Deal! Fortune!...in bed.

I do not own Shuffle! or any part thereof. I do not profit Financially! from this. The line between dirty and Filthy! is clear but less colorful than the line between dirty and Merely! naughty. [Title:] Deal! Fortune! The boy who could become either a god or a devil…in bed.

Chapter 8: Devil in the Details.

Rin was very quiet on his way back. The world around him was too, for the most part. It wasn’t just that he ignored the few people he passed, even if they made passes at him. Rin was quiet on the inside. The inside was where he had to listen. Even when the arguments between his insides were so heated it was hard to believe he was involved, he had to listen. Most people would just call this ‘thinking,’ but most people don’t live on the frontline of the food fight between Curse and Blessing.

He could have built a whole metaphorical forest from his indecision between whether to give Nerine the book or leave it on her doorstep. He could have clear-cut it for lumber, raised crops, and built a town or killed a river in the process. When Rin tried to think about Nerine, about Nerine instead of how to deal with Nerine, his insides just kept shouting memories of all the other cards who had dealt themselves to him today. All he could manage were images of her, and those were all either fragile, or irresistible.

Needless to say, but important to narrate, Rin did not think about the difference between Devils and Gods as the difference between Time and Space, even when struggling with memories. Rin didn’t really think about unchangeable differences in general, how people were born or bread. The same went for Devils and Gods, probably for Time and Space too.

But when people say ‘the Devil’s in the Details,’ they always mean History rather than Art or Science. Even when they don’t. This is why Kaede makes her past her demon and her future worshipping Rin. This is why Mayumi makes deals with her future to enjoy the present, why Asa makes deals to escape her past and promises to her future. This is why Sia makes a present and promise of herself.

This is why Nerine’s father, when he saw Rin walking up the hill toward him, thought about the past, Rin’s and his own. Forbesii is the king of the Devils, though, and no one can tell him to be quiet, not even his own thoughts.

“Welcome home, Mr. Tsuchimi. I see you made it in one piece.”

Still a block away, Rin heard the king’s intentionally unreadable tone loud and clear. He didn’t jump or even tense, he just looked up briefly, as if distracted from a somber daydream. Forbesii hadn’t been trying to excite the excitable boy, but seeing him so unexcited made the king frown.

Devils have a kind of double standard when it comes to deals and parents. It’s considered distasteful to come between a human and its offspring, but there’s no shortage of stories where his people extended all sorts of over and under hands to humans in the name of future Devils.

“Are you feeling alright?”

Rin didn’t answer.

Truth be told, Forbesii didn’t like humans half as much as he let on. There was too much inconsistency between their emotions and their actions, and far too much between parents and children. Liking Rin because his daughter liked Rin and hating Rin because his daughter loved Rin was not an inconsistency, he told himself. He all but pimped his daughter because he knew it would make the boy uncomfortable. Simple reverse psychology there. He also did this, however, because he knew it would make his daughter embarrassed and shy, which was her strongest allure. Let the Gods play cowboys. He’d rather play ninja.

When Rin got close enough, Forbesii was able to border the puzzle of smells on him. No wonder the boy seemed to be sleepwalking.

“Saved the best for last, eh? It’s a good thing my Nerine is such a patient girl.”

“I’ve got something for her.”

The reply was almost too prompt. Forbesii raised an eyebrow and clenched his fingers ever so slightly. He relaxed, then made himself relax some more when Rin lifted the bag in his hand.

“Did you want to deliver it yourself?”

Rin looked at him with one emotion he couldn’t place, then all the others. It wouldn’t have been too much harder to connect the rest of the puzzle, but Forbesii was perfectly willing to let Rin sort out the pieces for him.

“I don’t know…I don’t want to, but…if I…but I promised I’d make sure she got it. But sir, I know you’ll…and I know you said-”

“So it isn’t a present from you, it’s a loan from one of her friends? That cooking girl with the green hair, yes?”

“Yes. Asa.”

“Yes. Asa. She let you off pretty easy, hm?”

Rin was looking at him with a kind of terrified awe again. Good.

“You could give the bag to me so that I could give it to her, that would be the safe thing to do. Safety is respectful.”

Forbesii forced himself to relax a little more when the bag shook, then didn’t shake in the boy’s clenched fingers. He continued as if they were simply picking out ice cream flavors.

“But! On the other hand, bringing it to her yourself would be the honorable thing to do, the brave thing to do. Cowardice certainly isn’t respectful.”

“Yeah…” Rin gazed off toward the mansion that protected the future of the Devil world better than he knew.

Forbesii saw no need to let the kid know that, of course.

“It’s up to you, son. Maybe the star is getting tired, maybe we are. Maybe love means being brave, maybe it means you don’t have to be.”

The king of Devils had called him ‘son’ generically. Or not. At least the boy would have to ponder as much as he did. Really, he preferred to control how rather than whether things came and went. If his thoughts were going to crash his own parties he may as well raise a glass, drain it, and throw it.

“Stars can make us do anything, Rin, but that can’t make us be anything but ourselves.”

The memory, of Sia saying something very similar in a very different way, drifted across Rin’s face like a cloud, like a cool washcloth. The change it made in his expression was faint, but undeniable. The real cloud that drifted over both of them was just excessive, though. Forbesii would have a word with the Weathers about their subtleties later. Rin didn’t notice the ominous synchronicity, and didn’t exactly forget or remember what happened the last time he let a sudden flash of curiosity speak for itself.

“Um…your highness, sir, why aren’t you inside with Nerine?”

‘Damn,’ as might be expected, doesn’t quite play in the same ballpark or carry the same stick with Devils. Still, when they say the word out loud, it’s rarely for the sake of sarcasm or irony.

“Damn.” Forbesii hung his head as if the word had been a weight off his shoulders.

‘Damn,’ he thought to himself.

‘Damn, this kid is trouble.’

‘Damn, I’m starting to like this kid.’

“She’s locked me out.”

Rin shot quicker and quicker and more confused glances between the front door and its supposed master till Forbesii sighed. Just sighed, for whatever it was worth. Heck, he figured, Gods already took enough credit for human revelation.

“Listen carefully, Rin. You’ve seen what my daughter’s magic can do, but you really don’t know anything.”

Rin blinked and swallowed, but Forbesii saw, or maybe smelled, that he was searching for courage, not a shield, not an escape. He put his arm around him and genuinely smiled at the idea of him as a son-in-law. As he walked him to the door, the one next to one that had already taken him in, it became easier and easier to speak frankly. It made him remember how he’d felt around his own loves’ fathers, how much he’d wanted their approval, but moreso their honesty.

“Nerine hadn’t been born yet the last time the Lemon star passed by.”

Forbesii could actually feel the boy paying attention to him, but he could also see that it wasn’t that long a walk to the door. There was no time to make the story timeless.

“No. I’m sorry, Rin. Let me skip ahead.”

“Sir?” Rin turned toward him, but kept walking.

“I know I’ve already asked a favor of you for her sake once, and I still appreciate you giving her a chance to feel she had you to herself. This is different. She will have you this time, most likely however she wants to. What she might make you do…I’m going to give you more to worry about on top of that, something you have to know. Even if all you understand is that it’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from my daughter.”

Forbesii remembered to breathe.

“Please don’t tell Nerine this, but her mother and I actually went searching for the Lemon star so that she could be conceived in its light.”

Rin made a few tiny noises between their last few steps to the door, urging Forbesii to go on. It hurt Forbesii to know that even he might get so close and still want to turn back, that he, the king of Devils, didn’t want to honor the deal made whenever you start a secret. He knew he would finish telling it, and he knew he would trust this kid with this key, or lock, to his most precious and dangerous treasure. But he didn’t want to.

“Was she?”

Wow. The kid actually spoke up. It was like he’d averted the Primula catastrophe all over again. He made it feel easy, however he made it look.

“I don’t know. The Lemon star does erase memories of its wake in most people …but of all people, all people, as far as we know, no one has ever certifiably been conceived under it. By the time we knew we were pregnant there was no way to be sure if it happened before or after, in its light or just around it.”

Forbesii didn’t like the thought of Rin watching him revisit and reform so many uncertainties across his face, but turning away would be worse. He demanded and Rin deserved better.

A good old ‘say one half directly, then the other half while walking away’ maneuver would do quite nicely, though.

“Knock, and maybe you’ll find out. I’m guessing that today is either what I get for succeeding…or for trying.”

It would have irreparably damaged Forbesii’s sense of royal timing to know that Rin was looking at said door rather than said doorman when the big finish came.

A few minutes of Rin’s own private hesitations passed on and away with Forbesii’s footsteps, wispy things like ghosts sucked through the very door they were trying to spook him from. Forbesii was already gone when he turned around for… A smile? A thumbs up? Anything to make sense of whatever the Devil king had said about succeeding.

