"Onee-chan, why does your voice sound kind of weird?"
"Y-You're overthinking it..."
Kotomi Izumi mumbled vaguely. In the end, she didn't offer any more explanation and simply let Aimi hug her from behind, hoping that would get her to sleep more quickly.
Aimi looked at Kotomi's back, eyes filled with unspoken words. But seeing that her sister really did seem tired, she held back, not wanting to disturb her rest.
"You must be tired after coming back from Kyoto. Good night~ Have a nice rest."
Aimi sat up, smiling softly as she looked at Kotomi. She gently pulled the blanket over her sister. Only after everything was tucked in did she lie down again beside her.
Originally, Aimi had wanted to hold Kotomi as she slept. But in order to let her rest better, she decided to put that idea aside for now. There would be other chances!
After all, her sister was back from Kyoto now. Opportunities would be plentiful!
Aimi was confident.
One hour later.
Kotomi opened her eyes and slowly sat up. She had been pretending to sleep this whole time. Her flushed face said it all. She had acted so convincingly that Aimi—who hadn't fallen asleep yet—truly believed she was out cold and promptly climbed on top of her to perform her usual "nightly routine."
Thinking back to what Aimi did to her while she pretended to sleep...
At that moment, Kotomi suddenly understood why, on mornings after wearing pajamas to bed, her buttons were always misaligned.
Turns out it wasn't because she was too clumsy to button them properly!
"That little brat..."
Kotomi looked at the peacefully sleeping Aimi with a mix of shyness and annoyance. If she could, she would have liked to give her a good scolding. To think she would do all that while Kotomi was asleep!
And judging by how smoothly it all went, this definitely wasn't the first time.
The thought that Aimi had likely been sneaking into her room each night to pull such stunts made Kotomi's face burn with embarrassment.
If there were a pill that could erase memories, Kotomi would swallow it without hesitation just to forget what she now knew.
As long as I don't know... it's not my embarrassment.
Aimi, who had never been good at staying up late and had worn herself out with some pre-sleep "exercise," was already fast asleep.
Since Kotomi came home today and they got to sleep together, Aimi was sleeping especially soundly tonight. In her dreams, she'd already envisioned them having five children—and she was hard at work trying to give Kotomi a sixth.
"Hehehe... Kotomi, my Kotomi... so soft and warm. I know there are other girls who love you too, just like I do. They're all bad... trying to steal you away from me. It makes me upset, but I'm not afraid."
"If someday I really have to race them to reach you at the finish line, I believe I can outrun them all!"
Still thinking the race hadn't started because she hadn't found the track, Aimi clung to Kotomi's pillow, mumbling in her sleep. Drool had already begun to pool on Kotomi's bedsheet.
Kotomi, sitting nearby and listening to every word of Aimi's dream talk, couldn't help but be taken aback. Her mixed emotions surfaced only as a faint, helpless smile.
She reached out to gently stroke Aimi's black hair and wiped away the drool at the corner of her lips before quietly getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom.
She turned on the light, stepped to the sink—and the moment she looked up, she doubled over and retched, vomiting both what was in her stomach and a vivid red fluid into the basin.
A half-severed tongue hung from a still-raw wound. The gaping tear, visibly agonizing even to look at, clearly showed that the tongue had been bitten through with sheer force. Crimson blood was still smeared across the pristine white surface of the bathroom sink, remnants of what Kotomi had just vomited out.
"Urgh—what was I thinking?! I actually bit off my tongue just to suppress the side effect. Lucky I'm not a normal human. With this amount of blood loss and the size of that wound, I'd either be dead or halfway there."
She poured herself a glass of water to rinse out the blood and metallic taste from her mouth. It helped—her mouth felt significantly better afterward.
Kotomi had no inclination toward self-harm. The only reason she had done something so extreme was to forcibly suppress the second surge of her Queen of All Females side effect.
It worked. The eruption had been narrowly averted. Her heart had calmed, the danger passed. The only thing that remained... was the pain in her tongue.
"I guess I've discovered a new method. If I ever find myself about to lose control again, I can just grit my teeth and bite down—literally. Severing my tongue seems to keep me conscious and rational."
Kotomi thought this over silently, but even as she acknowledged its effectiveness, she wrinkled her nose. That bloody taste was back again. Good thing it wasn't a school day—if anyone saw her like this, she'd probably be mistaken for some deranged murderer.
With that thought, she lifted her head and looked at herself in the mirror. After rinsing away the blood at the corners of her mouth, she let out a deep sigh, leaned closer to the mirror, and stuck out her tongue.
What should have been a half-length tongue was now completely intact. Not a trace of the wound remained. It looked soft and pink, like new.
No matter how severe the injury—as long as it didn't involve her heart—her hybrid bloodline of Queen of All Females and succubus allowed for rapid healing. A bitten-off tongue could regrow in just a few minutes.
Of course, Kotomi still didn't know her Queen of All Females constitution included succubus blood.
She didn't need to worry that her tongue would stay half-missing. No matter how many times she bit it off, it would grow back, like a lizard's tail. But even so, unless she was truly desperate, Kotomi never wanted to use that method again.
Why?
Because it hurt like hell!
The first time, she had no idea what kind of pain to expect. Determined to suppress the second surge, she had steeled herself and bitten down. But when the blood gushed into her mouth and the searing pain from her severed tongue nearly made her pass out, she understood just how excruciating it was.
After crawling back into bed, the more Kotomi thought about it, the more it hurt. In the end, she made a vow:
This method—never again!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven