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Decadent Habits	By : OverMaster Category: +M to R > Mahou Sensei Negima/Magister Negi Magi Views: 8829 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Negima. No profit at all is made out of this story.

Chapter List
- 23
- 24
- 25
Darkenning strikes again:

Standard issue disclaimer: Akamatsu Ken created and owns Negima. I am not him. This is a parody, protected speech. Thanks to my cowriters and the reviewers.

And now for the cultural portion of our show.

Decadent Habits

Chapter 24: Natsumi

"Okay, so this Varu Jaanu guy goes, 'You have my word that my daughter will know what this letter contains'," Kotaro recited, reading off the script. "And then he goes, 'Tell the young man she will read it tomorrow and here's for your pains. Go careful now, stay out of sight, there's trouble in the streets tonight.' And tosses you a coin. Wow, a hundred yen. What a big spender."

Natsumi sighed. Why had she thought this was a good idea? "It's probably not a hundred yen coin, Kotaro-kun," she explained wearily.

"Cripes, a ten? What a cheapskate. And he's the hero of this thing?"

Natsumi leaned back against the back of the couch, finished counting to ten, and continued. "I meant that it's probably a ... well, a ... okay, I don't know what kind of coins they used in France two hundred years ago, but -"

"Francs," said Chizuru from the kitchen table, where she was finishing her summer homework awkwardly, writing with her off-hand.

"Francs," Natsumi repeated. "It's probably a franc. And you could probably buy a lot more with the coin he gave her than you could buy with a hundred yen coin, because one of the character traits of Val Jean -" She took a certain reasonable amount of pride in pronouncing the name correctly. "- is that he's incredibly generous."

Kotaro was staring at her, eyes half-lidded. This was an expression she suspected he ripped off from Kaede, and one which he generally used to hint that he found a conversation incredibly boring. She got it a lot.

Another sigh. "Let's just move forward, shall we? So Eponine gives Val Jean the letter."

"And he reads someone else's letter out loud so anyone around can hear it," Kotaro continued. "Yeah, he's such a swell guy," he added with a sneer.

"If he didn't read it out loud, the audience wouldn't know what the letter said," Natsumi explained wearily. Why couldn't Kotaro grasp dramatic conventions?

"Who cares about the audience? Shouldn't you be a little mad about this? I mean, you're the one who's listening in as he reads it, which is kinda sleazy itself, but never mind that, now. The letter's all about this dorky guy you supposedly have a crush on telling some other chick how much he wubs her. Doesn't that piss you off?"

For a few moments, Natsumi tried to follow the zig-zag of Kotaro's point. Then she gave up. "Okay, first of all, it's not me, it's Eponine who's doing all of these things. It's important to keep that in mind."

"But you're Eponine," Kotaro pointed out reasonably.

"No, I'm not. I'm auditioning to play Eponine, and even if I get the part, which I probably won't, I won't be her, I'll just be playing her."

"So it's just that you want to be Eponine."

"No, that's not it either," Natsumi almost snarled. It just came out sounding like a whine, unfortunately.

"Be, play, it's the same thing, isn't it? And if you don't want to be her, then why are you auditioning in the first place?"

"He has a point, you know," Chizuru observed.

"Don't encourage him, Chizu-ne!"

Chizuru only shrugged in response.

Natsumi took a few deep breaths. "Okay. It's like a fight," she said.

Now Kotaro leaned back, smiling broadly. "Okay, now this I gotta hear."

"You want to fight Negi-kun, right? And in order to get good enough to be able to fight him, you fight other people, to grow as a fighter, right? Well, it's the same with me. I want to become a great actress who can take major roles, and the only way I can do that is to take on more and more important supporting roles, to train myself. Okay? So even though I would never ever want to be Eponine, I think the challenge of playing her is one that will help me to become a better actress." She looked at him, fully expecting him to laugh at her.

"Damn," he said, smiling broadly. "That made sense!"