Nothing? Rin felt like laughing, like calling out ‘what the heck do I do if she doesn’t answer.’

“Or she does and no one sees me again,” he mumbled to himself.

Memories of Nerine answered via her confessions by the swing set, their swing set. They answered in vivid contrast of how scary she was when defending him and how scared she seemed to be of him. He hadn’t yet needed to suppress the ones that followed, of her in the lingerie store, or at the beach, and nearly knocked himself off his feet trying to fight them off so suddenly. When he won, he took those fists and managed to transition them into knocking on the door.

Rin still closed his eyes, though.

Nothing happened.

He knocked again. Again, eyes closed.

He waited, eyes open, at least. Then, at last, he knocked without even blinking. Then he leaned back to search for movement near the windows. Then he realized that he was inside.

With his back against the inside of the front door now, the handle grinding into his hip, the handle right there for the taking, for the fleeing, Rin tried not to panic. The house seemed empty, which first made it easier to calm himself, then, of course, impossible.

Rin had the bag raised, ready to holler out something along the lines of: “Sorry to bother you, Nerine. Just dropping off a book Asa wanted to loan you. See you later.”

No one ever asked if Rin regretted that he didn’t, which was good, because he might have had to answer them.

Whether or not it was the Right Thing to Do, Rin didn’t ask. He just lowered the bag, ashamed of himself, then ashamed for being ashamed, and so on, rolling a snowball of self deprecation all the way to what looked like the sitting room. It wasn’t quite the one he remembered, though. For instance, the coffee table had been clear, not mirrored. Rin put the bag on top of his reflection and pulled his hand over his face all the way to the back of his neck.

This had to be something like what Sia had set up for him. Yet this didn’t feel like Nerine was setting up a ‘special surprise’. It felt more like a trap. Trap? That felt like more than just a rude thing to think about Nerine (no matter how much her father had given the opposite of a reassuring blessing). Somehow, thinking that he was in a trap felt like the bait itself. Maybe this whole thing was a test.

Maybe his society just made their adolescents spend too much time in school.

Whatever gym classes had done for his reflexes, it didn’t prepare him for the book to start shaking, rattling the mirrored surface of the table, louder and louder till Rin sat back into the couch, realized he should have jumped over it, and pushed himself back to compensate. His feet in the air, his head thumped and throbbing against the floor, Rin just barely had enough flight in him to go fetal as a hundred jagged reflections swarmed toward the ceiling.

He put his hands in his armpits, waiting for the cuts to open, to realize that he’d already been disemboweled. The shattering sound didn’t die away, it seemed instead to level out, to focus. After a full minute without even a scratch, Rin dared a look and saw the whole table, now in splinters as well as increasingly tiny shards, swirling at the ceiling in an unseen blender. It was not done doing whatever it was doing, and this made Rin want to tip the couch again, this time all the way over him, but to do that he’d have to get off the floor, and the only thing that was going to get him off the floor was the part of him that found part of the display really quite pretty.

There was a woman standing where the table had been. She wore a loose, Romanesque dress, all drapes and folds over curves and Curves. A wreath of silver and obsidian branches held her hair, a white silk veil hid her face. It should have been easy to find some part of this more than pretty, but there was no part of Rin that could conceive of this woman as Nerine. Therefore, he ducked, quite impressively (by the standard of any generically cowardly animal, at least) when the woman raised her hand toward him. He didn’t notice that she had the bag with the book in her other hand, but that probably wouldn’t have made a difference.

Oddly enough, it was a feeling of intense heat that made Rin look again rather than finish tipping the couch over himself. He wasn’t surprised that the heat was coming from her, or even that it was coming from an orb of swirling liquid fire in her hand, just mesmerized to see that the fire was fire-colored, rather than the sort-of-colored sort-of-fire that magic usually made. The heat quickly went from rural campfire to industrial furnace, but Rin only blinked at his sweat as the shimmering, singing remains of the table whirl pooled into the forge. From this came a molten sphere that pulsated as it condensed to the size of a beach melon. As the mix swirled blacker, and blacker, Rin could only see the solid result as a cannonball.

Nerine, or whoever it was that spoke like her, cradled it as gently as an egg.

“I’m so sorry Rin, I should have warned you. There must be a hole in the bag.”

The heat dissipated in synch with the softening hesitations of Nerine’s voice.

Naturally, none of what she started to mumble about ‘certain demon craftsmanships not mixing well’ made him any calmer, whoever was saying it. Now that it was so very like Nerine, Rin was doubly certain that it wasn’t. He couldn’t quite ask ‘who are you,’ and certainly not ‘where’s Nerine,’ but he could grip the couch to keep from fleeing, or fainting.

“Rin I…I…”

That definitely wasn’t the way Nerine let her body use her voice. She sounded the way Kaede had when…or Mayumi when she…but Rin’s hands were still firmly on the couch, and her hands were divided between the new table-piece and the bag.

“I’m sorry that I’m hiding myself from you like this; for locking everyone out, for covering my face. I know you and father must be worried but… it’s safer this way.”

What little Rin had learned about today’s Star feature crept up his spine, straightening it a little, but mostly with electric currents.

“I am too…I do not want to boast, and I certainly don’t ever want to push you away but-”

“The sun’s setting, Nerine,” Rin gulped, trying to interrupt what he felt with what he thought he knew, “the Lemon star is almost gone.”

She slouched a little bit. Rin even smiled to think it was relief. He even let go of the couch and thought about walking over to hug her. She looked so much like a pitiful rather than terrifying ghost. All his friends were precious to him, and he had to be there for them even if they were suitors, especially if they looked like they were in distress. Nerine, it had to be Nerine, was about to cry. It had to be Nerine because she was so likely to cry when making herself vulnerable in front of him.

“Oh Rin,” Nerine giggled…maybe the way the real Nerine giggled, Rin couldn’t really say because Nerine almost never giggled.

Rin’s smile didn’t disappear, but only because he’d frozen with all the grace of that cowardly animal he’d moved like moments before.

“Rin. Rin. Wonderful, sweet Rin.”

Nerine tossed the sphere onto the couch and the couch was swallowed. The speed of it was so intense that Rin notice the wind of its passing more than the sound of its implosion. The sphere, satiated with a double helping of furniture, thumped on the floor and only rolled a little toward him.

“Is that what they told you?”

Rin wanted to hide under that couch now. He absolutely did not care how silly it would make him look. He actually wondered if the sphere might suck him up in a flurry of bones and blood if he asked it nicely.

“Did they say we’d all be safe if we just stayed inside today?”

It might seriously be time to consider asking where Nerine was. Only crazy people sounded this much like laughing and crying at the same time. Rin managed to back away a few steps. She reached out, tenderly, soothingly. This at least made her seem like Nerine again, which, again, helped at fist…till he thought about it, which made it worse.

“Wait, Rin. You don’t understand. The star isn’t leaving till it gets what it wants. That’s why I…”

Nerine reached into the bag and pulled out the book. Maybe it wasn’t Nerine, maybe it really was, but she definitely did NOT have anything of Asa’s.

The stories about ‘evil books’ found in secret old libraries, about ancient tomes bound in human skin, none of them could have steeled Rin for the experience. The thing in Nerine’s hand, held like a disappointing inventory report, looked held together by a dozen conveyer belts all going in different directions. The belts were made alternately of rusty metal and rotting blackish seaweed he couldn’t believe he couldn’t smell.

“I knew the star might come while I was here…in your world.”

Nerine, he was pretty sure it really was her now, or at least sure that whoever was in front of him had meant ‘here…for you.’ That fit Nerine.

He hoped.

He hopped in the air a little.

Nerine had held the book in both hands, arms out, chest up, and also out. Arousal was the first thing he should have prepared for when he found himself on the other side of the door, but it was the last thing he was ready for, so much so the first sign of tightness in his pants nearly made him jump out of his shoes.

“I tried to get rid of this book, but I couldn’t. The only thing that works is a loan, and even then it was difficult. I disguised this as a cook book and asked Asa to have you bring it to me. I had to want it back, you see. I loved the idea of an excuse to see you alone, even if-”

Rin definitely knew something strange and scary was going on, and was even following most of it. Unfortunately Rin was also still waiting to see how Nerine would try to …‘engage’ him. Engage. That was funny. She and Sia both wanted him to be their husband. But Nerine was here now. But it was wrong to think it was okay not to look at her face just because she was wearing a veil.

“Rin.”

He looked up at where her face probably was, ready to say he was listening, but he looked down at her chest again when she held the book to it. Something so wrong- looking should not be touching something so...

“So…”

“I’m so sorry. I know this must be confusing,” Nerine sounded ready to cry, “or does it just sound crazy,” then laugh.

“Nerine, what…what is that thing!?”

