The Last Cross Offs (Part 1 of The Eternal Partners Series)

Chapter 10

Dear Diary, I am no longer a virgin...

Is what Satoru would've written had he kept up with his Slime Diary to this day.

As the sun rose from the east, light slowly slipped through the window and painted their bodies with strips of gold.

When he woke it was to tangled limbs and a beautifully naked partner cuddled to his chest using his arm as a pillow.

Ciel's dark hair was a wild mess and petal-like red marks decorated the soft flesh of her neck down to her waist and beyond. Satoru himself had similar marks on his body. She was sound asleep as her chest rose and fell along with short breaths.

It was so nice, he thought, to wake up like this and share skin to skin intimacy. It was something he'd never thought he'd have. In the past, Shuna and Shion would often cuddle him, but that wasn't the same as this. They were his friends, not his partners. He never got naked with them either. And those times when they went to the onsen together didn't count! He was in his Slime body then. It was different.

Satoru shifted to lie on his side to see her face better. Ciel stirred in her sleep, but didn't wake.

It was said that only the only beings that did not feel loneliness were Gods as they loved and were loved in return by their creations.

Satoru only partly believed this to be true as he hadn't created any living beings yet so he wasn't sure. However, Satoru was clear that if he ever lost Ciel someday, there would forever be an empty Ciel-shaped void in his soul that could never be filled until he found her reincarnation. That was a loneliness that he never wanted to experience.

He watched her sleep. The tips of his fingers traced the contours of her face and he wondered, was this what it felt like to love someone?

Right now Satoru thought he could finally understand why Velgrynd would go so far for Rudra even though the him that was reincarnated in the different worlds had very different personalities from the him that had been the Rudra she fell in love with.

To love someone was a wonderful thing. But to love someone's soul was even better. After all, the aspects you liked about that person were still there, even if they were hidden behind aspects you never noticed before. It only meant that there are more of them to discover. The good and the bad.

Satoru carefully cradled her in his arms and leaned in to rest his lips on her forehead.

He would protect what they had.

.•° ✿ °•.

Ciel and Satoru were driving to meet Kaoru at his new home. The apple pie was held protectively in Ciel's lap. Satoru had grumbled when Ciel would not allow him to have a piece before they left but let it go when she promised to bake his favourites when they returned.

Unknown to Satoru, Ciel had been quite busy.

Once she had informed her original self about what happened with Mizuki, Original Ciel had decided to use her new skill <Life Cycle> for the first time.

She created new life forms to protect their human selves from harm. What she hadn't accounted for was the... connection that had developed. The beings created by her regarded Ciel as 'the Great Mother' and even called her so.

The initial design was for them to be the perfect spies and hidden protectors. There were three in total humanoid figures and possessed the ability to blend in with the environment much like chameleons. They needed neither food nor water to live, only sunlight. Their height came to about thirty centimetres, but don't let that fool you. They were intelligent with eidetic minds and their bodies although small were strong capable of lifting objects a hundred times their weight.