After their brunch, the group decided to take a walk around outside while waiting for William to finish preparing all of the fishing supplies and boat. They offered to help, but William assured them that he would be fine on his own and that he would rather them enjoy their time doing something more enjoyable.

Azalabulia was happy to offer pushing Alice’s wheelchair as they walked along the paved path that led through William’s property. There was not much for them to look at other than a yard with some bushes and flowers here and there, but it was a very large yard which gave them plenty of time to walk forward without having to turn around.

Between the simple view and path, they had a great opportunity for talking about whatever they wanted.

“Come on, it’s not the end of the world,” Ryouta tried to tell Kris, but his words proved to be less than comforting.

“Hold me, bro,” Kris said in response.

“You really are a lot clingier in real life, aren’t you?” Regardless of how surprised Ryouta still was from just how different Kris could behave in the real world, he still opened his arms up for a hug. Then he was reminded of how much smaller he was as Kris wrapped his arms around him.

Behind them, since Ryouta and Kris walked in front of the rest, Eva took notes. “It’s interesting how different he is in real life,” she said to the other girls.

“I’ll admit I wasn’t really expecting that,” Cassandra replied.

“I wonder what the reason is. Is it psychological? Does he find it harder to physically bond with others in a virtual space regardless of how realistic it is? Or maybe he discovered new feelings upon meeting Ryouta in real life? Wait… how could I have missed something so obvious? I was thinking about how unique the change in Kris is, but there’s something even more worthy of investigation right in front of me that’s been here the entire time.”

“And what would that be, my dearest Eva?” Alice asked.

“Our relationship. Poly relationships may not be all that rare anymore, but those are usually much more… balanced, let’s say. You know, multiple women and multiple men. But here we are with multiple women and only one man.”

“Lucky him,” Cassandra said.

Eva raised an eyebrow and held onto her chin as she walked. “Why is that?” She then looked at Serra, Cassandra, and Alice. “You three have been in the relationship for the longest. Have you ever entertained the idea of another guy joining in?”

“Of course!” Alice answered. “Though, I only entertained the idea of another man joining our relationship so that I could watch him and my hero together. Ah… what a wonderful sight that would be.”

“But you wouldn’t want to do anything with him yourself?”

“Well, if I were to fall in love with another, I am sure I would. However, I do not fantasize about being with any other men nor women.”

“What about me and Aza?”

“I do, but only because it became clear that the others were interested. Had the others not intended on introducing you to our relationship, then chances are likely that I would have never developed an intimate connection to you. Of course, now that you are here, I do love you just as I love everybody else in our relationship, so please forgive me if I sound harsh at all.”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I don’t think you’re harsh. Plus the more honest you are, the better data I can collect. What about you, Cass?”

“I don’t know,” Cassandra answered. “I mean… I don’t really like men that much in the first place. Even if I try not to judge them that hard in the first place, I still see how they look at me all the time. I don’t mind it when all of you look at me that way, but I hate when others look at me like I’m an object. Women don’t really do it anywhere near as much as guys do.”

“So, Ryouta is an exception to your experiences?”

“Not really. I still caught him checking me out all the time before.”

“Then why him but not others?”

“Well… you know how I met him. The first thing I did was try to kill him. Then when he had a chance to beat me, he threw himself over Rock to protect her instead. Even though I tried killing him and even tried to attack Rock… he still wanted to help me out and treated me like a friend. I can’t really imagine many men or women reacting that way to everything that happened. So, I guess it’s because… he’s sort of a general exception to the rule, not just because he’s an exception to the rule when it comes to men only.”

“I see. Serra?”

Serra was already working on the response on her phone while Alice and Cassandra talked. Once she was done, she handed the phone over to Eva.

Eva read the answer out loud. “I’m not against other guys hooking up with us, but I know that the others probably wouldn’t want other guys involved, so I’m happy with only Ryouta and other girls. I think it would be hot to tag team Ryouta with a guy. Me on top of Ryouta and a guy underneath him. That’s the end of Serra’s response… of course. But I see. Thanks.” Eva handed the phone back over to Serra. “Aza? You have an opinion on the topic?”

