I looked at Kyoka’s lowered head, and Momo’s lowered gaze. Momo kept looking back at me for small instances only to become too embarrassed and quickly turn her gaze away again; as the cycle continued. I was silent, my heart was racing, and I was trying my best to keep my electricity under control. My face was blushed, my bandages started to alight, as did my eye. I took a step back away from the girls to stop myself from shocking either one of them. I spoke in pieces, never formulating a real word as my mind became almost blank in fear.
Momo stared at me with an expression almost demanding an answer, while Kyoka was gaining conviction at the sight of my fearful expression. “Please don’t make me say it.” I said with a small tone, fear making my voice quiver. Both girls moved a step closer, and I reacted by taking my own step back. They did it again, and so did I. “You told us you would answer any question.” “Stop…” “You can’t run from this.” “Please…” “This is what we want to know.” “I can’t…” “You can. We are right here.”
Each time either girl would press me for an answer while taking a step closer to me. I always stepped back to create distance, but after the last thing Momo said I ran out of room to run. Momo made an electrical blanket to help insulate against some of my random sparking, and began to walk even closer to me with my back pressed against the wall. Kyoka was right beside her holding one of her own that Momo made.
“No… I can’t, because it’s wrong. How I feel is wrong.” Both girls stopped before wrapping the blankets around me. I slid down with my back against the wall as both Momo and Kyoka sat beside each other in front of me. I held my head in my hands, fear and sadness filled my thoughts. ‘If I answer this truthfully I’ll have to come to terms that I- No I can’t even think of it, it feels so wrong! But what am I supposed to do!? If it were true, then they would find out how disgusting I really am. Then they'll leave me...’ My head was spinning with no signs of the right path I should take. I was lost again, without any idea of what I should do. Until I heard Momo speak up with a calm, and soothing voice.
“Just please be honest. That is all we want.” I looked up at the crouching Momo with a calming smile on her face. I then looked over at Kyoka giving me the same expression. I threw my head down under one of the blankets to cover my whole body. “Stop it! Don’t look at me like that! Like no matter what I say you two will still care for me! You want to hear the truth, but the truth is skewed, it’s dirty, it’s stained, it's immoral, it’s wrong! Why do you both search so hard for the truth, when the lies are so much better!? We can continue on, leaving it here! We can stay like this!”
I then felt a hand on each of my shoulders through the protective blanket, then more of Momo’s calming voice again. “We cannot stay like this. The longer things like this drag on. The more things will be worse for everyone involved. We want the truth because it is real. We don’t want to live lives built on lies. Those are not lives at all. We want the truth to properly live. No matter how immoral, or dirty the truth may be, at least we can know that our lives are worth something throughout it all.”
I was silent. I really couldn’t say it. I felt like Momo was right, and that I needed to get this off my chest... But the words just refused to leave my mouth. “Both of you please back away. I have to do something.” Both hands that were holding my shoulders left, albeit after a few seconds of lingering. Kyoka punched me lightly on my arm. “You better not run.” I chuckled weakly. “No… I can’t run anymore, but I also need some help to do it.” I then gave the girls their blankets without looking at either of them. “Put these on, I need to use as much electricity as I can, and I don’t want to shock either of you.” I waited for both of the girls to cover themselves with the blankets.
I then turned on my ‘Overcharge’. I gave myself enough power to heat me up, but not give me a chance of overheating. While doing that I noticed my left arm was glowing behind the bandages. I unwrapped them quickly to find my scars were all alight. I put in more power just into my arm to try and find a limit while burning as much electricity my battery had. I was already down to around 65% so this wouldn’t take long. Putting much more power into my arm, I could feel it all heat up, and was becoming glowing hot. I could feel the electricity and the heat, but I could also tell I was doing something to the magnetic field. The amount of electricity was creating an electromagnet.
I wanted to play with it, but I remembered why I was doing this in the first place and decided to leave testing for another day. After I was down to 30% I kept going. I felt all the emotions I had tried to chain up, loosening. Down to 20% I was losing the will to fight off my emotions that I shouldn’t have anymore. I stopped draining my power, leaving the room with a thin layer of steam around me. I slowly walked over to Momo and Kyoka who were watching me go through all of this. I already mentioned that the lower my battery is the more I become controlled by my emotions, so they already had an idea of what I was doing.
