“Let me go let me go let me go!” I screamed, pushed my feet against the glass and rammed my elbow into Aska´s belly who was hugging me from behind. I basically sat in his lap, unable to escape his grip on my upper body and felt the water on my skin. Memories about hundreds of deaths surfaced and make me gasp for air while I tried to get out of the shower.

“Stop struggling, I am trying to help you here.” He was merciless with what he called help and didn’t even give me the possibility to escape from the water at all. He probably never even considered that his help wasn’t working at all, but rather made it even more stressful and scary. “Hey, hey! It stopped! Calm down!”

Suddenly, I was dry again and the panic started to fade away. Breathless, I rammed my elbow into his side one last time and bit into his arm to finally get free. I was furious that he did that to me and now that he wanted to treat me as his equal, I couldn’t accept this behaviour at all.

“Do. Not. Do. This. Again. NEVER!” I slammed against the glass pane as I screamed at the still sitting god. Just one second, I hoped that I was clear enough, but as I saw that he was completely unfazed by my outburst, my rage increased quite a bit.

“Don’t scream at me for trying to help! My only intention was to fix your problem, but no, Miss Manipulative has to scream and blame me for not being able to help herself!” Speechless by his egoism and lack of empathy, I hit the glass pane once again, hoping to vent my frustration. It didn’t help one bit.

“You want to fix my problems? How about you fix my Stockholm syndrome first? Or my self-destructive way of dealing with you? I have read enough books to know that you won´t be able to help a psychopath like me at all! If you ever dare to fix my problems without my approval, you will suffer! I kicked the glass door of the shower open, took my clothes and proceeded to walk towards the door while Aska looked at me with amazement. Before I went out though, I turned around and glared at him. “Don’t you dare to come into my bed tonight, otherwise I will make the worst food you ever ate for a month! And if you try to wake me up … “ I left the room without waiting for an answer and slammed the door shut behind me.

 Sadly, it was still a bit too early to go into bed. Just a second, I thought about finishing my knitting project I started a week earlier, but I couldn’t bear making socks for him right then. I thought about what I could do and frustratingly came to no answer. It didn’t matter what I did, the materials were always provided by Aska which limited my ability to do the things I liked greatly. That is if I even wanted to do anything at all. Frustrated and annoyed, I stopped and turned around, only to walk back towards the bathroom. He was just opening the door when I grabbed the handle, resulting in an awkward second between us.

“You. Food. Now. Hamburger.” I didn’t want to speak to him at all, but I wanted to do something. As soon as I stormed into the kitchen, I found all the ingredients I needed. Furiously, I began my work and even threw a pan or two out of the window because they weren’t cleaned properly last time. Needless to say, I made a complete mess out of the kitchen under Aska´s amused gaze. At least, he stopped grinning as a knife flew in his direction. Naturally unintentional.

In the end, I made two perfect hamburgers and cursed my routine of making two dishes. Aska had his gaze glued on one of them and didn’t look away one second. I walked towards the table, making sure that he had the perfect view of his food, but stopped midway. Confused, he looked towards my face and realized that he wouldn’t eat today. Swiftly afterwards, I dumped his hamburger in the trash can and ate mine at the kitchen counter.

“Listen …” I never heard him like this. It was as if he was serious about fixing his mistake which I nearly couldn’t believe. Before he continued, he shook his head and started anew. “What do I have to do?”

I was seriously surprised by this development. I suspected that he would try to coax me into forgiving him and I knew from experience that he could be successful with this approach, but he didn’t. Instead, he straight up asked what I wanted which was quite new for me.

“Promise me that you will stop when I tell you to.” There was still the issue that he could break his promise just like before, but I did have another plan to figure out if he was serious enough. After licking the sauce from my fingers and throwing the plate out of the already broken window, I straddled his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck and looked him deep in the eyes. “Sleep with me tonight.”

“You mean …” No, I didn’t mean that as I already gave up on this plan. Using his desire for me against him wouldn’t work if he was conscious about that. My plan this time was way less effective in being able to manipulate him, but it would show how honest he was with keeping his promise this time.

