Kapitel 109: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Omake – All Right! Fine! I Will Bite You! [12k Words, NSFW]
Vampires.
Let's talk about vampires.
They may be the most disputed genre of monster in all of fiction, with depictions varying from literally ghoulish freaks to debonair socialites, whatever the heck that may mean when you're talking about literal corpses. Vampires can stand as either a metaphor for a plague running rampant or as the most straightforward depiction of Sapphic love in any kind of fiction that doesn't feature undead magical girls (and the fact that they are undead magical girls points to a pattern I would rather not delve into).
Their abilities are about as consistent as power levels in Dragon Ball, their weaknesses go from a beach episode to Italian food, but can be completely ignored whenever the 'plot' calls for a silver-haired woman with a gothic pendant wearing a black bikini as her pink-haired self seethes in the background, and their cravings go from genocidal to barely disguised 'I can't believe this is not hentai.'
I hate vampires.
Particularly since I learned that they are real.
"Senpai? You're doing it again," my apprentice complains, willfully contradicting my orders to stay silent as we stalk this snow-covered, infuriatingly European forest planted around the mansion I should be infiltrating before the night is over, and whose fault is it that we're assaulting a vampire's nest at night? Well, not mine, of course.
And, for once, that's a perfectly factual statement.
About as factual as the hand lightly tugging on the sleeve of the black coat some would consider unpractical battle attire only justified by chuuni delusions, and some would gush over to the point that their redheaded, tsundere girlfriends launched into a jealousy-fueled rant about my sartorial choices.
"Sorry," I tell my earnest Junior as I turn around to meet her concerned gaze.
"Don't worry, I understand," she offers with a crooked smile that only highlights how bright her honey eyes glow in the dark of this treasonous forest.
Literally treasonous, as the traps we just dismantled can attest to.
But… she's still looking up at me with those worried eyes of hers, and I can't…
"It's all right," she whispers, getting uncomfortably close to me to rest a single, open hand on my chest that manages to ward off the winter night just because it's her. "It will be all right."
I… don't answer her.
We just stand in silence, hidden by the shadows of dark trees from the inhabitants of the mansion as the high Moon casts its silver light on the spread of snow between the forest and our target.
"I can do it alone, Iroha," I finally say.
Her eyes narrow, and she turns around in anger.
"I'm going to scout ahead," she says.
And then she's jumping away, using all of the tricks I barely taught her to climb a tall spruce, her leaps from branch to branch barely disturbing the heavy clumps of white snow weighing them down more heavily than her speedy passage does.
She's…
Well, let's just say that, while I can't argue against the practicality of tight clothing when it comes to avoiding getting it snagged in unexpected obstacles, watching Iroha agilely contort from below is not something I'm likely to get used to anytime soon.
"I knew it," a worryingly merry voice says from right behind me.
This, of course, accounts for me turning around with a stake in a hammer grip, ready to—
To have Iroha laugh in my face.
"What?" I ask.
"Body double illusion, Senpai. It's a great way to check if your allegedly unflappable instructor was checking out your ass every time you jumped away," she says, her grin growing wider by the second.
"I wasn't—I mean, I'm just concerned and watching your back—" I try to justify myself before—
Before she once again is right in front of me with her open palm on my chest, but now she's leaning up, on her tiptoes, and soft lips on my cold cheeks chase the winter away.
"I didn't say I didn't like it, Senpai…" she whispers in my ear, burning me with her breath.
But, before I can argue my innocence any further or tell her that this is not the time, she's already faded away, her echoing laugh the only trace that remains of merry, honey eyes with too much mischief in them.
… Well, I guess that's as good an excuse as I'm likely to get to infiltrate the mansion on my own.
***
I hate vampires.
With a passion.
But you know what I hate more than vampires?
Their interior decorators.
They can't have a nice flat with a subdued ambiance and a (maybe not gray) sofa, no, they have to go with Gothic décor, tall glass windows that seem really counterintuitive for their particular interests, pretentious art with very unsubtle subtext (I swear, if I see one more Garden of Eden with a crimson apple I'm going to scream myself hoarse), and, of course, traps.
And not the Totsuka kind.
Falling sections of floor, swaying chandeliers, corridors with walls that close in on themselves, bladed pendulums… There's variety, if not originality.
There's also a tear in my coat.
…
Someone's going to pay.
I take a steady breath to try and not fly into a murderous rage over something that only Zaimokuza would sympathize with and struggle to get a grip on where the heck I am supposed to be. I have gone up and down enough flights of stairs that my glutes should look spectacular, and, while I'm pretty sure I should be underground, I'm currently in the middle of a stretch of red carpet that goes along a corridor surrounded by more Biblically-themed stained glass windows shining with moonlight reflected off the snow-covered, slanted roof below each side of this passage.
That should be underground.
… I despise vampiric interior designers.
Still, there's not much else to do other than keep going forward, a stake in my right hand and a flask of holy water in my left, watching for—
The knight killing a dragon depicted in the window to my left impossibly shifts its head toward me and tries to stab me with a very colorful spear.
This, of course, may account for me finally losing my temper and kicking every single window in this stupid corridor into flying shards of colorful glass.
… Hate. So much hate.
Okay. Another deep breath, and this time it smells of crisp night rather than musty old castle—which is how the air smells even if the outside of the building is a mansion, and why the heck does that inconsistency bother me so much?
… Anyway.
I finally get to the end of the corridor, tall, imposing dark gates barring my passage, the wood engraved with what I'm pretty sure is something derivative of The Garden of Earthly Delights, a piece of Western art history that I only recognize because my teacher insisted I browse the very basics in case they would serve as clues for more stereotypical traps or, in the worst case scenario, guardian monsters.
Because, as it turns out, vampires are at the top of the wage slave hierarchy of the monster world. Which I guess makes it only natural that they would be my sworn enemy.
… It is getting increasingly harder to focus. I wonder why.
'Yeah. Such a mystery. Nobody could have guessed it.'
Brain-chan, as much as I appreciate your shared bafflement, I would also appreciate some clue. Like, for instance, what am I supposed to do here? Just push buttons at random until the gates open?
'That sounds like a terrible idea.'
Do you have any alternative?
'Of course not.'
Right. Of course you don't.
I let out a beleaguered sigh that not even Yukinoshita would begrudge me and start poking the bizarre monsters depicted in what should be a tryptic despite there only being two panes of wood—wait a goddamn second.
I take out my phone and type one-handed because only a moron lets go of his stake while going on a leisurely night stroll through a vampire's den, and, sure enough, the missing piece of the painting is…
On the wall to the right of the gate.
It's only invisible.
Because, sure, I can feel it out with the tip of my fingers, but the wall looks perfectly blank, slabs of cool, white marble perfectly smoothed out so that moonlight streaming in from howling, broken windows shimmers along them like over a calm lake.
So… this is gonna take a while.
A while of me blindly trying to make sense of the invisible engraving until I locate a part of the marble that seems to yield to my fingers.
It corresponds to a harp.
A harp that echoes with mournful strings.
… This is a goddamn music-themed puzzle.
Seriously? Seriously?! Am I supposed to just outright guess what melody I'm supposed to be playing and then learn to play the goddamn harp?! No. Screw this. Nothing is worth this. There's absolutely nothing that will get me to open this goddamn puzzle lock without a walkthrough, not even—
…
'…'
Shut up.
