Chapter 378: Baby (2)
Unlike Kesuye, Everly’s feelings were not quite so pure.
Even Kesuye himself couldn’t explain where his “liking” for her came from. But if you asked Everly why she liked Kesuye, she could easily list several reasons, one after another:
First, he was good-looking, and being around him was pleasing both physically and emotionally. Second, she had always liked being in control, while he was perfectly happy to let her take control, so their personalities meshed exceptionally well. Third, he gave her an almost absurd degree of trust. No matter what she asked him to do, he would never hesitate in the slightest. Likewise, Everly could trust him completely and would never harbor any suspicion toward Kesuye. Fourth, he wasn’t human, and his lifespan was just as long as hers. Fifth, he liked her, and if she liked him too, being together would be wonderfully easy…
The purer and cleaner Kesuye’s feelings were, the more they highlighted the flaws inherent in Everly’s humanity—flaws she could never completely cast off.
This naturally left her with a sense of guilt. As the two of them continued spending time together, she consciously treated Kesuye well. Whenever he asked something of her, as long as it didn’t violate her principles, Everly would usually agree, using it to make up for the fact that her own “motives” for being with him weren’t entirely pure.
Perhaps this was how human boundaries gradually eroded—through one concession after another.
Looking back, the way they had interacted when they first got together had been perfectly normal. Like any ordinary couple, they kissed, held hands, hugged, and kept each other company intimately… She couldn’t say when it happened, but at some point, something unusual began to emerge within their otherwise normal relationship.
It was also around then that Everly discovered that Kesuye’s human form had tentacles too.
They were hidden in the hollow of his lower back. When the soft yet resilient flesh on the surface split open, pink tentacles resembling octopus arms would emerge one after another through the openings.
Each tentacle was about as thick as a wrist. The outer side was smooth and springy, with a jelly-like texture, while the inner side was covered with round suckers of varying sizes. They were uniformly thick, with slightly blunt, rounded tips. Plump and chubby, they somehow gave off an adorably clumsy air.
The tentacles were coated in a layer of wet, viscous fluid that smelled like sweet wine, and even their rubbing sensation was reminiscent of wine. When they wound around her, the first thing her skin felt was a moist, cool smoothness. A few seconds later, the “wine” evaporated, and a gentle warmth slowly seeped into her pores, traveling through her veins and spreading to every inch of her body. Before she knew it, even her curled fingertips had acquired a tingling, tipsy sensation.
The first time Everly encountered one of the tentacles that had slipped out, she didn’t know what had come over her. She simply reached out and grabbed the mischievous thing that was writhing against her leg.
“Ugh… it hurts… I’m sorry… I just… it felt so good just now, I couldn’t help myself…” Caught red-handed, Kesuye turned his face away in embarrassment. He bit down hard on his own wrist, his pearly-white cheeks flushed an alluring red, his eyes so wet they looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment.
With that aggrieved expression, he looked as though the one who had done something wrong wasn’t him at all, but Everly… Though, Kesuye was pretty cute like this too.
Everly loosened her fingers and let the tentacle slip away on its own.
No matter when or where, she had always been extremely tolerant of him.
She hadn’t expected the tentacle to be quite as obedient as Kesuye himself. While its owner was still down below, whimpering tearfully and mumbling apologies, the newly freed tentacle had already enthusiastically wrapped itself around Everly’s wrist. Its slime-coated suckers clung firmly to her arm, and when Everly shook her hand, she could hear a succession of soft ‘pop-pop’ sounds—the little noises made as the suckers peeled away from her skin.
“Kesuye?”
“Sniff… I’m… I’m sorry…” Kesuye sobbed between hiccups, the embarrassment on his face becoming even more pronounced. “It won’t listen… because it likes you… It likes Everly too much…”
As he spoke, he pressed his lips together as though making some sort of difficult decision. Bracing himself on one elbow, he tensed his waist and lifted his upper body, attempting to grab the unruly tentacle.
“Wait…”
Everly had been completely unprepared for the sudden change. Before Kesuye could catch the misbehaving tentacle, she had already experienced the intense sensation caused by the abrupt shift in position.
With the deep pressure and friction, a jolt of electricity surged from her lower abdomen and shot straight to the crown of her head. Everly let out a muffled groan. It was as though fireworks had exploded before her eyes, and for a brief moment, everything dissolved into pure white.
