Chapter 5
Inkiri, after whisking off my backpack and putting it down against the wall in the living room, took me back to the mattresses where Lissir was once more engrossed in his manga.
Fellisse, the biggest of the five, sat cross-legged on the floor between me and the sliding glass door Inkiri had brought me in through. So much for an easy exit.
“I didn’t mean to make you run,” Fellisse said. “But you are really quite safe here, with us.” He grinned. “And if Inki isn’t the type of mate you are looking for—”
Lissir glanced up at Fellisse and said something in their language.
Then he turned to me. “Fellisse is being an idiot. You will like Inkiri. He’s always been interested in human customs, ever since he was young.
” Lissir tilted his head, leaning his horns toward me.
They were smaller than Inkiri’s, definitely smaller than Fellisse’s, but still impressive.
“I can vouch for him being a competent lover, if that’s a concern. ”
No, no it hadn’t been. Who even knew if the parts fit? I certainly hadn’t thought about…parts. Or their fit. I was thinking about it now though, and my cheeks were heating.
“I can’t be monster-married, I just can’t be,” I said. Out loud. Lissir tilted his head in the other direction, his fiery eyes still on me, and I went on. “So you and he, huh? What’s this, some…some harem thing you’ve got going? Looking for a novel type of harem bride on a new world?”
I was a second away from telling them I would suck in the sack on account of my severe lack of experience. But for once, the brain’s quality control unit was on the ball, and I stopped talking. No one needed to know that I was untouched in all the ways that mattered.
Fellisse made his clicking noises while Lissir asked, “What is a harem? Is that your word for an intimate romantic family?”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye just before someone else spoke.
“It’s when one of them, usually a man, gathers several women in order to control and repeatedly impregnate them.
It’s one of the ultimate power fantasies of the patriarchy.
” The sneaky one who’d kept me from leaving, Vergis, folded his tall body into a kind of lotus position on the floor to my left, kitty-corner from Fellisse.
“Rulers of the past used to do that as a display of power, and some religions still favor the practice. The women are usually severely limited in where they can go, what they can do, whom they can talk to, even what they can think.”
He sounded terribly judgmental. Like, I wasn’t a fan of the patriarchy either, and nor did I think harems were a good idea—apart from the ones I’d read about when I’d been comfort reading things on the internet.
Putting a group of movie superheroes in a harem simply made me feel warm and fuzzy, and there was nothing wrong with that.
At any rate, Vergis gave me a dose of razor cool side-eye before ignoring me.
I knew I had to watch out for that one the most. Apart from being sneaky, he also didn’t fit in with the rest of them, who wore those fancy all-black outfits, apart from Nokim.
Vergis was very human looking in his combat pants and hoodie—apart from the horns, of course. I wondered why he dressed that way.
Not that I really cared. I should probably be focused on leaving. I should not be getting interested or even involved, not even in the most platonic sense of the word.
Lissir tilted his head back and forth, his eyes still on me.
“If that’s what a harem is, then no, that’s not it at all.
It was just a few times with me and Inkiri, and anyway, I thought you didn’t have a uterus?
If most harem arrangements require that…
I don’t understand why human women let one man control them?
Wouldn’t it be easier, if the mating wasn’t of your choice and if you were in a group with other women, to simply… sakkir?” He looked at Vergis.
Vergis clicked his tongue, not to make the soothing noise, but one more like what a human would make. “It translates to cutting off his horns. But he means basically murdering him. And cutting off his dick at some point in the process.”
The fact that it didn’t bother me that the topic we were discussing had gone from uterus to cutting off dicks was telling. I needed a break. There were no breaks from the apocalypse, but boy, did I ever need one.
“There are laws against that sort of thing.” I sounded confident, then recalled reality. “Or, there were laws against that sort of thing.”
Lissir raised one eyebrow in a very human way. “Laws against…hareming humans with uteruses?”
“Ah, erm, no. Cutting off dicks. You’re not supposed to cut off any dicks.” Go me. That would teach them. I wished furiously that I had the social graces to change topics easily.
Lissir did the head tilt again. “But it is fine to harem a person?”
I felt unfairly put on the spot here. I glanced at Vergis. Who was smirking. He’d turned this whole conversation on its head so it would bite me in the ass, and I was pretty sure he’d done it intentionally. Not that it mattered, since I wasn’t going to stick around, but I really didn’t like him.
“It’s… ‘Harem’ isn’t a verb. And I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s unfair, but at some point, people with penises made laws for everyone.
Or something.” I’d never been good at explaining complicated concepts either.
Several of my teachers had told me that.
They had encouraged me to focus on theater, which really should’ve clued me in to what they really thought about me.
“I’m really not good at making this make sense…
just, you know. Uteri and penises should be equal.
” I blushed when that memorable quote blossomed from my mouth with all the oratory grace of…
well. I was just a guy talking to monsters.
Asking for grace was a bit much in this situation.
