Livia looked up at him with a face reddened from blood rushing to it. Through her hazy retinas, she could see Triton looking down at her with an expressionless face that seemed eerie.

“You’d better tell the truth.”

His calm voice piercing her ears was as cold as ice. The grip on her nape was so strong that it felt like her neck would snap at any moment.

The grip choking her neck was fierce, as if refusing to allow even gasping breaths.

The blocked breath was so painful that she wished he would just break her neck and kill her. Her fragile body trembled, as if anticipating death.

“Why you deceived me…. Tell me everything about what you did with that bastard behind my back and where.”

“Ha… Tri… Ah!”

“Just when did you start deceiving me, Livia? Don’t tell me, from the beginning? Was there ever a time when you were truthful to me? You must have found it amusing when I was making a fuss about saving you from that witch’s clutches? Ah, perhaps you weren’t plotting with Echidna to deceive me? Surely you weren’t that low, right?”

Triton’s words became blades that stabbed at Livia’s heart.

Looking back now, she couldn’t say she hadn’t deceived him. She remembered the moments when she didn’t trust him and tried to hide the truth, even though he said he would completely take her side.

It was true that she had also deceived him when he asked about Echidna.

“Huu. Kh, ugh…!”

While demanding the truth, he was still choking her breath and blocking her voice.

It was different from simply having her breath blocked. The pressure that threatened to cut off her breathing was close to pain, causing involuntary tears to stream down Livia’s face.

The strength gradually left Livia’s hands, which had been unknowingly scratching at his hand.

Looking down at Livia with distorted eyes, Triton finally cursed and released his grip.

“Kak, huk…! Ugh, hik!”

Though her blocked breath returned intermittently, she could barely manage to gasp.

…What was it, what had he asked her to say?

Though she tried hard to work her dulled mind, her dizzy head couldn’t form proper thoughts.

‘Pull yourself together. You need to calm his anger… You already decided to tell him everything.’

Livia urged herself and forced strength into her blurry eyes to look up at him.

Then she saw the man’s eyes trembling with anger and betrayal.

A god’s eyes contain their world. His eyes, which held the blue vast sea, had always inspired awe in Livia.

Even when she had gritted her teeth wanting to kill him blindly, whenever their eyes met, she would forget her vengeful thoughts and be swept away by the waves in those eyes.

Those beautiful and delicate eyes were now shaking so terribly that their original form was barely recognizable.

The blue sea had turned black and surged violently, and bitter rain and wind swept over the high waves. Though those massive waves were his anger, what were those weak raindrops falling drearily?

Various emotions floated through Livia’s dazed mind.

Anger, betrayal, contempt, humiliation, and perhaps a bit of hurt.

…Hurt?

Hurt… Could gods feel such things? Countless emotions that felt utterly human were melted in Triton’s gaze.

It was unbelievable, but it was true.

All because of her alone. Because of this one person…

Livia’s heart swelled sharply.

“A thing like you deceived me. How dare you… you deceived me.”

Triton ground his teeth and muttered, no longer able to choke Livia. Though his eyes looked like he wanted to kill her right away, they were more anguished because he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

Livia blankly faced him as he stared at her. The more she read his expression, the more clearly she could read the emotion that somehow made her stare at him blankly.

“I wasn’t supposed to find you pretty…”

Ridiculously, Livia felt his true feelings for her more acutely than ever in his anger.

He who had considered all humans worthless and insignificant, who had always dealt with her with a relaxed smile no matter what she did… was hurt.

To think he would be this angry just because she had met another man behind his back and kissed him.

“How amusing must I have been? Hm? Melting at your every word, I must have been so amusing.”

“That’s not… kuk!”

Livia’s neck was caught in his grip again as she tried to protest.

“Shut up, Livia. Trying to string me along again with that worthless three-inch tongue?”

The raw emotion pouring toward her pressed down on her. Though the chilling and eerie anger made her skin crawl, a strange elation bloomed deep in her heart.

The man’s emotions crashing into her without any filter shook Livia.

“Ah! Foolish Triton, stupid Triton! You’ve finally come to love a human!”

Though he had denied it could be possible, it was real. Triton had been sincere.

‘Really… this one has taken me into his heart.’

At that moment, Livia felt as if her hair was standing on end. An intense and thrilling emotion she had never felt in her life pierced through her.