'I didn't say anything.'
Yeah. Neither did I.
So, without saying anything, with just a disgruntled grunt, I turn around from what I'm pretty sure is the gate to the boss room and go back to find any and all unexplored segments of the stupid maze I just went through. Because, as it turns out, there's one thing I hate more than vampiric interior decorators:
Vampiric puzzle designers.
***
It takes me about two hours to find a room decorated as if a child had lived in it, except it's a child who was apparently fluent in piano. There are some drawings hung on the walls that look far too sober for any kid to have drawn them, but they also look too amateurish for a vampire to have bought them, so…
Yeah.
There are some definitely unpleasant connotations about whatever the heck this puzzle's trying to get me to think, but I honestly am out of both the time and mental energy to consider them.
Particularly because I'm in the middle of learning to play the harp.
'That is a very generous description of what you're doing,' the uncharitable voice in my head says. 'I wouldn't say "uncharitable," rather, I would call myself the objective voice of reason.'
And yet, you never stop me from taking a peek at Iroha's acrobatics.
'What part of "voice of reason" do you have trouble understanding?'
Right. So, as enticing a topic of conversation as Iroha's derriere may be, I really should get on with my music studies…
…
How am I even supposed to pluck strings recessed into stone?
'Have you tried button mashing?'
Yes.
'Then I'm out of ideas.'
How shocking. How baffling. How unexpected. Brain-chan, I'm astonished at you ever being out of ideas.
'Praise me more.'
That was—never mind.
I try to repress another burst of temptation and go back to trailing the invisible strings of the engraved instrument, muffled, warbling notes pouring out of the wall when I arrive at the mid-way point, and…
Huh.
I try to press on the wall, my fingers spread at more or less the same width as piano keys, and… it works.
So…
Okay. Just follow the melody of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and try to more or less keep to the goddamn rhythm in a way that doesn't make my ears try to recede inside my cranium, and…
The harp picks up on its own, silver light framing the shape of the instrument, bursts of glowing motes aligning with the notes of the melody as it keeps playing the music, and an entire orchestra joins it at a tempo that turns the lullaby into something as haunting and mournful as one would expect the OST of a vampire's den to be.
You know, those that aren't dance clubs. They don't tend to adhere to musical conventions over there.
So I hurry to stand up, both my phone and the music sheet thrust deep into my coat's pocket as I once again take out the flask of holy water and…
The gates part open.
The red carpet covering the corridor continues into the domed room, a gigantic piece of architecture that can't possibly fit into the manor I just went through, cathedral-like in both décor and magnitude.
And, in the middle of it, after a flight of stone stairs taller than some houses, there stands a throne.
Because of course.
I walk in, weapons at the ready, desperately trying to find any kind of tricky feature that I can use as cover or for improvised attacks, but the room is bare other than… than…
…
Vampires.
You know another thing I hate about vampires? Their sense of fashion. Because, yes, the first time you see an imposingly tall, bishounenly thin, silver-haired gentleman with a bat-themed cloak hovering about his shoulders, it may look cool. Dashing, even.
That's before the monotony sets in.
Except for female vampires.
There's… a wide-ranging gamut. From battle bikinis to bat wings acting as creative hand bras, but none of it is anything that makes fighting them anything other than uncomfortable, because it's really, really hard to pay attention to your opponent's body without coming across as something that Brain-chan would step on with a disgusted face when said opponent is basically a stripper bouncing all over the place.
In this case, though…
Well.
She's at least self-aware.
As in, she's wearing a silk gown that would barely work as lingerie, the sides of her thighs fully exposed and the front insinuated through spiderweb traceries of silver on black muslin. Her torso is somewhat more shielded, with fabric that at least looks like it wouldn't tear apart in a stiff breeze, but the thin straps valiantly trying to hold tiny stretches of black silk above nipples that are not so much covered as hiding in plain sight do more to highlight the pale stretch of cleavage than to lend any kind of modesty to the vampiress hiding her face in her cupped hands as the tips of her pointed ears go purple in what should be the undead equivalent of a mortified blush.
So. Vampire fashion.
… It may have its upsides.
"Where is she?" I ask with my job voice, trying not to get distracted by the empathically embarrassed monster.
She shakes her head.
I take a step forward.
"I asked where is she," I say, my stake now in front of me in an approximation of a fencer's stance—
"Go away," she says in a tiny voice that…
My stake clatters to the red carpet.
There… there are many ways I could react at this very moment.
Rushing up the stairs to her throne is likely not the best option at my disposal.
"Hikigaya, no!" she says, still hiding her face as I stand breathless in front of her and slap her gloved hands away to…
See her.
"How?" I ask the woman I've come here to rescue, and I'm too late, because of course I would be when something that mattered was on the line—
"I…" she looks up at me.
There's… her eyes…
They were always silver. Silver and steel.
Now there's a red ring around them.
"Are you… still you?" I ask my teacher. The woman who taught me everything I know about vampires, their interior decorators, and their fashion sense.
"I…" her mouth hangs open, her lips a pale blue that only makes her pointed canines stand out even more accusingly with the brand of my failure and its consequences.
I don't step back. I don't gasp. I don't… I don't do anything other than drop down to my knees like a knight swearing fealty as I grasp her hands, ignoring the prick of her long nails peering through slits on her black gloves, just… just looking into her eyes and trying to find the brave, wise woman that must be in there, because I can't… I just can't…
"Hikigaya…" she breathes out, a cold gust that washes over my feverish brow as she leans forward, and I ready myself for… for whatever it is that she may—
'Dodge, you moron!'
I roll back.
Miss Hiratsuka stumbles forward, and as I ready myself in a crouched stance, my backfoot right at the edge of the stairs behind me, she…
Falls.
Flat.
On her face.
Which, I admit, is kind of a surprising first move for supernatural combat.
"Oh, my dear Hachiman, how cruel can you be to your former mentor? Don't you realize how the sting of rejection hurts her so?" a mirthful voice says from right behind me.
Coming from a height where… there are no stairs.
I slowly turn around, already expecting the cloak-covered woman hovering in mid-air, and even ready for her vampiric sense of fashion, except nobody is ever quite ready for the display of black strings tightly crisscrossing a pale, voluptuous body in what some hentai authors may deem to call a bikini.
Like, not even Naga looked like this, even if… well, the pauldrons are quite on point. And pointy enough, and…
Damn it.
"Haruno?" I ask with the futile hope that the answer will be anything other than an ojou-sama laugh—
"Oh my, so quick to call me by my name while you still refer to the poor woman as 'Miss Hiratsuka?' Have you no mercy, Hachiman? No regard at all for the poor, maidenly heart you keep trampling on?"
… I think I would've preferred the ojou-sama laugh.
"It's a mark of respect," I say, frantically trying to remember if any of Miss Hiratsuka's lessons ever dealt with what to do when being forced to face two vampires at once other than 'Be sure not to do that.'
'I think she also mentioned something about a last will and testament…'
Thank you, Brain-chan. I don't know what I would do without your constant encouragement in these dark times I find myself in.
"Respect," Haruno says, her mouth twisting as if tasting something unpleasant, like, I don't know, peasant blood. "Such a useful little word, isn't it? Well then, Hachiman, allow me to teach you about respect…" she says as her left arm stretches to her side, pulling her cloak farther open as her lavender eyes gleam with crimson streaks and the very moonlight falling into this vaulted room blazes in the color of blood.
