First Time (2)

Quite some time passed like that. Mirabilis woke up and carefully wiped away the sweat Serina had shed. Feeling that touch, Serina opened her eyes, and he leaned in close.

“Onee-nim… I love you, Onee-nim, I’m so glad you accepted me… I already liked you, but now I like you unbearably. I want to shout it out to the world and ask. This feeling right now… the one filling my chest, warming my heart, the feeling I have for Onee-nim, is this what people call love?”

Mirabilis asked Serina, emerald eyes brimming with joyful tears, a smile on his face. His expression was so bright it seemed to banish the darkness itself.

‘What am I trying to do to this child…’

Serina hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t thought she liked doing it with a woman, but Mirabilis, who was truly beautiful even to her own eyes, and who called her Onee-nim and surrendered himself to her, was lovely. If only this kind of relationship had happened without hypnosis…

‘…You know that was impossible.’

Serina had been using long-term hypnosis on Mirabilis, changing their relationship from “maid and served Princess” to “Onee-nim and loving younger sibling.” And what Serina was trying to do now was to build a “master and slave” relationship based on this.

She thought that in order to completely control Mirabilis’s mind and never let him out of her grasp, the current state of “sisterly love” had its limits. So, she was trying to lay the foundation for changing it to “master-servant loyalty.”

‘Sorry… Mirabilis.’

Serina offered a fleeting apology in her heart and got out of bed, uttering the Keyword she had planted earlier.

“Regina Lecta.”

Mirabilis, lying naked, immediately fell into a deep hypnotic state. Bingalsa had explained that the deeper the hypnosis, the more it affected those who liked and trusted her. And Mirabilis was now feeling the full force of that effect.

“Mirabilis… how do you feel now?”

Even in the hazy state of hypnosis, Mirabilis smiled.

“I’m happy… with Onee-nim… truly…”

“I see…”

‘I might have enjoyed Mirabilis without a second thought before.’

Serina found it hard to explain her current feelings. She felt guilty towards Mirabilis, yet she also remembered the pleasure she had felt mingling with him, and she trembled with the sense of transgression at laying the foundation for completely dominating him, and she worried about the fear that if she failed, she would fall into a miserable abyss and drown in the waters of ruin, yet she never stopped her actions.

Just as mixing many different colors of paint results in a dull black, a dark pigment had dripped into Serina’s heart and was slowly spreading in all directions.

“You said you wanted to get closer to me… so you would do Daesik.”

“Yes… Onee-nim… I want to get closer…”

The voice of the Princess who had become her younger sister was sweet. Hearing that voice, Serina felt another surge of wanting to embrace him, but she forcibly resisted it. Now was not the time.

“But… Daesik alone… just us touching each other… isn’t enough…”

“I… is that… is that so…”

Mirabilis suddenly became sad. As tears quietly welled up in Mirabilis’s eyes and fell onto the bed in an arc, Serina carefully wiped them away with her hand.

“You’ve seen it too… people who meet, marry, and even have children… and have relationships countless times… yet hate each other… or treat each other like strangers…”

There was an immediate example close to her. The Emperor and Padrentia’s mother, the former Empress. According to Padrentia, the Emperor announced a new Empress before the corpse’s warmth had even faded, and Mirabilis was born not long after she entered the palace. So, it had to be assumed that he had been intimate with the current Empress even before the former Empress had died.

But the current Empress, Mirabilis’s mother, who had married him that way, did not love the Emperor and was cold to Mirabilis as well. There was only political strategy. Even if they married for political reasons, usually affection grows as they share their bodies and live together, but the Emperor and Empress were not like that. Mirabilis understood Serina’s words.

“Then… what should… I do…”

This was the crucial part. Cold sweat ran down Serina’s forehead, and her lips were parched. Serina licked her lips and then put all her strength into her tongue, imbuing it with the power of hypnosis, the power of the conjunction.

