𝐆𝐨𝐝'𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫 – 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝑳𝒊𝒆

Your wrists ache where the silk binds them, the knot cinched too tight—an artisan’s touch, practiced, meticulous, beautiful. A golden cage spun from careful hands and careful words. You tried to fight once, in the beginning, but the struggle had only made him coo at you, stroking the side of your face as if you were a frightened animal. “Hush, my love,” he had murmured, his breath against your skin. “It’s all right. I’ll be gentle.”

But he is not gentle.

Phainon moves with the precision of a sculptor shaping marble, with the tenderness of a lover and the restraint of a saint—except saints do not revel in their own holiness, and he? He worships his own kindness. He strokes your hair back, murmuring soft reassurances, his voice thick with a devotion so all-consuming it sickens you. You don’t cry anymore; he’s trained that out of you. Tears make him linger, make him slow down, make him want to “fix it.” You learned that silence, stillness, is the only thing that makes it pass faster.

His touch ghosts along your thigh, not rushed, never rushed. He loves you too much for that. He’s always been patient, hasn’t he? Even when you screamed, even when you begged, even when you swore you would rather die—he had only sighed, kissed your temple, and whispered, “I know. You don’t mean that.”

There is something worse than cruelty, worse than sadism. It is love twisted into something that smothers, something that consumes. Phainon does not hate you. He does not want to see you in pain. He wants you to love him, to feel loved by him, to surrender so completely that the thought of fighting back becomes foreign, absurd.

“You’re so tense again,” he says now, his fingers pressing into the meat of your thigh, kneading as though he can mold you into pliancy. “I thought we were past this.”

You stare at the ceiling, at the intricate carvings of the room he built for you. A temple, a tomb. He shifts above you, and your stomach twists, dread curling its cold fingers around your lungs. He does not take. He does not force. He coaxes, he manipulates, he makes you believe, if only for an instant, that this is inevitable. That he is inevitable.

“It’s because you think too much,” he muses, leaning down, his lips grazing your ear. “You’ve always been like that. But I love that about you.”

His weight presses against you, slow, purposeful, inexorable. A lover’s embrace. A captor’s restraint. He shushes you before you can even think to protest, before you can turn your face away. His lips ghost down your throat, tracing the fluttering pulse beneath your skin, drinking in the shudder you can’t suppress.

“You’re safe,” he whispers against your skin. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

And as he finally, inevitably, claims you again, you realize the worst part isn’t the way he holds you down, the way he murmurs sweet nothings into your ear like a man making love to his wife.

No.

The worst part is that he believes it.

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Character Tag List for HSR Phainon: @yandere-romanticaa