As I had already discussed with the girls before, onsen episodes were designed to showcase three things: fanservice in the form of various levels of nudity (either the accidental, or the 'hidden by strategically placed steam clouds' variety), risqué and/or embarrassing shenanigans (again, featuring various levels of nudity), and party games. Oh, there was also ping-pong, but the resort didn't have a table, so it was a moot point. The closest thing we had was the air hockey table, but since we already had one of those back at the base, it didn't have nearly enough novelty to draw our little group's attention for more than a couple of matches.

For now, let's ignore the conspicuous lack of indoor ball sports (they weren't all that intriguing without easily disheveled Japanese robes anyway), and focus on the actual thing unfolding in our very own VIP room. Needless to say, contrary to Judy's earlier remarks, it wasn't strip poker, though we certainly had more than enough drunk people in the room to qualify. No, the game on our hands was another sub-trope of the hot spring episode, namely a peculiar variant of 'truth or dare'.

At its core, it was a simple game: everyone sits in a circle, you spin a bottle in the middle, and whoever the bottle ends up pointing at has to either answer a question or do something embarrassing. Simple, easy, straightforward. Needless to say, we managed to overcomplicate the hell out of it.

"{Young knight! Stop this at once! I do not find this amusing at all!}"

Ignoring the complaints of the sword in the middle, I put a finger on its hilt and spun it around once again. As it turned out, the embossed lion head decoration on Cal's new scabbard was at the balance point, meaning it could be used to spin them with ease. It was convenient and stylish, though they didn't appreciate being used this way too much.

"Spin! Spin! Spin!" my redhead sister chanted on the side, only to then panic and wave her hands around. "No! Stop spinning! Stop!"

Despite… well, whatever she was trying to do by waving at Cal, the tip of the scabbard ended up unambiguously pointing at her.

"'main 'en, Penny-gurl. Ye ken th' rules!"

Duncan slapped his knees in delight, completely ignoring the glare my sister was sending his way. The guy was in high spirits, probably thanks to the empty beer can by his side. Despite his size, Dunkey was a lightweight as usual.

"Fine," Penny grumbled and got up from the floor. "I'll do it!"

Hearing that, I picked up the bowl on my right and mixed the folded-up papers inside it before picking one at random. In the meantime, Mountain Girl walked over to my sister and held her sword out.

So, here's how our homebrew game worked: Step one was to spin the bemused sword until it pointed at someone. While we were all in our VIP room, the 'adults' weren't playing, but instead, they were clustered around the kotatsu table in the back and playing a card game. This meant our truth-or-dare players, sitting on a circle of pillows arranged on the floor, consisted of my girlfriends, my sisters, the childhood friend couple, Ichiko, and Duncan. For some reason. The eagle-eyed might've noticed it already, but there was someone obviously missing from that lineup, but more on that later.

The second group consisted of Roland, Arnwald, Morgana, Fred, and Galatea, and they had a frankly alarming number of empty cans and bottles scattered on and around the kotatsu table. I was a little apprehensive about letting them drink so much alcohol, but so far they behaved themselves, and who was I to get in their way of fun? I mean, besides being their boss and/or king?

More importantly, Penny reluctantly grabbed hold of Onikiri in its shroud, demonstrating the second peculiarity of our game. Unlike regular truth-or-dare, ours had an actually reliable lie detector, which necessitated a change in the rules. For some reason. I still wasn't clear on why, but Judy was really insistent about it, and I didn't want to argue.

So, here's how our game operated: I spun the sword, and whoever it ended up pointing at would have to answer a question while holding onto Onikiri. Of course, as I had demonstrated in the past, its lie-detector function was anything but foolproof, but I only told Judy about that… which was why I got delegated to a 'referee', lest I would cheat. This, naturally, meant that now everyone knew that it wasn't a perfect lie detector, but it didn't stop the girls from latching onto it, and Rinne was eager to contribute.