Natsumi felt herself going all weak when he smiled. Under any other circumstances, she would probably have launched herself at him and begun kissing him frantically. It wasn't easy to hold herself back from doing so even under these particular circumstances, but she managed. "Okay, then," she said, blushing brightly. "Let's proceed."

"Alright. So after the jerk reads the letter out loud and runs off, you, I mean, Eponine is left all alone on the stage and that's when you start singing." Kotaro mimed disgust.

It was a never-ending rollercoaster with him, sometimes. "I've been singing all along. Nearly all of the dialogue in this play is set to music. But this is Eponine's big musical number."

"How come she gets a big musical number if she's just a supporting character?" Kotaro asked.

Natsumi coughed. "Because she's a more important supporting character than the ones I usually play, but she is still a supporting character. She dies, you see, and even when she shows up at the end as, well, as a ghost, she's still supporting Fantine and val Jean, rather than being important or having important lines. Still a supporting character," she repeated.

Kotaro exhbibited rare discretion by not saying anything to that. "Okay, but why the music, huh? It's silly! People don't just burst into song!"

"They don't -" She narrowly stopped herself from pointing out that people didn't start fighting for no particular reason, or have transformation sequences, or engage in stereotypically hot-blooded behavior. All of which were entirely real things, she now knew. She took a moment to compose herself. "It adds to the emotional content of the words," she said. "And sometimes it also adds subtext."

"Okay, what the hell is subtext?"

"I will not only explain what subtext is, I will show you how you use it all the time! It's a teachable moment!" Natsumi said cheerfully. "Your own words - what a big spender. If you say those words one way, it sounds like you're indicating that you think that the person you're talking about is actually a big spender. But if you say them another way, you're saying that he isn't a big spender, but rather someone who is very cheap. That is subtext."

"So this is just a funny way of saying sarcasm?" he asked.

"That's one kind of subtext. Anything where, if you were reading it on the printed page, you'd need a hint to tell you that something other than the words themselves was being meant, that's a kind of subtext."

Kotaro was silent for a moment, considering this. "Okay," he said slowly. "I was wondering how music could suggest sarcasm, but if it's other things, too, then I guess ... okay, I can see it, sort of."

"Teachable moment concluded!" Natsumi shouted, grinning broadly. "How'd I do, sensei?"

"I'd applaud if I could," Cnizuru answered, rolling her shoulder uncomfortably.

Kotaro opened his mouth to object to being the subject of a teachable moment, then realized just how happy Natsumi was ... and continued to show rare discretion by shutting his mouth and saying nothing.

Just then, the door opened, and Ayaka came in, wearing a red dress that none of them had ever seen before and an bracelet that drew Kotaro's attention like a magnet. "Tadaima," the class representative said wearily.

"Okaeri," Chizuru said without looking at her. "How was your night out?"

"Very interesting," Ayaka said, returning the favor. "But the day that followed was a lot of work. We have some visitors from out of town that I had to introduce to the Headmaster. And some other things happened ... but I'm really very tired, so if you'll please excuse me, I'm going to bed."

"Have a nice sleep," Chizuru said.

"I'll try," Ayaka replied. She looked towards Natsumi and smiled faintly. "Getting ready for the audition?" she asked.

Natsumi, terribly nervous, just nodded.

"Break a leg. That's what they say, in the theatre, right? Good night, all." And with that, Ayaka headed for her room. At the table, Chizuru sat for a few moments, resting her eyes on the palm of her uninjured hand, before gettting up and going to her own room.

"... what just happened?" Kotaro asked a moment later.

"Subtext," Natsumi answered sadly. "And you don't get to make fun of Iinchou for not realizing we're not brother and sister anymore."

"Huh?"

And so they had come home.

The conference ended, and neither Yuna nor her father had any interest in staying in Amsterdam any longer than they had to, for recent experiences had somewhat soured them on the city. So they boarded a plane for Japan, arrived at Narita and then took the train into Mahora, arriving at his apartment just after sunset. They were only slightly tired from their journey, having napped on the flight.

So they did what by now came naturally.