Expressing his fear and revulsion so blatantly felt right, even Right. Holding so much back had been making it hard for him to breath. It felt good to breathe and better to breathe a lot, even if he still expected anywhere near that book to stink. He even held his breath when Nerine opened it.

“The truth.”

Rin held his breath a little tighter and tried a little harder to see Nerine’s face behind the veil.

“This book has a lot of angry, dangerous magic inside, but mostly it’s insane. My people haven’t made books like this for a long time. Maybe that’s why no one noticed, or no one worried, that it also contained the truth about the Lemon star.”

“But,” Rin started pointing at the book again, even more nervously this time, “why would you give it to Asa?”

“Books like this, Rin. Once you want what they have to offer, you can’t un-want them. I hoped Asa might just forget about it, but I had to hope just as much that you’d bring it.”

“It’s…it’s so-” Rin thought of a few words that were bad enough, but couldn’t say them in Nerine’s direction. She still hung her head as if she’d felt them, and skimmed forward through what he saw only as blank, aged paper.

“If father knew about it, or what was inside, I might never get to see you again.”

“It’s so-” Rin tried again, but failed even more, just enough to skip ahead.

“Nerine, why go through all this? How does it help you or anyone for you to not have the book, or to have me bring it to you when I think it’s something else?”

“That’s the magic of it, Rin. I didn’t know if you’d bring it when the star was here, but I knew somehow it’d be all that could get inside if I locked even my father out. The book and the star, they’re both made from magic, possibly even from the same magic, and magic isn’t something you just pull from something or someone else.”

“But-”

“Magic is sexual, Rin. It’s a combining of things.”

Rin was quite finished wondering if Nerine was Nerine every time her tone changed. He was even nearly finished suppressing his desire to slap that book away, take off her veil and-

“That star-”

That voice might have been Nerine’s, but Rin was entirely back to being too afraid to ask.

“-is the great testament to Lust Itself.”

Rin thought back to what the Kings had told him about it being found near the destination of the star the two worlds had made together. He remembered what Forbesii had said about no one ever being conceived under it. He could feel the cracks in this knowledge forming, spreading across his skull in anticipation of Nerine’s hammer.

“My father, his father before him, and on and on, they were all told that the Lemon star was there when they went up to dedicate their star of truce. There was a star already in the spot they were going to plant theirs, but it had just begun forming between the time they left and the time they arrived. They took the birth of this new star as a benevolent omen and agreed to add to it, to feed it with the star they’d made…but some part of them must have wanted to feed the new star to their star.”

Nerine turned the page. Rin gulped and tried to slow his breath to muffle his heart.

“The Lemon star was born of these conflicting desires, but of desires most of all. I didn’t take control of the crew; the crew realized what they really wanted. They wanted Their new life to…dominate the Universe’s new life. They wanted control. They wanted to lose control. They did, and they made the Lemon star.”

Rin could smell Nerine now. He could also mostly see that she was Nerine under the veil, and definitely nothing but Nerine under the robe.

“When their star was born…they looked at it, and it looked back.”

Nerine was shivering with cold, or fear, or excitement. Or Rin was just holding so still that everything else was made to shiver. She slammed the book shut and he started with a gasp that, to Rin’s redoubling fear, Nerine seemed to inhale.

“It spoke to them, and they didn’t speak back. It knew it wasn’t what they’d wanted, and so it didn’t want to want them. And so it had to have them,” Nerine spoke to everything, around and inside her, that she loathed and pitied, “It goes where and when it wants. And while it’s there it Wants forever…but only speaks once!”

She threw the book down and Rin bit a tiny bit of his tongue off. He stepped away from the book between them. She stepped forward.

“Whenever it comes to one of our three worlds it picks someone and gives them a choice, they can either give the star all the children they would have ever made, or the one child they do make with its help.”

Rin was nursing his tongue, and that saved him from enunciating what his curiosity made him say. It kept him from wondering aloud whether Forbesii knew more about the truth in that book than she realized. This whole revelation had even more power to scare the arousal into him when it should damn well be scaring it out. Thinking about all of it was enough to do the trick.

“Nerine…you-”

His blood, all of it, seemed stolen into the table piece. It was a relief until it stole his voice too. He clasped at his mouth and felt only missing tongue.

She took his hand away from his mouth and held it in one of her own. He saw the dots of blood smear.

“Because the star is so unpredictable, and can make people so…powerful, because it so often takes peoples memories; when people disappear no one considers the sacrifices-”

Nerine reached her other hand toward him. It glowed with the unnatural, lovely fire he was more used to seeing, if never so close.

“-the deals being made.”

The ball of magic spread itself over her hand like a glove. She held his cheek and it felt warm. She slid her finger between his lips, over his tongue, and he wanted more so instantly and so intensely that he almost bit down.

“I’m not sure why the star chose me, but I can guess. In fact my father probably told you. Still, I have no right to do this.”

Nerine was referring to what she was planning to do, rather than what she was doing at that moment. Rin couldn’t think that far into it, but she had his attention either way.

“There are two things, which means there are three things, always three things, that we can do to send the Lemon star on its way empty handed. I don’t think anyone from any world could deal with more than one day of it.”

Rin could definitely let Nerine scare him and stimulate him senseless like this indefinitely, but he didn’t complain when she pulled her hand away.

“The first two options involve offering either myself to it or…our child to it…someday.”

Nerine dropped the last parts into softer and softer whispers, but that softness made them sharp as…let’s say ‘shards of coffee table’…in Rin’s ears.

“I thought maybe, if not our child, then…but I don’t think I can do that.”

Rin felt his hands reaching toward her and he stepped back to make doubly sure they grabbed his skull instead.

“Nerine…you can’t be-”

She lowered her head, then kept lowering it as she spoke. Her voice bore down for strength even as breath escaped, replaced by the frightening thing he had taken for someone other than Nerine.

“Like I said; there are three things. The star is not used to going more than a day, more than a daylight without one of the two choices.”

Nerine reached for him again, but not his face. Lower. Not his chest, either. Deeper. Her palm directly over his heart, Rin tried to slow it. He gave up when she dug her nails in. It was only even beating half as hard as he wanted to grasp her.

“If we can make…magic, make it like they did before, we can make a new star ourselves.” The princess took another full, round, voluptuous breath to reassure herself. The movement didn’t quite offer Rin any calm.

“I am more powerful than Sia. Today I may even be more powerful than Primula. I am more powerful because I want you, Rin. I know I can’t keep this veil on, but I know that if I take it off you might…want me…so much that you forget yourself.”

Rin actually thought about what to say. He thought about it with everything he had. The quieting parts that shouted over him, the Right and True things, all twisted around each other. For a change, they wove into cords, reeling out from his chest rather than knotting around it.

So much that you forget yourself.

He had a response, but he couldn’t reconcile the ‘too late’ with ‘no way’ side of the wooden nickel on the new tip of his tongue. Flattery didn’t reassure people, friendly or flirty. In that he felt assured. In that his fear began to seem respectful, Right as it would have to be to take away the pain of desire.

A small dot darkened on Nerine’s veil, lighting to the balloon he’d tried so hard to escape in.

“That’s why I’m so afraid, Rin. That’s why I always try so hard to be the nicest, humblest person I can be. I don’t want to force you to love me. I don’t want to bedevil you into taking me. Even if I know it’s the only way to help everyone and be honest with myself, I’d rather die than make you anyone but you.”

There was nothing he could do. The desire to comfort and the desire to conquer her had crashed at the center of him. After all he’d been through today, all the guilt and all the joy, the two made a zero, not a three. He had been so proud of himself for doing the right thing with Asa, but now there was nothing to do. It would all be wrong.

Another dark spot fell against her veil.

“I can’t do this to you, or to anyone else who loves you…to Sia.”

Nerine thrust her hands to her sides, fists shaking. Rin’s fear was so instant and deep that he couldn’t even recognize it as his own. Her voice became bitter, but she seemed to be drinking it with her teeth rather than spitting it out.

“The Gods…when all is said and done they’ve always been more powerful because people have always wanted promises. Promises not even for their lives, but for their deaths. They have no claim on honesty, or compassion. ‘A promise is a promise’…whether or not it ends up broken.”

Something like a sob of new or dying strength shook more spots onto the veil. Rin was already helpless, ashes colder than the stick that stirred them.

“I want you, Rin. I want us to be happy. I want to be happy. I don’t want to make promises, but I have to tell you the truth. I want you, Rin, but I don’t want you to make a deal under pressure. And…I don’t…want to have to throw myself at you.”

The sob she ended on, a deeper more complete shame, was a big drop in a bigger bucket. It wouldn’t have mattered now if she did throw herself at him, Rin thought. It wouldn’t matter if he’d lowered his head enough so that he couldn’t see Nerine raise hers. He knew he couldn’t deal with any of the Lemon star options she’d described, but ‘none of the above’ didn’t feel like it had a bottom to its pit. He felt he would just keep falling.