Then…
She keeps posing.
Which, you know, I do appreciate. I'm a healthy young man, and if a woman wearing a bikini too scandalous even for nudist beaches wants to stand in an iconic, exposed pose in front of me without even telling me some bullshit about whether I dare approach her, far be it from me to complain anywhere other than in the safe recesses of my mind, but this feels somewhat anticlimactic.
'Speak… for yourself…'
… Brain-chan? Dearest figment of my imagination? Is… something wrong?
"What the Hell?" the posing, quasi-streaker vampiress asks.
"I feel like it should be me asking that particular question."
"No, no, you don't get to play coy after effortlessly shrugging my mesmerism. You're going to talk, or I'll make you—"
"Lady, you're the first person in my entire life to threaten me with making me talk. I'll attribute the sheer magnitude of the nonsense you just spouted to blood loss."
"Blood loss? What are you even—eep!" Haruno undignifiedly complains as she lets herself fall abruptly to the stairs below just to dodge the spray of holy water I just attacked her with. Something that could count as a good evasive maneuver if not for, you know, stairs.
The stairs she's loudly rolling down while letting out a litany of curses that seems far too long for the time it takes her to finally fall on the floor face-first in an almost perfect mirror of Miss Hiratsuka's earlier mishap.
Speaking of which…
I refocus on my teacher, and she's kneeling on the red carpet, peering over the throne platform at her sprawled vampiric mistress with what looks like very familiar schadenfreude, the likes of which I grew intimately familiar with through my vampire-hunting training.
"So. She got you with her hypnosis?" I ask, trying to sound casual and wondering about any of the myths about how some vampire victims have managed to regain their humanity. A process that usually involves murdering the Hell out of the monster that turned them in the first place.
"… Yes."
"… That pause couldn't sound any more suspicious if it was wearing giant pauldrons and getting inappropriately excited about interesting things."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she says, avoiding my eyes as a lilac flush highlights her cheekbones.
"Miss Hiratsuka."
"Stop calling her that…" the pained groans of a vampiric overlady say.
"It's her name."
"No, her name is Shizuka, and you're making her feel old," she says, getting to her hands and knees and managing to throw my way an indignant huff perfectly suited to a cat who's certain that you haven't just watched him mess up a jump toward the top of the refrigerator only to headbutt the kitchen appliance with an almost musical sound.
I open my mouth to reply with something far more scathing than I usually would in the presence of injured feline pride, particularly about how ludicrous it is that a vampiress, of all people, would talk about age being a hang-up, and—
…
No.
There's. Absolutely. No. Way.
"You didn't," I tell my teacher with what is more hope than certainty.
She doesn't answer.
I slap my open palm on my forehead and let it slowly drag down my face, pulling on my lower eyelids as it does to assist me in giving Miss Hiratsuka my most appropriately exasperated look.
She flinches.
I stand up and, unwittingly, adopt the 'back of my fists on my hips' lecturing pose she often gave me when leaning over my exhausted, prone, sweat-soaked form after making me run through yet another of her hellish obstacle courses, but I take my time in the process so that I can gather as much ranting steam as I'm able to hold inside me without bursting into song.
Scathing song.
"You're telling me that I have come here, to the heart of a vampire's den, in a noble mission to rescue my mentor, only to find that said mentor, a renowned warrior, an expert monster killer, one of the bastions of humanity in its shadow war, has fallen not to treachery, not to arcane prowess, not to sheer might, but to her goddamn complex about being single at her age? Just how… how goddamn stupid do you have to be to think that anyone even cares if you're pushing thirty—"
"Watch it."
"—in your twenties when you have the body of a gymnast who somehow got the curves of a gravure model through a tempestuous puberty that she still managed to get a college degree through? Who cares about stupid Christmas Cake's gags when you're fit, smart, gorgeous, brave, noble, wise, and the woman I keep jerking myself dry to whenever your deranged idea of training doesn't leave me as breathless as your eyes do? Why would you even care what people whose idea of happiness is completing a checklist think about you when you are… you…"
I trail off.
Mostly, because Haruno is clapping.
"I've been telling her that for ages! Thank you!"
"You don't get a say in this!"
"I mean, been there, done that. Particularly the masturbating bit."
I blink.
Then I do a quick recap of what just came out of my mouth.
…
Brain-chan? A word, please?
'Still tired from saving your thankless mind from becoming a vampiric thrall. You're welcome, by the way, you ungrateful wretch.'
… Fine. I'll magnanimously allow you this much mercy, but only because I'm still in the middle of processing that my quirky and charming stress relief methods are, apparently, a supernatural shield against whatever Haruno does to my sanity by ways other than moving her lips—goddamn phrasing.
Also, Miss Hiratsuka is apparently hyperventilating. Which I didn't know was a thing vampires could do. How praiseworthy of her, to keep teaching me new things even in these dire circumstances.
"She's getting thirsty," the streaker vampiress says.
"She's always thirsty," I instinctively retort. "That's what this whole thing is about, isn't it? Her crippling need to catch a boyfriend and satisfy whatever twisted social contract she believes she has to adhere to despite—"
"No, I mean that she's going to need you to give her some of your vitality before things get ugly," the woman standing at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed below a bust that must be supernaturally enchanted to stay within the bounds of her bikini says.
Also…
"Vitality?" I ask, looking from Haruno to the crouched Miss Hiratsuka and back again, wondering which of the many things hidden in the manifold pockets of my coat (Zaimokuza is surprisingly handy with a needle) I should immediately deploy at the slightest hint of movement.
"Oh, she didn't teach you about that? Oh, dear, I wonder if I should spoil the surprise…" somebody auditioning for the role of Cheshire Cat, Monstergirl Encyclopedia Edition, says.
It… doesn't take a genius to catch her drift.
It kinda takes a genius of supernatural combat to react in time to catch Miss Hiratsuka's wrists in time so that she only pushes me down and straddles my hips as her wide, silver and crimson eyes swirl in front of me rather than get immediately overpowered by the novice vampiress.
"Get a grip of yourself!" I try to call out to her like a shounen hero to his rival in the middle of a forbidden-technique-fueled powerup.
"I do believe she would rather get a grip on you," Haruno says, her tone suddenly much lower, bordering on enticing, as I find her by my side, lying on her belly, elbows buried on the plush red carpet, her chin resting on the joined back of her hands as she kicks her feet back and forth while her feline grin sharpens, shining through the veil of Miss Hiratsuka's long hair.
"This is not the—why the heck are you taking this so lightly? This is a life or death struggle!"
"The only death that is on the line, my dearest junior in monster hunting studies, is whether or not you'll get to experience le petite mort before our teacher does now that she's finally past caring about social mores and restraints."
"Haruno… you bitch," said teacher says as her eyes blaze brighter, a string of drool falling down the tip of her lower left canine as she twists her head side to side in a desperate bid to reach… not my neck, which is making me all kinds of confused and somewhat ineffective in trying to leverage any and all martial arts knowledge for anything other than stalling the predatory beauty.
"Praise me more…" the bitch in question breathes out before meeting my eyes and deliberately licking her purple lips slowly enough that I get distracted and Miss Hiratsuka's hands slip through my grip.
Which is very bad news.