“If you really want to get closer to me… become a part of me… that’s what you should do…”

“Onee-nim’s… part…?”

Even in a deep hypnotic state, Mirabilis raised his voice at the end, expressing doubt. ‘Right, he probably doesn’t understand what I mean,’ Serina thought, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

“The clothes I wear… are a part of me… not someone separate from me… not a stranger… my possession… my part…”

Mirabilis lay on the bed, continuing to fall deeper into Serina’s suggestion.

“You… can do that too… my possession… my part… like the clothes… I wear… like the things… I own… entrust your body… your soul… to me…”

Mirabilis opened his mouth with a tearful expression. That brief moment felt like a thousand years to Serina.

“Then… Onee-nim’s… possession… body and… soul… all… Onee-nim’s… slave, if I become that… would that be okay…”

Mirabilis seemed to have thought of a slave from the expression “someone’s possession.” But if someone truly handed over their entire body and soul to someone else, could that state be called slavery? Even slaves had their own thoughts.

Even if socially, so-and-so was called someone’s master and the slave himself acknowledged it, he could not become the true master of the slave who was his ‘possession.’ In the end, the slave was also another person, and even if the slave’s body was the master’s possession, the slave’s mind was his own.

And the body followed the mind until the moment of death. Conversely, the body also influenced the mind, but that was basically how it was. Just like when a person puts a bridle on a horse and leads it, the horse follows.

Then, even if the slave’s mind was secondary, was his body really the master’s? It was only a promise enforced by social constraints, and it could not be said that he truly owned it.

That was why loyalty was so emphasized. Even if you couldn’t truly possess the heart, you wanted to get as close as possible to it. If someone really gave their entire body and soul to someone else…

‘Rather than a slave… it would be more accurate to call them a doll or a puppet, not a figurative expression.’

Serina gave a bitter smile. ‘Am I trying to turn this child who trusts and follows me so much into a doll?’ she wondered with self-reproach. But no matter how much guilt pressed down on her heart like a lid, on the other hand, a dark desire to make and control this beautiful Princess was slowly seeping out. Serina tried hard not to recognize the red desire rising from the depths.

“Slave… or doll… the name doesn’t matter… only the state… of entrusting… everything to me… matters…”

Serina’s voice, casting the suggestion, spread subtly into the Main Chamber. Mirabilis listened sweetly to Onee-nim’s voice, but seemed to be deeply contemplating its content.

“I’m sorry… Onee-nim… I really… like Onee-nim… I like you… but I can’t bring myself to do that…”

Mirabilis shed tears. He was sad that he couldn’t do as Serina said and refused. He really wanted to do everything Onee-nim said, but he was in pain because he couldn’t do such a thing. Serina had expected this answer, but her heart ached when she actually heard it.

“It’s okay… Mirabilis… your Onee-nim… understands everything… there’s no need to be in pain… that you can’t do it right now…”

“Yes… Onee-nim…”

Mirabilis seemed a little relieved when Serina comforted him.

“You won’t remember what I just said… not the fake you, nor even the real you… but… deep in your heart… those words will remain… and when you really… want to give… everything… to me… those words will come to mind…”

“Yes…”

The Princess’s expression finally became completely relaxed. Serina continued to speak.

“Then go to sleep… comfortably… deeply… when you wake up, you’ll feel better… and refreshed… than ever before… you’ll wake up naked… but don’t think it’s strange… you just wanted to try it… you just took off your clothes and lay down and fell asleep…”

Had she ever used this much power since learning hypnosis? It seemed like all the power Serina had learned through the conjunction had drained from her body. Mirabilis fell asleep as he was. Seeing him sleeping soundly naked, Serina pulled the blanket over him and picked up her clothes that she had taken off. She also folded and organized Mirabilis’s clothes that he had taken off.

After turning off the candle and groping for the doorknob, Serina let out a low, deep sigh. In the darkness that sank like sadness, she lowered her head and stood still for a long time, as if not knowing where to go.