“E-eh?” Azalabulia asked. “Umm… ah… we-well… I – I don’t really care who I’m with as long as… I have somebody. Not – not to say that you aren’t special to me! I just mean… when I was single, I didn’t care. Man or women didn’t matter to me. Now I just… go with what the others think, too? But I don’t really – I guess I don’t really find anybody else attractive now. Kinda of like what Alice said. Other potential… men and women don’t even register to me until one of the others is interested. If they get interested in a woman, I’ll do my best to also like her. If they got interested in a man, I would do the same.”

“I see, I see.”

“What about you?” Cassandra asked. “You’re a part of the relationship, too. What’s your own thought process for seemingly never being interested in any other men?”

“Oh, my reason is way simpler.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Right. I should probably say what it is. Anyways, my reason is because a male can get multiple women pregnant at the same time, but a woman can only get pregnant by one man at a time. Of course, it’s not all about pregnancy. You can have others because of hedonistic reasons. However, if I were to choose between a new man or woman, knowing that there is already one man capable of making us pregnant, then I would choose another woman.”

“Why?”

“Easy. Women can do everything that men can when it comes to sex, and they have more to work with. The only thing that guys have over us is their – their penises. We have toys that we can wear to emulate that. Guys, however, can’t emulate a woman’s body without surgery. Or excessive weight gain when it comes to the chest. So, in closing, my reason for that is because we already have Ryouta for biological purposes, and women are better for non-biological purposes. Of course, if you were to find a woman with a functioning… penis, then there would be zero reason to have a man in the relationship outside of purely emotional reasons. Oh, wait. I forgot to to ask you.” Eva turned to look at Tabitha.

“Ask me what?”

“Your thoughts on—”

“Ya know I’m not part of your relationship, right? I’m just unlucky enough to be here with ya havin’ to listen to this. Also, if you’re too shy to be sayin’ ‘penis’ out loud, ya shouldn’t be talkin’ about how you’re only keepin’ the wolf boy around for breedin’.”

“Ri-right. Sorry. I just… was asking everybody and didn’t really think of that. And it’s not that I have trouble saying that word. It’s just… more difficult to say it when not immersed.”

“Come on. Say it. Penis. I don’t even like the things and I can say it. Penis. Cock. Dick.”

Suddenly, Serra found herself far more interested in reading their lips.

“Pe-penis,” Eva barely managed to say.

Tabitha handed out the next test without delay. “Cock.”

“Cock…”

“Dick.”

“Dick! See? I just wasn’t used to saying it out loud with my real body. Now I’m used to it.” Eva placed her hands on her hips and, with far too much confidence, said, “Penis.”

“Don’t look so proud while sayin’ that,” Tabitha said before sighing. “And don’t ya girls know how to talk about anything other than boys?”

“To be fair,” Alice spoke up, “I would not say that our prior conversation counted as talking about ‘boys’ in the traditional sense. We were talking about relationship dynamics, and boys just so happened to be an element of that rather than the focus of it. The focus was on the dynamic and boundaries of our relationship more so than it was about ‘boys.’ Yes? As for whether or not any of this passes the Bechdel test, I am not sure. Not that such a silly test should be applied to real women in the first place, even if I have joked about it before.”

With her hands behind her head as she walked, Cassandra said, “So, I guess in the end… there’s no other guys because none of us really care, and Ryouta would have to want him, too.”

“Unfortunately, he is straight.” Alice sighed again. “And now we truly have failed the Bechdel test by making it about him.”

“Bro,” Kris said. “Do they usually talk about how much they want to see you with another guy?”

“It’s becoming more frequent, but yeah,” Ryouta answered and then looked back at the girls. “You know I can hear everything, right?”

“Of course, my hero! If we were discussing something that we wanted to keep from you, we would make sure that you are nowhere within sight like usual,” Alice answered.

“I’m not sure how to feel about that. What sort of things do you usually discuss when I can’t hear?”

“Well, it would defeat the purpose if we told you, would it not?”

Ryouta narrowed his eyes at the unusually smug Alice. “I have a feeling that being back in your homeland has made you more powerful. It’s like all the cocky arrogance from a thousand years of history is powering you up somehow. All that’s missing now is you holding a hand over your mouth, tilting your head back, and doing an ‘ohoho’ laugh like one of those blonde princess girls iin anime.”

“Would you like to see that?”

