Keeping a pout on, Karen held Dulan's hand. 'This was a normal start.' Dulan had two left feet and since Karen didn't want to fall over, she skillfully took the lead. Her moves were flawless even as her eyes drifted around to catch a server dropping the glass for the seventy-eighth time or a couple messing up for forty-fifth time. This was her sixty-nineth dance, she was all too familiar by now.
"H-Heyer, smile." Dulan whispered as they moved. "E-Everyone in this stupid m-manor is laughing a-at me."
"...it's too bad."
"She looks so miserable."
"...It's really Dulan."
"Shhh!"
"Lady Karen is trapped with him..."
The whispers around them mingled with the soft hum of music as they danced. It was also the hundredth time Karen Heyer was pitied.
His grip tightened over Karen's wrist. 'It hurts, you moron.' She thought but didn't voice her irritation, "It's not like that, Dullan."
Her attempt to comfort felt cold.
"I can't s-stand being treated like a f-fool."
His pride soared high, yet his self-confidence was rock bottom. It might be because he simply existed to highlight how much better the male lead is in comparison, but it didn't make Karen hate him any less.
The man in front of her was consumed by a severe inferiority complex. Any hope for change is simply laughable and a disrespect to the time she would spend thinking. He would never grow out of it. He never did before.
There was a time when she thought that marrying Dulan was the key to breaking the time loop. She was young back then. Wait, maybe not. She couldn't even recall the memory.
The teen life she led for more than a century had turned her mind into a jumbled bookshelf where books were haphazardly shoved in.
In the novel, the current time highlighted how Karen would break it off with Dulan. Up her arsenal, she had more than thirty ways to humiliate him. But they no longer amused her because of repetition.
'Amused....'
Karen's eyes suddenly glinted as if she finally realised something so obvious. 'Repetition,' she exclaimed in her mind. She needed something refreshing. Something new. Something she had never done before!
Her gaze ran here and there like a rabid dog set free. Nobles. Servants. Maids. That damn ugly fianceé. No-one new in the constant confluence. Karen wanted novelty. Variety. Something different. Unprecedented!
The party was here to celebrate Karen! It should excite her, please her, fill her with joy. She's THE protagonist. The novel revolves around HER. No matter how cruel the book was, it is about her. Karen Heyer!
And the hundredth loop should feel even more special. She's turning eighteen for the hundredth time. Her lips parted from the thrill. 'Maybe I should tie him up and pull out a whip.'
"Come with me." The savage grin that accompanied her words almost made Dulan to choke out an exorcism spell. Karen led him by the wrist and drifted into the hallway.
Karen whisked Dulan into her room and locked the door before turning to him with the same terrifying grin stretched across her lips.
"Do me a favour. Get on all fours." The woman moved closer to him and looked up before whispering the next words. "Like a damn dog."
The priest stilled, his eyes widening as he almost shouted, "H-Heyer!!?" Karen was unfazed and he continued, "Why are y-you asking for a r-repeat of your t-tenth birthday!?"
There was such a backstory? The new response immediately pleased her to no end. Finally something fresh in the stale existence she is leading. Motivated for her, she pushed the man and crawled over him.
"I-I don't f-follow-"
"You don't have to. I will make you follow." She pinched his chest over his clothes, and what followed was a weak groan instead of protests.
'Will something change if I sleep with him before marriage?' The thought catalysed Karen's actions and before long she was hovering over Dulan, staring at him with wide violet eyes that belonged to anyone but a good wife by his defination.
"Take off your clothes!"
He was fucked. Literally.
* * *
Why did sex and death seemed to be irrevocably connected? The inceptive disgust for sex, gradually molded into an act that brought her ephemeral warmth and comfort. The illusion of warmth soothing her soul when a body would embrace her was cathartic. It made her feel that her life was not depressing after all.
But then she would be reminded of her deaths. How, in her final moments, she would be pushed to the highest point, as if the heavens were a hand's length away only for the unrelenting shackles of the novel to plummet her back onto the ground.
Karen sighed and pushed such thoughts away as she dressed up. The sex sucked. She didn't like it but the fact that he was now flustered made it bearable. In the end, it was a deviation from the usual awkward Dulan. And she appreciated that.
During the act, Karen wondered who her actual first time was but she couldn't remember it. In the end, she decided it was Raymond just because she wanted to do that.
A brief knock on the door brought her out of her reverie. The banquet was ongoing. Servants must be looking for her. She wondered what would happen if they were caught. They were already engaged but this was an older time.
'Should I let them see?' Karen almost wanted a butler to admire her like this, before collapsing from shock. She chuckled at the mental image before turning to her fianceé.
Just this morning, he stuttered tremendously and beseeched God. His current state described a pervert, not a man of God.
Dulan couldn't figure out if Karen was shocked or pleased based on the quiet smirk she had on her lips but he fumbled and tried to make excuses.
"Y-You are the one who s-seduced me."
Was he implying she cared enough about him? All she was felt right now was pity that her underwear got dirty.
As Karen wondered if she should change them before going out, she caught the dirty smell of rain and frowned. He had not cleaned up.
"Wash up. You smell horrible."
"Huh? H-Horrible?" Karen spoke no further and walked past him with an intentional bump.