The room Jiro was in was dark. Enough that the outlines of the furniture had melted into the thin walls, and made every small sound happening in it feel louder than it would normally. In this dark, cramped room, making him feel uncomfortable, a low, wet moan slid through the silence.
“M-mmm…”
It was very soft and almost careful, followed immediately by the thumping and creaking of the old wooden bedframe.
“Keep it down, woman,” his father’s voice rumbled, rough with amusement and effort from moving his waist.
“You want the boy waking up? And hear how thoroughly his mother’s getting filled? Hah. Well, not that he’d understand half of it yet. The boy’s still wet around the ears, I think. Even after being an adult, he still hasn’t lost his virginity, that boy. While I was his age, I was busy stuffing myself in you day and night, heh.”
“Mff… ahh….” Jiro’s mother only moaned in reply.
Another sound tried to escape from the woman who was getting fucked, higher this time, and was cut short by the sharp, wet slap of her skin meeting her husband’s skin. The bedframe answered with a harder thud against the shared wall with another push of the big guy behind her.
The virgin boy the man was talking about, Jiro, had his face buried in the pillow from the moment the first noise started in the room. The three pillows he’d had since he was small were now crushed against his ears so tightly the seams dug into the side of his head. He breathed through his mouth in short, controlled pulls, tasting old cotton and the faint bitterness of the herbs he dried for the apothecary today. Even though he didn’t like this bitter, wild-herb scent, right now anything was better than this thick, musky scent of sex that always drifted across the room once his parents started their nightly activities.
Half an hour had already passed since this couple started tonight. It had already been going for that long, and if the pattern of everyday held today, too, it would stretch another thirty minutes at least. His father never finished quickly, and he recovered even faster. The man was a bull in every sense of the word, broad, loud, and apparently incapable of going more than a single night without burying himself between his wife’s legs.
Not that the rest of the village was any different. Out here in the countryside there was no theater, no traveling performers, no late-night taverns with music and sweet booze. People here finished their work when the sun dropped, ate whatever was left in the pot, and then went home to the only entertainment that didn’t cost them coin.
Every door here closes early. Windows stay shuttered. And the nights were filled with these same wet rhythms everywhere. Jiro has been basically forced to memorize this sound since he was old enough to understand what they meant.
He shifted under the thin blanket, careful not to make the straw mattress rustle. The pillow was already damp against his cheek from how hard he’d been pressing into it. His shoulders ached from the tension of holding still, trying not to make any sound.
Even though he was now eighteen years old, he still had to share a single room with his parents because his mother refused to let him leave the house. He earned enough at the apothecary, more than enough, some would say. He could have rented a small place on the edge of the village months ago. Hell, he could even have built one if he was permitted to do that.
But every time the subject came up, his mother turned into something desperate and theatrical.
She always cries until her voice breaks when he brings up this topic in this house. She had even gone door to door across three neighboring villages and quietly paid or threatened every possible landlord until no one would rent to him. Once she even claimed her heart was failing and she needed him close in case the worst happened in the night.
The village apothecary Jiro works with nowadays had later confirmed there was nothing wrong with her heart at all. Jiro had stared at the woman when he learned of it and felt something cold anger settle in his chest. Though he was angry at her, he still couldn’t disobey her wishes and leave her like this.
So he stayed. Different bed, same room, divided by just a thin wall that might as well have been paper. And every night the same performance continued, just like now.
“M-mmm… nnh…”
Another moan slipped free, softer this time, almost apologetic to Jiro’s suffering. Though his father’s laugh was low and pleased, as if mocking him.
“That’s it. Make only quiet little sounds, dear. We don’t want the boy thinking his mother’s a screamer, do we? Though he may already know you’re a greedy one for it. Look at you, taking it so deep you can’t even form words.”
“Mff… ahh… mmm….”
The bedframe slammed harder. The wet sound grew louder, and messier with each passing second. Jiro squeezed his eyes shut until negative colors bloomed behind the lids.
He tried to invent a different night, any other night, in his mind. A quiet library with tall windows and unread books. A forest so deep the only sound was wind through rare herbs. And inside that forest, there would be a girl with clean hands and a soft voice who had never known what it felt like to be pushed face-down into a mattress while someone used her body like it was nothing more than a place to finish.
‘Fucking hell!’ Jiro cursed himself as his thoughts kept slipping toward somewhere he didn’t want it to.
Just as usual, while wandering in his thoughts, he found himself again drawn to these same filthy thoughts for which he decided to distract himself in the first place.
This was the part that hurt most. It wasn’t that his own body had gone quiet.