I unzipped my jacket to try and cool me down while I grabbed both of the blankets. My face was flushed from being slightly overheated, as well as what I was trying to hold myself from blurting out. I knelt in front of both of them while I was trying to get my words in order before talking. I failed spectacularly. “I’m in love with you both!! I know I shouldn’t, but I do! I can’t help myself! You both just bring me so much joy in my life, and care about me so much that I can’t imagine it anymore without either of you in it. I can’t have either of you leave my side! So I want to do what's best for you, and make you as happy as I can so you have no reason to leave me! I don’t want to lose either of you!
But I have so much guilt feeling this way! I can never make you two happy enough, but I’m so selfish that some part of me doesn’t care! I want to see both of you happy! But I want to be the person who does that for both of you! I… I… I want you both to love me back… I love Kyoka’s sharp tongue, I love the way her earphone jacks twirl when she is embarrassed, I love her tough exterior that shows just glimpses of her softness underneath it, I love how the way she calls me stupid, or an idiot, I love the way she smiles when she thinks No-one is watching. I love Momo’s intelligence, I love the way she can be so smart, but at the same time oblivious, I love the way she is so curious about everything, I love the sheer amount of kindness she posses to everyone, I love the way she acts in embarrassment, I love her overwhelming desire to always do what she thinks is best…" My voice started to lower and I kept talking full of shame at how I felt.
"I love both of you and the ways you both make me want to become a better person. A person deserving to be by your sides. I want things I know I shouldn't and can’t have. That was why I was ok with just being friends, but I kept drifting for more because I couldn’t hold myself back from what I wanted. I wanted what's best for both of you, but also wanted you two to be mine. I am selfish, broken, immoral, and want what I can’t have… I know you two are shocked and appalled at me right now, but please… just let me continue to be by your sides. I’ll never bring this up again, and I won’t try to change either of your minds. I will just get rid of these feelings... I just want to be close to you both.”
Paypal
There's nothing wrong with harems, morally, if only because I don't think morals should be a thing people let themselves be influenced by, since how moral rules form and what they can tend to be are completely nonsensical. Most importantly, morality-based systems use a zero-sum mentality, where the individual must sacrifice for the group's benefit.
Ethics-based systems on the other hand are purely mathematical. It's what would happen if The Golden Rule was applied to Set Theory. Namely, an interaction between people is 'ethical' if it benefits both yourself and benefits at least the other party/parties that are dealing with you and worst only neutrally affects uninvolved parties or fairly harms competing parties, except when a party doesn't also behave ethically. In this way, among a group of ethical actors, the total value produced by both each individual and the group as a whole is positive-sum, with no need for anybody to sacrifice themselves.
Harems aren't practiced in modern society for the most part because the widespread practice of harems causes the women to congregate towards the top, to men with the resources to support multiple women and any children. It would leave the lower classes hopeless when it comes to creating heirs, as women (or the women on their father's behalf, depending on how primitive the society is) will want to marry upwards if possible, leaving no women for those below. A hopeless population has no motivation to follow laws, be productive, die in wars, etc. It's perhaps the first example of the concept of Consent of the Governed. Since this world isn't one where personal magical power is a thing, the ruling class are squishy human meatbags just like everyone else and simply must restrict harems in order to maintain control over their populace.
Damn! Makes total logical sense. Who's gonna get themselves killed in wars if they don't have families to protect? But war is just those on top trying to kill each other for their own selfish purposes and they want the ones below to fight it our for them and die, while they reap most, if not all, the benefits.
This is entirely wrong. Morals are real, first off. Harems caused congregations on the upper class, sure. But we still have that. Are you saying that harems aren’t legal because ye olde rich people decided that it was to unfair to not let the lower class reproduce? Do you think the lower classes ran out of people? How big do you think harems were? This is at the very least a massive exaggeration. Certainly not the reason harems aren’t practiced. Hopelessness is not a problem the upper class has to fix. The idea that the lower class only obeys the upper class because the upper class banned harems to let them have women is absurd. Are you telling me that the only thing that helps enforce the laws are women existing? What? Also the sheer amount of objectification in everything you said…
@Lionide looking back on this, what you say is right! I was thinking more in lines of those Chinese Emperor novels (where they could pretty much objectify and pick off any woman they wanted). While most people with good enough morals or self respect probably wouldn't join a harem, I can see many materialistic people(in our world today, most people are turning materialistic) join one, so while the person above wasn't entirely accurate, I don't think he/she is 100% wrong either.
@H_san No, he’s right, just saying that people would run out of women is such a stupid idea. He understands some of what’s going on but even then no Chinese emperor will have all of the women in China in a harem. That’s so absurdly non-feasible that it makes me question how he could write it. He has no clue why harems don’t exist, or why they’re generally immoral.