Yuna was flat on her back on the bed she'd slept in as a child, looking up at her father as he pumped his hard rod into her wet core, her feet up and wrapped around his knees as her hands clenched his buttocks. Earlier, he had peppered her face with kisses, but now he was entirely focused on the lower regions. She might as well have been lying on her stomach for all the attention he paid her. On the other hand, the ceilling behind his head was slightly more interesting than a close examination of the sheets would be.

Mm, no, mustn't get distracted, Yuna reminded herself. She took her right hand off her father's buttocks and slipped it up between their bodies, to start massaging the man in the boat. He didn't like it when she didn't achieve climax, either before or with him. It was getting harder to do, but she wanted him to be happy. So she rubbed, and eventually felt a surge of release, just moments before he let out a gasp and flooded her with baby batter.

That made her wonder. "You're using some kind of magic birth control, right?" she asked as he pulled her softening manhood out of her and rolled over to lie beside her.

"Yes. Kills the sperm cells before they even ejaculate. Casting it is almost reflex, now," he answered, breathing heavily.

"... I wouldn't mind if you didn't," she said, absently. "Could I borrow a smoke?"

"That's not funny," he said, just a little sharply.

"It's kind of weird for you to be telling me not to pick up bad habits, dad," Yuna answered, faintly amused.

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh, that. It wouldn't be a big deal. And hey, if I have a little girl, then thirteen years from now, when I'm too old for you, she can take over for me."

"Yuna."

"And if I have a little boy, then twelve years from now, when you're too old for me, he can take over for you," she continued.

"Yuna, that's not fun-"

"Or maybe I could have one of each, and we'll both teach them all about -"

"Yuna!" he yelled.

And now she turned to look at him, and quietly said, "It's over, isn't it." Not making it a question.

Akashi-sensei took a moment to calm down, and then said, just as quietly, "I think that it has to be, don't you? If I want to remain a teacher here, and I do, and you want to remain a student here - and I think you do - we can't keep doing this. Even beyond the fact that we're father and daughter, that makes it problematic, you see."

"Yeah, I see. And, yeah, I do." She sighed. "This is where I'm supposed to say something stupid and moving like, 'I'll never love anyone as much as I loved you.' Well, fuck that. I'm gonna devote the rest of my life to finding someone who'll love me like crazy, and when I find that person I'm gonna love them way more than I ever loved you." Her voice was firm, grim, and certain.

"Uh," he said. No idea how I'm supposed to respond to that. "Okay," he finally said.

Yuna's expression softened in the face of his haplessness. "But you will always be my daddy. And you're a great lay, so you should get out more. Maybe if we can't find Nagi-san, you and Arika-san can hook up again. You looked really hot banging her with Eishun-jiisan that time. I still can't believe she can take two guys' dicks in her yaya." With a grunt, she stood up and walked naked to the door of the room. "I'm having a shower. No peeking."

"... right," he said. Did she just say no peeking?

She went into the shower stall, started the water running, and lowered her face into the spray.

Then, and only then, did she start crying.

The next day found Natsumi up before any of her roommates. Chizuru was usually up first, but owing to her condition, she needed to get as much rest as possible. Ayaka could sleep for days. And Kotaro ... Kotaro usually got up when Natsumi did. But that morning, she strove to be more quiet than a mouse as she padded past his cot, pausing only to breathe in his smell. He needed a bath, as he usually did, but ... his smell wasn't all that bad.

With that consideration, she pulled on her shoes and headed out. The auditions didn't start until later this morning, but if she had any breakfast larger than the granola bar she was taking with her, she'd probably spend precious minutes before she went on puking it up. (Nerves, not bulimia. That's what she told herself at any rate.)

As it turned out, quite a few other young girls (and one or two not so young) had had the same idea, and there was quite a line-up outside the theatre. This was good, or so Natsumi told herself. She had the chance to scope out the competition. (Hah, said the inner Natsumi, hah hah hah. You honestly think that you're any competition for anyone?) Most of them seemed just as nervous and anxious as her.