“What do you want, Rin?”

Maybe the Honest Thing to Say and The Right Thing to Do had reached some truce. Maybe they’d killed each other. He felt he didn’t deserve to cry for either of them, and just cried for himself.

“I just-just wish things could go back to how they were. I wish everyone could just be happy.”

“I’m not a God, Rin, I’m a Devil. Don’t tell me what you wish, tell me what you want.”

“I want to go home.”

Rin’s teeth were chattering now. He remembered the day his parents died, the day he let Kaede find out that it had been her fault. He didn’t feel as he did then, alone in the rain, he felt only the numbness that came afterward. He felt like a helpless little boy.

“Very well. Do what you must.”

With an effect equal and so opposite it made him waver on his feet, the numbness turned itself, and him, into nothing. Nerine had spoken with an honesty and acceptance so pure, so gentle, that Rin didn’t feel guilty to begin walking toward the door. He felt nothing, but more importantly no guilt. He didn’t wonder if he’d really heard her whisper ‘as shall I.’

“Go home-”

Kaede’s neck, Sia’s hair, Mayumi’s leg, Asa’s face, the challenge in the eyes of the kings and Itsuki. Her voice returned those moments to him, floundering guilt crushed beneath the shadow of true weakness. Sharp, unrelenting, undeniable, Nerine’s voice grasped every broken part of today, of his life, and melted it in her hands. All he had to do was turn to see what she had for him. He could do nothing else.

Her hands were empty, but they moved up to her veil so surely, pulled it back and tossed her hair so slowly, that Rin rejected time to focus only on the space between them.

“-if you can.”


MEANWHILE!


“Geez! They make all their episodes seem like the last episode. I’m always so stressed!”

“I’m sorry, Sia. I thought some TV would take our minds off…”

Primula looked over her shoulder with a pout in her eyes.

“I like this show.”

“You’re never…nevuuur. Er. Bur. Er. Urp. You’re never too old for kid shows, sweetheart.”

Sia, for once, didn’t react to her father’s embarrassing behavior. It was his just as drunk, but not half as festive partner in crime that she glared at. Forbesii had returned just as suddenly as he’d disappeared and proceeded to turn yet another tea party into a sake contest. There was something more to Nerine locking him out than just the star enhancing everyone’s magic. Maybe he was keeping them all here, keeping her here to make sure she wasn’t home if Rin came back to her.

“Excuse me.”

She tried not to think about anybody watching her as she left for…the kitchen? Where was she going? At the corner leading down the hall she stopped and looked back.

The king of the Devils was investigating his sake saucers, her father was snoring or talking like a pig in his sleep, and Rin’s little girls were watching TV. Sia clutched her stomach. She wanted to smack herself for the outright meanness of her thoughts and hoped that no one saw her dash for the bathroom.

Managing to stop herself before she slammed the door, she locked it as delicately as possible. Wanting Rin to be with her so bad got her close enough to crying that she cried for her mother instead. Truly, she wished her mother had abandoned her duties and come, even if she only paid attention to her father. Just her being there would help somehow. Sia had been closing her eyes so tightly that she shook a little as she realized she’d closed the door without turning the light on.

The click of the switch seemed loud, her face in the mirror dull. She took a deep rejuvenating breath to push her tears down, but that only pushed them out. Another nick of time caught her hand before she smeared her makeup. Some of her nail polish had already chipped. Green looked so good on her. It was the only color every part of her liked.

Hands braced on the sink, Sia looked for strength, found more tears, some nausea, and then Rin. It hurt to think of him as brave for walking away from her, hurt worse to think of what more she could have done. Eventually, though, she made it over her bridge, let it turn back into a wall, and then smashed it down.

“Kikiyo,” she whispered.

The TV outside made stock audience noises.

Sia looked into the mirror, into her own eyes. She tried to imitate what she recalled as that almost spiteful, mostly lascivious expression.

“Come on. I know you’re in there.”

She thought of Rin touching her. She touched herself and thought harder. She went so far as to imagine the other girls crying. When this made her start crying again, or rather, start crying without holding back, it at least became easier to breath. Her hands felt stronger along the sink even as the rest of her crumbled.

“I don’t know what to do. Please. If we work together I know we can save Rin.”

“Idiot.”

It usually sounded like liquid crystal when Kikiyo spoke to her, an echo held in place. This time her voice was flat, making the mirror even more like a window. Kikiyo didn’t move, she just crossed her arms and lowered her head, all the way down, and a little to the right. Sia could still see her eyes, though, even if they were closed.

“Please, Kikiyo. I can’t do this alone.”

“Do WHAT alone?!” She hissed. “Rin doesn’t need to be ‘saved’ from anything.”

“Kikiyo…” Sia’s lip trembled.

“You don’t want to talk to me. You just want him.”

“I need you, Kikiyo!”

“What you need is to let Rin decide for himself. Isn’t that what you told me?”

Sia sniffed, and gulped, reaching for the tissue.

“I…he…you’re right,” Sia managed between blows, “he can stay strong. He’ll make it through this.”

“You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”

The sympathy, even sadness under Kikiyo jab lifted Sia’s eyes, and Kikiyo’s in turn.

“Don’t you understand? ‘Making it through,’ ‘holding back,’ that will just make it worse, especially with her.”

“But she…she wouldn’t-”

“You said so yourself, she’s the dangerous one.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Yes you did. You know how the magics work. You know what will happen. The more he tries to push her away, the stronger she’ll get. They’re going to-”

“Stop. Stop it.”

Sia had so intended to yell instead of whisper that she put a hand over her mouth. A few green tears painted her palm before she reached toward the light switch.

“I love you Sia. I love you so much that I love Rin too, so much that I even love Nerine. Go break them up if you want to, but don’t try to blame me…”

Sia pressed her palm over the entire switch, muffling the click.

“…or the star.”

It took a few moments feeling around in the dark before Sia found the tissues again. It took too few to get to the last one in the box. When she opened the door she almost collided with Kaede.

“Sia?” Kaede asked, fist still raised to knock on the door.

“Oh! Um, Kaede, I-my makeup was bothering me.”

The ultimate host didn’t smile as she should have. She didn’t even try to.

“Who were you talking to?”

Sia looked into her tissue, crumpled, green but mostly black, and wished she could have hid her whole face in it.

“I’m sorry, Kaede.”

“You…you’re father’s asleep. So is Nerine’s.”

“Figures,” Sia tried to sniffle up a laugh.

She tried not to look directly at Kaede, thinking that might keep things quiet, but through all the day’s treaties of silence she could feel a roar on the horizon.

“Sia…did you-”

Kaede wrung her voice through the apron bunched in her fists. Sia began to reach for some part of her Godhood that could hold Kaede’s question back, hold Kaede up. Delicate or strong, she didn’t know, only that Kaede must have it. Her hand, still a little green, almost touched the tip of her orange hair before Sia snatched it back, as if burnt. Kaede’s voice was so cold, so despairing.

“Did you take Rin?”

Sia let her hand fall. She let her shoulders follow and waited for the tears to follow, but they didn’t.

“I tried.”

Kaede closed into herself a little, but Sia could actually feel her relaxing in the next moments. She looked up with tears, but also with a tiny smile holding back a gigantic blush.

“S-so did I.”

It took long enough for Sia to figure out why Kaede was anxious about her hands, about one hand over the other, just long enough for the princess’s sudden gasp of surprise and good natured jealousy to turn them both into a teeter totter of blush and giggle.

“Kaede?”

They both gulped and stood stock straight to face Primula. They even hid their hands behind them as if caught red handed instead of red-faced.

“Primula! Um, is your show over?”

“Would you like to get dinner started?” Kaede asked, glancing toward the TV sounds still loitering about.

“Nerine’s house…”

The air seemed to be jumping, racing into the older girls’ lungs. It moved even quicker into their eyes as they followed Primula’s only mildly urgent index finger into the empty lot next door.


!ELIHWNAEM


‘So was she super hot?’

‘Did her eyes light up?’

‘What was it like to look at her?’

When re-telling the story up to that point Rin had needed to genuinely collect himself so many times that, after he finally came to terms with the memory, he’d started automatically pausing for dramatic effect. He’d only ever answer something worded like the last question, and only with another question.

‘Do you know what it’s like to ejaculate and urinate at the same time?’

He’d also never let on that it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

The veil had floated off and gently down between them. It was only during those seconds that Rin could feel the pain in his backside from collapsing. Only his closest advisors knew this, but Forbesii loved metered speeches done in sync with the steps taken toward a fallen opponent. Nerine would have done daddy proud.

“Well? Is this what you wanted to see? The Devil in the Flesh? Did you come for my sweet, meek personality, or was it just to climb the greatest mountains in all three worlds?!”