“I am kind of tempted now.”

Alice tilted her head back and raised a hand up over her mouth before… smiling and saying, “Too bad, my hero.”

“That smug grin you’ve got is even more powerful than the ohoho laugh.”

“Why do you keep laughing like Santa?” Cassandra asked.

“It’s – it’s not a Santa laugh. It’s a rich, blonde, foreign, anime girl laugh.”

“Foreign girls in anime sound like Santa?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Ohohoho.” Cassandra’s execution of the laugh wasn’t exactly with the same amount of personality that Ryouta was used to, but it met the most basic requirements to be considered the stereotypical noblewoman laugh. “Like that?”

Ryouta wanted to deny her but he really couldn’t. “Yeah, but—”

“They’re Santa.”

“But—”

“It’s Santa’s laugh, Ryouta.”

“But – but it starts with an O instead of an H.”

“Fine. It’s ninety-nine percent a Santa laugh. Just because it starts with an O doesn’t change that the rest of it sounds like how Santa laughs.”

“Cass… you’re ruining an entire trope for me.”

“If it can be ruined that easily then it deserves to be ruined. Santa lover. You’re not going to make us dress up as Santa with white beards for you, are you? Put on some fat suits?”

“I feel like you’re both bullying me way more than usual. Wait, Cass, could it be that you have blood from this land? Does this foreign land wake up the hidden ancestry in you or something, powering you up just like with Alice?”

“All I’m doing is calling out a Santa fucker when I see one.”

Ryouta couldn’t help but to laugh at that, and neither could the rest of them. Save for Serra, of course, who started to look up Santa’s “helpers” costumes on her phone as soon as she read Cassandra’s lips saying “Santa” the first time.

“Don’t worry, Captain Puppy. I’m just as disappointed as you are now,” Tabitha said.

“You can never just call me by my name, can you?” Ryouta asked.

“Names are for friends. I don’t have a single guy who I call by his name and I don’t plan on starting.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Because you’re all a bunch of idiots.”

“An actual reason?”

“Not really. It’s just tradition at this point.”

“How’d it start?”

Tabitha stretched out and cracked her fingers. “Now that’s a story. Ya see, back in the day, I used to play games with a guy. Poor boy was obsessed with me. Tried askin’ me out every few months hopin’ I’d somehow suddenly start liking guys instead of girls. Was pretty annoyin’ when he asked, but he was always pretty darn friendly and respectful the rest of the time. Great guy. Desperate and too hopeful, but great. Anyways, never called him by his name since I didn’t want him gettiin’ too close. Thought maybe he’d get the point if I purposely screwed his name up all the time. Learned that from the Swanson. Great man. Only one I’ll ever look up to. So, always screwed up this guy’s name to try and keep a more uh… professional distance between us, even if I did like hangin’ out with him and playin’ with him. Eventually had to break things off with him. His choice. Said he couldn’t handle bein’ just friends anymore and that our relationship wasn’t enough for him, so we agreed it’d be best to end things there. I’ll admit, I was pretty sad about that, but it was his choice and for the best. Got a message from him last year, actually. Few days before I met ya. Let me know he got married and had a kid on the way. Thought I’d like to know he was able to move on, and I was. But what if I actually called him by his name? There’s a chance that he never would’ve been able to move on. So, I’ll stick to never callin’ guys by their names in case they get too attached to me.”

“I don’t think calling him by his name really had anything to do with that.”

“But can ya prove that it didn’t?”

“Can you prove that it did?”

“Nope, but there’s more evidence to support that it worked than there is that it didn’t work.”

Ryouta looked at Eva in hopes that the girl who loved science and researching would take his side.

Instead, Eva asked, “What? She has a point. Technically, there’s more evidence to support her theory than there is evidence against it. There’s still nowhere near enough information to come to a solid conclusion but, as it stands, there is technically more evidence in her favor. Of course, it’s only a sample size of one. One successful experiment doesn’t actually mean anything. Which makes me think… maybe that’s a good experiment to run. What if we never refer to anybody by their actual name anymore? Would people still get close to us? Would it be easier for us to cut all ties with them? Would the average time it takes for them to forget about us decrease if we never call them by their names? Increase if we do? But because of how unique each human is… we would require a massive amount of testing in order to get accurate results since even ten or a hundred subjects could produce wildly different results. This is an experiment that might very well take the rest of our lives to perform unless we can somehow bring hundreds if not thousands of other testers onto our team to assist us. Even then…”

“Oi, do ya actually have a degree in anythin’?” Tabitha asked.