Now then, here was the biggest change in rules: before we started, everyone wrote a couple of questions onto slips of papers, I folded them up, and put them into the bowl. Then, everyone wrote down a bunch of dares, and those went into a separate bowl. When the next player had been chosen, I drew a random question, just like this, and then after unfolding it…

"Okay, here's your question, kiddo," I began, only to pause when I read the words on the note. It… kind of smelled troublesome, but it was well within the spirit of the game, so I decided to get on with it. "Answer me this: Do you have a crush on anyone in this room?"

"W-W-What kind of question is that?!" my knightly sister… well, she didn't exactly 'scream' per se, but it was definitely up there.

"It's a perfectly valid question!" Angie chimed in, which told me that she was probably the one who wrote this question. Well, either her, or Duncan, since the latter was constantly chuckling to himself.

"Go, Penny-san! You can do it!" the little miko cheered her on from the other side of the circle, but it did little to stop Penny from looking like a deer in headlights.

"B-But this is very personal!"

"Aren't all the questions like that?" Judy commented on the side, from behind Elly's back.

"That's right," the princess agreed, throwing her hands into the air. "Asking how old I was when I wet my bed for the last time was also very personal, and I still answered it!"

She left out the part where she lied about it, and as a punishment, she had to do a dare where she had to sit in her best friend's lap for half an hour, but she wasn't exactly wrong about it. The whole game was about weird and embarrassing requests, and I'd been sure it was only a question of time before this particular one would rear its ugly head. It was unfortunate that Penny of all people had to be the one to answer it, and I was feeling at least a little sorry for her, but I was also just a little bit curious about how she would answer.

"I... I…" She faltered, but upon Mountain Girl's encouragement, she tightly grabbed onto the shroud and exhaled hard. "I-I mean, what does it even mean to have a crush, am I right? It's not like I really like anyone! I-I mean, I like someone, but I don't like-like them, or at least it's probably not like that, I think, and I don't even know the difference, and it doesn't matter, because it's not like they like me anyway! I mean… I think they probably do like me, but it's not that kind of like, and… It's complicated, okay?!"

There was a long beat of relative silence (ignoring the still chuckling Mr. Minotaur) left in my sister's wake, but before I could inject a comment about how she gave Sahi a run for her money in the 'like-per-sentence' department, Rinne solemnly declared, "It's the truth."

"But… was that a yes or a no?" Elly spoke the words on everyone's minds.

"That sounded like a yes to me," Josh pronounced with a hand on his chin.

"Really? Then who do you think Penny-san likes?" Ichiko chimed in, entirely too excited by the topic, but Josh didn't seem nearly as invested.

"I have no idea, but one thing's for sure: since it's not me, so it has to be someone else."

"Obviously," Penny scoffed by reflex, only to cover her mouth a moment later.

"Ah-ha! So it really was a yes!" Angie exclaimed, and somehow my sister turned even redder.

"N-N-No! That's not it! I just told you it's complicated!"

"I wonder who it could be..." Angie pondered seemingly absent-mindedly, and it took me a while to notice that she was giving me a furtive look.

"What? Is there something on my face?"

Instead of answering my question, she gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up

"No matter what society may think of it, I'll support you!"

It took me a few seconds to puzzle out what she meant by that, and since Penny was getting more confused by the second, I gestured for her to sit down before turning back to the weirdly excited Celestial.

"For the record, whatever you're thinking of is wildly off the mark, so let's leave it at that."

"Oh, I get it." She flashed a grin and then muttered, in a wistful voice, "Don't worry, I won't be advertising it. Your secret is safe with me! Ah, the forbidden fruit! It is always the sweetest..."

She continued to stare into the nonexistent distance with a dreamy look in her eyes, and I couldn't help but wonder if she had sneakily taken a few sips from one of Duncan's beers. Or was this that 'getting drunk on the atmosphere' thing I often heard about? In any case, it was at this point that Josh also put two and two together, and he outright face-palmed before gesturing at me to get my attention.

