Chapter 145: Want To Break My Fingers For Me?
One of the most direct ways to alleviate the pressure was to give the voice what it wanted: lust and in this case, violence.
If he were in one of the minor realms, he could have already vented this maddening energy. A good old-fashioned killing spree, tearing through hordes of cursed beasts until their blood slicked his hands and their screams silenced the whispers in his mind, would have satiated the urge for a time.
But he was in a classroom, surrounded by fragile humans. That option was off the table.
So, he resorted to his other method.
A cruder, more personal solution. He needed a stimulus powerful enough to overwhelm the psychic onslaught, a physical shockwave to disrupt the mental one.
Pain was a reliable tool. More than that, the act of breaking and regenerating his own body was a way of reclaiming control, a violent assertion of ownership over the flesh the voice sought to puppet.
So, while Maria watched, her eyes narrowed with concern, Mika's left hand came to rest on his desk. His expression went blank, a mask of calm descending over his features.
Then, with a chilling deliberation, his right thumb and forefinger closed around his left pointer finger.
CRACK!
The sound was sickeningly loud in the tense quiet of the classroom. He broke the bone cleanly at the top knuckle. Maria flinched, but Mika's face remained placid.
CRACK!...The middle part of pointer finger.
CRACK...And finally the tip.
He moved on to his thumb finger without pause, a grim artisan at his work.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
He continued down the line, a rhythmic, brutal percussion of snapping bone, his face so devoid of pain it looked as though he were merely folding laundry. This wasn't suffering; it was a procedure.
Seeing the mangled, unnaturally bent state of his hand finally broke Maria's silence.
"You know..." She said, her voice a dry whisper that cut through the air. "I seem to recall telling you I'd let you touch my breasts if you ever broke your fingers for me. But you really didn't need to take the offer so literally, since I would've let you do so if you got on your knees and begged."
Her attempt at dark humor was a familiar shield, but it quickly fell away. She leaned closer, her expression softening into pure, unadulterated worry.
"Stop joking, Mika. Are you alright? Is it the voices again?"
Mika paused, his thumb hovering over his pinky. He turned to her, and the smile that touched his lips was genuine, a small flicker of light in the darkness.
While his family, Yelena, and everyone else remained blissfully ignorant, Maria was the sole exception. She knew.
Vaguely, imperfectly, but she knew.
The memory was seared into both of their minds.
They had been at her home, working on some mind-numbing project and the attack had come without warning, the most violent and sudden he had ever experienced.
The voice hadn't just whispered; it had roared. It flooded his senses with a lust so profound and predatory it was all-consuming. He remembered looking at Maria, not as his friend, but as a conquest, a women to be taken.
He had almost pounced, almost done the unimaginable. But a sliver of his own will held on, and he had managed to recoil, cramming himself into a corner of the room, shaking and fighting a war within his own skin.
Maria had seen it all. She had seen the raw, conquering lust in his eyes, but she had also seen the sheer agony of his resistance. And in that moment, she had made a decision.
Seeing him suffer so terribly, she had walked over, closed the door, and in a quiet, steady voice, offered him a different kind of release. She had helped him calm the storm.
Ever since that day, a silent understanding existed between them, a bond forged in his darkest secret.
"They're a bit loud today." He admitted, his voice still low. He flexed his broken fingers, which were already beginning to knit back together with faint crackles. "The doctors gave me a new set of medication, but it doesn't seem to be working out."
It was his the story he created, a "mental illness" He'd supposedly had since he was a child. But Maria simply stared at him, her gaze sharp and suspicious.
She didn't believe a word of it. A simple illness didn't drive someone to the brink of madness she'd witnessed. It didn't require a solution as extreme as systematically breaking one's own hand.
His eyes followed hers down to the mangled fingers. "You don't have to watch this." He said softly. "It's not the best sight."
"No, it's fine." She replied, her tone strangely clinical. "While disturbing, there's something...endearing about seeing your fingers bend in directions they're not supposed to."
He let out a short, breathy chuckle.
"Then do you want to try? Here's an opportunity you'll never get again. Break a few for me."
But the shook her head immediately.
"My abuse is mostly verbal, with the occasional kick thrown in for emphasis. I'm not going to snap your bones, Mika. I'm not into that sort of thing."
"A pity." He sighed, moving on to his thumb. With a final, sickening—CRUNCH—he dislocated it. "It would feel so much better to know a pretty girl like you was doing the damage. Doing it myself just makes me feel like a self-harming fool."
Maria bit her lip, her gaze strange and intense as she watched the last of his fingers mend themselves. He was smiling through it all, a mask of casual indifference that she knew was costing him everything...and she wanted to do something to help him out.
"I won't break your fingers." She said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "That's your own mess to manage." She paused, her eyes locking onto his. "But...I can help you with something else."
Mika raised a brow, still flexing his newly-healed fingers. "What? What do you mean, what are you going to do?"
Maria didn't answer at first. She only shifted slightly, her expression unreadable, eyes glinting as if she were about to do something reckless.
Then, without ceremony, her hand slid beneath his desk. He froze when he felt her fingers press against the front of his pants. The sharp rasp of his zipper being pulled down followed, then the soft pop of his button, which caught him completely off guard as he was expecting her to start and strip him.
"Don't play dumb." She murmured, her tone deceptively casual. "You're worked up. You're breaking your own body to fight it. That's messy. So, let me handle it in my own way."
Mika's eyes widened when she tugged his pants open far enough to reveal the thick ridge straining against his underwear.
Even covered, it was impossible not to notice the sheer size of him, the way the outline pressed bold and obscene against the thin fabric. Maria's lips parted slightly before she caught herself, the faintest flicker of surprise betraying her usual composure.
"Maria..." He hissed under his breath, trying to keep his voice steady even as heat flooded through him. "What the hell are you doing? I only offered to let you break my fingers, I never said anything about...breaking that. I don't think I'd survive it."
Her eyes flicked up to his, dry amusement cutting through the tension.
"Relax. I'm not going to break your cock. Even if I tried, it's so damn hard I doubt it would budge."
Her words came out like ice, but her hand betrayed her, slowly stroking along the rigid shaft through his underwear. The chill of her fingers seeped into him, shocking at first, then intoxicating as the friction built.
Mika couldn't hold back a groan, low and rough in his throat. She leaned closer, her lips quirking as she whispered.
"See? Better than listening to your bones snap, isn't it? You complain I'm a terrible friend half the time, so maybe this proves I'm not completely useless. I'm helping you, like a good friend should."
"Some study partner you are." His laugh came ragged, uneven. "We're in class right now, you know. Shouldn't you be focusing on notes instead of...this?"
He gestured faintly toward the board at the front, where the teacher went on obliviously.
"I can handle it myself. A few more broken fingers and I'd be fine."
But Maria shook her head, her hair brushing his shoulder as she pressed firmer against him.
"No. I told you, it's fine. As much as I love watching you suffer, the sound of bones breaking gets annoying after a while. Distracting, even...I'd rather deal with this quickly, and properly It's more thrilling this way."
Her voice dropped even lower, huskier as she added with a smile,
"Besides...it's quite thrilling to think that I'm going to do something like this in a classroom."
And with that, she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his underwear and tugged it down just enough. Mika sucked in a sharp breath as his cock sprang free into her hand.
And immediately, the sheer weight of it filled her palm, thick and heavy, veins standing out along its rigid length.
Her eyes widened again despite herself, drinking in the sight of him—long, fat, the flushed head already slick at the tip.