“Nope.”

“Wait, seriously?” Ryouta asked.

“Yeah.”

“Not a single one.”

“Not one.”

“Did you ever even go to college?”

“Dropped out of high school, so no.”

“Wait. Wait, wait. Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Eva shrugged her shoulders. “It was boring. I had straight As in everything and was supposed to get moved up a couple of grades to try and challenge me, but I lost interest before that and kinda just… stopped going. I learned more from watching Indian guys online and buying books to read. Oh, by the way. Did you know that colleges used to charge students like… hundreds of dollars for a single book? And even make people pay an extra hundred dollars for a code to do their homework online?”

“What?” Ryouta asked. “Are you serious?”

“Yep. You might have had to pay thousands of dollars for a class and then still pay an extra four hundred dollars just on a book.”

“I… I knew that colleges used to be crazy expensive, but I never heard they were that bad. How’d they get away with that?”

“They didn’t in the end. Though, they did for a few decades. Too bad they still won’t take you if you never technically finished high school.”

“Actually,” Azalabulia spoke up, “they will still accept you so long as you pass an entrance test. As long as you demonstrate that you already have knowledge on par with other new college students, essentially, you’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be honest, I also don’t really care that much. I feel like going to college and learning all the super proper ways of doing everything would take a lot of the fun out of it. I’m already as smart as I want to be, so now I just want to have fun with it. It’s not like I actually want to do any serious experiments or make breakthrough discoveries or anything like that. I just want to have fun figuring out the stuff I randomly feel like figuring out.”

“So in other words,” Tabitha said, “ya just like to pretend that you’re a scientist. Ya don’t actually care all that much about doin’ it right and bein’ professional and all that.”

“Sort of. I still like to try and do things the right way and I’ll at least pretend to be professional, but other than that – I don’t really care. You know, like, figuring out how stuff works is fun. Taking things apart and putting them back together in different ways to see if they still work. Dissecting random bugs—that were already dead, mind you—to see what’s going on in their bodies. Mixing random over-the-counter chemicals together to see what happens while doing the bare minimum to make sure that I won’t accidentally poison myself or create a bomb. Dipping a cucumber into ketchup. Random stuff with no regard for the proper way of doing things, most of the time. But it’s fun to pretend that I’m actually being serious and scientific.”

“So basically, ya like the idea of being a scientist more than actually being a scientist while potentially killin’ yourself from mixing dangerous chemicals together in your kitchen.”

“Yeah, pretty much. That’s why I joined the Scholars. There are a few actual scientific types in there, and the big guy himself is one, but I think most of them are like me where we’re basically roleplaying scientists instead of actually being scientists. Oh, I had one friend in there who came up with a better name for us than scientists. We’re not scientists, we’re ‘testers of the random.’ Or alternatively, ‘testers of chaos,’ but I thought that one sounded a bit… edgy.”

While their conversation continued, Serra left the group to run off into the yard to check out the flowers that caught her eye. The rest stopped their walk so that they could wait for her to come back, not wanting to leave her behind.

“Oh? A friend?” Alice asked. “And what are they like?”

Eva nodded her head before she stretched her arms upward underneath the sun. She tried to stretch out her wings and tail, too, only to remember that she didn’t exactly have those in real life. After feeling silly about that, she answered Alice’s question. “He talks in a really heavy accent that I can’t even understand half the time, but he’s nice. He’s the only one who was interested in finding out what it feels like to have a limb burned off by lava with me.”

“You have not had time to go back and see him, have you?”

“Nope, but he’s fine. He’s the kind of guy who you can be best friends with right off the bat, and he’ll treat you like family, but then if you leave him without any reason, he won’t question it. You’ll basically not exist in his mind until he sees you again. Then, no matter how long you’re gone for, he’ll go right back to treating you like family no questions asked. He’s the kind of guy who’s so hyper focused on the present and everything directly around him that he never thinks about anything else. I kind of respected that about him.”