"As her boyfriend, I think I'm obligated to apologize in her stead. Please don't hold this against her; it's not her fault. You see, reading all those terrible young adult romance novels caused her to suffer irreversible brain damage."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, Angie. It's the truth," he continued on in a mournful tone. "I'm sorry everyone had to learn it this way, but don't worry. As your partner, I will support you, whether you have brain-rot or not."

"That's it, mister! Now you'll get it!"

Before the guy could defend himself, his girlfriend jumped on him and put him in a chokehold.

"H-hey! Cut it out! Not in public!"

Angie didn't relent, and in the span of a few short seconds, the two descended into an actual, honest-to-goodness wrestling match on the floor. Groaning, I glanced over to see Penny's reaction, but by the looks of it, she wasn't paying attention to the childhood friend couple. Instead, I found her being cornered by Snowy of all people.

"...really have a crush on someone?"

"N-No! I-I mean... It's complicated, okay?"

"If you don't want the others to hear, you can whisper into my ear. I promise I'll keep it a secret."

"N-No way! I absolutely cannot do that!"

"Are you sure? I could help. I-I mean... I don't have much experience with romance, but I'm still a Seducer, so maybe I can give you some advice?"

"A-Awawa! Stop teasing me!"

"I'm... not teasing you though." Confused, Snowy glanced at me for reassurance. "Am I teasing her?"

"Don't worry about it, sis. She's just overwhelmed at the moment."

"Oh. Okay."

Visibly relieved, Snowy turned back to my knightly sister, who was very obviously trying to avoid eye contact. She, in turn, leaned over to establish it anyway, which caused Penny to look somewhere else, rinse and repeat. Was this some kind of game?

Anyhow, I left my sisters to their own devices and was about to announce the next round when my eyes landed on my assistant, still partially hidden behind my other girlfriend.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

The question slipped out before I knew it, and she flashed an honest-to-goodness smug smirk. It wasn't even one of those 'by Judy standards' ones, but the kind even someone without my extensive Dormouse-reading skills would recognize.

"We both know the answer to that, so I'm not going to say it," she told me, and once I figured out what she meant by that, I promptly rolled my eyes.

As for what this was about, it harkened back to a certain discussion we had about shipping in the past, and as much as I found it annoying, I couldn't completely deny that something was brewing between my sisters. I still wasn't ready to peg it as either romantic or platonic, but it was definitely something, and I had to say, Penny calling it complicated was an understatement of monumental proportions.

Still, they were big girls, and I was confident they would sooner or later figure it out on their own. Considering the rate of visible progress, I imagined it would probably take ages, but as their big brother, I was going to support them either way.

However, that was something to worry about in the future. For now, it was time to commence the next round, and I was just about to announce it when Elly beat me to the punch by raising a hand into the air.

"How much longer do I have to sit on Judy's lap?"

"I was just about to ask the same question," my other girlfriend spoke up again, and gestured at Elly's butt. "I can't feel my legs anymore."

"Am I that heavy?" my Draconic girlfriend sounded genuinely alarmed, but I cut the topic short by glancing at my phone and telling them, "You can get up."

"Good." My dear assistant had more than just a hint of relief in her voice. "How was this supposed to be a penalty for her again?"

"It's not a penalty, it's a dare," Ichiko interjected, and Judy shrugged in return.

"At this point, it's a semantic difference at best, and doesn't answer my question anyway," she grumbled while massaging her thighs.

"All right, guys." I raised my voice and put a finger on Cal's pommel. "Next round."

"Rinne doesn't think everyone's ready yet, Leonar-dono," Mountain Girl interrupted me, and as I glanced around again, I had to agree with her. Josh and Angie were still wrestling on the floor, Judy was busy stretching her legs, while Duncan was... Wow. I wondered why he was so quiet, and as it turned out, he literally fell asleep while sitting. Color me impressed.

"You're right. How about we take a short break first?"

