Into the Rose Garden Novel - Chapter 2.1 Always dreaming of my own sin

Once I had resolved to live, I couldn’t remain like this. If you ask what “like this” means, I don’t have a clear answer, but still, I wanted to prepare something, just like a widow who places yellow flowers on her windowsill every day for her husband who will return tomorrow.

I went down to the river, avoiding people’s eyes. The river, shrouded in darkness, reflected light from somewhere, rippling and flowing like a black serpent with white scales. The petals I had sent downstream a while ago must have already been carried by the current to the sea. Perhaps they met in the sea with the two previous batches of petals I had sent off.

I scooped up the murky, bottomless water to wash my face and hair. I also washed my clothes, which were covered in filth. My inherently thin, weak fingers struggled to wring the tough, water-soaked fabric. No matter how many times I splashed and wrung it in the water, the stains didn’t come out properly. It seemed I had never properly done laundry before.

I should have learned beforehand.

Regret seeped into even the smallest things.

For now, it was important to clean his clothes even a little, so he immersed himself naked in the cold river until his fingertips were wrinkled. Washing his body in the cold flowing water without soap or a brush was completely unfamiliar. He slipped and fell on slippery rocks a few times. He even drank a little water. But he washed himself for as long as he could.

Oh, what a mess.

It was good to wash at night, avoiding people’s eyes, but wearing wet clothes in the early morning was too cold. Aeroc rummaged through a pile of trash in a secluded spot, desperately trying to find something to warm his shivering body. However, he couldn’t find anything to cover himself with.

If he stayed still like this, his body temperature would drop to a dangerous level. Even without that, surviving the night in his emaciated body, with no fat left to burn, was suicidal. How long had it been since he decided to live, and such a crisis already struck? After hesitating, Aeroc left his hiding place and headed for another alley.

“Hey, wake up. Time to earn your keep.”

Aeroc opened his eyes at the rough kick to his leg. He then got up from the shabby shed, which was full of foul smells but at least kept out the night dew. The old, dusty blanket covering him was stained with the semen Aeroc had to endure all night. As he woke and moved, the man who had kicked him immediately left the shed. The clothes thrown by his head were almost dry.

Before pulling them on, Aeroc inserted a finger into his anus to scrape out the accumulated semen, then wiped between his legs on the blanket. Ignoring the stinging pain, he forced his legs, which felt like they would cramp at any moment, and went outside. The man who had demanded three acts of sex last night in exchange for a warm blanket and a place to avoid the dew now offered him food.

“How many times?”

“You swallowed all the stuff that was in my balls last night, so there’s nothing left to feed you. Instead, work.”

The man pointed to a sack of flour with his rough, hairy hand. Aeroc stared blankly, not understanding what he meant. The man said gruffly,

“Move that over there. If you drop it and it bursts, or if the flour becomes unusable, I’ll wring your neck, so remember that. And never come into the kitchen where the oven is. You’ll spread germs.”

He tied a pristine white apron around his waist and entered what appeared to be the kitchen. Aeroc picked up a sack of flour as big as his torso, as instructed. More accurately, he tried to pick it up, stumbled, put it back down, and after several grunting attempts, finally managed to lift it and place it on the stone slab next to the kitchen, where the man had pointed.

Moving just one made all his joints ache, and he had strained so much that even his teeth wobbled. Was there anything heavier in the world? As Aeroc gasped for breath and massaged his knees and wrists, the man, who had been looking outside, yelled.

“If you don’t move it quickly, you won’t even get a moldy piece of bread!”

Startled by the thunderous voice, Aeroc nodded quickly. And he hurried to move the second sack of flour.

That afternoon, Aeroc received two loaves of bread and a little sugar for the first time in his life, as payment for honest labor. In monetary terms, it was cheap labor, slightly less than a single coin. When he stared blankly at what he had earned with his own hands for the first time, the man loudly declared that, considering the quality of the labor provided, it was a very generous payment.

He was probably not wrong. His legs trembled all day from moving things, and his arms lost strength. Out of approximately thirty sacks of flour, he did manage to drop one, tearing the end of the sack and spilling white flour. Because of that, he was severely kicked in the thigh, but still, the man, who ran a bakery and was not entirely unkind, diligently prepared his wages and handed them to Aeroc.

He tore the white flesh of the precious bread, earned through hard labor, dipped it in the soft brown sugar, and put it in his mouth. It was more delicious than anything he had ever eaten. He wanted to savor the special bread and make it last longer, but before he knew it, he had eaten an entire loaf. His mouth watered, and the half-eaten sugar and the other loaf of bread kept catching his eye, but he resolutely tightened the bag and held it in his hand.

If he ate it all today, he would starve tomorrow. On the streets, he had learned that avoiding tomorrow’s hunger was more important than immediate fullness, so he saved the bread for today. This, too, was his first time practicing frugality.

While staying in the bakery’s shed, Aeroc reluctantly spread his legs when the man demanded, but he said he preferred to work. The man didn’t seem pleased at first. But then he seemed to change his mind and nodded, agreeing. Instead, the man asked if he could try something new at night.

“Fine. But don’t do it inside anymore.”

“Heh. An old, worn-out alpha whore, and now you’re saying what?”

“Otherwise, I don’t want to do it.”

“Hmph, fine.”