It was the first time that the School Version of Les Miserables would be performed in Japan. Of course, it would happen here at Mahora. Everything else did, so why not this, too? And the competition was going to be fierce for all the roles, even for a supporting role like Eponine. Most likely, the best that Natsumi could hope for would be to understudy. (Hah hah hah, went the inner Natsumi, who was really starting to annoy the outer Natsumi.)

Eventually, the doors opened, and all the prospective Eponines marched into the theatre to take up seats in the auditorium, reporting their names to the production assistants so that they could be called up in alphabetical order. Natsumi got comfortable in her seat, pulling out her granola bar to take a few bites. Murakami, after all, was pretty far down in the alphabet, and so -

"Okay," said the director, seated in the auditorium's first row. "We're not going to go by alphabetical order, because I don't feel like doing it that way. Let's just pick a name, shall we? Um, duh duh dee dee ... Murakami Natsumi!"

Natsumi found herself choking on the granola.

"Going once, Murakami Natsumi!"

"Here," she said, standing up, and starting to make her way towards the aisle, past girls whose names began with vowels or the consonants k and s, who were staring at her with marked hostility. To their credit, none of them deliberately tried to make her journey harder, at least not that she noticed, but they didn't have to, really. It took her several minutes, and then she was out in the aisle and dashing up to the stairs set up to let her walk up to center stage, where the lights were brightest.

She couldn't see anything in the darkness beyond the orchestra pit. She suspected that the director wanted it that way. No way that an actress could play up her 'talents' directly at him.

"Murakami," the director repeated. "Where've I seen you before?"

She opened her mouth to start describing her embarassing body of work.

"Oh, right!" he interrupted. "You were in that one Cinderella show that was done for the kindergarten class. My daughter told me all about it, and I looked up the players who'd done it. Nice work, she was really entertained. I guess stepping in like that gave you a taste for the lead roles."

Oh my. He'd heard about that. Her friends and Kotaro had basically arranged things so that she had to step up and take on the lead, even though she had just wanted to direct their efforts. It had really been wait did he say something about lead roles?

"Lead roles?" she repeated, bewildered.

"Sure. Eponine's one of the most important characters in the play. You didn't think she was a supporting character or something, did you?"

"... of course not!" Natsumi vigorously lied.

She couldn't believe it. All that talk she'd given Kotaro about subtext, and she'd completely ignored one of the most important ways that music could lend a song subtext. When the same tune was used for different words, it linked them in the listener's mind. And Eponine's song used the same tune as the climactic music of the entire play! Of course she was a lead.

What was she thinking, trying out for a leading role! She was just a supporting character!

"So, whenever you're ready?" asked the director.

Natsumi nodded. But saying that she had made a mistake would embarass her even more than she'd be embarassed by her inevitable poor performance. She could kiss whatever theatrical ambitions she might have good bye if she did that. Forget appearing as Acorn Number One, she'd be lucky to become a stagehand and walk around dressed like a ninja. Her only real option was to go forward and do the audition as though it wasn't absurd for her to do this.

The piano began to play the music, and she let the pianist give her a few bars while reviewing the song. This was a song about loneliness, about realizing that you're not as important to someone else as you'd want to be. She understood that, surprisingly well, actually. This was just what Chizu-ne was going through. It hurt her own heart to watch the way that Ayaka was turning her back on what they had.

Suddenly, there was someone else sharing her body with her, and that person began to sing, her tongue traipsing swiftly over the first few verses.

And now I'm all alone again

Nowhere to turn, no one to go to

Without a home without a friend

Without a face to say hello to

And now the night is near

Now I can make believe he's here

It was surprisingly easy to remember not to say 'she'.

Sometimes I walk alone at night

When everybody else is sleeping

I think of him and then I'm happy

With the company I'm keeping

The city goes to bed

And I can live inside my head

And now the chorus. The words that defined who she was.

On my own

Pretending he's beside me

All alone

I walk with him till morning

Without him

I feel his arms around me

And when I lose my way I close my eyes

And he has found me

She was speaking now a little more from her own heart, her own dreams of what her own love might be like.

