I couldn't help hugging him tight at that look, which was like that a lost child would make upon finding its mother.
While wrapping El in my voluptuous breasts as if to comfort him, I opened my mouth in an effort to speak words of repentance.
"I am sorry... Really... Even though I should have been the one to step forward... I always made walls between us, and I hurt you, didn't I El...? I am truly... sorry."
—I recalled all the ways I had ill-treated him when I had been a "Hero."
They had made my breast hurt powerfully.
And yet... they must have hurt him more.
After all, from his point of view, his childhood friend, having been set up in a high position as a Hero, had been behaving as if everything before had been a fleeting dream.
I could only imagine that pain and sense of alienation.
I had gone on treating him like that for a long time.
My chest seemed about to burst and my tears about to flow at the mere thought of it.
"It wasn't your fault, Wilmarina... no... Mary. I was so confused myself when I found out you were becoming a hero, so... I've been making walls, just like you did."
"Aah... "
—As he spoke those words... El wiped the tears that had been steadily rising in the corners of my eyes without my noticing, and...
It was just like back when I had been a crybaby... just like when I had been happy, he softly stroked my back.
In spite of myself, several streaks of tears spilled from the corners of my eyes at that, which seemed to warm my spine with each pass.
Surely I could not feel this warm and safe anywhere else... not even at Lady Druella's bosom.
For me, his broad chest had a charm that made me want to abandon myself to it completely.
"...Will you call me 'Mary' again...?"
"If you want me to, Mary... but..."
—Aah... I'm so glad...
At the sight of him smiling bashfully up at me from between my breasts, a heat kindled throughout my body.
That, which resembled the feeling of warmth throughout the body one gets after a bath, was surely not unrelated to the fact that he had again called me, who had completely become a monster, "Mary."
El was willing to accept me as "me," without even the usual prejudices of the Order, and my body, in which a passion had been suddenly ignited, was squirming bashfully at the bigness of his tool.
A hot passion again ignited in my lower parts, which rubbed themselves against his of their own accord as if to embrace them.
"S, so... how did you end up like that, Mary...?"
"Aha. "
El spoke as if to gloss over that symbol of seething maleness.
His aim in desperately moving only that portion of his body with a look of embarrassment was surely to keep me from touching his hot pole.
But to me such tactics were transparent.
Gently raising a knee between his legs so that neither one could move, I softly opened my lips.
"You see, I... never really cared about humans, except for you... I wonder why I said things like that when I was human? Really, I was such a fool."
"Mary...!"
There was a tinge of rebuke in that word.
It was surely not because I had become a monster, but because as an individual human he could not overlook my words.
I admired El's willingness to deal with me on an individual level.
And yet... he was still just stubbornly bound by a human sense of values.
Surely right now I ought to find a way to repaint those in the colors of a monster... no, in my own colors, and... perfectly convey my mental state to him.
"It was silly, wasn't it? Saying that I'd save the world, of all things... even though nothing mattered to me as long as I had you... Don't you think it was silly? I mean, thinking that because I was a hero I belonged to everyone... even though I'm yours alone... "
—A powerful confusion rose on El's face at that exclusive and sweet confession, and...
I didn't understand why in the world that there was a need for him to make such an expression.
But at least I was certain that not a hint of rejection showed on his face; while it's expression displayed bewilderment, that was certainly mixed with a tinge of joy.
—In that case... I suppose all I have to do is make it grow...
"But... the human me didn't understand that... No. Even if she understood, she could never have done anything about it. So... I got myself a body that could... "
As I spoke those words, I quietly drew back, so as to peer into the face of him I embraced so tightly.
The gap between us that had just been born could be more than enough to make him take up the sword that leaned against his bedside.
Having made sure of that, I quietly moved my lips closer to his ear with a malicious grin.
"El, do you hate... such a woman... no... such a monster...? Are you going to kill me...?"
"...That's..."
He showed more than a little indecision in response to the words I whispered into his ear.
Surely that was to be expected. If our positions had been reversed, I should have ended up so troubled that my heart would seem about to go to pieces.
I was sure I would have let my sword fall, worrying endlessly at that unanswerable problem.
After that, I would have been raped by him a lot, and... made into a monster.
By the time the scene in my imagination had reached that point, El opened his lips as if he had come to a decision.
"Even if you've become a monster, Mary, you're still you. ...There's no way I could kill you, Mary."