Chapter 81: Mark of ownership
Amran stepped into the room with a deep frown, pausing for a moment right at the threshold.
His eyes scanned the small, stone-walled room with a sense of sudden unease. For some reason, he felt like there was a lingering presence here, a strange, suffocating weight in the air that hadn’t been present when he left.
He shook his head to clear the irrational thought and focused on the bed. Kenji was lying on the thin mattress, but his physical appearance was completely different from a few minutes ago.
His face wasn’t paler like before; in fact, a healthy flush of blood had returned to his cheeks, and his breathing was perfectly steady.
But there was something else. Amran secretly hesitated as he approached the bedside. Why did he feel like Kenji was currently radiating a massive wave of silent anger?
Obviously, Kenji was in deep anger.
Which man in the entire world wouldn’t be in absolute anger if they were suddenly interrupted right after having sex, just as they were winding down?
Although he and Ayla had already done every single intimate deed on that very mattress, he wasn’t truly satisfied with only doing it one time.
His slightly distorted, battle-hardened, ahem, horny mind wanted to do it multiple times. He wanted to perfect the mechanics of sex just like he did with his martial arts by dying and repeating the process over and over again.
He viewed physical acts as something to be thoroughly mastered through raw repetition.
Furthermore, his current irritation was fueled by the memory of Ayla’s parting words. She had explicitly warned him that Amran was a bad guy.
That short statement meant she had actively read the inner mind of the bespectacled boy while perched outside the glass window.
Kenji hadn’t doubted this man before, simply because he wasn’t an opponent. His tactical attention had always been entirely focused on the stronger students, the aggressive seniors, and the enforcers who could actually provide a decent martial arts challenge during his loops.
He had simply categorized Amran as a background character, a weak variable not worth tracking.
Kenji understood why Amran was being friendly with him. He was using Kenji as a human talisman of bad luck. Kenji shouldn’t have cared about it, but now, after he interrupted his good times, how couldn’t he?
Knowing that the boy was intentionally using him as a human shield transformed Kenji’s irritation into a cold, dangerous glare.
"I have registered for you..." Amran said, cutting off his own thoughts as he placed the stamped document on the table. He secretly gulped, his throat tightening slightly at the exceptionally dark face Kenji was making.
Poor Amran had absolutely no idea that this pathetic meat shield of his was currently showing such a dark, murderous expression because of an interrupted sexual encounter rather than an exposed betrayal.
Instead, Amran assumed the dark look was because Kenji was upset that Amran wasn’t registered to go into the forest alongside him.
Amran secretly scoffed in his mind, his posture straightening as he looked down at the injured boy.
So what if his good relationship with Kenji was completely destroyed today?
What did it matter if Kenji grew angry because he chose not to follow him into the wilderness?
Amran knew he wasn’t stupid enough to risk his own fragile life in a dark forest filled with high-tier apex predators just to maintain a superficial friendship with a zero-soul cripple.
After all, any relationship built in this harsh academy was destined to break at one point or another. It was a simulation of survival, nothing more.
After that selfish thought solidified in his mind, Amran didn’t even bother to keep his fake, smiling face anymore.
The meek exterior completely vanished. He dropped the official registration paper onto the wooden table with a sharp, heavy thud, turned around on his heel, and left the medical room without saying another single word.
The heavy door clicked shut behind him, leaving the room in silence.
Kenji was taken slightly aback by the abrupt departure. He remained sitting on the edge of the mattress, his hazel eyes fixed on the closed door, genuinely curious to know why Amran had suddenly turned so hostile and cold in a matter of seconds.
"Because he is breaking up with you..." a gloating, soft voice suddenly sounded from directly under his wooden bed.
The small, translucent blue slime slithered out from the dark floorboards, its malleable body rippling with an amused vibration. It climbed up the side of the bed framework and slid onto his lap.
The moment the cool membrane established full physical contact with his skin, the blue mass expanded rapidly, turning directly back into her beautiful, human shape.
Ayla became completely naked again, her pale, smooth skin reflecting the dim torchlight of the room, which immediately made Kenji frown in mild exasperation.