"Yes!" the tiny miko exclaimed and sprung to her feet. "I needed to go to the toiled for a while now!"

"Rinne would also like to visit the restroom," Mountain Girl uttered, with an implied request for approval, so I absent-mindedly waved at them to get going. In the meantime, Judy picked up the empty soda cans and bottles from the floor, and after silently counting, she also spoke up.

"We're running out of drinks. I'll go and buy some while the buffet is still open."

"I'm coming too!" the princess volunteered, and as the two of them left the room, I could hear her ask something along the lines of, "Do you think I should switch to diet soda?"

I doubted she had to worry about something like that, but I didn't have the chance to tell her, so I picked up Cal and stood up instead.

"{Is it finally over?}"

"No, it's just a short break," I told them, and the sword in my hand let out an enormous groan.

"{To think I would live to see the day when I would become but a tool of gambling! These truly are the darkest of times!}"

"There we go. It's been so long since you last said that, I was starting to get worried."

"{This isn't amusing at all, young knight!}"

Ignoring the grouchy sword's complaints, I glanced around. The only people left on this side of the VIP suite were the quietly snoring Mr. Minotaur, the childhood couple still sprawled out on the floor (though they went from wrestling to giving pecks to each other, so at least that was some progress), and my sisters, still locked in a game of eye-contact-avoidance. In fact, it might really have been a game, since Penny seemed considerably less flustered, and she occasionally even hid her eyes with her hands, peek-a-boo style. Either way, with nothing better to do, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to check out the ‘adult' side of the room.

"Kihihi! Hey, boss! Are you taking a break?" Fred welcomed me the moment I came closer, and I nodded along.

"Yeah. What about you? Do we have a winner yet?"

I could already tell the answer from the relatively evenly distributed chips on the table, but it was only polite to ask.

"Not yet, though we do have an early loser," Roland noted while collecting the cards on the table, but before he could elaborate, the androidess on his left raised a hand and slapped the tabletop hard enough to make all the tokens and bottle jiggle.

"Shaddap! It wasn't mah fault, I told ya!"

It took me a second to gather my wits, but then I turned to Fred again.

"Is she drunk?"

"Ah'm not dhunk!" Galatea protested and pointed a shaky finger at me. "Ah'll let ya know, ah can turn on mah ahcohol-dehydragenahse soubhrutines ahny time ah want!"

"Which means you didn't do that yet. Ergo, you're drunk."

"Nah, yah'r dhunk! All three of ya!"

"… Wow. Just how much did she drink?"

"A little over half a beer," Roland told me in a dry voice, and at first I was sure I didn't hear it right, but then Fred also confirmed it.

"Kihihi. Isn't it marvelous! She can reproduce all the associated behavioral effects with such minimal alcohol intake! Chalk another triumph up to SCIENCE!"

"Why do you sound—" 'proud of that?', is what I would've asked if Galatea didn't let out a sudden noise, like she just made a huge discovery.

"I shud borrow moneh from ghandmastah! That weh, ah can get backh into the ghame!

Now, that remark made me raise a critical brow at once.

"Are you betting real money?"

My question made the rest of the people around the table shake their heads just vehemently enough to remain suspicious, and caused the androidess to let out an indignant huff.

"Fine! If yuh don't take moneh, then ah'll bet mah clothes!"

She seriously looked like she was about to start undressing, so I put aside my original intent of asking Fred about why she could even get drunk in the first place and decided it was time to draw the proverbial line.

"Galatea. You either sit down, stay put, and kick your metabolism into high gear this instant, or you're going home."

She was startled at first, but when I maintained eye-contact, she sheepishly pulled her turtleneck back down and responded with a grumpy "Ahffihmatif,"… and then she unceremonious laid down on the floor, with her legs still under the kotatsu table, and started softly snoring,

I was just about to ask if that was normal, but Fred beat me to the punch by letting out an annoyed noise.

"How come she listens to you, but not to me?"

