I’m a Sheep, But Don’t Call Me Soft - Chapter 1 - Prologue

It’s unwise to desire things beyond one’s station. Many stories warn that those who reach for what they shouldn’t will face punishment. If you draw too close to the sky and you shall fall; try to drive the sun chariot and you shall burn to ash; seek to eat the same food as the gods and you shall suffer eternal thirst.

‘But then why make us capable of desire in the first place? Aren’t the gods supposed to be omnipotent?’

Yet looked at the other way, isn’t desiring things, even nigh-impossible things, human instinct?

Didn’t the very first humans crave the forbidden fruit, knowing full well they’d be cast out of paradise?

‘If it was a sin, then why make us able to think and act for ourselves?’

In my case, what I wanted was a man. A man far too perfect for the likes of me. If a fitting man for my station could be likened to a cup filled to the brim with water, then he was an ocean. No matter how hard I tried with the cup I held, I could never contain him.

‘I know. I know he’s a man out of my league.’

It wasn’t just visible traits or status, there was an undeniable gap in every respect, and I knew it.

‘I know that no matter how hard I try, I can never reach him.’

And yet, despite all that, I wanted him. And at certain moments, I even dared to think I could have him.

Because in the moments he held me, it felt like we were equals. His lion ears, my sheep horns, the fact that I was an orphan with no kin and he was royalty, none of it seemed to matter in the moments we wanted each other.

Once, we did want each other. And I loved him.

And I believed, without a single doubt, that he loved me too.

In the darkness where moonlight faintly seeped through, when he held me, I felt triumphant and elated, as if I possessed the whole world. He handled me like I was someone precious and irreplaceable, and in those moments in his arms, I almost believed I really was that person.

When he rained kisses from my brow to the tips of my toes, gentle as a soft drizzle, I was helplessly drenched.

“Ah, ah…”

I twisted my whole body, letting out sweet sounds I’d never made before. It was a shame I hadn’t known such pleasure until now, but I’d sensed it dimly. That no one else could make me feel this way. That no one else could make me tremble like he did.

When his lips and sharp teeth and tongue licked me, bit me, coiled around me, it felt like being devoured, and I loved it.

‘I feel so good I could die. No, I think I could die right now…’

Receiving his kisses while tracing his shoulders, his forearms, his chest, his waist, his stomach, his backside, it gave me a different pleasure than simply being touched.

‘Yes, I could die happy.’

Touching his sculpted body made my fingertips quiver with pleasure. His body was smooth as silk, yet entirely different from the softness of a woman’s. Beneath his smooth skin, with hardly a trace of fat, lay muscles hard as stone, and those muscles moved with an elastic rhythm that delighted me.

“Hnh! Ah! Ah-huk, hnh…!”

For instance, when the muscles of his backside clenched and pushed up into me, a shock raced through my whole body. It was so intense I couldn’t even make a sound. I felt my pupils dilate and his beautiful face blur into a haze.

“Sophie.”

His was so large that simply holding it between my legs left me gasping. My whole body felt like it was splitting in two, and the strain made my teeth clench on their own.

“Sophie, look at me.”

And yet I loved it. The spring of pleasure kept flowing with slick wetness, making it possible to take him a little deeper, a little smoother.

“Please… Franz, ah…”

I often floundered like someone drowning, clutching at his lean waist, his backside, his forearms, anything I could grab. And I looked up at him hovering above me, pounding into me, with eyes that begged him to save me.

But the truth was, I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to give me more. Just a little more.

“Sophie. I love you.”

Then he, perhaps also losing his strength to the tide of pleasure, would smile in a way that looked almost pained, gather both my legs in one hand, and keep moving. Gently. But without ever stopping, driving me forward until my breath ran out. Until, in the end, I lost consciousness.

“You don’t know how much I love you.”

Even those sweet words I heard on the edge of fading consciousness felt like a caress.

Back then, I didn’t know his words, sweet as honey, were actually as empty as a hollow reed. Or that he was someone who could lie without batting an eye.

‘What exactly were you thinking, that giving that would let you have him? A man that extraordinary?’

People could sneer at me and I’d have nothing to say.

I know I was a fool. The fact that I was deceived shames me. I was so blinded I couldn’t even grasp the simplest logic of the world. After I learned the truth of what happened, and his real nature, I trembled with rage for a long time.

Not because I gave him my body, but because I gave him my heart.

…And I had no idea how to get it back.

‘The fact that I still love him even after all this… makes me so furious.’

Even after learning he never truly loved me, and that he wasn’t a man worthy of respect.

* * *

Humans, the leaders among all beasts, are strongly endowed with the trait of one animal at birth. That trait determines the hierarchy and superiority among people. Who decided that hierarchy, I don’t know. But regardless, a clear discrimination existed based on what trait you had.

For example, those born with the lion’s trait were said to possess, not only golden hair, but also lion ears, and a tail, greater strength and courage. Moreover, lions are the only feline beasts that were in packs, so those who shared the trait banded together well. Using that trait, they claimed far higher status than people of other traits. Kings, for instance, or high-ranking nobles.

And what of those born with the jackal’s trait? Born with lush tails like a dog’s and pointed ears, they lack the lion’s glamour but are endowed with caution bordering on cunning, meticulousness, and cleverness. They used those traits to plunge into finance and amass vast fortunes.

Or those with the nightingale’s trait? Their effortless singing ability and surpassingly beautiful tone earned their voices the name “god’s gift.”

Compared to that, what of the sheep? Curved sheep horns rising from the head, ears, curls so coarse they can’t be combed, and, contrary to the common prejudice that they’re meek, a stubbornness no one can shake. Those were the things given to people with the sheep trait.

If you could choose your trait, who would pick the sheep? Useless and common to boot.

You’d pick the leopard or the lion.

The nuns at the convent I lived in used to lord it over me as they sneered:

“You sheep are stupid and stubborn and willful, and you don’t even know gratitude for being raised.”

And I was a sheep. Bearing the trait that made up the vast commoner class, and one useless for surviving in this harsh world.

Fine, so I’m a sheep, let’s grant that. But on top of that, I was also an orphan.

I can’t know what kind of people my father and mother were. Since all they left me was stubbornness no bundle of switches could break, long black curls, and horn-like sheep horns, they were probably sheep-trait people themselves. Weren’t they? In any case, many children bearing their parents’ trait like a brand, never knowing their faces, were left abandoned at the convent gate. And I was one of them.

Should I count it as luck that my mother chose the convent instead of tossing me into the river the moment I was born? Or would the river have been kinder? Who can say.

I’d been working for as long as I could think. The convent doubled as an orphanage and the village laundry and sewing workshop. The orphans, on the pretext that they had to earn their keep the moment they could speak and walk, were put to work as laborers in the laundry and sewing shop.

“Everyone up! Quickly!”

The children turned laborers had to, from daybreak until the laundry started running, haul endless buckets of water from the well to the laundry, boil the wash in giant pots with water and lye, carry firewood to keep the flames from dying, and pound the wash against washboards until it turned snow-white, over and over. On top of that, they went around the village collecting customers’ clothes.

“Cough, cough…”

“Hah, heok, hah…”

“Who’s coughing in this sacred workplace!”

And so, in steam so thick and filthy a child could drink it just by opening their mouth, the children hacked and sickened.