I have mentioned already (maybe at length) the party system, the party management system, the companion side quests, and a lot of things that game developers use to trick the player into caring for the sprites moving across the screen in ways they likely have never cared for a living, breathing, human being, if only because most classmates or family members are often saddled with people writing their dialogue who are even worse at the job than scriptwriters who believe answering a polite “No” with “But thou must” is something that would be admitted in court.

… That went kinda dark. Let’s try this again, shall we?

The JRPG! Despite the genre’s frequent failings when it comes to mechanics, it usually excels at telling an emotionally engaging narrative—pfffffft. Sorry. Okay, no, this time’s for real.

Dating mechanics suck.

There, I said it. Despite games in general and RPGs in particular being all about fulfilling a fantasy not readily available to the player, which dating is very much an example of, it’s extremely rare that a game that uses dating as a mechanic will do It in a way other than disturbing. For every little skit about sharing a lunchbox in Persona that makes us believe the kung fu nerd is a real, vibrant person with her wants and desires, of which hopefully Silent Protag-kun’s dick is first and foremost, we’ve got a thousand Thousand Arms of counterexamples about going on formulaic, repetitive segments that quickly go from novel to drudgery.

Brief slices of conversation followed by binary choices? Memorizing the list of topics and preferred gifts for each girl? Struggling to repeat the same damn thing over and over and over to get to an arbitrary threshold in affection points that will allow you to reach the all-important milestone of a stat bonus or a new skill to add to the list of things you never use because you don’t want to waste mana potions? These, and more, are the hallmarks of any JRPG with dating mechanics that treat dating as a game.

And really, that’s the crux of the issue: dating is supposed to be about knowing each other. Sharing just as much of yourself as you can afford to without scaring the other person away until they’re too invested for that to be an option. Learning just enough of your partner-to-be’s weaknesses that you can target them without too much effort. Dicovering where she lives so that you can send anonymous letters to her that will get her scared enough to flee into your arms.

You know, the usual lovey-dovey stuff.

But, tender high school memories of frequenting dating advice threads on 4Chan aside, what I’m trying to get at is that where games fail when treating romance as a mechanic is that they turn the concrete into abstract. Romance is not about arbitrarily increasing points—the same bouquet of roses will get you kissed or slapped under different circumstances, and using the most expensive gift in the shop as a bribe is very unlikely to work with anyone that would be a good idea to keep dating.

In turning the interaction into mere point accruing, unless measures are taken to intersperse a storyline and character development along the way, you transform what should be a character into a target. Into yet another collection of numbers to grind past. Into the thing that is, other than in some very specific discussion groups, the furthest thing from romance that you can get: math.

It is then a very good thing that, now that I’m faced with finally going on my first date, I keep remembering just how much reality differs from all those unenjoyable mini-games.

What’s that, you say? That not only are there stellar implementations of the subject, but that those games have the vast advantage over real life of having both a saving system and online walkthroughs to help you navigate them? That there are, in fact, very few actual repercussions for failing a mini-game date compared to failing an actual one? That this rambling mess of a monologue does nothing to disguise the horrible anxiety attack about to make the edges of my vision darken? That this collection of barely cogent words amounts to sour grapes and me, high Int-stat character that I am, trying not to think myself into a spiral of panic?

Well, I can only answer one thing to such a well-orchestrated rebuttal:

Fuck you.

With a spork.

“Kazuma, Kazuma!” a cheerful voice says with implicit bounciness.

“No, it’s not me, Kazuma; I’m just a coincidentally handsome orc with no relation to him at all,” I answer with suave confidence.

“What?” the voice at my back says with what sounds like genuine confusion.

Which has nothing to do with me resignedly turning away from the fountain in the middle of Axel’s main square to face…

Darkness.

… Hello, Darkness, my old friend~

“Kazuma?” she asks yet again, making it very hard for me to run away from reality into a careless aside that will allow me not to focus on the woman in front of me, and…

…

“Kazuma,” she says with an actual edge of irritation that would pair magnificently with her slapping on her palm one of those telescopic pointy thingies that teacher characters sometimes have even if I’ve never before seen one in real life, and—

“Stop ignoring me,” she says.

“I am not ignoring you. I am trying to ignore you. I’m doing my very best not to ogle you in clothes that I’ve never seen you in before and to wonder out loud how in actual Hell do you manage to come across as more alluring when wearing a white, airy sundress with the ever-stereotypical, wide-brimmed straw hat than you do while wearing your unnecessarily lewd bodysuit or your adequately lewd hentai maid outfit. I’m doing my utmost best, yet still failing, not to have my brain short-circuit at my girlfriend wearing something that should be the epitome of innocence—you aren’t even showing any cleavage, for Eris’ Sapphic sake—yet still managing to convey the very essence of the childhood friend from a rural hometown in a doujin about a reunion happening after long years of separation that culminates in page after page of sweaty, passionate lovemaking on every single scenic location of the town, but more often than not starting in the porch of a traditional Japanese household after a summer afternoon nap. I’m struggling, Darkness, to ignore the way in which you’re now suddenly looking bashfully at the tip of your sandal-clad toes, with your hands clasped behind your back, your cheeks steadily reddening, and—”

For some mysterious, bizarre reason likely related to an enemy stand, there’s a hand slapped over my mouth.

Note to self: try and gently word it to Darkness that, with her godly stats, she doesn’t need a weapon so long as she can slap enemies like she does her boyfriend.

“Shut up,” she hisses, looking around her at rookie adventurers who are, rather than aimlessly strolling around in search of somebody who needs their basement cleared of rats, looking at us.

Because of reasons.

“Mph,” I eloquently answer her.

“Shut. Up,” she insists, her grip on the front of my silk jersey tightening in ways that could be worryingly expensive.

“Hn,” I answer with an attempt at a nod that gets stopped by the unyielding hand in front of my face.