She, Nerine, the demure demon princess, clutched the greatest mountains in all three worlds with both hands. Rin gasped in all the Awe. How ever little actual air he’d managed to gasp with, she simply swung her hands into fits at her sides, continuing louder. (She had also made a vulgar metaphor. Nerine never even made bland metaphors, but the startling strangeness of that was mostly overshadowed.)

“It certainly wasn’t for one of my fucking omelets!”

As far as Rin knew, omelets, very tasty ones, in fact, were the first and only dish Nerine learned how to make.

As far as Rin knew it would take more than a whole constellation of stars to make Nerine say a bad word. Those times when she’d gone a little overboard in protecting him had been scary. Damn scary. Still, he never really wondered about how much scarier she might be if she really got pissed.

Did he have to wonder if she was not just pissed, but pissed at him?!

No, he had to wonder if she realized that she’d made him…there wasn’t even a word for it. ‘Double mess’ himself? And at the same time? Seriously, he’d paid attention in sex Ed; it was supposed to be physiologically impossible.

Speaking of science out the window, looking at Nerine was still like looking into the sun. The difference was that the blinding sensation went through the rest of his body while his eyes felt only the throb echoed in his sex. Nerine’s very presence was Lust as Strength. Her eyes had in fact changed, from red eyes to eyes made only Red, the heat and the force not of life, but of Living. Rin felt a savage charge with each step she took toward him and found he couldn’t move anything but his mouth. Or rather, he couldn’t keep his mouth from moving, lolling open to cast a lazy string of drool onto his chest.

“Licorice, the better one, I ATE her. Even if she crawled down my throat I still ate her. And now…I’m going to eat you. Then I’ll take the lemon star, then your world, then mine, then the gods and it’ll be just me and I’ll make a better version of you!”

She was getting more terrifying, but she was also bending more toward him. Urethra lightning struck twice, and Rin clutched his crotch with both hands, which only gave encore to the overwhelming sensation. Every climax in his short pubescent life danced through his memory like a parade of lost or discarded childhood toys. He heard his yelp echo throughout the mansion and closed his eyes. It was similarly helpless reflex that kept them closed tight.

“Nerine…you’re-”

“I know I’m scaring you, Rin. I want to.”

He heard the movement of the fabric on her body more than her footsteps. He felt more than heard the desperation swirl back around her voice, from molten silver back into glass.

“If I can do that, then I’ll be worthy to love you. If I can show you the worst part of me, then this won’t just be a crush. I won’t just be some pining tragedy. Tomorrow I’ll be mortified by how I’ve acted today, but at least I’ll have acted. At least I’ll have done something worthy of you.”

“Y-You-” Rin barely managed to attach a word to his breath.

“Say ‘Devil’, Rin. Say ‘demon,’ say ‘monster’. Say whatever you can to separate me from you. Can’t you understand; I don’t have anyone to make a deal with…and I won’t have anyone else sacrificing themselves for me.”

“But you don’t owe her anything. You don’t owe her anything because she didn’t ask. You don’t owe her gratitude because that would cheapen why she did it. You don’t owe her for saving you any more than I have to love you because you love me.”

It didn’t feel like the counterattack outburst with Asa, mostly because he barely realized he’d talked (almost shouted, actually) until he felt Nerine stop approaching him. He had hurt her just by half-saying the worst hypothetical thing he could. The uncontainable pleasure started to implode back into a dull mass in his chest. His memories, though, orbited him less like toys than model ships, sailing around what he’d just said, churning it into something he could stand up on.

Rin caught his breath, held it, and swallowed. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, shaking now above his still spreading stain. They closed tighter.

“I swore, when I got here, I wouldn’t-”

“Because I’m the delicate one? Or because I’m the dangerous one?”

Nerine’s voice was still a deadly sword, but at least now it felt like she was holding it between them rather than at him.

“Dammit. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Should I build a tower that can just get taller and taller with every girl I treat with common courtesy?

For all he knew better, for as powerful as his anger (not not NOT the sexy kind) felt, he knew he wanted to open his eyes and look at her again, to look at her body. He wanted her, but he had to keep himself.

“There’s just no way to win!”

He glanced a moment of hope that his weakness was strong enough to push her away.

She took another step closer.

Whatever was holding him back was also holding him down.

“I told you, Rin. I’m a Devil.”

He opened his eyes when she had bent down toward him. With one hand on the floor, one on his knee, Nerine had him transfixed. She was impossible. Desire and anger felt suddenly so very alike.

“Not a girl with cute ears and magic tricks, a Devil; I know how to bend the rules.”
Nerine closed her eyes and removed half the light from the room. Her hair receded. Her hair grew. Horns sprouted from her forehead, curving triumphs of platinum bone. Her hair flooded the room. Rin looked at her body, at his hand reaching toward the looser cloth at the lower shoulder. Her hair swirled. Nerine opened her eyes with a smile made of teeth.
Rin did not remember falling asleep and would not remember dreaming, but when he awoke he was reclined in a chair that was either air or jelly or-

How was it holding his head out of the water?

Hot water. Almost too hot. Almost.

How did he get in a giant bath?

An impulse to stand bounced harmlessly off an insurmountable wall of comfort. The impulse tried again, inspired by his completely sudden complete nakedness. And a very valiant effort it was.

The new room looked very much like early 20th century western opulence, but the bath waters fell and spouted from of gargoyles instead of cherubs, the structure made of onyx and pewter instead of marble and gold. The walls around him were tall glass doors, and all that stood between him and a dense jungle stretching to every horizon. He was too busy wondering how the inflatable or magical black stone could be so comfortable, and where his perfect or demonic hostess had gone, to wonder where he was.

Face into his hands, Rin reclined, yielded. Lying there, letting himself feel, then appreciate, then marvel at Nerine’s illusion, he waited for a thought to rise above the brawl in his head. The only thing that came to him was the water around him. Every time he thought of calling out, or getting up, he thought of what he would do next. The blank thoughts that answered were like massaging hands. The cleansing water around his crotch was like a very dirty mouth.

Rin took in air, all the air and more. Warm, relaxing water or not, drained and drained again or more, Rin shouldn’t have been able to grow like a sponge capsule animal. He shouldn’t have been able to get as hard as coral. The water wasn’t salty, but his mouth was as he tried to stay quiet, as he tried to see what was in the water, what in the world was making him feel so good.

The sensation had no source he could see. Yet, face drawn forcefully up at the celestial mural on the ceiling, its vastness and excess fitting the room perfectly, Rin relaxed as constellations began to join together in shapes he could not describe. He relaxed till his face was almost submerged. He relaxed and relaxed till his face shot up and his hands shot down. The remaining air was so thin, the water around his hands, around his sex, was so thick. Trying to, then trying NOT to imagine an invisible, underwater Nerine only made his climax more overwhelming. When Rin finally caught his breath he was almost too empty to jump up.

“I thought about a hot springs, but that’s a little cliché.”

Almost. Almost flight again, but definitely a hearty splash.

“Relax. Rin. We’re just getting started.”

Her voice had seemed to rise from the bath’s own steam. The bath, smooth across the surface, rose up in her own form.

“Oh Hell.”

Rin’s helplessly sincere response seemed to flow seamlessly into the conjuration. With hands at the edges of the bath, desperate but no sturdier than fingernails at the chin of a purring cat, Rin watched every molecule take shape. It was the exact likeness, the perfect mold of a naked Nerine. Steamy, literally, it looked down at him with a shy smile. Its voice was playful, filtered through a mixture of surface bubbles and area fan buzz.

“What do you think? Mistress Nerine made her myself.”

Rin lifted his foot dumbly. It passed through her leg like a slow waterfall. Not thinking, not thinking at all, he moved his foot upward. The Neri-nymph gasped and moaned at once, little droplets falling from its fingertips as they half-grasped the air. It giggled as he yanked his foot away. Its throat, Rin noticed, contained a mix of water and something else.

“When I learned the Lemon star was coming, I stole Mayumi’s dream lover.”

The sculpture looked at him coquettishly as Nerine’s voice came not from within, but from beyond the steam. Rin squinted to see if she were at the opposite end of the tub.

“You what?” Rin asked, exhausted and confused, then exhausted and frightened when he realized what she was talking about. He asked again, a lot more quietly.

“You what?”

“I could say I ‘commandeered’ him. I’d be within my rights. I do have sovereignty over that half of her, after all.

Rin watched as the Neri-nymph stepped back deeper into the (or back into) water, his mind flailing at the implications of this till it reached the other side.