Except, rather than get my throat torn out…
I get kissed.
It's… not a sensation I'm familiar with, given that it's, you know, my first kiss, despite Hina's best efforts when she locked me and Hayama in the gym storeroom, but, well, it's hard to misinterpret the meaning of a cool, long, agile tongue eagerly yet tenderly caressing my own as cold lips slowly warm with my touch and…
She's…
Miss Hiratsuka is on top of me, writhing, and her almost bare breasts rub against my chest with every contortion of her mesmerizingly agile body. Her silver eyes are closed and…
And she looks…
I close my own eyes and…
I kiss back.
My hands go from her forearms to her back, bare except for crisscrossed strings of satin, and I reach up until I rest my palms on her shoulderblades just so I can pull her tighter against me, my legs opening just enough for one of her thighs to slip between them, her toned softness pressing against my steadily hardening cock.
She mumbles something unintelligible that still conveys as much sense as any of her melancholy lectures and revelations given to me under pale moonlight after a day of strenuous training, the two of us sitting on the concrete blocks of the breakwater in Chiba Port, lit from behind in the amber light streaming past the open door of her rumbling car.
I reach up, bury my fingers in her hair, and pull.
She… Her eyes open as she moans at my rough treatment, her mouth inviting me to dive right back in, but…
But I have to… I have to see if…
There's no red in her eyes. Only silver and steel.
And so, I let myself fall back as something terrible is allowed to leave my mind and I feel like I could fall asleep from the sheer emotional exhaustion.
"That won't last, Hachiman," Haruno chides me.
"It… may," Miss Hiratsuka says as her lilac blush returns to her aristocratic cheekbones.
"This is bullshit," I, quite appropriately, mutter.
"What do you mean 'it may?'" Haruno asks, rudely ignoring me as is her wont and has always been since my high school days, when I first met the terror who walks in her eternal quest to traumatize her cute little sister like all older siblings are sworn to do.
'And you wonder why Komachi keeps hanging up on you.'
She's just being tsundere.
'Now think back on what you just said and feel all the shame an Oreimo reader should feel, you human pile of walking trash.'
"It's…" Miss Hiratsuka struggles to find the words even as she leans away from my lips, sitting up on me and raising her eyebrows in mute panic when she realizes what, precisely, she's now sitting on before she pretends that nothing of import is going on while her former student turned vampiress interrogates her as the two of them hold her new student, namely, me, prisoner. "I'm certain it was his first kiss."
Haruno's mouth clicks closed.
Then, a wide, slow grin comes out like a knife from its sheath.
"You don't say," she all but purrs.
"I think I need an adult," I immediately say.
"We are adults. And perfectly suited to turn you into a man…" the woman crawling toward me with an exaggerated sway of her hips claims.
"Wait, wait, wait—what does it even matter if that was my first kiss—"
"It means that you, my dearest, scrumptious Hachiman, are a virgin, and thus a perfect source of energy for me and my partner to… partake."
"Oh, no, not the whole virgin thing! Do you realize how little sense that makes? As if virgin blood was anything special—"
"Nobody said anything about blood…" Miss Hiratsuka says.
…
Look, I know. From an outsider's perspective, this must've seemed like a foregone conclusion, but I am me. If you think I would ever dream that a woman would want to touch me in that way without it being part of a plan to get evidence for a sexual harassment lawsuit, you clearly haven't been paying attention, and I have seen absolutely nothing to clue me in that, all this time, I was dealing with hentai vampires, which I'm not even sure if it's better or worse.
So, yeah, thinking that Haruno, of all people, would want to drink me dry in a non-lethal way is just…
"Preposterous," I say.
"Not really, no," she says, her tone shifting toward something that calls to mind Tohsaka Rin's Lecturing Pose Number Two even as she hovers over me in a way that doesn't quite impede a privileged view up Miss Hiratsuka's wide, low decolletage.
"Oh, come on, do you really expect me to believe that vampires, the blood-thirsty monsters I've been battling for the best part of the last three years, can subsist on… semen? That's just—"
"What is the difference between blood and semen, Hikigaya?" Miss Hiratsuka asks from atop where she could easily get one of those two things, particularly with how thin her slit dress is.
"I fear that I would make my Health Education teacher cry if I tried and failed to explain that there are many obvious differences."
"Oh, from a medical perspective? Of course there are," Haruno continues, getting nearer and nearer with every syllable that comes out of her enticing, purple lips. "But, from a mystical perspective? They both hold the essence of the man they come from. They both are lifebringers. We are not the only creatures of myth that subsist on vitality, Hachiman, and you'll find that plenty of those myths are rather… sensual in nature. Even kitsune feed on life essence, and, other than the anthropophagous variant in Korea—"
"Oh, for—that's just xenophobic slander! I'm so damn tired of that stupid myth that I could just scream!" a feminine voice complains.
A third feminine voice.
A voice whose source we all turn around to focus on, finding Iroha holding two stakes and looking very flustered while dressed in her tightest working outfit yet.
I, for reasons I believe to be self-evident, groan.
"You know, of the two of us, I was certain it would be me who would spoil a surprise attack by being unable to keep my mouth shut," I say with pedagogical exasperation.
"It's not my fault, Senpai! I'm just so sick and tired of hearing that just because Mom came from Korea that—I mean, of course, this is just because I'm emulating the one who taught me, so, if you really think about it, this is actually your fault, Senpai. Now be a good boy and apologize to the girl who's risked her life through a maze of traps just to find you actually went ahead of me and confronted the final boss on your own because you're still the same damn martyr I—I mean… Hi, Miss Hiratsuka. I love the outfit," she says, taking half a step back on the currently overcrowded platform as she hides both hands and the weapons held in them behind her back.
Which makes it so there's nothing to cover the front of her outfit.
"Iroha?"
"Yes, Senpai?"
"Why are you wearing mesh armor that barely hides your nipples?"
"Oh? Senpai, are you telling me that you just noticed how exposed my body is? That you have finally realized what kind of woman has been by your side night, after night, after night? That you are discovering my feminine charm and are eager to learn how much more of it you've been too oblivious to appreciate? I'm sorry, Senpai, but that just won't do! After all, you're in the middle of a boss fight."
There's a bit of silence only broken by the howling winter wind coming in from the broken windows of the corridor.
One vampire hunter and two vampiresses keep staring at an increasingly flustered, wiggling Iroha.
I, somehow, manage not to groan.
"She just keeps doing… this," Miss Hiratsuka says, perfectly encapsulating my own feelings on the matter as she sags, emotionally drained.
Just… she's sagging on top of me. On top of a particular part of me.
This, for entirely mysterious reasons, makes her abruptly shoot up, sitting far straighter than I've ever sat through my scholastic career.
It also makes her jiggle.
That, in turn, makes a certain part of me twitch.
And then she moans.
Which, through the mystery of the chain of causation that binds us all to destiny itself, makes me shift my hips beneath her.
That, somehow, ends up with her open hands on my chest, her face nearing mine, her eyes gaining a glint that has not a single trace of crimson in it, and—
"Will you two stop flirting already!" Iroha complains.
"Oh, leave them alone. The sexual tension they built up during training is enough to blind my psychic senses."
"Tell me about it. I've seen people under sexual hypnosis who looked positively tame compared to this couple of repressed morons…"
"So, kitsune also see auras?" Haruno idly questions.