In the rain the pavement shines like silver

All the lights are misty in the river

In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight

And all I see is him and me forever and forever

But really, Kotaro could get by fine without her. She knew that. It only hurt a little to admit it.

And I know it's only in my mind

That I'm talking to myself and not to him

And although I know that he is blind

Still I say, there's a way for us

And suddenly, she wasn't thinking about Chizuru, or Ayaka, or even Kotaro. This wasn't about any of them, and it wasn't about Eponine or Marius or anyone else. This was about anyone who had ever been a supporting character in someone else's life.

I love him

But when the night is over

He is gone

The river's just a river

Without him

The world around me changes

The trees are bare and everywhere

The streets are full of strangers

And that was everyone.

Her voice began to soar.

I love him

But every day I'm learning

All my life

I've only been pretending

Without me

His world would go on turning

A world that's full of happiness

That I have never known

Draw it back now, become quiet. Hide the pain. Clutch it down deep.

I love him

I love him

I love him

But only on my own

And she was done.

Dead silence.

Oh great, Natsumi thought disgustedly. How bad of an idiot did I sound just now?

"Um," said the director after a moment. "Well. That was very good, don't you think? Yeah. Um, well, we'll definitely keep you in mind, Murakami-san."

Recognizing dismissal when she heard it, Natsumi quickly headed down the stairs on the opposite side of the stage from where she'd come up, and briskly walked up the aisle, feeling the hostile eyes on her once again. Right now, all she wanted to do was to get out of here, head back to her dorm room, crawl into bed, and die. Well, okay, maybe just cry herself senseless.

She had just cleared the auditorium doors when there was a low whistle from behind her. "I think you maybe forgot something?" said grown-up Kotaro, holding up the jacket she'd left in her seat when she went up on stage.

"Oh, thank you," she said reflexively, followed almost immediately by, "Kotaro-kun! What are you doing here, I told you I'd be too nervous to do anything if you were watching, and -"

"So I decided you meant you'd be too nervous if you knew I was watching, and I didn't let you know," he said blandly as he draped the jacket across her shoulders. This brought him close enough that he could speak directly into her ear. "And you did great," he said softly. Roughly, but softly.

"What are you talking about, the director couldn't wait to get me off stage," Natsumi said dismissively. "Everyone was staring at me like I'd just exploded some kind of stink bomb."

"Bupkiss," said Kotaro. "I may know jack about music, but I know when someone's giving it everything they got. If that director wanted you off the stage, he's a schlub. Nothing we can do about that. But if everyone was giving you the evil eye, it's 'cause they know you just set the high mark and they're gonna have to work their hearts out to even come close to meetin' it." He rested his hands on her shoulders. "You did great."

The possibility that he might be right suddenly exploded in her mind, and she almost reeled. Before she could collapse, though, Kotaro enfolded her in an embrace. Her face was up against his left pectoral, and she was breathing in his scent even deeper than she had earlier this morning. He definitely needed a bath. He definitely smelled good.

So good.

Slowly, she pulled back, looked up, wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders, and pulled him down so she could kiss him. He blinked, startled, as her tongue reached up into his mouth. "Wurgh?" he said. It was hard to get the word out. They were in public, for pity's sake.

"I really want to be alone with you right now," Natsumi said, when she eventually released his lips.

"Uhhh," Kotaro responded with his usual scintillating wit.

"Yeah, I know. You're ten years old. I'm as bad as Iincho. But you know what?" she said. "I don't care. I really don't. Let's go, Kotaro-kun."

"Where are we going?" he asked, faintly.

"To my room."

Eventually, they got there, and found that both Chizuru and Ayaka had disappeared for the moment. Convenient, particularly in the latter instance. They kept kissing frantically as she pushed him back through the door to her treasured private room, and then backwards so that he fell back onto the bed and pulled her with him.

"Um, Natsumi-chan?" Kotaro asked hesitantly as she stopped kissing his mouth and began to rain kisses on his jaw and chin while her hands busily worked at his belt. "What, exactly, are we doing here?"

"It," she answered as she got the belt loop out of the buckle.