Fortunately, he thought Aeroc was an alpha. There were no specific heat symptoms, and he didn’t properly emit an omega scent. Honestly, Aeroc didn’t even know when his heat was. Only when a bloody clot came out from between his legs after his belly swelled did he know that a heat had passed, and that he had conceived again and it was over at the same time. His body, which had changed one day, was still unfamiliar.

He soon found out what the man meant by “something new.” One night, he appeared with three or four companions. He had been with two alphas at once before, but this was his first time dealing with so many. Moreover, they were large. They grabbed Aeroc’s limbs, who kept trying to pull back in fear, and played with him like a toy, repeatedly defiling his torn anus.

“Is this really an alpha? Squirting and clenching like this?”

“He smells like an alpha. Though he’s mixed with an omega, that’s because this big brother dotes on him so much.”

The men took turns raping his thin body, and not content with that, simultaneously inserted themselves and began to pour out immense amounts of semen. Aeroc, writhing in the pain of his torn anus, glared at the man who had made the promise and demanded,

“Ugh… Ah… Don’t do it inside… Ugh, huh!”

“I didn’t. This friend did. Hehehe.”

Biting his lips, he couldn’t control his already numb body and had to surrender to their rough hands. Before long, his entire body was soaked in semen. After they had satisfied their desires and left, Aeroc began to vomit. The semen he couldn’t swallow came up through his nose with the vomit and flowed out.

After vomiting the semen, he spread his legs and inserted a finger into his anus, which screamed at even a touch, to scrape out the remaining fluid. If he hadn’t been biting the blanket, he might have bitten his tongue. After repeatedly inserting his finger until his dirty fingertips were stained with only blood, Aeroc buried his pale face in the blanket and collapsed.

Being violated by multiple people simultaneously was an incredibly painful experience. As his flickering vision gradually darkened, his strangely hazy brain, though he didn’t wish for it, completely ignored its owner’s command to recall nothing. An associative memory triggered by similar experiences began. The sin he had committed, which was probably many times more horrific, reared its head.

Raphiel Westport was certainly omega-like. He was short, and his build was also petite enough to fit snugly in one’s arms. Even for an omega, it was rare for a male to evoke such protective instincts.

However, other than being an omega, he had nothing superior to Aeroc. He wasn’t exceptionally learned, nor did he possess any special talents. In aristocratic society, he was a common, ordinary human, as numerous as pebbles rolling on the roadside. He wasn’t even remarkably beautiful. While he certainly had a cute side that made him quite presentable, he would never be considered a beauty, even if he died and came back to life.

Despite the clear difference between an alpha and an omega, it was almost impossible to call Raphiel more beautiful than Aeroc, even softening the sharp criteria of aesthetic judgment. Unlike the count, who was a handsome man like a painting, though slightly irritable-looking, Raphiel’s delicate features, even with generous consideration, were merely charming.

Moreover, his blonde hair was lighter than Aeroc’s, and his blue eyes had gray flecks in places, making them far inferior in quality compared to Aeroc’s irises, which were like flawless lapis lazuli. The Viscount Westport family, a distant relative of the Teiwind Count family, was not entirely bad, but neither was it a family that could firmly support a son-in-law.

Why would he like such an insignificant person? If he were dating someone completely different, it might have been understandable. Kloff was not the type to like someone who was in every way inferior to Aeroc, simply because they were an omega.

Despite the glaring difference in class, which was unpleasant even to mention, it was also true that they were sometimes considered so similar that they were mistaken for siblings. There must have been another reason why he chose Raphiel, of all people.

After much thought, he decided it was a form of provocation. Perhaps it was a device to avoid meekly surrendering dominance to Aeroc of Teiwind. It was very childish, but it was quite effective. Every time he saw the two of them affectionately together, Aeroc was consumed by fiery jealousy.

Late one evening, after the tedious dinner party at Viscount Derbyshire’s, which he had attended solely to meet Kloff, was over and he was preparing to leave, he waited for the count’s carriage in the viscount’s lobby. People crowded at once, causing a carriage jam, and Aeroc’s expression hardened slightly as he paced the corridor.

Over there, at the edge of the garden where little light reached, he saw two people clinging to each other. Reputable aristocratic gatherings were the only places where young nobles of marriageable age could freely socialize. Being directly invited to someone else’s house without being engaged was considered gossip-worthy, as it symbolized a very secret relationship due to heat or other reasons.

Since he hadn’t yet heard that Kloff had personally sought out Raphiel, their relationship was clearly nothing more than innocent interaction. But to be clinging to each other like that in the open garden of another mansion, even in a secluded spot that one wouldn’t find unless they deliberately looked for it, was that sane? He felt disgusted and considered ignoring them, but since Raphiel was his relative, their reputation was shared, so he decided to give a slight warning.

They whispered something to each other with soft laughter near each other’s ears, unaware that someone was approaching. Disgust surged. As he got closer, Kloff held Raphiel’s two hands together and kissed the tip of each bandaged finger. For a moment, he was so shocked he couldn’t close his mouth. Kloff, with his characteristic deep gaze fixed on the small omega, put his fingertips to his lips and said,

“No matter how rough and scarred, these are the most beautiful and lovely hands to me.”

At those words, Raphiel’s face flushed deeply, and he merely called out, “Lord Kloff.” It wasn’t just a simple act. He was clearly a naive omega in love, and the alpha, gently embracing him with his long arms, bowed his head to touch foreheads, as if he found him utterly adorable. That was the end of it. Aeroc did not possess the vulgar shamelessness to watch them kiss.