"Doesn't everyone?" Iroha says.
Once again, she's the focus of three stares.
And yes, she writhes and blushes, but I've got the steadily growing suspicion that she enjoys it.
"Iroha?" I ask while trying not to focus on where, precisely, Shizu was pressing her pliant derriere when she abruptly stopped moving back and forth on top of me.
"Yes, Senpai?"
"If you have a fluffy tail and you never showed it to me, I don't think I'll ever forgive you."
Her eyes widen, luminous honey suddenly parted by slit pupils, and the blush on her cheeks darkens along the lines of what may seem to be whisker marks, then…
Then two pointy, fuzzy ears spring up from her bob of hair, and I suddenly realize she never tinted it, that tawny blonde is her natural color, but that realization doesn't last for long as her hips shake left and right and…
And an undulating, fluffy, glorious tail sways from behind her.
Two things happen in quick succession:
Miss Hiratsuka is sent flying after I suddenly remember how to get out from under an unbalanced enemy.
And my hands are full of peace.
The long strands of fur are silky, softly bristling with each passage of my hands along Iroha's tail as the wonderfully dexterous appendage undulates beneath my combing fingers, the very tip, where honey blonde turns to pure white, flicking capriciously whenever I near it in my cycling caresses, teasing me with the promise of the epitome of softness just beyond my reach, turning my petting more forceful, more purposeful, as—
"Se—Senpai! You brute…" she says, her yelp turning into a throaty moan as she sinks down to her knees and looks up at me with…
…
"I think I need an adult," I say as somebody who just got very defensive about being called a literal man-eater looks at me far more intensely than she's ever looked at one of the fancy café snacks she insists on me rewarding her with after a night of patrol.
"We are adults," Haruno purrs right in my ear as her hands trail down my chest, beneath the lapels of my coat, and something entirely too soft to belong to a mortal woman presses on the back of my head, engulfing me up to my ears, which are currently burning badly enough that the cool reprieve Haruno's chest offers is welcome enough for… maybe more than one reason.
Also, I'm now pantless.
Why am I pantless, you say?
"Tee-hee?" Iroha asks with what would make for a passable impression of Komachi to anyone with an eye less trained for discerning detail. The way she just bonked her head with a hand bent into a cat-like paw is off by a few degrees, and the faked bounce lacks a certain flair, a display of energy that… she may be focusing on other pursuits.
Such as not letting me know where the Hell my boxers went.
"Iroha, I understand that your nature as a ravenous beast of legend has just been exposed, and I may not have displayed the proper respect for the messengers of Inari that a Japanese man of stellar upbringing should have, but I would also like you to appreciate the gravity of stripping me down while we're fighting vampires."
"Is he always this stubborn?" Haruno asks, her chin brushing over the crown of my head with every word.
"You have no idea," Iroha asks, rudely talking over me, or, at least, looking over me to talk to the person holding me from behind, ready to attack in treasonous—hn!
"Did you ever try to change his mind… like this?" Haruno whispers as cool fingers brush over my nipples as if she was a Josei predator teaching a young schoolgirl about the pleasures her body has to offer.
"It would take more than mere teasing to—that wasn't an invitation, Iroha!"
"Of course not; it was a challenge," she says, slitted eyes looking up at me with merry mischief as her fingers trail over my exposed member and she approaches my very tip, sniffing along the way until sheer bliss blooms on her face.
Which, I guess, accounts for just how much harder I suddenly get.
"So, you're still a man, after all," Haruno whispers in my ear with smug triumph.
This, of course, is the dramatic opening I've been waiting for all along.
"Gah! What the fuck!" she uncharacteristically swears as she flies away from me and the salt shaker filled with garlic powder no longer hidden in the pocket sewn into the cuff of my coat.
Once again, Zaimokuza is very handy with a needle.
'Unlike Iroha, who seems to be very handy with something else entirely.'
I was going to take care of that next, Brain-chan; no need to rush me.
'Yeah. Rush you. That's what I'm concerned with.'
"Iroha? For reasons that I hope will be self-evident, I am not carrying fried tofu to bribe spirit foxes with, but I promise to treat you if you stop messing around and actually get us out of the vampire's den before something happens—"
"Hello. I am something," a dark voice says from right behind me, but I'm already deploying another burst of garlic powder and—gah.
"Iroha! Let go of my cock!"
"Hmph! Hmph!" she indignantly replies before she sucks much harder, which is kind of the distraction I really don't need when a pissed-off Haruno who's apparently not a fan of Italian cuisine circles around me in a speedy flight that looks entirely too cool, what with the way she's standing upright with her arms crossed, only her flapping cloak and bouncing breasts signaling the speed of her maneuvering as she keeps avoiding any and all attempts at further seasoning.
Though maybe I would be more accurate if, you know, Iroha stopped trying to choke herself on my dick.
"Iroha! Seriously! Stop!"
"Oh, you want me to stop?!"
"Yes, I really, really do—"
"You want me to stop so that we can go back to what? Long nights filled with innuendos you always take as a joke? To me saying how badly I need a full-body massage after you contort me in all those very involved stretches, only for you to show up the next day with a voucher for a professional masseuse? To me all but throwing myself at you only for you to keep dodging—"
"It's training! Of course I dodge!"
"Then dodge this!" she says.
And I don't.
I, instead, let out a low groan and bend over her, my hands going to the sides of her head, my fingers pinching soft, fuzzy ears, and her mouth going more than halfway down my shaft.
"Gotcha," Haruno says.
My eyes open in a panic, and—
She kisses me.
Her arms are like bands of steel around my chest, pressing my own arms to my sides as her breasts flatten against my back, and Iroha's hands travel up my bare legs as she corkscrews her mouth around my length, her tongue lazily tracing patterns on my skin that flare with bursts of sheer sensation as Haruno's own tongue heats up the inside my mouth, seeming to come to life as it steals my own heat and the half-naked vampiress pulls away from me, her eyes staring at me in naked wonder as…
As she, somehow, manages to make this into a moment.
There's a clicking sound, my eyebrows shoot up to my hairline, and I turn to look down to find Iroha holding my cock above her lips, licking my frenulum side to side, and holding her goddamn phone.
"You didn't just take a picture of me kissing Haruno," I declare, contradicting material witnesses with as much disregard as an Ace Attorney prosecutor.
"I'll send it to Yukino," she says, breaking the laws of human decency like an Iroha.
"Name your prize," I capitulate with familiar, indignant resignation.
She smiles. Then she grins.
Then…
She stands up.
She's… close to me. Close enough that the mesh of her bodysuit disguises nothing of the firm curves of her body, that her heat passes right through the gaps in black steel to caress my skin along the stretch bared by my open shirt.
"Senpai? I just don't want to feel left out," she whispers.
And then she slithers forward, the tip of my cock nestled against the gap at the top of her thighs, pressing against the leather section covering her crotch, making both of us hiss before she wipes her lips with the back of her hand, doing a poor job of hiding the embarrassed moue that comes up at that point, and…
And, of course, Iroha kisses me.
So.
Three girls.
Three monstergirls.
Three first kisses.
One from the woman who guided me through this moonlit world after I barely managed to survive my first encounter with it. Another from the woman who watched me almost grow up and instead wreck my first love with her little sister. And the last one…
From the first girl I saved on my own.