"And ... by it, you mean ... it, as in it," Kotaro stammered, blushing faintly.

Natsumi paused in her attempts to unbuckle the belt. "God, you're cute," she said.

"Um, I'm really, really not so sure about this -" the dog hanyou started to say.

"Negi does it," Natsumi interrupted.

"Uruh?" Kotaro replied. "What, how, how do you know that?"

The buckle finally was undone. "You've seen how happy Iinchou's been lately, right?" she asked, opening the snap on his pants, and starting to pull down the zipper.

"Well, yeah, but that's cause she got a pactio, which means, okay, they kissed, but that doesn't mean that they're -"

"She stayed out all night," Natsumi interrupted again, shaking her head as she realized that, of course, Kotaro went commando under his jeans, and reached in through the fly. "Why would she do that if she wasn't, wasn't ..." She trailed off as she realized what she was holding and pulling up into sight.

Had she been an American, she might have said something along the lines of "Holy Mother Macrae," but being Japanese, albeit very Westernized, all she did was gape.

"What, what?" Kotaro said, panicking a bit at the look of mild fear on her face.

"Um. Wow," she said. "This is, um." She'd seen one of Chizu-ne's dildos once, and thought to herself, that can't possibly go inside someone. This was about that big. "Well, it's, it's nothing to worry about, Kotaro-kun. It just needs l-lubricant. That's all."

"What?" Kotaro repeated, sounding possibly more frightened. "Natsumi-chan, how, how do you know about these things?"

"I, well, I went to all of Kakizaki's lectures, you know, just, just in case the only acting job I could get was as an AV idol," she said very quickly and quietly.

"Okay, what?" Kotaro asked, fear vanishing in a surge of anger.

"Never mind that now!" she said, and mouth open wide enough to take a big bite out of a rice ball, she proceeded to start lubricating him. Oh boy, she thought. Kakizaki, couldn't you have mentioned that this really didn't taste all that great?

Now it would have been Kotaro's turn to say something like "Holy Mother Macrae", but instead he simply boggled at the sight before him. If she could, Natsumi would have sighed. She was going to have to do all the work, wasn't she? With her free hand, she reached down and started fiddling with the snap on her own jeans.

By the time she got them down to her knees, along with her panties, Kotaro had regained enough animation to at least start running his fingers through her hair as she bobbed up and down. He was still shy enough not to try and do something stupid like pushing her down so as to put the head of his thing at the back of her throat, which was good, because he was certainly not smart enough not to do something like that. One loved an idiot at one's peril.

"Okay," Natsumi said, pulling back and breathing deeply. "I think, yes, that should be lubricated enough, but, I mean, if you wouldn't mind making sure that I was, well, l-lubricated," she continued, as she stood up to a kneeling position and pushed the panties and jeans down to her ankles. "I mean, if you don't think that it's too -"

She eeked as, with a growl, Kotaro lifted himself up and threw his face down between her thighs and began licking frantically.

"I was, ah, going, ah ah, going to say, ahhhhh, unmanly, but I, ah ah ah! I, I guess that it doesn't -"

"Nah, I lick my own ass all the time, this is nothing," Kotaro said dismissively.

"Way too much information!" Natsumi shrieked.

Eventually, unwilling to simply lie there passively like Kotaro had when she was doing stuff to him, she persuaded him to roll over from his stomach onto his back, with her perched on his face, and bent over to get another crack at his thing. What he was doing distracted her, so she was really only able to lick at and tease its head with her tongue, while her hands wrapped around the rest of the shaft. He was making excited and pleased sounds, and becoming even more enthusiastic, like a -

No! Don't go there!

- like a puppy, and now her thoughts were filled with the idea of doing it with him in his full wolfy form, and oh, it was wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels, but she just couldn't stop, and it kept building, and building, and finally, she pulled back to let out a bone-shattering howl of sheer release. For a few moments, all she could do was just sit there and pant.

