Sins of Orpheus : My Father's Secret Diary

Arles, France. The Mortal Realm.

Under the setting sun spreading like sticky blood, a vast wheat field swayed.It wasn’t golden. It rippled crimson, like the flesh of a woman drenched in desire.

Above it, a flock of crows, which had been greedily pecking at the grain, suddenly soared into the sky.

Bang―!

A single gunshot tore through the silence.A young man’s head slumped powerlessly.In an instant, the wheat field was stained with the fishy scent of blood.

The crows, having found fresher, hotter meat to satisfy their hunger, dive-bombed toward the young man’s still-warm heart.

The Celestial Realm, Orpheus’s Crystal Palace.

The gunshot echoed in the ears of the gods, bored with eternity, like a stimulating pleasure.

“What a vulgar sound... erasing a trivial life on earth.”

The owner of the languid voice was Orpheus’s eldest daughter,Toris.A single sheet of loose red fabric draped over her body rippled dangerously along her ample cleavage with every breath she took.

With a long finger, she zoomed in on the coordinates of the giant screen showing the earth.

“Anyway, humans have no manners! How dare they disturb the gods’ banquet with such an ominous vibe?Uncle Hades down in the Underworld must have a headache. I hear it’s a ‘hot place’ these days; the bedrooms are fully booked, so souls are lining up.”

Across from her, the second daughter,Cleo, chimed in.Contrary to her sister, she was a beauty sharp as a blade. Through thesheer dark blue silkshe wore, her smooth, toned legs were transparently visible.

She stared at the pool of blood on the screen with contemptuous, yet curious eyes.

Then, Toris let out a bizarre laugh and gulped down the red nectar. Even the movement of her throat was obscene.

“Oh my, look at him? What is our troublesome youngest,Eroo, going to do now!Isn’t that beggar... the ‘artist guy’ who kneels and prays every night to Eroo’s star, Vega?Puh-hi-hi!”

On the screen, a crow’s beak was digging into the young man’s chest.Seeing the flesh being torn apart, the sisters’ eyes glinted with a strange excitement.

Voices filled with mockery, contempt, and voyeuristic desire were chewed on like snacks in the banquet hall, thick with the scent of wine.

Just then, the heavy doors of the banquet hall opened, and a thick scent of musk flooded in.

“Cleo, Toris! Anyway, your conversation carries its vulgarity even a thousand miles away. Act your age.It’s the name’s fault. They say fate follows the name. Who names their kids according to their own taste?”

MotherEurydiceappeared.Hergolden dress, flowing like waves along her curves, heavily revealed the ripe lines of her plump hips and pelvis with every step she took.

Her entrance heated up the air in the space.And behind her, the youngest,Eroo, walked in with a pale face, barely covered by a fluttering, thin white cloth.

Her skin, visible through the pure white fabric, was so transparent that she looked like a contradictory saint, inciting the most lewd imaginations.

Eurydice frowned elegantly and softly shot back at her husband.

“Honey! What is that grotesque scene at the dinner table! The smell of blood and death... And can’t we rename the kids?Cleo, Toris, what is that? You keep...”

“You pick on everything. Toris is the firstborn. So it should be Toris! Cleo! Why call Cleo first?It’s because it’s stuck in your mouth. Don’t make a fuss now, haha!”

‘Ah, I see. He was conscious of my Clitoris! Gosh, dropping facts like that in front of the kids!’

Behind them, Eroo’s gaze was fixed on the screen where the crow was ravaging the body.

“Last time, you were watching a messy scene of humans tangling with each other...Father, you seem to have taken a sudden interest in human flesh lately? You’re acting weird these days.”

Behind her noble, saint-like face, she felt a thirst to touch that young man’s body—unbroken even in death—and swallow the forbidden apple immediately.

As if reading her mind, the first daughter, Toris, changed her expression and pulled the corners of her mouth down in feigned sadness.

“Oh my, dear. Don’t misunderstand us. We are just... ‘mourning’ the sublime and desperate moment your worshiper down on earth becomes crow food, aren’t we?”

Draped in red cloth, Toris approached Eroo and whispered in her ear. It was a sticky, humid breath.

“How is it, Eroo? The smell of death and life mixing... don’t you want to smell it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Eroo flinched, shook off her sister’s hand, and stared closely at the screen.

The fishy death of the young man vomiting blood scraped coolly across her lower abdomen, and then she recognized him as her loyal worshiper.

“Ah... No! He can’t die! My star (Vega) is breathing thanks to that man’s prayers!I don’t want to make my star a pitch-black, cold ‘Star of Death’ like you bitches!”

Eroo’s scream was not simple pity. It was a‘survival instinct.’

Gods.Humans revered them as omnipotent, but in reality, they were merelyhigh-class unemployed bumsliving off the energy of desire and prayers shot up by humans.

The past was different. In the days when humans slaughtered fat bulls and offered virgins as sacrifices all the time, the gods ate their fill of that blood scent and sincerity, wielding their power recklessly.

But times changed. Humans no longer sought gods; they began to believe in science and reason.Prayers dwindled, sacrifices ceased. The ‘Great Depression of the Gods’ had arrived.

The gap between rich and poor widened cruelly even among the gods.Thus, Zeus, the King of Gods, proclaimed a plausible welfare policy called the‘Divine Basic Income System.’