Her lips are light on mine, barely a caress, a brush of softness and unsaid promises, and then, before anything remotely obscene happens, she's pulled back to look at me with something surprised and vulnerable that brings me right back to that night, months after I last saw her during her high school graduation that she insisted I attend no matter what.
The night I found her backed into the corner of a dirty alley, a tall, dark shape barring her escape.
She was bleeding.
I… Despite Haruno's grasp, I bend my arm forward and trace the faint scar barely disguised by her armored mesh, my thumb trailing up the side of her trembling belly, almost reaching beneath her chest as her eyes remain on mine, not straying for a single second.
Like she did when I stood over her with a bloodied weapon and I thought she would fear the man I had become.
"It's taken you too long to take responsibility, Senpai," she murmurs.
And then, her lips once again find mine, softness turning to passion, her tongue meeting mine, entangling with it, dragging me into her mouth as her right thigh rises to curl around me and Haruno, pulling herself closer to me as heat that goes right through the piece of leather barely covering her sex makes me hiss into our second kiss.
That's before she moves.
Before she agilely moves her hips back and forth, enticing me with maddening promises as her kiss grows more urgent and her hands clutch my face, pulling me closer and deeper, making me feel all the hunger she holds for me, making me…
Wanting me.
"Too long," she repeats with hazy eyes that glow brighter than ever, the vertical pupils doing nothing to detract from the very human yearning that…
That suddenly vanishes from in front of me.
I blink in confusion, trying to know what just happened as I find myself free of Haruno's grasp and Iroha's… Irohaness, but I can't see—
"You're all a bunch of teases," a very despondent voice claims.
From right in front of me.
Where there's absolutely nothing.
…
Okay, I know this one: when fighting an invisible enemy you just have to… pray they aren't very good at fighting.
Which, seeing as this is Miss Hiratsuka's voice, is unlikely to be the case.
"Can't we talk?" I say with a nervous grin aimed somewhere at the empty air between the spiky, gargoyle-encrusted throne and me.
"All we ever do is talk, Hikigaya."
Ah.
"Well, there's no need to change what's working, I always say—"
"You're mine."
I try not to show any hint of alarm at an invisible vampiress claiming me in what sounds like a yandere's start of darkness and take half a step back, feeling with my back foot where the stairs begin so I won't trip and make an embarrassment of myself like an undignified Haruno, but…
Well.
She's my teacher, you know?
In far too many ways.
So, she predicts my movement and my follow-up before I even formulate them inside my head, an invisible hand finding my throat, a gentle pressure that carries entirely too much threat redirecting my movement, an ankle barring my attempt at regaining my balance, and my awkward flailing ending up with me sitting on a throne that may as well have a sign declaring that lack of pauldrons is ground for denial of service.
"We always talk," she says, her cool breath washing over my lips as unseen fingers push my shirt and coat down my arms, binding me as she sits on my lap, plush thighs pressing over mine, and…
And her breasts push against my chest.
I open my mouth in what tries to be a silent gasp, but that suddenly becomes a muffled kiss, another cool tongue quickly gaining warmth while tracing my own. Then… then she sets on exploring my mouth. On drawing the tip of her tongue along the striations on my palate, teasing my gums, pushing her lips harder against me until the back of my head sinks into red velvet and long nails ghost up the sides of my neck.
She pulls away, and I gasp as she grabs my hair with two impossibly strong fists that… that seem to be just as unyielding as they were when she was human.
I… should beg for mercy. For reason. Tell her to release me. To let me go so I can search for a cure before it's too late. Before she and Haruno turn into the kind of monsters I've been putting down since she taught me how to survive.
My heart beats harder than ever. Harder than the first time I saw a pool of slowly spreading blood and a maddened grin in the dark.
"Let me see you," I say as if I was begging for my life.
And, slowly, she shimmers into being.
Her skin is tinted with cold blue, her hair spread gloriously behind her like the mane it always was, and her eyes are mercifully silver without a hint of red.
She's still grabbing my hair.
"I… Do you…?" she asks.
She asks.
"I would've taken you," I say.
"What?"
"Any of the times you complained. Every single time you told me about the woes of being single. Every day that you taught me another thing to laugh at. I would've taken you," I tell her as if making an oath.
She, once again, kisses me.
"This is so wrong," she murmurs as her naked body presses against me and my cock pushes against her yielding belly.
But at those words, I can only smirk:
"My Urban Fantasy Romance Is Wrong, Just as I Expected," I say.
Her eyelids flutter in cute, adorable confusion, and then the deadliest woman in Japan giggles like a schoolgirl with her first crush.
Just loudly enough to disguise the sound of me… dropping a flask of holy water I'm honest enough to recognize I never would've used against her.
And I let go.
I pull my arms out of my shirt and coat's sleeves, now fully naked beneath her, and I embrace her, pulling her against me without any kind of rush, letting her laughter fade into murmured tenderness as I explore her back, her sides, her breasts. As I learn the body of the woman I've admired since the first time that I managed to see past the façade of clumsy, reckless enthusiasm. As I study with more devotion than any subject what makes her clutch her fingers on my hair, what makes her gasp or moan, and what makes her go back to those delightful giggles of hers.
What makes her smile. Most of all, what makes her smile.
We kiss, over and over again, lingering pecks, slow brushes, or deep, hungry devouring, all of them interspersed with clumsy, half-said lines that can only be shared at night with someone who looks at you like you can push all the darkness away.
It's almost enough to make me cry. Or laugh. Or both.
"It's all right," she whispers like so many other times, meaning it as much now as she did back then, when she was helping mend the broken boy she met through a quirk of fate I'll never be grateful enough for.
"It is. As long as you're here, it is," I say like I never managed to tell her back then.
She pulls away in brief surprise that quickly turns into giddy joy, and the seductive, gorgeous woman in front of me smiles something silly and unbidden that only makes her more beautiful in my eyes.
But, well, there's another part of me involved in this whole process that makes its presence known and…
And Shizuka Hiratsuka's silver eyes are now fixed on where my cock peeks out between her thighs.
"So. You're a virgin," she says without meeting my eyes in a way I find both flattering and infuriating.
"If it helps, I have done a lot of mental training," I say as I possessively grasp her behind and pull her even tighter against me.
She licks her lips, her eyes briefly find mine, and then she's once again staring at the incriminatingly wet tip of my cock.
"And, apparently, you being a virgin helps keep me… fed," she says.
I stare at her.
My mouth falls open in mute, sheer horror.
She grins.
"No," I whimper.
"Only for a while? Until we study more how this works?"
"Shizuka, I swear to whatever god won't make you burst into flames; if you blueball me right now, I will—why are you looking at me like that?"
"Say it again," she says with as much intensity as the time she found an autographed drawing of Ranko and Ryouga walking under the lost boy's umbrella.
"If you blueball me—"
"Not that. Say it. Again," she says, her fangs seeming to lengthen ominously.
"Whatever god won't—"
"Say. It."
"I really don't know what you're—"
"Say. My. Name."
"Miss Hiratsuka?" I whimper, wondering why my dick hasn't gone soft in the slightest and cursing myself just a little bit.
She growls, and traces of crimson flit around her irises as her eyelids twitch into the kind of rage only nicotine withdrawal and recalcitrant students seem to send her into—
'Quick! You must call her Shizuka! Or maybe a cute abbreviation that infantilizes her, like Shizu-chan, reprehensible as that sounds!'