The steam dissipated even though the water temperature remained the same, if not warmer. Opposite him was Nerine, sitting on the edge of the tub. Her hair was held up in a towel, that towel held by her horns. Her body was being covered with suds by the two-dimensional shadow of a man, made not from darkness, but from the rainbow skin of a soap bubble. It looked at Rin, or at least turned what he supposed was its face toward him. Rin would eventually be able to articulate that it was somehow both smug, and sad.

Rin would never admit that he was instantly both protective, and jealous.

“I tried to put him to…use.”

Especially after Nerine said that, looking away from Rin back to her soap attendant, her tone more solemn than ashamed.

“I was so nervous, and he made me less nervous…which made me more nervous, if that makes any sense.”

A flash of Nerine’s normal shy self sparked a natural gas pocket in Rin’s bubble.

“Actually it kinda does.”

Nerine smiled sweetly at him, but before Rin could return the sentiment it melted, then inverted. Yet, this time the expression that preceded her horns drove them away and deadened the light in her eyes. The Neri-nymph moved toward Nerine more like a pet than a puppet, putting a consoling hand on her knee.

“I tried to use him, he used me more, so I used him up.”

Rin flinched as Nerine picked up a bathing bucket (which looked more like a fancy ice bucket in its western context) and dumped it over the rainbowman. It dissolved, died, so quickly, so pitifully, that only the realization that a radiant Devil princess was wearing nothing but soapsuds could have brought him back to the present.

“As already finished as I was, something inside me…woke up, and I ---I mocked him. I laughed at him like-like some kind of evil queen. All that desire, all that pleasure, abandoned and violent. I knew who I was, what would happen, what I wanted to happen, what I had to make happen…and what would never happen.”

The omni-colored oil slick, now dissipating across the surface of the bath, recaptured Rin’s attention, then passed it up and over Nerine’s head to the Sun, touching down beautifully over…

“This isn’t an illusion, is it?”

Rin’s reflexive, deadened observation canceled out one numbness with another, letting the panic in. He tried to stand up from every angle at once, so he didn’t rise, or fall, very far.

“Where the hell are we?!”

“At the core…or rather, at the pit.”

Rin let his eyes lift him this time, over Nerine and past the jungles to a sunset that had spread itself like a broken yolk of dancing flame.

“The Lemon star…” Rin’s mind whispered over his lips. The new insanity of his position made him feel strong enough to collapse, but not to move.

“I can do anything here.”

Nerine swung her legs forward, white glisten, white hot, white foam spreading out as she lowered them into the bath.

“We can do anything.”

The towel slipped from her hair, the soap spread from her body as she swam toward him. Smooth as a crocodile, her ears like shark fins, her lips targeted him like a warhead, dipping in and out of the ripples.

Rin didn’t know what to do, but he did know what would happen. They were both naked, and as less and less water separated them he became more and more ready for what she clearly wanted to do when she reached him. He knew what would happen.

He would strike her. He had felt ill any time he’d even imagined hitting a girl, but this was the last card he had. He didn’t know if it would bring things back under control, but he knew there was no way he could hit himself hard enough to even distract his own desire.

Nerine reached him and stood, entirely naked, more than perfect, more than real. Rin let his face be as thoughtless as it wanted, he had to put everything into his hand.

The slap echoed off the many shining and shimmering surfaces like a grand execution. The pain of it was actually enough to topple the tower beneath the water. Rin would have been relieved to have his blood focused in other areas if one of those areas hadn’t been the inside of his cheek, cut against his teeth.

“But you won’t do anything.”

The word ‘anything’ had gone to Heaven and Hell completely through Nerine’s voice. Rin touched the pain on his face, looked at the blood on his hand, remembered how she had so recently healed an almost identically wound, remembered everything the day had brought him, everything he had returned to it.

Everything he had done?

He could have done anything.

“I hate that look,” Nerine glared at him with almost the same terrifying power that had first emerged from the veil, save that a single tear made it, impossibly, even more agonizing.

Rin looked at his hand, as if the answer, the mirror, were in his blood. He then looked back at Nerine with what he knew was the same look, impossibly, made worse by staying the same.

“That look says the you are unworthy. That you can’t let yourself take advantage of us. We open our souls to you and all you can give us is fear? Have you considered how that might insult us? We offer ourselves to you and all you can take is guilt?”

Nerine turned and walked back toward the other end of the bath. Her long, wet hair against her bare back, above her…Rin’s desire was solid steel again, but enflamed by the truth that Asa had sparked, that Nerine had spread.

“As I was saying, about Mayumi’s incubus, I tried not to pretend it was you. When I mastered it, I tried harder, but I failed.”

The bitterness in Nerine’s voice made Rin’s stomach knot and his hands clench, raging in every direction.

“It was then that I sought a vision, not that I needed it. Even if we forget all of today by tomorrow I know that…that we’ll never be together.”

Nerine reached the other end of the bath and the Neri-nymph had taken her into its arms. They seemed to comfort each other equally. To Rin’s surprise the Neri-nymph spoke. To his disbelief, it seemed to speak of its own will.

“It doesn’t matter what you think, or even what you feel, only what you want can make a now. Only what you want can make a memory because only what you want can be had. Only what you want can be an action rather than a re-action.”

Was it more than a puppet? Rin balked at the idea.

“I can complete the spell,” Nerine guessed, easily, at his question, “I can make her real, Rin…and you can use her. You can do everything you won’t let yourself do to any of us, to all of us.”

Rin felt the knots in his body release, but the stiffness in his flesh return. With a caress of its cheek, Nerine had given the nymph a face identical to her own.

“Maybe, if you try hard enough, true enough, you and she can release us all from the Lemon star.”

The Neri-nymph began to walk toward him, flesh spreading now from her face, over her neck, down and down, replacing the water.

Energy, his own, returned to him. Strength. Lust. Rin rose to his knees, barely keeping his arousal beneath the water. This would be okay, this wouldn’t be-

“No.”

Rin felt the steel that had cauterized over his throat now pierce through his chest. The choice had come and the choice had been true. He didn’t know if it was Afraid or Right, only that it stopped the Neri-nymph in its tracks and brought fresh tears to Nerine’s face.

“I can’t, Nerine. I can’t do this anymore. This…fooling around has got to stop. I know I’m a coward. I know I’m…I know I’m hurting everyone, but I don’t want any consolation prize, for me or for anyone else.”

Rin waited to break somewhere, melting or crumbling away, but he didn’t. There was still something hard in his chest, so he clutched it and, even as it burned, even as it screamed, he spat it out.

“I want something real!”

He waited for Nerine to lift her head, but she only lifted her voice, softer now than ever he’d heard from anyone, even before today.

“I know.”

The Neri-nymph turned back into water with a splash that shook Rin out of so much seriousness that he seriously almost fainted. Nerine, on the other hand, looked up at him with the eyes that had matched the horns, her hair began to dance. Again, even though the temperature only seemed to increase a little, the steam swirled with a life of its own, now more like a raging fire than a soothing pool.

“That’s why I love you so much, Rin. I know the strongest part of you is a kindness that outshines any fear, any selfishness, but that’s why I can’t let you blame yourself if I fail. If the Lemon star takes me, I want you to know that it wasn’t your fault, that you don’t have to hurt yourself for anyone’s sake.”

Rin noticed that the water was low enough for his (somewhat uncertain, but certainly somewhat) aroused state to show. It got even lower.

The water, that is.

“That is why I want you to tell everyone, my father, Sia…Asa, what happened here. I want you to look at the worst part of me and hate me if you have to. I want you never to run from your desires again. I want you never to cower before them, either.”

The steam was everywhere now, the water receding like someone had pulled a giant plug. Rin shouted for Nerine, all too willing to believe that she was the one in peril. From the cloud, thick as stone for one moment, then lifted with less substance than a thought, Nerine’s voice rained down.

“Now look upon me, and despair.”

The bath had emptied, spread entirely across the windows like a mocking gesture of privacy. There, beyond every veil, was Nerine, seated, straddled, enthroned atop half a dozen water shadows, not of herself, but of her love. Easy as it might have been to see them as generic, stock male bodies, even Rin couldn’t miss this details, more his own than the amorphous, naked reflection of himself on the floor, the length of which was all that separated him from this new All.

Three of them, on their hands and knees, made a base, two above those made a pedestal. Atop those was another, posing like a regal stallion…no, like a roaring lion, barely tamed between the naked thighs of Nerine. With one hand she held the back of his head up, his neck out, his mouth open. With the other she raised a large chalice so radiant Rin couldn’t say if it was gold, silver, or ruby. Before Rin could conceive of it as a flag, a sword, or the still beating heart of life itself, she tipped it, drenching herself in a broth of glass, white sand and pearls. It cascaded down her naked body. It bled thickly over her hips onto the backs of one Rin after another, transmutating their water flesh into even more perfect molds of him, carved not from marble, but from what looked like a thick swirl of fog and ice.