"It must be our liege's royal bearing," Arnwald quipped on the side, followed up by a couple of chuckles.

"To answer your previous inquiry," Roland raised his voice again, and even as he talked, his hands didn't stop shuffling the cards in his hands. "In the fourth round, Galatea decided to go all in on a pair of twos."

"It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do," she declared out of the blue as she sat up straight again. "Based on the previous cards played, I had an eighty-two-point-four percent chance to win."

Her voice sounded considerably less slurred than before, but still not perfectly sober. The question on my mind must've shown on my face, as after a long beat, she added, "I have metabolized seventy-two percent of the alcohol in my bodily fluids. Is that acceptable?"

"Erm... for now, I suppose."

She let out a satisfied grunt, then unabashedly took a sip from one of the cans on the table. Before I could say anything about that, she played the party-girl trope straight by letting out a moan of pleasure and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. I was pretty sure that sigh/moan/whatever was also a trope in and of itself, but I just couldn't recall the name of it at me moment. Something like 'beer-gasm'?

Anyhow, after she was done with that, Galatea slammed the half-empty can down and pointed at me.

"As you see, grandmaster, I didn't make an erroneous judgment. I was simply a victim of a statistical anomaly."

In the end, I could only muster a flat "Sure, if you say so," and focused my attention on the rest of the group. "Well, so long as you're having fun, I suppose it's fine."

"We most certainly are, your majesty," Morgana said with an uncharacteristically demure smile. "Playing poker with just us brings back many pleasant memories. It is also much more straightforward now, since the Fauns aren't around."

"Hm? What was that?"

My question made Arnwald and Roland share an uneasy glance, after which Mr. Eagle softly cleared his throat.

"You see, my liege… Could you please keep what I'm about to say a secret from general Brang?" It didn't seem like he would continue until I agreed, so I nodded. "To be frank, playing poker with the Fauns is somewhat… hm…"

"Unfair?"

"Yes, that was the world I was looking for. Thank you, brother Roland." The corners of Mr. Griffon's lips bent into a thin-lipped smile, but he didn't say anything else, so Arnwald was soon forced to continue. "Put simply, their expressions are impossible to read, so we could never tell when they were bluffing."

"They do have a natural poker face, don't they?" Fred noted, and the others seemed to agree with his sentiment.

"Really? I find them pretty easy to read." All of the sudden, all those concurring eyes turned skeptical as they glanced at me. "What? It's really not that difficult. You just have to pay attention to their ears. Not to mention, it's not like their facial structures are that different from ours, to begin with."

"You shee, grandmaster? That's yer big problem! You ahr always meashuring others with your own yahdstick, and then act aaall shurprised when they can't do ehverythin you can! You are shooo full of it!"

"Galatea. Are you drunk, again?"

Instead of answering, the android froze up, unsubtly hid her beer can under the table, and then declared, in a mechanical voice, "Entering standby mode. Beep-boop," and lied down on the floor again.

"… Seriously, what's up with her?"

My question was obviously aimed at Fred, but instead, it was Morgana who told me, "Everyone is only young once your majesty, and occasions where one can truly feel at ease grow rarer over time. We should allow her to enjoy herself today."

"That wasn't the point of my… You know what? Never mind." Sighing, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Rinne and Ichiko were already back and in the process of covering the sleeping Duncan in a blanket. "The girls should be back soon too, so I'm going back."

"Very well," Roland spoke absently, his hands busy with dealing out the cards for the next round. "Enjoy yourself."

"That's the plan," I responded with a smirk, but it withered the moment I turned my back on them.

Truth be told, I wasn't a big fan of this whole 'truth or dare' thing, whether the original version or our own, but the others seemed to be really into it, and at the end of the day it still was a hot springs episode staple, so I felt obliged to do t. Considering how many slits of paper we still had in the bowls, I had a feeling this game was going to last for quite a while longer, but hey? So long as the girls were having fun, I was always happy to play along.