What the Hell—
'Se—Self-Preservation-kun?! You're back?!'
'We don't have the time, beloved! I'm spending all my remaining strength to—'
I swear to Inner Sakura, if it turns out all of you are the result of some kind of half-assed bloodline, I am going to be very pissed—
'Hurry, you fool! You will doom us all!'
Fine! But I just want it on the record that this is stupid, useless, and clearly not the issue at hand—
'Assuming direct control.'
"Shizu," my lips say.
I blink.
The vampiress does, as well, which I'm not sure is redundant for her supernatural biology.
And then her fangs shorten, the crimson fades from her iris, and a look of hunger contradictorily grows in her eyes.
"Again," she whispers.
"Shi… zu?" I say.
And then it's a bit hard for me to say anything else, seeing as her tongue is twirling inside my mouth fast enough to make me dizzy, her breasts are searing cold circles on my chest that grow warmer with every new cycle, and there's a hand tightly gripping me.
A grip that shifts right before it becomes uncomfortable, deft fingers playing along my length as studiously as Iroha's curious tongue earlier did while her soft palm goes up and down, pushing me against her belly as she undulates against me, slowly rising until the back of my glans glides along short, curly hair and slippery wetness joins my own lubrication.
Then… I realize that my eyes are closed, and I force myself to open them, meeting her intense stare, finding in it a hunger so intense I can't help but shiver and then groan at what my involuntary movement does to the sensation of her grip and sex on me.
Her eyes close, and she throws her head back, a low, almost silent moan making her throat vibrate in front of my eyes until I can't help myself and lunge forward, biting around her cool flesh, suckling on it, dragging another gasp out of her as she keeps masturbating me with her hand and her body and her other hand grabs the back of my hair to force me harder against her neck, as if demanding that I brand her.
I do my best to oblige.
I… shift my hips beneath her, probing harder between her folds, not getting in, but sliding over the hardened nub of flesh at the apex of amorous lips, moving to the tune of her slow handjob as I once again roam her body, but not to explore her, but to indulge. To grab her ass and breasts, finally sinking my fingers in them as far as they can go, relieving pent-up teenage desires on the woman that inspired so many of them, relishing every one of the sounds she makes that tell me that my touch is welcome, wanted.
Needed.
"Shizu," I growl over the saliva-slickened skin of her neck, and her embrace grows immediately tighter, dragging me back toward her so that I won't leave her for even a second.
I, rather than obey, creatively interpret the assignment.
It's what a bear would do.
"Hi—Hikigaya!" she pleads as I pepper her with kisses and nibbles, pulling on her skin to leave purple marks behind that look just shy of a bruise, of the shade that beaten skin takes after harsh combat training that always ended with me panting beneath her.
"You're a slow learner, aren't you, Shizu?"
She quivers.
Then… then her grip tugs on my hair, and I'm looking up at the taller woman, into silver eyes as tender as they were when sharing a beer in a companionable silence that filled the rooftops of bustling Chiba at night while we sat on the verge of falling from crystal towers and streaming lights marked the passage of other lives under us.
"… Hachi," she shyly says.
I dive forward.
I taste her breasts, raining even harsher kisses on the soft, yielding, accepting flesh, going lower and lower until I find a purple nipple that I swallow as I ignore her muffled protests and the increased speed of demanding fingers on my shaft just to focus on the sheer rush of a pet name on her lips and the vulnerable tenderness on her gaze.
Just to try and give her back as intense a thrill as she just granted me.
Just to… be the lover she needs.
"Hachi! I can't… I'll come!"
"Come. Come for me," I demand, looking up at her before deliberately, slowly, tracing a narrowing spiral over her areola that ends up with me frantically suckling on her nipple until her feet slide between my back and the throne, her legs closed around me turning into the softest trap I could ever fall into in one of these stupidly convoluted lairs, her sex going harder and faster against the underside of my cock, her free breast consoling my cheek in bouncing caresses.
Her eyes never straying from my cold, dead fish eyes as the ones of the vampiress above me shine with unrestrained life.
Then… Then she stops, right at the cusp of her bounce, her breasts shaking with the abrupt shift in motion, and her hair streaming behind her, curling in an unseen breeze as color blooms over her chest, along the sides of her neck, and all over her cheekbones and forehead until she looks precisely like the flustered, frantic woman who always panics when she thinks she may have gone too far in her Spartan regime and finally injured me like she always fears she one day will.
But that's what being human is, Shizu. We clumsily hurt one another when we never mean to. We live, err, and regret.
And, sometimes, we are happy.
So I grab her waist and force her down, my cock sliding over her open lips and the pearl they hide at their joining, and I let go of her captive nipple to…
To kiss her.
To grab her flesh roughly and possessively, grind my cock against her sex as she convulses around me, and barely graze her begging mouth with as much tenderness as I've often wanted to give her.
Her arms are around my neck, something salty runs down her lips and over my tongue, and her fingers tease both my spine and the back of my hair with something as possessive as my groping of her breasts and buttocks.
She keeps shivering, convulsing against me, her body telling me without words that I have pushed her past the edge, thrown her into the pit of pleasure I want her to drown in. That I have made Shizu, my Shizu, climax.
My cock beats harder against her, uncomfortably hard, and…
And she finally relaxes.
Her face falls on the crook of my neck, frantic breaths as heated as my own wash down my sweaty chest, and I stop groping her to clutch her as tight as I can against me, not letting her go, finally letting some of the frantic rush of the night beat out of me with every strike of my racing heart against my ribcage. Finally feeling like I have her back, even if not the way I hoped I would find her when I first learned she'd been abducted from that teasing note with a wording I should have easily recognized.
She's mine. Mine.
And, even if she's no longer human…
She's still her.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs on my neck.
"Don't be," I say as I kiss the wild tresses of her black hair.
"Do you… forgive me?"
I pause, my fingers walking up her back, over soft skin and under a mane that traps my warmth like a silk blanket.
"No," I say, grabbing her hair and pulling, making her gasp as I force her to look up at me with her mouth wide open in surprise and…
And, of course, I kiss her.
This time, it's me that devours her, that pushes her down with my swirling tongue, that has her bend back until her weight hangs from my arms, and her arched back offers me her spilling breasts as her silver eyes are glazed and tiny clouds of silver vapor escape her mouth with every ragged breath.
"You'll have all of my life to get me to forgive you," I promise her.
And she whines.
Then… then her hand goes from my hair to my neck, slowly crawling down my body until she's once again gripping me in a velvet vice that has me grunt against her open lips.
"I… I really want it, you know?" she says, shy and conflicted.
"What's stopping you?" I tell her with what I hope is a cocky smile and not, you know, the rush of panic that just went through me at the idea of finally losing my virginity to one of the women I most fantasized about doing it with.
"I mean… you taste so good…" she says, biting the corner of her lip in a pleading moue, and—wait, what?
"Shizu, what the Hell," I say, hoping to have misheard her.
"It's not my fault! Just a kiss with you makes me feel giddily full, and, and… I think I can remain perfectly sane—"
"'Remain' and 'sane' are not compatible terms when it comes to—"
"Remain perfectly sane as long as I… have you?"
…
I'm feeling very conflicted.
On the one hand, I seem to have stumbled on the method to keep my frazzled teacher on the side of humanity, and it is a method that would involve me getting and giving regular orgasms, which I've just discovered is something I really, really want.