… This is all very rude of her, you know? It is, in fact, likely discriminatory. Just try the mental experiment of changing the genders of the characters involved; how would Darkness feel if I, for some reason, in the middle of a very public location, just decided to forcefully shut her up, grab the front of her dress with strength just shy enough of tearing it apart, and—

“Eeeek!” she yelps as my orcish spear seems to get a very vivid idea of how, realistically, Darkness would react in such a situation.

“It’s not my fault!” I tell her, only partially lying. “You can’t expect to flaunt around such a lewd outfit and have my raging instincts remain dormant!”

“It’s not lewd! Sundresses are a proud and noble attire!”

“… How does that even work?”

“I don’t know! It’s the first line that came to mind!”

“Get a room…” a somewhat familiar fighter-mage duo mutter as they walk past, probably in search of Rodents of Unusual Size, which, in this world, would be regular mice and thus about the only thing I can picture the two of them handling without being overwhelmed by a scene out of the best Acerola games, those with cum-collecting mechanics—

“Really,” Darkness darkly mutters at my orcish spear’s twitch and eyes that don’t wander so much as choose to take the road less traveled.

“In my defense, I was picturing them being raped by monsters due to their ineptitude because I’m still salty at them likely being the ones spreading malicious, utterly baseless rumors about Megumin being my limp, comatose cocksock.”

“We never said cocksock!” the flustered, eavesdropping mage says.

“Well, now you have! And very publicly! Say goodbye to your reputation, bitch!” I answer. Very maturely.

“Just… Just follow me,” Darkness unnecessarily says, seeing as she just grabbed my wrist with a grip that pointlessly shows off her unbalanced character sheet and is physically dragging me away from Axel’s main square.

Which I guess signals the start of our first official date.

… Good enough so far. I wonder how the other Kazumas are doing?

***

“I… Are you sure this is what you want to do during our… our…” Wiz tries to say yet stumbles on the last word as if at an impassable hurdle, her cheeks fetchingly tinting into a lilac shade as her eyes flee from my imposing, viridian frame.

… Cute.

Have I already said that Wiz is cute? Because she is. That is an objective fact, and not at all me focusing on outward appearances and distracting curves so as not to think about the mess I’m currently in, with me, a hero reincarnated in another world, going on a date with a Demon Lord General, thus finally stumbling onto both the title and gimmick of my particular light novel:

I Was Mocked in My Deathbed by My Parents, but I Am Now Fucking a Cute Lich in Another World.

Huh. I wonder if that met the minimum character quota.

“Mister Kazuma?” she adorably asks, chin tucked in, clasped between her thumb and the bent forefinger shielding her lower lip from my strictly analytical gaze.

“Uh?” I answer amid a few extra blinks.

She shyly giggles.

Which…

…

“Ah! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Mister Kazuma, I didn’t mean to incite your lusts! I will take care of it right away!” she says, thus definitely proving that she’s a top-tier waifu candidate and objectively superior to the trash tier in which assassins belong.

“Wiz, as hard as it is to believe, I’m not helping you in your store’s backroom to get a blowjob,” I say, making both Past and Future Kazuma hate me intensely enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if a tanned, white-haired version of me came back in time intent solely on eradicating my very existence.

Except that would be a badass version of me, what some cultured folks call ‘Gar,’ and, as it is objectively impossible for any Kazuma to be anything other than a badass, it would not be a distinguishing trait, and thus the character would not be distinct enough to count as a variant. Also, bleached hair on a muscular, tanned guy? Yeah, that’s NTR-Kazuma right then and there, but I am Orc Kazuma, which, given my hentai powers, also has access to the NTR perk tree.

Sorry, Archerzuma, but your existence is entirely redundant and will thus be omitted from the plot. There, time paradox averted. You all useless goddesses above can thank me for it.

Particularly you, Ishtar.

“Mister Kazuma?” the stacked Christmas Cake with the power to never go past the expiration date asks from where she’s kneeling right below my still-raised Orcish Spear.

… For fuck’s sake, what do I even bother monologuing for?

“I… One second,” I say before I lean down and grab Wiz under her armpits, quickly looking around her storeroom to locate a crate that looks sturdy enough to hold my weight without hilariously collapsing under me and activating whatever cursed artifacts it contains.

“Eep!” she cutely answers when I sit her on my lap, the underside of her full thighs pressing down on something that should’ve learned to stay down sometime around when I was still attending high school and getting mocked because of spontaneous boners that weren’t that different from my current Orcish Ancestors Themed woes.

“Look, I…” I try to say without getting lost in the frightened, violet eyes peering up at me.

“You?” she asks with a voice that trembles entirely too much for the length of a single syllable.

And, yeah, I’m now suddenly licking my lips, which are dryer than the mouthful of saliva I just swallowed would imply, and…

Okay. Okay, Kazuma, for once in your life, take a deep breath, focus on the woman in front of you, and try not to act as if the whole world was a shitpost.

… Even if it most likely is the cosmic equivalent of one.

“What do you want to get out of a date, Wiz?” I straightforwardly ask, likely violating every dating protocol ever created, particularly those mentioned in some 4Chan threads.

“I… uh… flowers?” she says with a weak, tiny voice that very much contrasts with the soft thighs perfectly molded around the contour of my cock.

“And… okay, no, that kinda works. Why flowers? What do flowers mean?” I say, very much not focused on a body that is not warm but pleasantly cool. Maybe cool enough that it could quench my desires in a way far more literal than any of my other live-in female acquaintances, with Wiz’s sex steaming up, letting out clouds of lilac-scented, white vapor as soon as I thrust into her and—

“It’s…Flowers? Like, a rose, or a lily—”

“No lilies. Stop it with the lilies. Why is everyone so obsessed with lilies? They are ridiculously plain flowers. Sure, they’re white and pure, but they’re also shaped either like a trumpet or like a hentai vacuum fellatio, and those things are ugly—they are meant to be ugly, you understand, as the appeal is to see a proper beauty turned into a debauched parody of herself when consumed by lust, and what was I talking about?”

“I don’t know!”

