he heard the sound of a keyboard somewhere.
Ding-
He saw a woman sitting in front of an abandoned piano.
“Cynthia.”
He called Cynthia’s name, but she just looked at the sky with her hands on the keys.
Soon, the pitch-black sky, where not a single star could be seen, slowly began to brighten.
She was quietly watching the light falling like a meteor shower.
Masera recalled the story Cynthia had told him about her past life.
This seemed to be the ‘moment she died magnificently’ that she had talked about.
Only after seeing it with his own eyes did he realize that Cynthia had faced her lonely end alone.
But she described it as magnificent and brave.
Masera, standing on the border between memory and ashes, felt a pang in his heart.
Cynthia, rising from the piano chair, did not run away even after seeing the terrible and beautiful sight of the bombing.
Rather, it seemed as if she had been waiting for this moment.
He rushed to her urgently.
Cynthia, whose hand was grabbed, turned to him with surprised eyes. Fear and sadness welled up and flickered in her wide eyes.
“It’s okay now.”
Just like on the ship where fireworks exploded on their honeymoon, he embraced her once again.
Beyond the two people embracing, the light drawing countless lines was slowly descending upon the world.
Masera whispered kindly to her in his arms.
“You have to make a wish when you see a shooting star.”
Cynthia, who had been looking up at him silently, smiled brightly.
“There are so many falling? Will they grant all of them?”
“Whether they grant as many wishes as there are shooting stars, let’s check it out together later.”
“What will you wish for?”
“First of all, that you don’t return to your sad past every time you fall asleep.”
He heard her unique, innocent laughter.
“I wished at this time…….”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, she poked his chest and continued.
“To live while loving and being loved to my heart’s content. Like the main character of a happy romance novel.”
The light that reached the ground did not turn into bombing to burn the world or take lives.
The two people standing under the countless meteor showers held hands and watched the brilliant sight together.
With this, it was no longer a nightmare.
Cynthia, awakened from her sleep, opened her eyes, giggling with the lingering afterglow of the dream.
Turning her head, she found Masera staring intently at her.
“You seem to have had an interesting dream.”
To his question, she nodded, her lips moving slightly.
“It was a dream about wishing on shooting stars. Hundreds of them fell, but I woke up before I could make many wishes. What a waste.”
His eyes, as if containing the night sky filled with shooting stars, curved kindly.
“Still, wasn’t it fulfilled?”
“How do you know what the wish was?”
He playfully cupped Cynthia’s cheeks.
He gave her the name of a strange and difficult emotion that he had not even been able to understand, and handed it to her.
“I love you.”
Cynthia’s eyes widened.
“Huh? I didn’t hear you.”
“…….”
After a moment of silence, Masera asked with a blank face.
“Don’t tell me you’re pretending not to hear on purpose? It was a pretty monumental thing to say.”
She hugged his neck, grumbling, and giggled softly.
“I pretended not to hear on purpose so I could hear it again. Say it again.”
“I don’t want to.”
He showed off his sulky side, but in the end, he said it about five more times as she ordered.
The two of them didn’t have nightmares after that day.
They no longer lost anyone or experienced bombings in their dreams, and they no longer shot themselves in the head to escape nightmares.
They could never see the blood-red aurora again.