On the other, I would have to remain a technical virgin until we found an alternative. Which could take years. Maybe decades.
My eyes roam down the exposed body marred with my sweat that hangs from her grip on my nape and my arms on her back.
Her breathing is still erratic, her soft breasts quivering with every hitch.
…
I whine.
"The universe hates me," I declare, this time knowing that I'm factually right and not even Zaimokuza's redheaded Stockholm victim can argue otherwise.
"I will make it up to you," she promises.
And then, she immediately starts working on fulfilling said promise.
Her cool lips travel down my chest as she shifts back on Haruno's throne until she climbs down from it, kneeling between my legs right as her open mouth hovers over my cock.
My rigid cock that shifts with every single one of my breaths.
"You're… Well, I never thought you would be small, but—"
"Oi."
"—but this is even bigger than I expected," she says with an Iroha-worthy mischievous grin that almost manages to mask the hint of embarrassment she feels at praising my cock.
My cheeks tingle in something that is clearly not a blush, and her smile both firms and warms, happy to see my reaction to her words before…
Before she resumes what Iroha started.
Just… with far more skill.
I don't even keep my eyes open. I sink into the cushioned back of the throne as I let out a groan that I find impossible to hold back, and her falling tresses caress the inside of my thighs as she moves. As she swallows up and down my length, the suction growing by the minute as the sloppy, wet sounds of Shizu's blowjob make the experience all that more vivid, the orgasm I so effortlessly ignored while I was busy pleasing her now overwhelming any and all thoughts that don't revolve around the woman with her lips around my shaft or sealed tight under my glans as she sucks even harder and the velvety inside of her cheek wraps around my tip while her prodding tongue keeps asking me to feed her.
One last groan, one last explosion of colorful motes flaring in the darkness behind my eyelids, and I manage to open my eyes only to find her staring up at me with…
With something that makes me let go.
Waves of rushing pleasure travel up and down my body, and my world shrinks to silver irises and suckling lips. To a demanding tongue and the burst of sperm exploding against it. To Shizu eagerly swallowing me.
To… her.
Her and me.
It… It takes me far too long to stop cumming. To stop filling her mouth over and over again until not even her vampiric thirst can keep up, and a lonely dribble of white semen leaks from the smiling corner of her mouth, her eyelashes batting up at me in fluttered delight, her fingers drumming merriment atop my thighs.
Her… just her.
I sink back once again into the throne, and I gasp when she lets go with a suckling noise that echoes in the domed chamber, then she climbs up on top of me, nuzzling the side of her head against my chest like a demanding cat as she hugs her knees and her feet playfully kick back and forth over the armrest of Haruno's thoroughly desecrated throne.
"So. I could go for a snack. You hungry?" I say before I kiss the crown of her head.
She giggles.
It… makes me want to.
I could just… relax. Fall asleep. Let the fatigue of a night even longer than usual claim me and fall blissfully unconscious with this extraordinary woman on top of me, keeping me from the chill of winter.
I could.
I want to.
But… there's one thing I definitely should ask before I allow myself to.
"So… What did you do to Haruno and Iroha?"
She freezes. Which, quite honestly, doesn't bode well.
"Shizu."
"I want you to keep in mind that I wasn't thinking properly at the time…" she says.
So I wait for her to continue, and she doesn't. So, of course, it's only natural that I grab her chin and force her to look up at me with eyes wider than when she was sucking my cock—damn it, Brain-chan! This is not the time!
'My boyfriend just fell back into a coma before he could do his job! If I'm filled with frustrated libido, so are you!'
"Shizu," I repeat my earlier growl to prod her into answering, but mostly because I really don't want to learn more than strictly necessary about my brain's sex life.
A mumble about as impossible to understand as instructions not to deviate from the topic of an assignment comes out of her lips as she does her very best to avoid looking me in the eye despite tremulously coming back to meeting my focused stare and flushing in lilac tones for no discernible reason whatsoever.
"Come again?" I prod her—damn it, Brain-chan, that wasn't meant to be literal—
"God, I wish."
"What was that?"
"Nothing!"
"Shizu."
"Fine! I threw them in the mirror!" she says, waving her hands between us and managing to turn her head away despite my grip, only to then look back at me sideways, from the gaps between her fingers.
Something that I would usually find extremely enticing, but…
But, with a feeling of dread I can't ignore, I shift on Haruno's throne to look back and around it. The room it's standing in is perfectly symmetrical, with a second set of stairs I hadn't noticed until now falling down from the platform, covered in the same carpet that leads to a…
That doesn't lead to a set of double gates barred by a musical puzzle.
No, instead, the carpet leads to a huge, obviously magic mirror.
I, once again, whimper.
"No. Please, no," I say.
"I mean, I'm sure they can get out on their own," the naked woman sitting on top of me says with a tone that doesn't quite beg for forgiveness so much as flagellates itself in the town's square.
"Shizu."
"It's not my fault…"
"Shizu."
"i… they were about to take you, and I… I panicked, all right! Haruno is the castle's mistress, and she likes Iroha, so there's no way that they would—"
"They haven't come back."
"… Maybe they were giving us some privacy?"
I quirk a single eyebrow honed to perfection in chastising a foolish, younger sibling so that they'd be too ashamed to argue back against their obviously wiser brother.
Shizu shrinks.
"Right," I say.
She pouts at me.
"… Right," I repeat.
She pouts harder.
… When the heck did Komachi instruct her in verbal sparring?! This is just not fair! Secret techniques are bullshit!
"Just… a few more minutes? Then we can go through the mirror castle and see what kind of trouble they are into?" she pleads.
I…
Sigh.
Then I once again wrap my arms around her and drag the happily mumbling woman toward my chest as I try to relax and gather my spent strength while making a mental inventory of what supplies I spent in the first half of the castle and what kind of obstacles and traps I've encountered so far that are likely to be repeated or increased in the mirror half.
That's… when I realize something. Something dreadful and terrible.
"Shizu, do you know why there aren't any Medusa heads guarding the way here?"
She stills as unnaturally as only an undead can.
"Because Haruno saved all of them for the second half," she says with a tone just shy of a whimper.
I, on the other hand, turn out to be far less shy than I always thought I was.
So, as I lament my impending doom at the hand of enemies gifted with petrification, erratic movement patterns, and frigging pushback, and my mentor tries to pat my head consolingly until she gives up her futile effort and pushes my face between soothingly soft breasts…
I realize anew the one inescapable truth I had known all along:
I hate vampire interior designers.
With a passion.
The one thing I hate even more? Even more intensely than vampire puzzle designers?
Vampire temp hiring agencies.
=====================
It's been a while, hasn't it?
Well, the good news are that it's not because I dropped the story (which currently has about 138 chapters posted elsewhere). The bad news is that real life hit hard and has drained even the minimal energy I needed to keep reposting my work.
But, well, it is Halloween (or, at least, it was until a few hours ago), and I decided that what better time there is to come back from the grave? So…
Here you go.
A Halloween-themed omake that definitely ran away from me but I hope will be both enjoyable and a good way to ease you back into the story as I resume regular reposts. I hope to have you all back on this wild ride now that I'm approaching the ending I envisioned far too long ago.
Fingers crossed that I stick the landing.
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): Adad64, aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein