The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19

Nik said nothing, and brushing his hair out of his eyes, nervously rubbed his tattooed cheekbone. Kors perfectly noticed this gesture, and a slight, barely perceptible smile flickered across his face. He looked at Nik with paternal love in his eyes.

“Nik, understand, whatever it is, you are still very neglected. Your body is exhausted by the endless intake of all sorts of rubbish. And you still look younger than your actual age. You need my help. Nik, this human symbiosis is wrong. And my son is a man… he — he’s really not healthy in his mind, a little bit, but not healthy. Sorry. Maybe that’s how difficult childhood affected him…” saying all this in a slow, penetrating voice, Kors took out his golden cigarette case, which was now full of cigarettes, intending to light it up. At the same time, carried away by his explanations, he just senselessly twisted it in his hand, seemingly without realizing what he was doing.

“Nik, you don’t understand what shame is. You can walk around naked, without underwear, you can say without any hesitation that you want to relieve yourself. You can be dirty and not understand it. You can pour over, get dirty, and not understand, you will be fine. When wet and dirty, you don’t feel disgust at all that you or others stink. Natural manifestations don’t concern you. You don’t understand the procedure for taking care of yourself, I literally hammered into you that you need to wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair and put on your underwear. You forget to eat, you don’t realize whether you are cold or warm, whether you are hungry or full. You just feel a little thirsty. That’s all! This is possible to correct it. You need multiple repetitions, correct prohibitions to do some actions, and all this without explanation, you won’t understand them. But trust me, your human brain is underdeveloped. I can see. I have spent many days with you. This is a mild degree of violation — the lack of shame and misunderstanding of the signals of your body. I will help you to overcome these difficulties, and you will begin to feel your physical body as a human, you will own it. This will increase your power in our world.”

Nik was silent. He looked at how Kors, telling him all this, lazily twists his cigarette case in long beautiful fingers, decorated with rings. They were meaningless movements, empty in themselves, back and forth, but Nik watched with some admiration how smoothly polished gold gleamed. Kors saw his gaze, and his hand froze. Nik shook his shaggy head.

“I don’t go out naked,” he finally said.

“Yes! But only because they somehow managed to drum it into you before me. What is impossible. Butwhy so, you don’t understand. You just can’t understand. Otherwise, you would have gone out this way,” Kors finally took out a cigarette and lit it.

Nik replied:

“I understand when I’m wet.”

“And that is why I say you are not hopeless. A mild degree of mental retardation, severely neglected due to the almost complete lack of education…”

“Come to me!” Nik interrupted him. He opened his mouth and lifted his tongue, twisting it up a little, so that the ball screwed onto the bar from below became visible. Very quickly, Kors didn’t even understand how he did it, Nik pushed the ball forward, so that the bar stretched behind it and behind the bar threaded through his tongue. Covering his mouth, Nik flashed a ball in the corner of his lips, and deftly moved it to the middle of his lower lip. The ball clinked distinctly against the rings, and Nik moved it further to the other corner of his mouth. And then he did the same thing, but in reverse order. Seeing the look on Kors’ face, he sincerely laughed.

Kors suddenly felt like he was pulled from behind, and he understood:

“Hey! Let go of my tail!”

But Nik only pulled harder, forcing him to get up and move closer to the bed.

When Prince Arel finally returned from the stable, he heard Nik and Kors splashing in the bathroom. Without bothering them, he undressed and lay down to rest.

The day passed greatly. Kors was happy again and forgot all his fears and torments. Cheerful and even cheeky, he commanded his Nik a little, everything was almost the same as before. Kors washed him and combed his hair. He re-braided the bottom layer of his hair into neat braids and trimmed his bangs. Kors deliberately cut front hair a little shorter than necessary, so that Nik now, even if he wanted to, couldn’t shield his eyes with it. Nik understood this, but didn’t object.

“You don’t need those stupid bangs at all. If only it wasn’t for that damn order!” Kors said with regret, holding his bangs with one hand, and gently stroked Nik’s tattoo on his forehead with the other.

“You would wear hair and a tail beautifully removed from your forehead, like black ones, because you no longer need to cover half of your face with hair, hiding the scar,” Kors removed his hands, and his hair immediately covered the drawing.

Nik, as usual, remained silent.