“Gee, Wiz, at least try to pay attention. We’re supposed to be on a date, after all,” I chidingly tell her.

She pouts at me as her sole, petulant answer, but I can assure you that has nothing to do with my orcish spear suddenly lifting her up a couple of inches.

“Eep!” she says, likely assaulted by her fear of heights.

“Okay, so, as I was saying… yeah, flowers,” I tell her, kind enough to ignore her distress so that she can compose herself as she adjusts to her new stature.

“Flowers?” she says, fidgeting atop something that is not as considerately ignoring her reactions as I am.

“Yeah, flowers… You… Okay. You go on a date. And you want flowers. Or chocolates?”

“Chocolates would be nice…”

“Or maybe a candlelit dinner. Or a carriage ride? Maybe you would like to get a gift that shows the other person has been thinking about you, like a weird magic item that—”

“A magic item?” she says with covetous eyes.

I raise an adequately exercised yet not well-rested eyebrow, and she has the grace to flush in yet another display of cute lilac hues that very much act like eyeshadow, bringing my attention to the glimmering—to Wiz. To Wiz looking up at me despite her lowered head, her eyes peeking up past her artfully messy bangs, her hands clasped in front of her chest, her back hunched forward tempting me to run a single finger up her spine to see her arch back against my touch, her eyes closing and a single gasp of pleasure coming out of her lips, and—

“Ah! Mister Kazuma…” she says, writhing in an entirely feline way that I will do my best so that Vanir-chan will never copy it.

“Or a massage,” I pretend to continue. “Would you like a massage, Wiz?” I say, not entirely aware of just why my tone just dropped a few octaves, but very much liking the flustered reaction it causes in the woman writhing on my lap.

“I… A… Hmph!” she answers as my fingers dig tiny, slow circles along the sides of her spine, right above her coccyx, the purple silk of her robe gliding over her skin in marvelous, soft coolness.

“A massage. With you lying down on your bed and me sitting astride your thighs. Your plush, comfortable thighs. With your naked body spread under me, my hands going up and down your back, rubbing every part of you that desperately craves my touch, warming you up in a slow, thorough cycle. Making you feel my weight and strength above you as I push you into the mattress, uncaring of your muffled moans, just pushing more and more until the only thing you can think about is my touch on you…” I whisper right in her ear, my free hand now on top of her thighs, massaging them in a more possessive way than my fingers do her back, sinking into softer flesh, into yielding, sensitive skin. Into Wiz’s body.

“Ah! Ka—Mister Kazuma! I—I—I!”

“You?”

“I don’t know what this has to do with flowers!”

…

It takes me a moment to remember that I started doing this for a purpose other than to see a flustered, embarrassed Christmas Cake writhe atop my cock. It takes me a few more moments to argue with myself that, while that’s a worthy goal in and of itself, and one most deserving of all my manual dexterity, maybe I should try to revisit my first, perhaps a tad more dubiously worthy goal.

By the end of the strenuous inner debate, Wiz is pouting up at me. Which, truth be told, only causes further delay as I have to deal with another, incredibly urgent debate.

“Right,” I say after clearing my throat in an entirely natural and not suspicious at all way. “So. Flowers.”

“I am starting to think that you should buy me some,” she says, uncharacteristically snippy with her tone.

Ah! For fuck’s sake, don’t add gap moe to the list of reasons to fuck you cross-eyed, woman! How about you try being a bit more considerate to the hentai rape machine trying to explain dating to you despite this being his first date?!

“Hentai what?” she asks with clear alarm and a bit of a panicked bounce that does nothing to detract from the readiness of Spear-kun.

Ganbare, Spear-kun. At least I didn’t have to solve a fucking vase-related enigma to get you as my ultimate weapon.

“That’s nothing that you should concern yourself with,” I say, suave as ever—

“It sounds like it should—”

“Anyway! Flowers! Chocolates! Massages! The quintessential list of gift items available even to the most Gil-deprived party! What do they all have in common, Wiz?”

“They are… cheap?” she asks with a confused frown that indicates she may still be stuck on entirely innocent professions of dub-con-readiness.

“They can be. Not always, of course, a good box of chocolates is a luxury item, but! That’s a good start. What else?”

“They don’t last long?” she adds with a tad more focus that indicates my distraction tactics are working—I mean, that she’s engaged with my current reasoning.

“Precisely! They are something to be enjoyed and then forgotten about. Gifts that last just as long as they should, and not a day more.”

“… Are you trying to say that you are not interested in me anymore?”

“… While I see how you may have reached that conclusion, I assure you that’s neither the point of the argument nor anything that I would consider telling a lich archmage while at point-blank range for a max-stat Explosion,” I reasonably explain.

She may not be convinced by my unassailable argument, given the sudden narrowing of her eyes.

“Okay! Look, what I’m trying to get at is that… Picture this: you’re dating an adventurer of few means. It’s your first time going out, and rather than pay for an expensive meal at a trendy restaurant, he’s brought a picnic basket. You meet him at Axel’s Main Square, and he’s waiting for you, trying not to look nervous, his smile a bit strained, and, before you can even ask if he’s been waiting long for you, he takes his hand from behind his back and thrusts a bouquet of lilacs at you. How would that make you feel?” I say, maybe fast enough to rush over an incantation starting with ‘Darkness beyond twilight, Crimson beyond blood that flows.’

I… Maybe shouldn’t have bothered.

Because that violet tinge from earlier? That’s… That’s quite a bit darker. And Wiz’s hands are clasped around one another, writhing atop the rumpled skirt of her robes, with the woman wearing a silly grin that is making it very hard for me to—

“Eep!”

Okay. Let’s just say that it’s making it very hard and leave the ‘it’ unspecified.

“Right. So. You would like that?” I ask, trying very hard to look into her eyes without getting drawn in, which her answering, enthusiastic nod makes quite hard to do.

… Cute. Wiz is cute. Cute enough that I want to see her face twisted in beauty-defacing lust.