Fine beads of sweat dampened her eyelashes, while the trembling sensation reverberated through her flesh-and-blood body like the distant tolling of church bells, lingering for a long time. The fingers hanging at her sides curled and relaxed, over and over. In the end, she couldn’t hold back a curse. She grabbed Kesuye by the back of the neck, gritted her teeth, and kissed him fiercely.
It was a kiss tinged with dishevelment and the taste of blood.
Once again, it had to be said: human boundaries were remarkably easy to lower through one concession after another. And with that chaotic kiss as the dividing line, all sorts of strange things gradually began intruding into the intimate moments between the two of them.
At first, there were only one or two. They would sneak their way out only when things became particularly heated. It didn’t happen often, and the frequency wasn’t high. But Everly’s indulgence encouraged bad habits. As time went on, more and more tentacles began appearing. Almost every time the two of them became intimate, they would emerge to snuggle up against Everly, even when the two were simply alone together, as though they had to make their presence known.
Everly even began to wonder whether Kesuye was doing it deliberately.
But whenever she asked, he would look at her with those innocent, clear puppy eyes, gazing at her pitifully while sniffling out things like, “They just come out when it feels too good,” or “I really can’t hold them back. I can’t control them…”
That delicate, timid appearance made Everly’s hard heart slowly collapse, until it became as soft as a damp, muddy swamp.
At this point, how could she possibly bring herself to interrogate him? She only wanted to indulge him even more, to make that beautiful face of his display even more lovely expressions… Ah, this was depravity. Utter depravity!
Everly strongly suspected that the baby in Kesuye’s belly—er, his brood pouch—had been accidentally conceived during that outrageous beach vacation not long ago.
That was the first time the two of them had tried it in mermaid form, um… ahem… but because of the size difference, they weren’t very compatible, and after fumbling around for a bit, they gave up.
After they returned from their vacation, a scar gradually appeared on Kesuye’s abdomen.
It was located on his lower abdomen, just below the navel.
The scar ran horizontally and was about two fingers’ width in length. When Everly first noticed it, she assumed Kesuye had accidentally scraped his stomach somewhere.
Then she thought about it. Kesuye’s healing ability was exceptionally strong. Even if he were injured, the wound would heal quickly. There was no reason for it to leave a scar.
Curious, she picked at the edge of the scar with her finger and was surprised to discover that it could actually be lifted open.
Before she could see what was underneath, however, Kesuye stopped her.
“This is where the baby lives. You can’t open it.” He stared at her with his round eyes, speaking with utmost seriousness.
“Huh?”
At first, Everly thought Kesuye was joking. That was until he took her finger and guided it to a certain spot beneath the “scar,” where he had her feel around.
“Can you feel it? The baby is right here,” he asked.
To be honest, Everly couldn’t feel a thing.
Kesuye exercised together with her, and there was already a thin layer of muscle covering his abdomen, giving it naturally defined contours. Everly hadn’t dared to press too hard, either. Aside from the firm, elastic muscle beneath her fingertips, she didn’t seem to feel anything unusual.
But Kesuye’s eyes were sparkling with joy and anticipation. Somehow, Everly felt that telling him she couldn’t feel anything would be rather disappointing.
So after a moment’s thought, Everly told a small, well-intentioned lie.
“I think I can feel something a little different.”
The corners of Kesuye’s mouth immediately curled upward in triumph.
“See? See~ I can feel it too. It’s a very strong little baby…”
As he spoke, he lowered his eyes, gently resting both hands over the back of Everly’s hand. A tender, distinctly maternal softness appeared on his beautiful face.
“…”
So he really was pregnant with a baby?
Even though she had already been mentally prepared for it, actually confirming it still left Everly feeling as though her entire worldview had quietly collapsed. How on earth had he gotten pregnant? She couldn’t have children herself, so how had one random, chaotic encounter somehow resulted in him becoming pregnant?!
Everly stared at his abdomen in bafflement for a long while before finally remembering that part of Kesuye’s genetic makeup came from seahorses.
Seahorses were currently the only known animals in which the male became pregnant and gave birth. Perhaps that was why Kesuye was exceptionally gifted when it came to pregnancy and carrying offspring. As for the pouch-like structure on his abdomen, that was his “brood pouch.” And inside that pouch now lived the baby belonging to both of them…
What would their baby be like? Human? Whale? Or would it have traits from both?