Nerine’s mount descended in a slow spiral across the backs of her attendants. When it reached the floor, two took the chalice from her and two lifted her by the arms, all with a precise and dedicated reverence mixed with a violent tension. The lion, now unfettered, stalked directly toward Rin, Rin who knew only his heart and his flesh, throbbing, holding him in place as it flanked him. He felt its breath as it stood, then sat behind him on some invisible armchair, the shape of which Rin only knew when two carrying the chalice carried it toward him. Their right hands at its base, their left hands on his shoulders, they pushed him effortlessly into the prison throne of himself.

They bent their mouths to his ears, speaking a single word each, burning rather than bubbling with so much lust that it couldn’t be his voice, or anyone else’s but his.

“Sit.”

“Watch.”

Five now returned to their mistress, presenting themselves, their swords, to her above all.

Five now descended upon their whore.

Rin sat, aghast and enthralled, as they ravished her. Dots of pure blackness blinked out from their mouths as they opened and closed upon her, a carnage of obscenities. Nerine bent and stretched into them, moaning, gasping, impaling Rin with glances over their shoulders, over her shoulders.

They filled each of her hands, her lips, each howling and gnashing apex of her thighs. They made a ritual compasses around her, fondling themselves at eacg corner as one dominated and poured himself into her flesh. Her mouth whined and cried out with the rhythmic ripples of her breasts. Rin watched, God and Devil Himself, pitifully omnipotent in his unblinking, raptured, revulsion. The distance between him and the still morphing, churning dance, stretched the length and breadth of the universe.

As did Nerine, profaned and exalted, beneath and beyond him.

Lust as Power. Rin’s recent erotic experiences cried out like children murdered before their father. He was drunk on this, depraved to every depth she descended with her perfect, unnatural, supernatural, POST-natural! body, her body, eyes lashing into him like a whip every bit as merciless as the swords plunging into every part of her.

Lust as Madness. Rin clutched the soldier slave he sat in, first by the hand, then by the fist. He would grasp this, scream and submit and come triumphant to the other side of this. He wrapped one hand of its colorless white-hot Life around him. That hand, now beneath his own, he pulled and pounded and would somehow, NOW, posses Nerine deeper than any of them.

And it came. The despair.

Rin was not his desire, or his fear alone, but he was alone, alone so long as the flesh used for his pleasure was only fantasy.

Rin was not his desire, or his fear alone. He would not be alone.

“I don’t want this,” he muttered, almost muted. He stood, almost fell.

“I want…”

The Rins did not slow their self-sacrifice, their assault, but when Nerine met his eyes this time, he caught, and held her there. Lust was Anger. Lust was Strength. Strength was Compassion. Lust could be Empathy.

“I want…”

Nerine took her mouth from her slaves and mouthed the name on her heart.

“I want something REAL!”

Rin yelled, not frantic or desperate, but defiant and True.

The mist upon the glass walls melted, wept, as the sun outside set.


ELSEWHERE! (WHERE ELSE?)


The lot was clean, almost pristine, just soft flat dirt where the grand estate had been.

“Ok…tell me again who we’re looking for why we’re we looking for him where Nerine’s house used to be?”

Itsuki let his indignant hands fall from his hips and his head collapse to one side.

“And why…and where…is Nerine’s-”

Mayumi pushed past him, then promptly showed him how the completely befuddled pose was done.

“What the-”

“Mayumi? Itsuki? What are you two doing here?”

Kaede blinked rapidly at the first clue she, Sia, and the two kings draped over Primula’s shoulders, could find at the scene of the disappearance. Everyone exchanged quick, frantic looks between the lot and each other till their necks were sore and their eyes were dry.

“Uh, hi ladies, my, uh, Mayumi said she wanted me to meet someone, but that this someone might have gotten lost or kidnapped or-”

“Rin’s been kidnapped?!”

Sia pushed forward and grabbed Itsuki by the collar.

“You kids ALL need a nap,” Eustoma slurred then cackled over Primula’s shoulder. The designated drunken despot dragger (DDDD’s were usually taller and more formally dressed) just wrinkled her nose.

“Rin will be fine,” Forbesii lifted his head wearily, “even if my Nerine were to-”

Everyone was looking at the Devil king now, making doubly sure he saw what they did.

“Oh dear.”

His helpless response, though not quite as aloof as they expected it to be, helped them get however hysterical they needed to be.

“You don’t know where your house is either?!” Sia hollered.

“Did my incubus s-s-suck up your whole house?” Mayumi stuttered.

“Your what?!” Itsuki turned. White, then pink.

“You said you wanted to meet him. I figured you wanted to…you know.” Mayumi looked at her two index fingers tented together.

“Meet who? Kaede what’re they talking about?” Sia almost cried.

“I d-don’t…but where’s Rin?!”

“Rin? But if he’s here, then Nerine…” Mayumi turned. Pink, then white.

“Nerine?! What has she done to Rin?” Sia took a step toward Forbesii, fists at her side, heart at her throat.

“You mean…then Nerine, too…with us-” Itsuki balked like a kitten, then a grinned like a fox.

“Quiet manservant.” Mayumi relaxed, then collected herself.

“Mayumi? Did you just call Itsuki-” Sia turned. Disbelieving, then deeply interested.

“Everybody QUIET!”

Kaede’s outburst worked faster and more thoroughly than expected. She shivered at all their surprised, then expectant faces. She only clutched her hands beneath her chin, sobbing at them.

“Somebody just tell me where Rin is. I don’t care about…about anything else, just please-”

“Rin?”

Everyone swung their head away from Kaede toward the newly arrived Asa who, for her part, looked just as helpless after grabbing their attention with a whisper instead of a bellow.

“You too?!” Sia hollered.

“I…found the book I thought I gave him to give to Nerine, so I worried he might have-”

“Mayumi, if Asa is going to be in on this too, we’re definitely going to need help from your incubation, or whatever.”

“Incu-bus, Itsuki, he’s an Incubus, and he won’t be able to help anyone if Nerine sucked him, her house, AND Rin back into the Devil world.”

“They’re not in the Devil world, I’d know…I think.”

Forbesii shook his head weakly and went even more limp over his DDDD. Primula raised an eyebrow and began to frown, but lifted her head toward the sky as the sunset went from orange, to pink, to purple in an unnaturally accelerated procession. Everyone else’s frantic return to chaotic questioning rose up again, and dissolved again in their own time till they caught up with Demon-little’s airy observation.

“The sky is falling.”

A swirling flash, like a simultaneous ex- oh!- and im-plosion of lightning and shooting stars dotted the suddenly darkened sky like a second moon. It made a noise exactly like a collision of male and female cries of ecstasy trying very hard to sound like thunder.

“Eustoma?”

“Yes, ma’boy?”

“Is that my house plummeting towards us?”

“It certainly is.”

“Should we put up a shield?”

“I suppose so.”

“Dummies,” Primula mentioned to them, everyone, and anyone who might have heard her amid their own screams.

A few of the neighbors actually had enough strength left to awaken when the tremendous crash shook through their community. Some even had enough to grumble about the noise before going back to sleep in and around their beds and bedmates.

Much like the last moments of the grace it had fallen from, the mansion had not completely collapsed, or completely exploded. The creaking sounds it emitted were dangerous and foreboding, but nothing compared to a chorus of perfect sync and monstrous projection.

“RIN!”

“Rin? What about Ne-Rin-HEY!”

Primula dropped Forbesii into the ground, Eustoma landing next to him. She chased after the others, all scrambling for who would be the first to bring the fallen house falling down.

The front door swung open and a few bits of the house crumbled around it. There, soaking wet, wild-eyed, panting, and clutching a towel around his waist, was Rin. He clenched his eyes as if fighting back a migraine and stumbled forward, left, right, and into Kaede. She barely managed to catch him, but didn’t even come close to catching his towel as he wrapped his arms around her. Her blush, following the theme of the evening, swallowed her entire face before shrinking to two tiny but very intense dots. Her eyes followed suit when Rin leaned back to look at her.

“Kaede…I’m so glad to see you.”

The door swung open a little further and off one of its hinges. There, soaking wet, wild-eyed, panting, and clutching a towel around his waist, was Rin. Asa was no less petrified than anyone else, but she was in the stumbling path of this next arrival, who collapsed to his knees in front of her.

“Asa…I’m sorry. I should have-”

He hugged her legs, all but nuzzling her pelvis. Asa reaction only shock-shook a little more than those around her (save Kaede, who was hugging Rin, burying her face in his shoulder). Timidly, then with a kind of blissful calm that did not match the mischievous smile on her face, she began to stroke his hair.

The door swung open a little further and entirely off its hinges. There, soaking wet, wild-eyed, panting, and clutching a towel around his waist, was Rin. He took a few steps and-

“Rin! Tell me you’re real!”