“I… Mister Kazuma?” she asks with another shy, cute, maybe a tad too lustful grin.

“Yes?”

“What are you trying to say?”

That I want to fuck you until my back gives out, but I’m afraid that would just unleash Yunyun 2: The Yunyunning, and the world in general, and Megumin in particular, are not ready for that.

“That… All right, you asked me if this,” I say, gesturing around her cramped storeroom with the hand not currently kneading her lower back—and no, that’s, sadly, not a euphemism, “is what I wanted to do for our…” I pause and look at her expectantly.

“Our date?” she shyly answers after a while.

I nod and try very hard not to wet my dry lips when I do so.

“Our date,” I confirm.

“And then you started complaining about lilies?”

“Let’s not talk about lilies. The world’s saturated with lilies. Really, at this point, the only thing I want to see less than a spread of lilies is a shower of rose petals falling in swirling spirals around Dust.”

“… What?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” I say, not condescending in the slightest. Pinky swear.

“I don’t get your sense of humor,” she complains with a bit of a huff that inflates both her cheeks and, rather unnecessarily, her chest area.

“… Sorry. It’s just how I deal with… You know,” I say.

“I don’t?” she tells me.

Darn it.

Right, let’s… let’s try to come up with something to do other than, yet again, sit on a crate with a cute Demon General on top of my lap, waiting for something absurd to happen. Like…

“Is that a tea set?” I ask, pointing at what clearly is a tea set, but, well, sometimes, you need to point out the obvious to get a conversation going. Particularly when that conversation involves Aqua.

“Ah, yes, I have had to spend quite a few evenings down here, so I set that corner to be a bit of an extra office?” she says, either glad for the distraction or as helpful as ever.

… Scratch that: as helpful as she ever tries to be.

“Right. Are you in the mood for a cup?” I ask.

“I could do with a bit of green tea?” she says, slightly disoriented by the persistent change in subject.

And, well…

I kinda like seeing her disoriented.

It’s… It’s a bit of a Wiz thing? Like, sure, I enjoy messing around with my party members, and getting Megumin’s prodigious Int stat tangled into a logical trap never gets old, particularly when she gets frustrated enough to start pulling at her plushy-hat’s wide brim, but… in Wiz’s case? It’s more about how earnest she is about it. Like, and I mean this in absolutely the best way possible, it’s like looking at a loyal dog with his head tilted to the side, doing his best to understand what the heck the string of sounds coming out of his owner’s lips even means.

And, sudden fantasies about Wiz on all fours, wearing a collar with a tag with my name on it aside, I just like that. That she’s the kind of woman who would get so worked up about trying to understand what a rookie adventurer is ranting about as if every single person she’s ever come across matters enough for her to make the effort.

So I, in the interest of indulging my newfound aesthetic preferences, nod at her implicit acquiescence of my offer to brew her a cup of tea and stand up.

But not before shifting her into a bridal carry.

“Eep!” she repeats, yet, for some reason, without prompting a snarky aside from me about the lack of variety in the lines that her voice actress has been fed.

“A magic stove?” I ask when in front of the desk littered with a few scribbled pages of inventory and mismatched cups, a bronze teapot, and the magic circle in question.

She nods without meeting my eyes.

Cutely.

Because of course.

I shift my grip on her and sit her down on the unvarnished desk, facing me and, regretfully, my unyielding polearm, and then I pretend not to notice where her eyes move down to while I pour water from a clay pitcher into the teapot then operate the magic circle of the stove with a few touches that do a lot to make me miss my smartphone and all the people I never contacted with it.

But mostly the smartphone.

“You shouldn’t be making tea for me; I am the host,” she protests, her eyes on my green hands.

“It’s a date. Let me be refreshingly gender-conforming for once.”

“A date,” she says before briefly sucking her lower lip in. “But without flowers.”

“Ah, how greedy you are, Wiz. I just had to mention that for you to covet—”

“Mister Kazuma…” she says with a chiding note that makes it all too easy to picture her wearing a white blouse and a black pencil skirt, getting flustered when jumping to try and erase the lines at the top of a blackboard without noticing the clouds of powdered chalk getting stirred by her breasts rubbing against the green surface.

… This does nothing to abate my spear salute.

“We are here, aren’t we?” I say with a bit of a tired smile.

“What does that have to do with flowers? Or… or with chocolates?”

And, well, I guess that’s when I do visibly wet my nervously dry lips with a long tongue pushing past magnificent tusks.

“I… A date is… Do you know this is my first date?” I say.

“You mean aside from all the other ones you’re currently on?” she asks with an eyebrow that unfairly jumped up before the starting shot was fired.

“Yes, aside from those. It’s not like I know what the other Kazumas are thinking at the moment, so all of them count as a first date,” I try to explain without getting into the nitty-gritty details of how yet another Yunyun spell is responsible for my relationship woes.

Just… I’ll leave the other Kazuma to deal with that. He knows what he did.

And I suspect what he’s doing.

“It’s also mine,” she says, reminding me yet again of the particular traditions that her magic lineage adheres to when it comes to dating prospects, mentorship, and a likely addiction to unhealthy relationships glorified in books with very graphic covers.

“Right,” I say, trying not to sound dismissive, nervous, or—oh, look! A distraction!

The hot water burbles inside the teapot, and I turn off the magic stove before grabbing a pot of tea leaves from the shelf running along the bare stone wall and above the desk, popping the tin lid open to take a careful sniff of the soothing, earthy fragrance before eyeballing the teapot’s size and pouring a couple of teaspoons inside of the perforated steel ball with a chain affixed to the teapot’s lid.

And, well… let’s just say the distraction didn’t last for long enough.

“So… look, I don’t—we don’t know much about this dating thing, and… and that’s fine. That’s… I think that’s what dating is for. To figure things out. To learn about the other person and see if… I mean… flowers?”

“Flowers?”

I make a frustrated noise and look from her to the still-steeping tea, then back to too-wide, lilac eyes that are devastating enough when not speckled by flickering candlelight.