“No no. Just like usual.” Smilingly, he picked me up and carried me towards the bedroom, leaving the messy kitchen behind. It was probably that moment when I added cuddling with me to the list of things I could use against him. Strangely enough, this list had exactly the things he could use against me, even when I would never admit to that.

I didn’t know when, but his gluttony kind of swapped over to me. Well, at least I made the food, so the actions he could take there were fairly limited. Another one was my emotions and he was way too successful in abusing that. I would never give someone a second chance if he did something like this to me, except him obviously. Despite everything, I desperately wanted our strange relationship to continue.

And this lead to the last thing on the list that I was conscious about. The time I spent in bed was the only bit of happiness I had during my first eleven years of living. It was no wonder that I wanted to stay in it as much as possible, even when I didn’t sleep.

It was always a wonderful experience … excluding the drowning stuff. Just like always, it nearly made me forgive him everything. Nearly.

The very next day as I was preparing his breakfast, it became obvious that I didn’t forgive him completely yet. I served him burnt toast, salted egg and marmalade that was slightly, just slightly sweet. He looked at me as if he couldn’t grasp what was going on at all and I swiftly explained to him that I was still angry while smiling.

“I told you that you will eat my worst food for a month if we slept together ~” It looked way too satisfying as he lifted up the toast in disgust. Meanwhile, I started to eat my perfectly fine cornflakes with milk happily while he took his time to grasp what happened.

“You tricked me.” The trickster got tricked. I was so incredibly sad as he realized that. Not.

“Serves you right ~ “ I ate another spoon of cornflakes and moaned, just to show him once again what delicious food he could have if he hadn’t forced me under the shower.

“What happens if I don’t eat that?”

“I will never ever trust you again. I will rip the love I feel for you out of my chest, trample on it and stab it to death. After that … well, I´m thinking of whoring myself out with a few souls out there, but I´m open for other ideas ~ ” I wasn’t really planning on doing either of that as he didn’t drove me into a corner yet. In fact, I would probably just shrug it off if he broke his word a second time and try to manipulate him through other means, but it was a threat that he absolutely didn’t want to come true, no matter how slim the chances of it were.

Our relationship was already quite toxic and I thought that he would continue down this road by not eating the food at all, but he didn’t do that at all. He ate all of it for four weeks despite his struggles. I tried everything to make him quit and in the end, I was honestly quite good at serving burnt meat together with uncooked dough and other crimes against the LLoC, or Lucinda´s Laws of Cooking.

He was nearly puking every time he ate and more than once did so after running outside. Still, he didn’t complain one day and successfully managed to chew through four whole weeks. I was quite impressed by this feat alone and was even more shocked as he didn’t try to pay me back during my training. I still wasn’t able to dodge every dagger that flew towards me, but I managed to dodge around a third of them.

I was seriously impressed though as he didn’t restrict the time I spent in the bed one second and so, I finally relented and agreed to shower again. The shower itself turned into a quite different one. It was open and allowed easy access from two sides and most importantly, I wouldn’t feel trapped in it as there were no glass panes this time.

The open shower was already spewing out hot, steaming water as Aska appeared behind me. He sat down against the already wet wall and patted the floor between his legs shortly afterwards.

“Fine…” The torrent of water was quite a bit away from us and I didn’t think that he would try anything bad, so I sat down between his legs and leaned on his chest. I started to panic as he wrapped his arms around me, but only for a short moment.

“I´m sorry for what I did to you last time.” I understood that he really was. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have eaten all that disgusting food I served him. Still, I was quite curious about the reason and thought that there was no better time than this.

“Since when do you feel bad about hurting me?” His embrace became tighter, but not because he wanted to drag me into the water. I only had to tilt my head to see how he looked at me to finally notice what actually happened. His gaze was the one that I gave him basically half the time. He changed not because his personality did or I managed to manipulate him, it was rather because he finally fell in love with me, or rather my completely fucked up personality.