“He sounds like a cool guy,” Ryouta said.

Eva eyed Ryouta as if she was thinking about something for a few moments before saying, “You’d probably get along with him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Similar personalities. I know he’s also really into anime and wanted to make himself a ‘monster boy.’”

“He’s a man of great culture then. What kind of monster boy did he turn himself into?”

“A dragon. Though, he’s only got the wings, horns, and a few scales. He’s not full-on draconic like GG and all of them.”

“What kind of name did he pick? I can think of a ton of names for other dog or wolf guys, but I can’t think of any that’d be fitting for a dragon guy without relying on the usual clichés that everybody else uses.”

“I – I feel like I’m being personally attacked,” Azalabulia whined a little.

“Nothing wrong with being cliché,” Cassandra said, patting Azalabulia on the back. “I mean, I don’t feel any shame about using Cassiel and originally intending to be an angel girl.”

“You’re right. I – I need to have my pride in Bahamut when I’m outside of FTO. And – I second wanting to know the name of this dragon friend.”

“It’s nothing fancy,” Eva answered. “Just Manoel. Wait, now that I think about it… I really should have asked him for help during the battle. He’s crazy badass.”

“A crazy badass dragon guy named Manoel who treats everybody like family?” Ryouta asked to confirm.

“Yep.”

“Sounds like a pretty unique guy.”

“Bro, are you trying to find a new bro to replace me?” Kris asked. “I already blew my chances with the maids. I can’t handle losing my bro to another man on the same day.”

“I – I don’t know if I should take your seriously or not right now. Do you need another hug?”

“Yeah.”

Once more, Ryouta opened his arms to give a hug and feel small within Kris’s embrace.

“Also I was joking,” Kris confirmed. “Having another bro would be awesome. Then the three of us could go out and have guy time by ourselves.”

“We already have three of us if you count Olly – Spencer.”

“Wait, are we supposed to count him as a bro?”

“Ac-actually… yeah, you’re right. He doesn’t really count and I think he’d be offended if we did count him. Though, there is Corwin.”

“Oh, yeah. So then we already have three bros and this Manoel guy could be our fourth.”

“I don’t know. From how Eva described him, he didn’t really seem like the kind of guy who would care about hanging out for a guy’s night or anything like that.”

“He would as long as you stay within his sight,” Eva said. “But if you let him get distracted or if you vanish for whatever reason, he’ll probably be gone by the time you’re back. He’s the kind of guy where, if he blinks, and he doesn’t see you when his eyes open back up, he’s going to immediately find something else to do instead of spending even a fraction of a second wondering where you went. Needless to say… it becomes extremely easy to lose him when you’re trying to do something together.”

“Sounds like handcuffs would be useful,” Kris said.

“What – why handcuffs?” Ryouta asked.

“Think about it. If he’s super easy to lose, all you need to do is handcuff yourself to him so that he can’t get lost.”

“I don’t think that’s the best solu—”

“No, no,” Alice interrupted. “Kris has a wonderful point. Please, do go into greater detail regarding handcuffing yourselves together. Ah, or perhaps chains would be more suitable for the task? Rope, perhaps? Rope would be easier on the skin and allow for easier tying.  You would be able to tie one another up in all sorts of ways to ensure that you never… get lost, from one another.”

“See?” Kris asked Ryouta. “She gets it.”

Ryouta sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I think everybody gets it but you, Kris.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Bondage. She wants to see us all tie each other up. Sexually.”

Kris turned with a raised eyebrow to look at Alice.

“What? Do not look at me so,” Alice said. “It is not my fault that the obvious was not obvious enough for you.”

“You really are sassier than usual,” Kris said.

Alice stuck her tongue out only to be immediately interrupted by Serra hopping up onto her lap.

Within Serra’s hand was a small, white flower that she found, and she made sure that the flower found its way into Alice’s hair right over her left ear. “Pretty,” Serra said, actually managing to pronounce it almost perfectly.

No matter how much sassier Alice might have been feeling, it was impossible to not melt as soon as Serra came to steal the show.

And then a voice called out to them.

“Everybody! The boat is ready!” William shouted back from the manor.

Ryouta was the first one to change course and start heading back.

It was time…

For fishing.

Real. Life. Fishing.

Ace_Arriande

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