… How the heck does a damn storeroom have romantic mood lighting? Who designed this—

…

Vanir-chan.

Okay, yes, that definitely fits. New rule, Kazuma: When in doubt, blame Vanir-chan.

Also, second new rule: Never tell Vanir-chan about the Vanir-chan rule because I’m pretty sure I can’t deal with her being even the slightest bit smugger.

“Flowers?” a woman displaying an uncharacteristically put-upon frown says while poking my bulging biceps for reasons that I’m pretty sure have to do with her particular upbringing.

“Flowers… Flowers, chocolates, massages, meals… All those things are momentary. They are experiences rather than possessions. They are something that could easily be meaningless or… or not, and… Damn it, I feel like a sap, and I haven’t even finished the sentence.”

“Can you… do it? Tell me?” she asks with a vulnerable, unfair look that makes it impossible for me to look away from her and the errant flames flickering in her irises.

“… It’s about caring. And showing it,” I mutter, the last addition harder to push past my throat than it should be.

And Wiz smiles at me. Smiles shyly and nervous, like I think she would have if she had gone to meet a rookie adventurer near the fountain of Axel’s Main Square, only to be confronted with a hastily arranged bouquet and… and an equally shy, nervous smile that would likely have been covered up by a fake, confident, façade quickly enough for her not to notice.

Just, you know, in a world without potions of Orcish Ancestry or Yunyun’s disturbingly extensive spell catalog.

But this is not that world. This is the world in which Kazuma Satou drank something that made the chaotic tangle of his relationships precipitate into something unpredictable. Large.

Complicated.

This is also the world in which Kazuma Satou has… learned. At least some things.

So I return her smile. I look at her like she looks at me, and I do my best not to fall back on a defensive behavior that has no place here. That doesn’t serve any purpose. That is not needed.

That would only push them away.

“You’re… very pretty,” I say, trying not to kick myself for the lackluster line.

“Thanks,” she says, turning her head away but still looking at me as she nervously tucks a lock of brown hair behind a pale ear tinged with lilac at the tip.

“I… I know we haven’t talked that much since we… since we did that. Since the first time we…”

She nods, biting her lower lip, and I nod back in gratitude for not having to say out loud, ‘Since my girlfriend involved you in her cuckquean fetish before getting us into a threesome that Chris masturbated to, something that should really have clued me in about future developments regarding the allegedly Platonic friends—and, in this particular instance, I do think it’s quite appropriate to ponder about Plato’s homosexuality.’

“Things have been busy,” she says, excusing both of us.

“Yeah, but… I just… I want you to know that I like you. Always have. Maybe I don’t know you as much as I would like, but… well, we are on a date,” I say.

“A date in my storeroom,” she says with a bit of an impish smile that I could grow to appreciate.

“In lieu of flowers,” I say with a cheeky grin that I hope my tusks don’t turn nightmarish.

She snorts.

And, of course, she does it cutely.

“I just…” she pauses, looking at the underground room with only a tiny window at the top of the wall letting light in, the assorted candles of likely magic origin doing a much better job of lighting the place than the meager amount of sun that gets in, shafts of flickering light shooting past the corners of stacked crates, making the edges of pools of shadow dance over grey flagstones. “I don’t know what to think about this.”

“Your shop is your passion, isn’t it? I thought it would be a good first step if I could help you with it,” I say with a studiously careless shrug.

She looks at me wordlessly and then scuttles over her desk, nearing me, her arm stretched past my torso in a hug that—ah, she’s just grabbing the teapot.

Of course she is.

And also giggling at, apparently, something funny that must’ve gone past my face, invisible to somebody without her arcane training, because she’s most definitely not laughing at my disappointed expression, on account of that not being a thing.

Not in the slightest. Really.

“You shouldn’t let the leaves steep for too long,” she says with a return of that impish smile before grabbing a crimson mug decorated with the sort of symbols that would make Megumin declare it The Bloody Grail’s Third Coming and pours herself a cup of tea that I can proclaim I’ve prepared for her if anybody questions me about just how considerate I have been on my date with Wiz.

Just, you know, hedging my bets. Not like a prosecutor with a magical artifact of lie detection will be interrogating me after this.

… I should look into how legal the recording of pornography is in this realm. Just because… reasons.

“This tea is very soothing,” she says, taking a sip.

“I may appreciate anything soothing at all at this point,” I say with a bit of a chuckle, reaching for the teapot and… and having Wiz’s unyielding grip clasped around my wrist.

I silently question her with an athletic eyebrow display, and she smiles enigmatically before taking another sip.

A long one.

“I use it when I want to sleep soundly,” she says, her lips wet and glimmering with the dim amber light surrounding us.

“Is that so,” I non-answer.

“Hmm.”  She nods, her smile turning into something wider and more pleased. “It’s a hypnotic.”

I blink.

Twice.

“What?”

“It can help you rest or get to sleep, but… if somebody were to say a few lines out loud… well, I would be in a suggestible state, you know?” she says in a way that very much reminds me that this is a woman who, upon learning that her teacher was not killed by orcs, but rather went on to get captured by them so she could be railed on a daily basis, decided to have me teach her how that would feel.

“I—glargh!” I answer, about as coherently as I can, given that she just threw half a mug of tea into my open mouth.

“Mister Kazuma?” she asks with a bit of a girlish, immature tone as she makes a show of fidgeting while I make a show of trying not to drown. “Do everything you want to do to me.”

My eyes fly wide open, and Wiz’s lid into a pretty unambiguous bedroom stare.

My Orcish Spear twitches.

And she grins.

***

“This does not count as our first date,” I tell Yunyun.

“Mmmm?” she curiously answers with a head tilt that does a lot of things to me.

