iii.

Underneath the bleeding moon, he takes her in rough intercourse.

Kurapika doesn't mind. Pain is a familiar companion.

It is when he takes her in feral brutality that she realizes that they are no different from vicious beasts in heat. The ground trembles, the earth splits between her fingers where all the sin and grime sticks onto her nails. Absentmindedly, the wild grass they lay turn into the silken sheets from a brothel, the stench of sweet incense coalesced over sex and sweat. A thin grim smile crooks the side of her lips. Not much has changed after all.

This is a debauchery. The very sight and scent and sensation of it is, whenever he pushes inside her like a great tide, a savage energy that threatens to break and break and break her into pieces, but she knows she is already a broken thing, holding onto the vestiges of revenge. Bent and broken and burnt, but grasping onto the edges still. That—that is what this violent creature wants. What he salivates on, feeds on, hungers on.

So he ravages her from behind; a clawed hand grabbing her rear, a wide red smile on the nape of her neck. His fingers are careful, though—as to not scratch her soft flesh because she is spoken for, but he doesn't mind her scratching him till he bleeds, till blood and sweat streak from his thigh. He relishes this all the more when she fights back.

However this night, it feels too gratuitous than tortuous, as his hand slowly glides down from her abdomen, sharps nails teasing to cut, and stops at the thatch of coiled hair, trenching over nether lips, fingers sliding in and—

The treacherous moan echoes from her throat. There is a dull ache from her clenched teeth and her shaking legs that attempt to kick him in retaliation. He goes on and on, reveling on that slick warmth, and the pleasure it gives her repulses her to the bone. "Faster," Kurapika rasps out shuddering breaths. "Don't be gentle," this doesn't make him cease, and in her shame, she whimpers, "please."

"It isn't like you to plead," he tells her from her fallen disheveled hair. His tone is that of mild surprise.

"It isn't like you to care," she spats out.

In the end, he abides. She doesn't scream, but there is blood painted on the flowers beneath them.

Pain, she thinks, lips quivering. It is all she will rather know.


Exposition Corner:

Shunga: translated as "spring pictures", it is an erotic artistic tradition that emerged from early modern Japan, featuring graphic images of sexual activity. At its best, shunga celebrates the pleasures of lovemaking, in beautiful pictures that present mutual attraction and sexual desire as natural and unaffected.