Ella was pinned under Elos.
The weight on her was heavy and her chest felt tight. Through her blurred vision, strand after hanging strand of hair cut that lovely face into many small pieces, and for a moment Ella couldn't tell whether this was real or a hallucination.
"Cough, cough..."
Coughing, able to breathe at last, Ella clenched her fist.
She tried struggling a few times first and couldn't get Elos off her, so Ella raised her hand.
"If you dare hit me, I'll have someone go and butcher the person you were just talking to."
Elos gripped her shoulder and made no move to stop her.
When the words landed, Ella went rigid. She held the fist up, unable to swing and unable not to.
"You— you— you—!"
"I what?"
"..."
Ella fell silent. What was there to say to Elos? Call her shameless? Call her contemptible? Call her insane?
Said often enough, words like that did nothing except make her own life harder.
Ella's raised hand came slowly down.
"Sensible enough."
Bracing on Ella's shoulders, Elos looked down at the girl beneath her.
On the girl's face was undisguised anger, and some measure of grief.
Facing a wretched life with no end to it, perhaps she felt uneasy too? But right now, at least, Elos could see no sign of any such feeling.
"Hateful creature. Why won't you cry?"
One hand braced on the girl's chest, biting the nail of her other index finger, Elos thought again of being beaten to tears all those years ago.
So shameful, so mortifying. A proper duke's daughter, beaten to tears in her own family's territory, and then unable to find the culprit afterward.
The more she thought about it the angrier she got, and her gaze settled on the small patch of pale skin showing at the girl's shoulder.
Decorum forgotten, she lowered her head.
"...?"
Ella went blank at first. Cheek against cheek, she could feel the warmth of Elos's face and the dry, fluffy hair against her.
Wasn't this a bit too suggestive? Was this one in heat or something?
"Ssss! What are you, a dog?!"
Ella's train of thought was cut off by a stab of pain, because Elos had bitten her shoulder, hard.
On reflex she went to hammer at Elos, then remembered the threat, and stopped the motion dead.
"...Hmph."
Lifting her head, swallowing saliva with a trace of blood in it, Elos looked down again.
The girl was still glaring with those almond eyes. Ella bit her lip; blood seeped from the tooth marks on her shoulder, and the thin body shook and shook.
Stubborn, and pitiful enough to break your heart.
Elos blinked.
"Your mouth really is foul."
It would be nice if she couldn't talk.
Elos thought about it for a moment, then pulled off a sock, balled it up, and shoved it into Ella's mouth.
Then she pinched the bite mark on Ella's shoulder and worked her fingertip into the small bleeding hollows, over and over.
"Mmf! Mmf!"
Ella's body went taut, and the expression on her face changed.
Beyond the fury there was humiliation now, and Elos found the sight rather satisfying.
The next moment, Ella seized both of Elos's hands.
"Mmf! Mmf!"
With everything she had, catching Elos off guard, she reversed their positions: Ella on top now, Elos beneath.
"Ugh... pff, pff..."
Pulling the cloth out of her mouth, Ella retched a few times.
Looking down at Elos from above, she raised her hand again.
"Your little childhood sweetheart."
Elos only paused, then her thin lips parted and a few words came out.
She had the game won and was certain Ella wouldn't really swing. Well, because Ella was a soft-hearted fool.
"..."
In silence, Ella held her hand up, at a loss.
The upper position did not last long. Elos drove her knee hard into Ella's stomach.
"Hurgh—?!"
The pain took her strength. Her face twisted with it and she doubled over, reaching for her stomach, and Elos pinned her down again at once.
Waiting at her leisure for Ella to come back out of the pain, Elos laid a hand lightly on the girl's throat, ready to close it at any moment.
"...hoo... hah..."
Breathing hard, time passing, the screwed-up face slowly smoothed out.
She looked up at that hateful face and opened her mouth, and for a moment did not know what to say.
A great many feelings were brewing in her chest. Grief, anger, the sting of being wronged?
In the end the one called being wronged took the largest share. Why? Why did she have to go through all of this? Had she done even one bad thing? She had lost the body she was used to, was being tormented by the person she was married to, her discount dad had given up on her, and now she was being threatened and not even permitted to fight back.
Her fist closed, nails sinking into her palm, and a mist came into Ella's eyes.
After a long moment, she spoke slowly.
"Why... why do you have to do this... torment me like this...?"
Her voice shook. Ella was close to breaking.
She covered her face with one hand, stubbornly refusing to let the tears fall.
"Even if we had bad blood before, that was nine years ago, wasn't it? And what you've done to me is already far worse than anything from nine years ago."
Ella's voice was muffled. There was a stone on her chest and she was wretched. She couldn't work it out, genuinely couldn't.
Were there really people who were simply born rotten?
Elos did not answer at once. She only pulled Ella's hand away and looked into those misted eyes.
On the edge of crying and not crying... it was very alluring.
Elos pressed her lips together. She wanted to see more.
The bite mark on the girl's shoulder had been worked by her fingers into several small wells of rising blood. Elos looked down at her own hand.
Her fingertips were stained red, and there was blood under her nails.
She couldn't help wondering. Why? Why did it have to be Ella?
"Because you're different."
After thinking about it, Elos spoke slowly.
Different from everyone. Because of her birth, everyone feared her, whether they were the children of great houses or minor ones, or the princes and princesses in the palace. All of them were afraid of Elos.
There was no gossip and no pranking. People simply avoided her. Isolation? Something like that.
Everyone knew Elos was a monster who would one day absorb another person's life force, and nobody was willing to talk to her—and that was so even before her personality became what it is now.
Ella was different. After her personality had turned nastier still, when she had ordered the servants' children to bully a commoner girl over some trifle, Ella had come charging in—and then Ella had hit her.
Being hit until she cried was, without question, a humiliation for Elos. But... perhaps not entirely a humiliation? There had been something else too, a feeling she couldn't name. Ella had blundered into Elos's life, careless and unwavering, and knocked a crack into the idea she had built for herself: that she was a monster everyone feared.
In any case, Ella was special. This idiot. Elos had remembered her for nine years.
"You're special."
Elos thought about it again. Her wanting to make her cry: beyond the revenge, perhaps she also wanted Ella to fear her the way everyone else did.
She was refusing Ella's specialness.
"I'm going now. See you tomorrow."
Elos got up and left, and Ella was alone in the room.
She held her stomach, which cramped where the knee had gone in, and the wound on her shoulder still ached dully, staining the fabric around it red.
A faint smell of blood hung in the air. Ella got no answer out of Elos's explanation; it made no sense to her at all.
"Hoo..."
Unable to make head or tail of it, she sniffed and curled up.
Getting herself back in order, she found she felt no fear of Elos, only greater disgust. Everything she had done, Ella wanted to give back.
Her body was more powerless than ever, and the illness had never gone. Ella closed her eyes wearily.
What would tomorrow be like? Probably nothing worth looking forward to.
Ella fell into a deep sleep without noticing.