“I… I just want you to know that it doesn’t. I still remember all those things you ranted about—explained. All those things that you explained to me in a non-disturbing, utterly sane way that don’t make me at all wonder how I should store the kitchen knives in the mansion for maximum safety. This is not our first date. That will be something just for you, and it will have all the expensive restaurants I can fit into a hopefully non-Aqua-sabotaged budget. There will be flowers, and chocolate, and likely some expensive wine, even if I don’t get why people pay so much for spoiled fruit juice. I will dress up nicely, and I will compliment your dress, and I will look into your eyes through a candlelit dinner in which I promise not to blatantly stare at your cleavage more than five—make that ten times. I know it sounds like a lot, but, honestly, you’re bisexual enough to understand why it’s such a concession on my part to promise that much of a limit, given just how spectacular your cleavage is.”

Yunyun looks up at me, momentarily still, her eyes wide and her nostrils dilated.

Then she pushes forward and swallows my cock down to the very root, her tongue going wild on the underside, her hands roaming my bare sides as the heiress of a village of magic supersoldiers apparently snaps like my sanity will if she keeps this up much longer.

“Yunyun! I need to last the entire night!” I say like somebody who hasn’t quite realized the meaning of the words that just came out of his big dumb mouth.

She pushes me back, and I fall onto the mattress of her bed, the one in which I first fucked Megumin and her together, the thing surrounded by now fluttering drapes of satin, silk, and muslin hanging from carved bedposts that would make a vampire either feel nostalgic or start ranting about man being a miserable pile of lies and secrets.

My robust, perfectly healthy, orcish weight bounces on the bed, and my non-Zodiac Spear follows suit, vibrating up and down in front of the suddenly intense gaze of the most terrifying archmage I’ve ever met, who immediately snatches me into a tight, two-fisted grip and points my glans straight at lips streaked by glimmering threads of saliva mixed with something much thicker.

Scarousal is a Hell of a drug.

“You don’t have to last all through the night. I just have to make sure to get you up again. And again. And again,” she says, crimson eyes gleaming in a way that would be far less disquieting if they were dull, lifeless, and without pupils.

… Wait, does this mean that the Byakugan counts as a yandere gaze by default? Because that does explain Hinata’s whole character—

“Just… Just look at me?” she asks with a shy smile, the edges of which just barely peek past the sides of my cock.

My hands close around her waist without me deciding to do so, the black, sheer fabric with solid dots of her negligee wrinkling between my fingers and her taut belly, and I lift her not on my lap but in front of me, her unique eyes blinking at mine, the warm breath coming out of her half-open mouth washing over my lips in wet caresses, her knees resting on my thighs.

“You… You need to stop doing this,” I manage to say despite words suddenly being something hard to grasp.

“Doing what?” she asks, as if she really doesn’t understand, squirming between my hands in a way that makes her rosy nipples shift in and out of view from behind the solid black spots of shimmering fabric dotting her negligee.

“This,” I say before I lean forward and meet her lips with mine, my tongue thrusting into her mouth, dancing with hers as I delight in each and every single one of her muffled moans and the tender, possessive fingers running along my temples and to my nape before she grabs me and tries to pull me impossibly closer.

I pull back, and we’re both panting, my cock pressing down on the front of her negligee, against her scalding, panty-less sex, with Yunyun squirming against me, weighing down the light fabric with both our juices before she spreads her thighs just enough for me to push between them, to have soft, silk-covered legs framing my shaft as we both shift against one another, my tip pressing her lingerie up against her inviting folds until she lets out a sound that is as pleased as tortured.

“I… Mister Kazuma, I don’t understand…” she says, biting the corner of her lower lip, her eyes half-closed as if she’s about to cry like she did so often right before fleeing from a confrontation that she couldn’t stand for any longer.

“I… I think that… I think that you don’t need to,” I tell her.

“What—hn!” Her hips shift forward, the drenched fabric between us tightening as she takes as much of my tip as she can without her lingerie tearing. “What… do you mean?”

I look at her. At a woman beautiful enough that she is all the proof I need to believe I’ve been brought to a world full of impossible magic. Of things I would never have found back on Earth.

Of impossible women. Of frustrating, sometimes moronic, always extraordinary women.

“What’s… What’s there to understand other than that I love you?” I tell her rather than try to explain all the other things. All the things about how I know how she felt when she was unable to connect with others, all the anxiety and fear that I can push past only because I’m a very different person than she is. Because I can pretend not to care.

I’m not lying to her.

But I’m just telling her the truth that I want her to hear right at this very moment.

The truth I need her to know so that I can see her smiling in a way that would make all knife attacks in the world worth it.

“Mister Kazuma…” she murmurs, melting against me, her forehead resting on mine, her thighs relaxing around my cock.

“Yunyun…” I say like a love-stricken male lead in a TV drama for middle-aged women.

Or like a teenager falling in love with too many people at once, too fast and too hard. Like a teenager faced with a girl he wants to be as happy as humanly possible for the rest of her life. Like somebody who’s had layers of cynicism forcefully scrubbed off after one too many nights shared with…

With people he loves.

And people he’s finally allowing himself to believe love him.

“Hey…” I murmur, low and intimate like only a voice carried over a pillow can be.

“Y—yes?” she says, still beaming and having trouble looking at me.

“Just how conscious do you need to be for the spell to keep working?”

She nervously licks her lips and looks at the floor of her bedroom where a pink magic circle with what very much looks like a womb crest dully pulses.

“I… Crazy Train is meant for group sex, but… but I don’t have to be conscious for it to still count as sex,” she says with what my brain chooses to interpret as a hint of an invitation.

I nod.

And then I dive.

Yunyun lets out a surprised giggle when my head brushes along the underside of her breasts, then moans when my breath seeps right past the fabric covering her belly.

Then… Then I catch between my teeth the semi-transparent cloth, and I pull, the negligee sliding up her thighs and the underside of my cock, brushing right where we would be touching one another if not for it, each thick, solid dot of black making me hold back a groan and Yunyun to let out a whimper when they glide over her clitoris until I pull all the way back and open my mouth, letting the short skirt of her negligee flutter down between us.