And then the door was flung open. "Good grief, Natsumi-chan, what's wrong -" Ayaka said, gasping as she ran in wearing her bathrobe and stared at the sight before her. Natsumi, in her turn stared at Ayaka. Kotaro, unable to see any of this, chose that moment to emit both a grunt and a stream of white ejaculate up towards the bottom of Natsumi's chin.

Incredibly, the first words out of her mouth after that happened were, "This isn't what it looks like." She didn't know why she said that. She wasn't a very good liar, normally, but that was weak even for her.

After a moment, Ayaka found her voice. "Natsumi-chan," she said levelly. "You are a complete failure as a liar. You have obviously used those age-disguise pills that I've heard about to increase Kotaro-kun's age, and are engaging in sex with him. Under the circumstances, I really can't object to you two engaging in incest. Indeed, given what Chizuru said about the soap opera that was your home life, I suppose that it was probably inevitable. So I will simply leave you to it ... but I would ask that you please keep it down, so that people approaching in the hallways do not hear you screaming and run in with the expectation of finding you in intense pain! Complete failure, Natsumi-chan!"

With that, Ayaka stepped back out of Natsumi's bedroom and closed the door in front of her.

After a few more moments of utter paralysis, Natsumi rolled over onto her back and covered her face with her hands, then pulled them back as she realized what was getting on her palms. Kakizaki's lectures had not mentioned a number of important topics, she now realized.

"Okay, can I make fun of her for not realizing -" Kotaro started to ask.

"No," Natsumi growled.

"Are we gonna -"

"The mood is gone!" Natsumi replied sharply. "And, and anyway, we don't have any condoms. I just realized that. It's, it's really a good thing that Iincho burst in like that, I might not have remembered that we don't have any condoms, and then I might get in trouble. You wouldn't want me to get in trouble, would you, Kotaro-kun? Are you ready to take responsibility?"

"Um, no," he said.

"Right," she said, refusing to think about the little box hidden in one of her drawers. Especially refusing to look in that direction. Failure as a liar, huh? "I, I need to get cleaned up," she said, absently.

"I can take care of that for you," Kotaro said, desperately trying to brighten her mood by being helpful, as he let his long tongue loll out of his mouth.

"Wait, what? But, but this is -" Natsumi protested as he approached.

"Eh, whatever."

Ayaka heard a faint shriek from Natsumi's bedroom, and shook her head. Well, at least someone here was happy. She'd been hoping to meet Negi - definitely just Negi, not anyone who might be accompanying him - at the baths, but her hope was in vain. Nor had they been in when she went to their room. Doubtless they were engaged in some sort of planning to deal with that Tsukuyomi person.

But she was part of the group, now, wasn't she? They should be inviting her in to their strategizing!

In any event, now, all there was to do was to sit around and wait for Chizuru to come back and endure even more uncomfortable, subtext-laden conversation with her. Some summer days lasted forever, even if you'd rather they didn't.

There was a knock at the door. Ayaka blinked, got up from the couch and went over to open it.

"There's my favorite grandchild," said her grandfather fondly, eyes faintly visible behind his thick spectacles.

"Grandfather!" Ayaka replied happily. "When you didn't arrive yesterday, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind!"

"Oh, you know how it is, there were endless distractions," he said vaguely. "Is this the fashion, these days?" he asked, looking askance at her bathrobe.

"Oh, don't be silly!" she said, shaking her head. "I just got back from the baths. Come in, have a seat, I'll get changed -"

"Oh, no, it wouldn't be right for me to enter a young woman's private residence," her grandfather said, holding up his hands in a gesture of refusal. "I'll wait out here. Is Naba-san in? I was looking forward to seeing her again."

Ayaka coughed. "Um, no, she's, um, at the doctors. A recent accident. I'm sure you'll see her later this evening."

"I hope so. I'll wait out here," he repeated.

"All right. Won't be but a moment!" Ayaka said, and closed the door to dash off to her room.

Outside, the man adjusted his spectacles. Best purchase of his life, he decided.

Kept anyone from thinking there was anything at all odd about his heterochromia.

NEXT: Takamichi
- 23
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- 25
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Decadent Habits