It meant that even without sweating to grant human wishes, Olympus would pay a steady ‘Nectar Pension’ every month.

The result was disastrous.‘Lethargic Equality.’It castrated the gods.

To save a single human required strict ‘causality verification’ and hundreds of approval documents to be submitted to the Fates, the Moirai sisters.Listening to prayers became a bothersome and tiring labor.

“Tch, Eroo. You’re so old-fashioned. Who passionately looks after humans these days?Just lie down and eat what’s given to you.”

The second daughter, Cleo, yawned and spoke. As she said, the Orpheus family were typical‘welfare parasites.’

Father Orpheus barely maintained his dignity with royalties from his old hits and his pension, and the sisters idled away, wearing their dim stars like medals.

The one covering the cost of this incompetent and lazy family’s extravagant banquets was, in fact, only the youngest, Eroo, who possessed the only sincere, active worshiper in the family.

“I am... old-fashioned? That wine you’re rolling on your tongues, I bought it with the energy I earned. Those silk clothes you’re wearing that reveal your flesh, they’re thanks to the prayers that dying man offered while vomiting blood!”

Eroo shouted, trembling with rage. The hem of her pure white silk fluttered violently with her agitated breath.

The moment that young man on earth disappears, Eroo’s income is cut off.Then she, too, would be reduced to a‘career-interrupted goddess’, half-naked like her sisters, begging Zeus for ‘Divine Basic Income’.

It was a fall more terrible than death.

“Oh dear. Our financier (youngest) is angry. So what?Go and save him. Before your precious ‘wallet’ closes.”

Toris giggled and shoved Eroo’s back roughly. Eroo staggered.She regained her balance and glared at her sisters.

“Is that so? Fine. I’m going independent! I’m escaping this damn duty of support.You bitches, know that there will be no soup for you from now on!”

At those words, the atmosphere turned icy cold. The words ‘the money line is cut’ were deadlier than snake venom.

“What? What is this crazy bitch blabbering about? Just because you’re young and tight, that’s everything? You’re going to take care of only your own body?”

The second daughter, Cleo, stood up, twisting her lips.As she kicked out, the hem of her dark blue sheer dress fluttered, revealing her white thighs nakedly.She lunged at Eroo as if to grab her hair.

“Silence!! How dare you act so vulgarly at the dinner table! How on earth did you educate the children, wife!”

Orpheus jumped up and slammed the table. The dishes clattered.But his shout was less majestic dignity and more the annoyance of an old male who couldn’t stand noise.

At his words, Eurydice frowned elegantly and shot back.

“My fault? Who was it that went out to play with young Muses, saying it was noisy when I was breastfeeding the kids, looking for ‘inspiration’?”

“Kuk-kuk! Mother is right. Dad, aren’t you still secretly exchanging messages with Aunt‘Thalia’, famous for her big tits?”

Cleo mocked her father, exaggeratingly squeezing her own meager chest. Orpheus’s face flushed red.

“Uh, ahem! While adults are talking... Oh, my head! I have no allies here!”

Orpheus, humiliated, grabbed the back of his neck and disappeared into the bedroom as if fleeing.

“Why does Mother live with such an incompetent husband? Just go toHadesinstead.That way, we can live a bit more affluently, wearing ‘luxury goods’, right? Ho-ho!”

Unable to bear her sisters’ vulgar and immoral remarks, a cool murderous intent erupted from Eroo’s whole body.

“Shut your dirty mouth!”

At Eroo’s shout, the giant crystal chandelier in the banquet hall swayed precariously.

“Pathetic bitches! Fine, let’s see. When the pension is cut off and you bitches are starving, naked, and reduced to maids wiping Hades’ feet!When you grab my ankles and beg, I will repay this insult very slowly, deep into your bones.”

Eroo turned around and stormed out of the banquet hall. The remaining sisters stood blankly for a moment, then burst into louder laughter to hide their anxiety.

[Orpheus’s Bedroom]

Eroo burst open her father’s bedroom door. Orpheus was sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping a cold sweat.

“Father. If we don’t save that poor artist... no, my loyal ‘prayer-er’,our family is really bankrupt. Mother and those stupid bitches will sit on a pile of debt and be sold to Hades!”

“Hmm... That is heartbreaking as a god of arts... no, wallet-breaking.But will greedy Hades spit out a guy who has already taken the express train to hell?”

Orpheus quickly tapped the calculator in his head.An A-class worshiper, especially one with an obsessive attachment to his youngest daughter, was hard to find. The loss was too great.

Just then, Eurydice followed into the bedroom with a fragrant scent of flesh.She approached her husband with eyes that still seemed angry but were strangely aroused.

“Honey.”

She gently cupped her husband’s nape, lightly touching his earlobe with the tip of her tongue, and whispered languidly.

“Why don’t we send Eroo to the earth at this opportunity?Let her experience the world, and depending on the situation, send those noisy sisters along too.”

Orpheus realized his wife’s intention at once. A signal to get rid of the daughters who were a thorn in the eye and remain alone with him.

It was a chance to remove the noisy lumps of the family one by one and explore his wife all night long like in his prime. His eyes glistened.

“Oh! Earth experience... Yes, excellent! When in trouble, find the answer in the field. Very good!”

Cheering inside, he unhesitatingly pulled the latest‘Heaven-Phone’from his waist.