With my cock on the other side.

“Do you want this?” I say, still leaning away, looking up at the girl trying not to writhe against the hot shaft of hard meat between her legs.

“I always will,” she breathes out.

And I push her down.

Slowly, gradually, marveling at each shift in her expression, at yearning so intense it borders on excruciating.

At her beauty.

At Yunyun.

Yunyun, on top of me, slowly dragged down, getting closer and closer, her legs spreading to fall on either side of my own, her arms stretching to keep caressing my face with fingers that burn on my skin.

I stop and hold her steady before I’m fully inside of her just to watch her look at me with pouty reproach.

My cock throbs.

And I thrust up.

She hisses past clenched teeth, her eyes closing tightly, her back arching, her breasts rising proudly with stiff nipples tenting the light fabric.

And she’s beautiful. Too beautiful for me to endure. Too beautiful for me to do anything other than rise up and carefully bite the side of her neck, feeling the muscle pulse under my lips as her jaw opens into a silent scream.

“You are mine,” I tell her, letting out the part of me that is as crazy, as disturbed, as desperate as she can sometimes be. “You’re mine, and I’m going to spend this whole night making sure you can never forget it.”

“Please,” she says, her hands on the back of my head, pulling me back toward her wet neck. “Please don’t ever let me get away.”

I stand up only to immediately turn around, lying her back on a purple duvet that is the same one where she and Megumin were once wrapped around my cock.

Then I push. I push not only until my hips sink between and into her thighs, with Yunyun surrounding me as best as she’s able, but until she sinks into the soft mattress. Until there’s a Yunyun-shaped impression on the purple duvet, and my body lies flat over it, her breasts spread along my chest with impossible softness, the negligee doing little to disguise the feeling of the skin under it.

She breathes over my chest, and I feel it when she sniffs me, when she fills her lungs with my scent, and her folds clench around me, our juices squeezed out of the tight fit with her rhythmic convulsions.

“I… I just came,” she says, her voice barely audible. “Just a small one, but… I just came because of you being close.”

Marvel fills her tone. And it takes a lot out of me not to immediately thrust as deep as I can go. Not to rut her deeper into her bed. Not to flood her womb with rope after rope of semen that could only brand her any deeper if she stopped drinking her potions.

And then it takes a lot out of me not to say something stupid regarding those potions.

“I don’t want to fuck you unconscious, Yunyun,” I say, settling on a decision that I wasn’t able to make on my own back in the Dungeon of Bankrupt Creativity.

“You… don’t?” she says as if immensely saddened by news that could only be made any worse by Megumin finding out that a vow of chastity would improve an Explosion’s power by a fraction of a percentile point.

“No. No, I want you awake. I want you awake all through the night so you can feel and remember every single thing I’m going to do to you. I want you to walk down the street, get nervous at somebody looking at you, and then remember that, no matter what, no matter how afraid you may be of others… that you belong. That you have somewhere where you’ll always be welcome. That you have… me.”

I… I almost don’t do it. Because to understand Yunyun’s fear… because I’ve lived it. I have known what it is to be the one wondering what other people were saying. If they were laughing at me or at something unrelated, if they were…

I know.

So I almost remain where I am, her soft, warm body under mine.

But I have been that boy.

I, quite clearly, seeing as I am green, no longer am.

So I school a reassuring smile on my lips that is only as fake as the effort it takes to keep it there, and I push up until I can meet crimson eyes full of wonder and joy, and…

And love.

As hard to believe as it is. As impossible as it was for a Kazuma Satou stuck in his room with only his games to let him pretend he was living something other than the same monotonous, meaningless day over and over…

Yunyun loves me.

And this, more than anything, is proof enough that I’m no longer living in that world but in this new one. In this one full of idiocy, of outrageously poor game balance decisions, of deranged morons.

Of wonder, magic, and blessings.

And girls that love me.

I slowly saw my hips back and forth, careful not to overwhelm either of us, looking straight at her all the way, her own eyes never wavering from mine even as tenderness wars with pleasure, her hands once again reaching for my nape, her fingers interlaced behind me.

It doesn’t take long for her face to contort into another near grimace. Into something that is too beautiful for that word. Into something that is the furthest you can get from a slovenly vacuum blowjob.

“I love you,” I remind her while she cums around me.

“I… I love you… I love you too…” she struggles to speak past broken breath and unyielding moans.

So I keep moving.

I keep moving as slowly and deeply as I can, taking all but my tip out when I pull back and gradually refilling her when I go back in, doing it thoroughly enough that her eyes keep widening as she feels like I’m remolding her anew with every push.

I keep doing it until another shiver runs through her entire body, and I catch her toes curling out of the corner of my eye in a way that makes me grin without realizing it until my cheeks hurt.

“I love you,” I remind her before leaning down to lay a single kiss on her forehead even as I keep moving my hips.

“Mis—Mister… Kazuma…” she struggles to say until I smile and slowly shake my head, relieving her of her self-imposed duty to answer as her hands tremble behind my nape.

I keep moving, and she takes deep breaths that make her breasts shift between her arms, the splotch of red staining the upper part of the full globes reaching up to her neck and slowly fading until her eyes refocus and her mouth opens with purpose rather than desperation:

“I love you, Mister Kazuma,” she says, composed enough to shoot the words right through my heart. To make me believe her like I wouldn’t have months ago.

To fill the world with that little bit more of magic.

I kiss her. I kiss her like I want her to wake up with a true love’s kiss. Like I want to convey to her everything that I can’t with mere words, with just the things that often are so hard for her and that I always shield myself from. I kiss her with varying softness and depth, from brief caresses going side to side over her pink lips to deep massages of her mouth and tongue reaching down to her throat.

I kiss her while I keep slowly making love to her, studiously trying not to cross the line all my instincts demand I do. Struggling to keep myself from going just a bit faster, just a bit harder. From bouncing her curvy body along this bed where I first discovered that I could love seeing girls I love be with one another, even if it’s all still so new and raw that that love can hurt.

