"Hoo," Malcolm exhaled, throwing the hoe over his shoulder.
"Thanks," Leila said, taking the item from him. She was a stunning young woman, with short black hair and piercing blue eyes. She also had the tanned skin and strong muscles of a farmer, but Malcolm personally thought that they only made her more attractive. "I'll put this up."
"I don't mind," Malcolm protested.
"YOU need to get home before your father gets angry," she said, poking his chest with the butt of the hoe. "It's getting dark, and I know he worries about you."
Reluctantly, Malcolm agreed.
After obtaining the promised parsnips from Allen, he went home only to be greeted by his father, who glared at him as he tapped his foot on the ground rapidly.
"Yer late," he said simply.
"I didn't feel like running back," Malcolm replied tiredly. "I'll be rested enough for tomorrow, I promise."
"Good. We'll need to work hard if we want enough left over to feed ourselves."
With that, the old man stood and headed inside, leaving an empty bottle by his chair.
Malcolm sighed and headed inside.
.......
"Are you sure you have the time to help us?" Leila asked suspiciously.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," Malcolm grunted, bending down to toss a seed into the freshly-dug hole. "You know that. Besides, after your mother was taken, you'll need the help until the city adjusts your tithe."
"I don't want to talk about that," Leila said angrily, mimicking his actions. "That snake."
Malcolm wisely dropped the topic.
Women weren't passed around like precious goods, or at least not in this city. Instead, the Ascended would often offer families certain things to take a woman as their wife or concubine.
Leila's mother, as it so happened, had taken one of those offers, leaving her daughter and husband behind. She was likely living it up in the city even now, without a single care for the struggling family she had left behind.
And the worst part was, it happened so recently that the city officials hadn't yet adjusted their tithe, which they did along with collecting it every six months.
Clearly, the wounds still ran deep.
"So, what do you plan to do between tithes?" she asked, changing the subject.
"Besides work?" Malcolm asked with a grin.
"Besides work," she confirmed.
"Well, I heard Terr recently got a new book. He promised he'd teach me to read."
Vacation days were also calculated carefully by the city officials. Each family typically got a week and a half between them before they were expected to go back to work, but the time could vary.
Terr in particular, being the only one in his household and having suffered a particularly nasty leg injury during the last tithe, had been given this tithe and the next off for it to heal naturally.
And Terr being who he was, decided to spend that time reading. Luxury was something farmers like them rarely had time for, but with Terr also being so old, his tithe was much lower than theirs and he actually had time to read nearly every day.
"That doesn't sound too bad," Leila said thoughtfully. "Mind if I join you?"
"Yes! I mean, no, I don't mind." Malcolm coughed into his hand, eyeing a screen that only he could see.
[Affection increased!
Leila: 55%]
'Yes!' he rejoiced.
Leila caught his grin and smirked herself. "What are you smiling at?"
"Your pretty eyes," Malcolm replied distractedly.
Blip!
[Affection increased!
Leila: 56%]
Huh? Wait, what did he say?!
"I mean!" he started.
Leila just laughed. "Your eyes are pretty too," she said before she went back to planting parsnips.
Malcolm buried his shame and did the same, soon sinking into a rhythm.
.......
"And what's this letter?" Leila asked Terr.
"Rarrar," the old man replied. "It makes the 'rrr' sound."
The two nodded seriously, internalizing this information with the utmost diligence.
"Relax, you two," Terr said. "You look like you're at a funeral, and I'm not dead yet!"
"Sorry, sir," the two said in unison. They laughed at their synchronicity, forgetting about their worries.
[Affection increased!
Leila: 70%]
.......
"Are you sure he won't see us?" Malcolm asked nervously, glancing around the corner at her father, who was still working the fields.
"If he does, I'll just say I needed your muscles to fix that pipe over there," Leila said with a grin, kissing him passionately. "Besides," she whispered, pulling back and gazing into his eyes. "Soon enough we'll need his blessing."
"For what?" Malcolm frowned, pretending he didn't know. He wanted to hear her say it.
"To get married, idiot!" Leila laughed, kissing him again.
[Affection increased!
Leila: 82%]
.......
"Malcolm," she whispered into his ear. "Malcolm. Harder."
He grunted in acknowledgment and thrust as hard as he could, earning a slight squeal of pleasure from her before pulling back and doing it again and again.
Her beautiful moans of pleasure tickled his ears and spurred him on. He refused to let go until she did.
"Ah, ah, ah~" Leila's spine arched as she gripped the sheets and her toes stretched as far as they would go.
Taking that as his cue, he unleashed everything he had, gushing into her to the tune of her songlike moans until he was completely empty.
He fell next to her, both of them breathing heavily, and embraced her in a tight hug.
He wasn't worried about hurting her. They had been rougher only a few minutes ago.
She returned the hug, gripping his back and winding her legs around him before squeezing like a boa constrictor.
"Oof," Malcolm let out. "A bit too tight."
"I thought you liked tight?" she grinned.
Blip!
[Affection increased!
Leila: 100%]
A sense of pride and blissful affection welled up within him when he saw the message.
Truly, his life was perfect.
[Relationship completed! Assimilating…]
Huh?
"M-Malcolm?" Leila whispered.
What was happening? Leila never stuttered, not even when they were learning how to read.
He looked down, but soon regretted it.
His eyes widened as her legs started to turn the same shade of green as his system's screen.
He rushed to a sitting position, hands reaching for her leg and feeling it for lesions or tumors or anything else that might cause such a thing, but to his confusion and fright, he found nothing.
The green spread up her leg and swallowed her skin in less than three blinks of the eye.
"Malc-?"
FWOOSH.
With a rush of wind and a bright green light, she was gone.
Malcolm sat there dumbly for several minutes, unable to comprehend what had happened.
"…Leila?"