"Why are you naked?" Kenji asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it. He felt remarkably stupid after asking such an obvious thing to a literal mimic slime, so he quickly corrected his phrasing.
"Do you always become completely naked after shifting back into this form?"
Ayla nodded her head simply, her long silver hair brushing against his bare stomach as she adjusted her weight on his lap. Kenji stared closely at her perfect, porcelain face.
There wasn’t a single mark or blemish left from their highly energetic activities from before. If anyone walked into the medical bay right now, no one would be able to find any physical marks of their intense sexual activities.
There were no scratches, no flush, and not even a single hickey left on her pale neck.
Ayla tilted her head to the side, her golden pupils shimmering with a faint light as she effortlessly read the exact trajectory of his mind.
"Whenever I shift my form, my physical body completely returns to its perfect, default state," she confirmed deadpan, her voice entirely smooth. She watched closely as his facial expression seemed to grow slightly lost and disappointed.
"Isn’t it better this way?" she asked in genuine confusion.
Unlike him, who needed to literally die and trigger a massive timeline regression sequence to fully heal his physical internal injuries, she could achieve the exact same structural restoration simply by changing her species form for a split second.
Her non-human logic calculated that this was the most efficient biological mechanism possible. She truly thought it was a superior trait, so his visible disappointment confused her simple mind.
Kenji lowered his dark eyelashes to glance directly at her face. His eyes slid downward, locking onto her soft, moisture-laden lips. Without explaining his human sentiment, he lowered his mouth to firmly take them.
Before Ayla could even properly reciprocate the gesture, Kenji intensified the kiss, his lips pressing hard against hers as his tongue slid deep into her mouth, claiming her sweetness with a rough, dominant pressure.
He poured all his lingering frustration into the exchange, holding her tight against his chest for a full twenty seconds before finally parting their lips with a soft, wet gasp.
Both of them gasped for air in the sudden quiet of the room. Ayla raised a slender finger, tracing a very thin, bleeding scratch on the edge of his lower lip where her sharp teeth had accidentally grazed his skin during that sudden, intense kiss.
"You are injured..." Ayla pursed her lips tightly, a flicker of genuine distress passing through her golden eyes. "I am sorry. Should I kill you right now so you can regress and heal it?"
Kenji almost choked on his own saliva at her casual suggestion. He let out a low, amused huff and flipped her forehead gently with his index finger, wiping the small smear of blood away with his thumb.
Still, despite his gentle strike, the side of his lip remained bruised and a bit swollen from the impact of their teeth.
But to Ayla’s eyes, the slight injury looked incredibly hot. Her golden pupils shone with a strange, predatory light as she stared at the small red mark on his face. It felt different. It felt like she had finally marked him as her own property.
Her internal expression suddenly froze.
’Marked him?’ She glanced up from his bruised lip to his current, grinning face. Her thought processors quickly cross-referenced his soul ripples, and the data finally clicked.
So he had been sad and disappointed before because his own physical marks on her body completely disappeared whenever she shifted shapes?
He wanted to see his mark on her flesh!
Ayla bit her lower lip, a wave of intense, territorial possessiveness washing over her mind. She cupped his broad shoulder blades with her small hands, pulling her naked body forward until she was completely pressed against his chest.
She leaned her head directly into the crook of his neck, her breath running hot against his collarbone. With a sharp, eager exhale against his skin, she muttered softly.
"How about you mark me again? Right now."
She just had to say that single sentence before Kenji’s restraint snapped entirely. His arms locked around her waist, and with a sudden, heavy shift of his weight, her naked body was slammed back into the mattress.
Kenji climbed directly over her, his muscular frame pinning her down as his mouth immediately descended upon her throat with an unyielding hunger.
"Mmuahh," Ayla let out a muffled sound as his lips bit into her shoulder.
Her initially suppressed yelps and gasps quickly turned into soft, rhythmic purrs of absolute satisfaction as the locked room filled once again with the heavy, wet sounds of their unyielding coupling.