I kiss her.

And she kisses me back.

Every bit as attentive as I am. Every bit as thorough. As devoted to passing along something other than the sweet taste of her saliva and the thrilling sound of her moans. To make me feel what words… what words still do because they aren’t words I have gotten used to.

Because they are words that once were only on the other side of the screen, filling text boxes with a blue background, and are now…

Hers.

Mine.

“Hn!” She writhes when I push that bit deeper and hold still, grinding my pelvis against hers, holding myself above her just to watch her as she can’t help herself and her eyes close only for her to hurry to open them back up and desperately search for mine, her face melting into an incredulous smile when she finds me looking back.

A silly smile. A smile trembling at the edges, filled with enough emotions that it keeps shifting, shrinking, and growing with her eyes opening in wide marvel or narrowing in sheer delight.

A smile that mirrors my own.

Another kiss. Another kiss filled with all the things I don’t have the skill to say because I’ve yet to track down a bard that can add eloquence to my character sheet. A kiss to tell her that I love her, that I want her, that I’ll never leave her, that I’ll always listen rapturously to her unhinged rants and declarations and barely refrain from making my own. A kiss that keeps going as I move in and out, my movements shortening without speeding up and always ending in a twist of my hips against hers even as I try and fail to keep my breathing steady.

“Do it,” she demands when I give her just enough space to do so. “Give it to me. Warm me up inside.”

I pull back, one hand on either side of her head, her short hair spread over purple silk, her forehead dewed with sweat, her cheeks almost as red as her eyes.

“I love you,” I say.

And, before she can answer with anything other than joy so pure it hurts, I finally let go of something I’ve been struggling to hold back and push.

Her jaw clenches, the muscles on the side of her face trembling as her lips purse, and her breasts quiver with the vibration coming from between her legs as I push, and push, and rub my tip just as deep as I can reach, fire roaring in my belly, demanding to be let out, to fill Yunyun with all that I can give her…

And I do.

The first jet of it catches me by surprise with its mind-blanking strength, and I open my eyes to find myself panting harshly above her, my weight on my elbows rather than on my hands, her mouth open in silent supplication for more.

I give it to her.

I roar as liquid lightning pours out of me and inside of her. As every shudder of my hips has my rigid cock spasm inside of her. As I keep coming inside Yunyun, uncaring of each burst of our own juices pushing past her lower lips when she’s too full and her belly visibly swells, her eyes rolling back as her fingers desperately cling to my nape and her stiff nipples quiver atop her bouncing breasts, my eyes filling alternatively with the whiteness of my mind being overwhelmed and the pink and crimson of admiring the woman responsible for it.

The woman that I’m giving all my warmth to.

“I love you!” she yells before she laughs. Before she lets herself go, her body arching off the bed, quivering in ways that translate to the warm flesh wrapped around my cock. That pull at me, demanding more, pleading with me to give her all the love she deserves. All the warmth she always deserved.

And, with a last push and grind, with a last spurt of fire, I collapse on top of her, panting and gasping as the woman under my chest does.

We stay there, soaking her duvet with sweat, the room smelling like sex almost more than it did when it was me, two girls, and a goddess in here, and I only manage to roll away when a hand weakly taps my chest so that I instinctively wrap my arms around her to bring her along and have her lying disheveled on top of me, her soft cheek rubbing on my chest as I lie on my back, looking up at the canopy of her vampiric bed as I realize that it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever meet a vampire able to drain me as completely as Yunyun is capable of doing.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Even if… thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

Something burns in my throat, and my hands possessively clutch at her back and nape, pulling her against me until her surprised yelp turns into a giggle.

“Thank you,” I finally manage to answer. “Thank you for being you.”

We then drop into a silence of slowing breaths, and…

And I know this reprieve can’t last. That I am still going to do a lot of things to her before the night’s over just to keep her group sex spell going, allowing the other Kazumas to do whatever it is they are going to do on their many, many first dates while Yunyun and I are not on one.

But I am not jealous. Not of them. Not of the Kazumas that will give me their memories as soon as the magic breaks. Of the boys likely fumbling around and trying not to fall back on 4Chan’s guidance.

I am not jealous at all. Not after making love to the girl making it all possible.

I sit up, holding her against me as I incorporate, both of us sinking deeper into her soft mattress when our weight shifts, my hand protectively cradling the back of her head, soft black hair caressing my palm.

I bend down to kiss the crown of her head, to brush my lips over that short hair held in twin pigtails and the braid running across the top of her head like a tiara. To silently tell her what I will repeat to her every time that she cums tonight, cringy as it might sound. Clingy as it may be. Desperate as it may look.

Sincere as it is.

And, as she makes wordless noises and hugs me as tightly as trembling arms allow her to, my gaze unwillingly falls back to the pink gem sitting on a bedside table, glowing with a pulse slightly faster than the magic circle of Crazy Train.

The thing recording all of this that, supposedly, a bikini-clad succubus will pay us a small fortune for, enough that tonight’s spread of first dates and what comes after should pay for a broken bridge’s repairs.

I resent its mere existence and presence. Its reminder that this is something that somebody other than Yunyun and I will ever witness.

It sucks.

RPG’s economies suck. Dating mechanics suck.

I guess that’s why we so often rely on the recollection room once we manage to get through them.

 

 

 

==========================

Well, this should have been last month’s update, but…

Okay, as it turns out? The next chapter? It’s Wiz-focused. And (among too many other fetishes) hypno-themed. And more than 10k words long.

It took… a while.

The bright side is that I’m currently exhausted enough that I shouldn’t have any issues sleeping tonight. This means I’m going to bed as soon as this is posted, and then I’ll likely be comatose until it’s no longer International Worker’s Day anywhere on the planet.

A day that I, ironically, spent working. Hope yours was better than mine, and, if it wasn’t, I hope this will improve it. For now, I’ll leave you with the promise of another update before May’s over. See ya!

As always, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!