The silence was thick, and I could feel the three of them staring. I was pretty sure Vergis was enjoying my discomfort.
“Is ‘uteri’ a plural and a word in your peculiar dialect?” Lissir finally asked. In a very tactful manner. Especially for an otaku who didn’t need a costume to cosplay.
“It is a peculiar dialect, but so similar to yours, Vergis.” Fellisse seemed happy to jump on the tactful train.
“Sure, peculiar uteri dialect.” That was just one more reason for my English teacher to hate me. Vergis’s smirk had grown like a festering wound.
Another long stretch of silence followed.
“Humans are so odd,” Lissir finally said. He looked away again and turned a page in his manga.
As if on cue, Inkiri came back into the room carrying a plate with a sandwich and some potato chips on the side. It looked like regular, normal food. I hadn’t expected to see that here.
Inkiri sat on the couch-mattress between me and Lissir and handed me the food with both hands. He was so close I could feel the warmth of him. He’d taken off his swords.
“Here. I thought some food might make you feel better.”
The sandwich did smell nice, and I hadn’t eaten anything all day.
After all, the plan had been to raid the department store, then find a place for the night, then get some rest and food.
Meeting monsters and talking about penises and harems with them had decidedly not been the plan.
Nor had the part where I’d almost gotten eaten in a changing room.
I shivered. Inkiri made those clicking sounds as if he’d actually noticed my discomfort.
Despite everything, I was hungry, so I threw caution to the wind and took the plate from him. The chips seemed safest, so I crunched down on those.
They were just regular salted ones, but so damn good.
I hadn’t had chips in ages. But with everyone in the room watching me, I definitely recalled H?nsel and Gretel, specifically the part where one of them was being fattened up for dinner.
I stopped mid-chew and looked from one strange face to another.
“What?” I asked with my mouth full.
Nokim, the one wearing taupe instead of black, leaned around the corner from the hallway as if he’d been hiding there but listening.
“Doesn’t he like that? I can make something else. In fact—” Nokim approached and began staring like the rest of them.
“This isn’t good?” Inkiri said. He was leaning in and sniffing the air. Or the food. Or me. Something. “Would you prefer something else? Tell me what you want, sweet thing.”
I swallowed finally. “Why are you all watching me?”
“Who else should we be watching?” Fellisse asked. “Why wouldn’t we watch him? I don’t understand.”
“He was scared we’d eat him, and you didn’t help with your greeting.” Inkiri sounded more upset than angry.
Fellisse crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What? Because I said I smelled human? I did smell him, for your information.”
Lissir hummed. “I like his scent. It’s a good scent.” He added something in their language.
Inkiri growled.
“Wait, I’m confused.” Nokim stepped closer. “I thought Inki had felt his mate call draw him to Rory? If we’re all smelling him, I want to smell him too. You all know my sense of nose isn’t that good.”
Mate call? That didn’t sound good.
Vergis clicked his tongue, again more in the way I would, not like when Inkiri did it. “It’s ‘sense of smell.’” He added something in their language, looking increasingly amused.
Nokim tilted his head left and right. “Well, then I want to use my sense of smell on him if we all get to do that.”
And without further ado, he stepped around the others, moving like a dancer, reached for the hand I’d picked up the chips with, and smelled my wrist. He was not subtle about it, and his breath tickled the sensitive skin there.
It wasn’t intimate exactly. It was plenty weird though. The air in the room seemed to become alive with static.
“Uhm.” I froze. I looked at Inkiri, who’d leaned in closer yet again and was making low rumbling noises deep in his chest. The guy was so close, he was pretty much wrapped around me like a blue tortilla. His slitted pupils were blown, and he looked only at me.
Lissir looked at Nokim with what even I could see was shock. “Why would you behave so lewdly?”
I liked Lissir. I decided I liked him a lot when he stood and pulled Nokim away from me before slapping his arm with his manga. He then tried the same with Inkiri, but whereas Nokim had allowed himself to be moved, Inkiri didn’t budge an inch.
Lissir clicked at Inkiri and said something in their language. Inkiri did finally lean back, but his eyes were still intense, as if he needed to communicate something that I simply didn’t understand. Lissir waved for me to come with him and took the hand Nokim had been smelling.
I wished I had the fortitude of character to have left the food there, but no.
I was not leaving that plate behind, wherever we were going.
It was food someone else had made for me, and despite my mistrust, it looked really yummy.
It also smelled good, and not just the fatty, salty chips that I desperately wanted to shove into my mouth by the handful and crunch down on.
“And you are coming as well.” Lissir tapped Vergis’s knee with a foot as we passed.
“Shame. This was cringeworthy to watch.” Vergis unfolded himself and stood up before following me and Lissir like a horned shadow.
I thought I could feel Inkiri’s eyes on me, and a look over my shoulder confirmed it. A shiver ran down my back, and it wasn’t fear. Not once in my life had anyone ever looked at me like that. Like they wanted me. Wanted to ravish me. Hard.