Why is this happening? Why is my heart pounding so?

Triton’s distorted face was branded into Livia’s pupils. His pressure and anger seeped into every corner of her soul, and it burst forth as a spine-tingling joy that shook her entire body.

Looking up at him with bloodshot eyes from burst blood vessels, she barely managed to raise her strengthless hand to grasp his cheek. Her desperately trembling fingertips brushed his reddened eyes.

“Triton…”

Triton squeezed his eyes shut. He endured her touch with a face that seemed to be suppressing something, gritting his teeth.

Livia clutched at her neck that felt like it would tear. She barely opened her mouth to him with a voice mixed with unpleasant wheezing coughs.

“He… had something to… thank for… he helped… me… ugh!”

“Helped you? Why would that bastard help you? What did he help with? Why! Why him instead of me…!”

He who had been roughly pressing her suddenly stopped speaking. His disheveled silver-blue hair and darkened complexion were chilling. Quietly twisting his lips in a cold smile, he muttered in an icy voice.

“To think a kiss was the payment for his help. What cheap lips…”

His words made Livia flustered. Kisses of gratitude were common in the world.

Though lip-to-lip kisses were rare, they weren’t particularly meaningful either. Moreover, wasn’t he a god who lived in a more promiscuous world than anyone?

While humans might obsess over kisses, she thought they wouldn’t mean much to non-human beings…

“…That.”

Could it have been different for him?

Could this beautiful and great god have been someone who attached meaning even to just a kiss?

“Help? Helped… What could the god of the underworld have to help you with? Did he find something for you in the underworld? In the underworld…”

His eyes gleamed as he muttered to himself.

“If it’s something you would seek in the underworld… Yes, there would be just one thing.”

“……”

“Your family. Right?”

He found the answer himself before Livia could tell him the truth. Livia, frozen in surprise, bit her lip hard and nodded.

At that moment, Triton threw Livia’s body that he had been holding onto the floor and stepped back. Livia, who stumbled and fell to the floor, looked up at him with fearful eyes.

Triton ground his teeth as he paced roughly around, glaring at Livia with complex eyes she couldn’t read.

“It was about your damn family again.”

The thing that made everything return to square one no matter what Triton did for Livia.

Even though they were already dead, they clung to Livia like a curse and wouldn’t let go.

Family.

In the end, what mattered most to that small human woman was those family members.

No matter how much Triton bewitched and seduced Livia, her heart was entirely with those family members.

Those ghosts dominated that woman. She probably couldn’t even imagine how much that humiliated and frustrated Triton’s heart.

That very vengeful heart that had been the starting point of all this.

That damned love for family.

In the end, Triton would never be able to take precedence over those things for Livia.

His mind suddenly turned cold. Just being good to her wasn’t enough to make that human completely mine. How pathetic that I only realized this now…

More than the fact that he couldn’t be first to such a lowly being, what was more infuriating was that he was frustrated about not being first.

What was this for?

What was that nothing of a girl, what was this thing for!

“…!”

Grinding his teeth, he pulled up the woman he had thrown to the floor. He could see the woman’s lips that had been touched by that filth. Though it felt unclean and unpleasant, it still captured his gaze.

Like a fish thrown out of water, his anger surged at his own disgusting emotion of wanting to suck on her lips whenever he saw them.

Glaring fiercely at her, Triton roughly grabbed Livia’s nape. Her lips were crushed under his as he pulled her close.

“Hauk, hup…!”

The kiss that felt like biting continued frantically.

While strongly holding her struggling neck, he sucked all her painful moans and sucked her lips until they bled. Her soft tongue and lips were torn by his rough kisses.

When he tasted blood, Triton’s heart beat violently. The shark’s instinct that had risen roughly urged him on.

“Ah, hu… it hurts… Tri…ton… hik!”

Finally, their lips separated only after being completely covered in blood. Triton licked between Livia’s thoroughly torn lips and whispered again in a voice that had grown cold.

“In the end, you never trusted or relied on me, Livia.”

“That, that’s…”

“And I trusted you. Like a fool.”

Triton’s cold lips touched the ear of Livia, who looked up at him with trembling eyes as if at a loss for words.

“You said you would accept punishment, right? Good. Then endure it, Livia.”

He whispered with a fierce smile.

“Your fifth trial.”