It was the opposite. The more he was forced to listen, the sharper his own unwanted bodily reactions became. Heat coiled low in his stomach even now, traitorous and familiar.
He hated it with a clarity that bordered on violence. He wanted something pure. Something that didn’t smell like sweat and filthy sex.
There had been offers. Girls from the village. A few from the neighboring farms even. They all wore soft smiles, gave lingering looks to him, and sent invitations that were anything but subtle. One had even waited for him after he finished work and bothered him at every chance she could get for weeks.
Jiro had always looked at her and felt only a distant kind of exhaustion from seeing her act like that. She might’ve been a beauty, but far from the vibe he always searched for in girls.
And what’s worse, every girl around him was more or less like her.
In a place like this, a rural village, out in the borderlands of the country, where people didn’t care how much their spouses fooled around before marriage, innocence didn’t survive long enough to become available to him. He wanted someone who still blushed at the idea of holding hands. Someone who thought a first kiss was a big deal. Someone whose body hadn’t already been mapped by other filthy male hands.
But finding such a girl was far harder than it looked. It is basically a dream at this point.
Getting him out of this fantasy of his, his mother cried out once again…. “Nnh… m-mmm…!”
The sound muffled, like she was biting down on something. Yet his father’s rhythm of moving his waist didn’t slow.
“That’s my girl. Take it. You’ve been dripping for this since supper, haven't you? Don’t pretend you weren’t spreading your legs under the table when our boy wasn’t looking.”
“Mff… ahh… haah..hh..”
Jiro’s fingers dug into the fabric of the plush over his head until the seams threatened to split. He really felt like leaving the house right now. Packing a bag, walking out before dawn, keep walking until the village was a rumor behind him. The thought came every night and died the same way.
Thinking about his mother’s face when she realized he was gone, the way she would hunt him, the guilt she would feel because of him, all of these thoughts were the only reason he was still here, in this madhouse.
The bedframe gave one last violent series of thuds. His mother’s voice rose, cracked, and broke into a string of short, helpless sounds.
“M-mmm… nnh… mff… ahh…..!” His father’s breathing turned harsh, almost animal-like.
“There….take it all. Every drop. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
….
As soon as the guy had come, silence stretched in the house for a few heartbeats. Jiro allowed himself the smallest hope that it was finally over. His shoulders loosened a fraction. The stuffed pillow still pressed against his ears, knowing the worst of the noise had stopped.
But then the bed creaked again. His father’s voice returned.
“Ready for round two, wife?”
The woman didn’t say anything.
“Look at you. You’re still clenching onto me like you can’t stand the thought of being empty.”
“Fine. Turn over.”
“I’ll fill you again. Satisfying a wife is the sole duty of a husband, isn’t that right? Wife!” He said it slowly, close to her ears.
“M-mmm… w-wait… nnn..dear, give me a moment.. ahh…”
Before long, the wet sounds started over almost immediately. From a different angle this time. More deeper, probably.
Jiro’s mother’s soft, broken whimpers mixed with his father’s low laughter and the relentless rhythm of the bed against the wall started to make Jiro’s night into a full restless night once again.
“Mff… ahh… m-mmm… haah…”
Jiro pressed his entire face into the pillow until his nose hurt and the world narrowed to the smell of old fabric and the distant, muffled percussion of two people in his family who would not stop fucking like rabbits.
The night stretched on, and his father’s stamina never failed, as usual. His mother’s voice grew hoarser; the short, punched-out sounds were quieter but no less frequent.
And eventually, after what felt like another full hour, the sounds finally began to slow. The bedframe settled. Breathing evened out. Soft, lazy murmurs replaced the earlier intensity. Something that might have been a kiss. A tired laugh. Or the rustle of blankets being pulled back into place was the only sound remaining in this madhouse.
Jiro did not move. Still unsure if that was really it, he kept the pillows crushed against his ears long after the last wet sound faded.
Only when the first thin line of gray light touched the edge of the shutters did he allow his arms to loosen. His neck was stiff. His jaw ached from how hard he had been clenching it. And the pillow was damp in a way that had nothing to do with the night air.
Outside, a rooster crowed once, distant but ordinary. Somewhere a door opened and closed. The village was beginning to wake into another day of work and quiet conversations.
But the same unspoken understanding still remained in their eyes: that when the sun went down, the real entertainment would start all over again.
Jiro closed his eyes and let the last of the darkness settle over him like a thin, insufficient blanket.
Somewhere beyond the village, beyond the fields and the dirt roads, the capital of Licia waited for him with its own kind of noise. He did not know that yet.
He only knew that the night had finally ended, and that another one would begin all too soon. And he wanted to escape this hellhole at any cost before that.