Sia, not taking any chances, threw her arms around this third chime was the charm.

“Sia, I-” he gasped, then exploded in a cloud of steam, slightly sticky steam.

“Careful, Sia, they’re one size fits all, but only good for one ride.”

Nerine voice was her own, if wry for the first time. Shocking as her entrance was, it was only the cherry on top of the Rin sundae (his head covered in suds rather than whipped cream) she was dragging. He had one arm over her shoulder, both shins on the ground, and his head lolling about where neck bones should have been. Though their bathrobes were thick and closed snugly, everyone, Rins included, looking at them like a scandalous vaudeville act.

Maybe it was because they’d heard Nerine mumble through an inflated smile ‘I probably could have made them more substantial if certain people had left me more material to work with.’

"Wha-what’s going on?” Kaede’s grip (on her Rin and a growing list of things) loosened.

“Nerine, did you-” Asa began, trading glances between the Devil and her details.

“And where’s my Incubus? Hell, forget that, where’s my Rin?” Mayumi took an indignant step forward.

“Yeah, where’s our Rin,” Itsuki followed suit, then stepped back with a blush of his own, “I mean-”

“Rins!” Primula exclaimed happily, pushing past the ménage a duo at the two new Tsuchimi heirs that stumbled out from behind the Devil heiress. She wrapped a tiny arm around each of their wastes, which held their towels up, a small favor lost like too many puns on too many Rins.

“Holy-” began the two Rins on either side of Primula.

“-fucking-” continued the Rins turning from Kaede and Asa.

“Hell.” ended The Rin, ended like the world with a whimper as he raised his head under Nerine’s special brand of care.

“Nerine,” Forbesii chocked, struggling to his feet, teary wide-eyed with fatherly affection, “you’ve made your daddy so proud.”

“She’s made more than that,” Eustoma muttered in a dumbfounded awe equal and opposite to his ally, “to think that even under the Lemon star she could-”

“Um…about that.”

Everyone instantly looked from Rin, Rins, and each other to Nerine’s meek interjection. The exception being Sia, who scooted toward Primula and claimed half of her entourage, mumbling something about little girls needing to learn to share.

“That star,” Rin chuckled helplessly to himself, “I’m so sick of stars. I swear I’m going to move to the city where I can’t see them.”

“Actually Rin,” Nerine spoke more clearly, if again with the more typical shyness, bracing her charge against the sturdier-looking half of the doorway “I think we…the star that is-”

“Spit it out!” Sia and the Rin she’d converted yelled as one, then looked at each other in shock at how…mirrored they seemed. Then they smiled. Then their smiles grew. Then their smiles grew closer together.

“I think we made lemonade.”

Nerine managed a kind of half smile-half shrug to sweeten her observation.

Even if no one believed him about any other part of his story, about the wingless flights, terrifying ecstasies, or sublime revelations, Rin made damn sure everyone believed him when he said:

‘I don’t know anything about mass empathy or being in turn with the universe, but I can say for certain, when Nerine said that, everyone, everyone…seemed ready to fall face first into the ground.’

“What do you mean?” Eustoma asked a little sternly, a lot anxiously.

“What’s a Lemon Star?” Kaede, Primula, and their Rins echoed in a perfect cube.

“All of us wanting to…wanting Rin, and him, the real him, they way he feels about us, any of us, all of us-”

Nerine, speaking with less and less confidence, was convincing the original Rin more and more that she was right when she finally said:

“I think having more of him in the world, more to want and more to not have… must have just…overloaded it.”

“But is this,” Asa began, kneeling down and cradling her Rin’s face in her hands, “is this really Rin?”

“Of course I-” her Rin’s voice seemed to escape him. He chased it from the face of one Rin to another to another, retreating back farther into himself.

A melancholy, yet somehow accomplished sentiment washed over Nerine.

“They have his memories, his heart, but like I said, they probably can only,” Nerine looked down, blushing, “love us…just once.”

Rin, the original, managed to stand. Head down, he crossed his arms, hugged himself, and gripped the belt on his bathrobe.

“That…”

“…wouldn’t be...” another Rin continued.

“…the Right Thing to Do.” another Rin finished.

One by one the Rins stood, looking sincerely and lovingly into the eyes of their respective suitors.

“I know that, if I were to…” The Rin in the doorway looked at each of them, and at himself.

“…love any of you…” another Rin continued

“…I wouldn’t ever want it to be a one time thing.”

One by one the Rins turned toward the original. The original turned red, worried, breathless. He hung his head, chuckled, then laughed heartily, throwing his head back in a way that Eustoma naturally took as the sincerest form of flattery.

“Tsuchimi love squad!” He commanded.

“Sir!” They answered as one, standing at attention, saluting, and dropping their towels.

“For-ward! March!”

The four avatars obeyed, following their origin back into Hell.

“What the-” Mayumi exclaimed, her mouth gapping, then closing with an audible click and a knowing grin, “well that figures. All the good men are taken…with themselves.”

Sia and Kaede looked at her, oblivious. Asa blinked, blushed, and giggled.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t…” Nerine looked at her nervous hands, “make more than five.”

The receding footsteps of Rins stopped, then resumed as a naked Rin crawled on his hands and knees under Nerine’s robe like a mischievous boy sneaking a peak under the velvet curtain before a show. He jogged into the house and the marching footsteps continued, stopping with the sound of a door slamming, but staying on its hinges.

“Um…I mean six.” Nerine blushed deeper and smiled nervously, scratching the back of her head.

Everyone looked at her with a dozen brands of disbelief. Then, as one, they turned their heads to Itsuki, who shrugged with his hands out, but otherwise mimicked Nerine perfectly.

“So…I guess it’s up to me to make orgy porgy then.”

Primula tilted her head curiously.

“Porridge? Isn’t that a breakfast food? Like cream of wheat?”

Kaede blinked to attention and a mortified new blush.

“Well it’s kind of a cream of-” Itsuki managed as wide a grin as he could, as if knowing it would be dislodged when Mayumi slapped him upside the head.

“Rin’s taking the final countdown on that point,” she grumbled, crossing her arms, but eventually smiling.

“Oh.” Sia deflated, looking back toward the mansion, eventually smiling and shaking her head with a silent chuckle.

“Oh my.” Kaede caught up, put a hand to her mouth, looked down at it, then smiled behind it.

A few minutes spent exchanging a variety unfamiliar, unknowing, though not entirely uncomfortable looks, and the remaining friends settled on encouraging smiles.

Nerine and Sia shared glances back and forth between a still slightly confused-looking Primula and approached her together.

“I know this must all be very confusing to you, Primula.” Nerine bent to the smaller girls height.

“We can explain more when you’re older, but sometimes people have-” Sia picked up, then dropped off.

“There are parts people have to deal with alone…or, in private at least …other parts of themselves.” Nerine said, almost serene following an encouraging smile from Sia.

“Some people more than others,” Sia finished.

The princesses looked at each other, basking in a new glow of understanding and affection.

Primula, brow leveled and mouth small, turned away with the first exasperated sigh they’d ever heard her make.

“Go fuck yourselves.”

The two girls just stared, mouths agape, as Primula ran up to Kaede’s side.

“Kaede. Is it time to make dinner now?”

Her sunny matron just stared at the mansion.

“Yes, Rin will probably be hungry when he’s done…doing…when he’s done-”

“Alright! I’m done!”

Rin appeared in the doorway, alone but with his bathrobe opened confidently across his chest, shoulders spread as if he had…an army…behind him?

As if he had conquered himself, that most daunting of enemies?

No. For lack of a better phrase, Rin appeared in the doorway looking blissfully gang-banged by himself.

He walked toward the uneven grouping, each girl opening her mouth to say something as he walked past.

But he just walked past.

Then, first nodding in a friendly way to Mayumi, he addressed her four-eyed sideman.

“C’mon Itsuki, let’s go play video games.”

Itsuki tilted his head for a moment, blushed, smiled, then did both till he was all laughs, till they both were.

“Ok…but no Mr. Bomb Bomb.”

Rin leveled his gaze, suddenly serious. “Deal.”

“Lu-cky.” Itsuki held up the two fingers for victory.

Mayumi watched, slumped in disbelief, half-fake half-sobbing to herself.

“So much for a seller’s market.”

“No need to worry, boyish goddess.” Eustoma clasped an encouraging hand on her right shoulder.

“Chin up, handsome devil.” Forbesii wrapped an arm around her left.

“There’re plenty of birds in the bush, plenty of koi in the pond.”

“Plenty of ducks and plenty of swans.”

The streetlights came on, casting the shadows of two youths in one night. Their conversation was too far away to hear, but Rin laughed in what was obviously a jeer. Itsuki slugged him in the shoulder. Rin kicked at Itsuki, who ran, then ran back. Rin got him in a headlock, and kept him there.