Chapter Ten #2
“I still don’t want to hurt you because of what I am.
Ettore and Jin Woo have ideas about how Renai and non-Renai can be together without the non-Renai being harmed, but I don’t know,” he trailed off.
For the first time since he started speaking, he looked away from me, staring into nothing as if trying to solve an overly complex puzzle.
He looked at me again with frank, vulnerable eyes, “and I don’t know, I don’t want to presume that you would even want to be close to me anymore. ”
Of course I did. Even if I didn’t crave him, like I craved oxygen, even if I was angry at him, even if adult Oskar was someone whom I truly didn’t know, I still wanted him. I’d rather not die of depression or whatever the consequences of being with one of the Renai were, but we could at least try.
“You are stuck with me, and I’m stuck with you, Oskar.” I told him as I sat up on the boulder and threw my legs over the side of the rock, “Catch me.”
I didn’t give him the time to protest. I slid off the side of the boulder and into his arms, and he caught me as I knew he would, as I knew he always would.
I looked up into his beautiful face, feeling strong arms around me, and felt more at home than I had in years.
Savouring the moment, I closed my eyes, letting the feeling wash over me.
I let it settle my sharp edges and mend the little chips and cracks in my soul for a long moment.
Pulling away, feeling settled for the first time in a long time, I smiled up at Oskar, feeling a too-wide grin creep up, my facial muscles complaining.
“Let’s go find the others. We need to talk, and I can only let them mope about for so long.”
And Oskar smiled like he had always smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, an almost supernatural happy glow around him.
“Oh, so you knew that they were pouting,” he joked, lightly brushing his shoulder against mine in a familiar movement.
I tossed my head.
“Of course, why do you think that I was up on that boulder? I like a clear view of everything that is mine, aggravating men included.”
His laughter rang out in loud peals.
***
I was thoroughly sick of the cabin, but on the westerly side of the pasture, there were a couple of large flat rocks that were surrounded by moss and covered in lichen.
That’s where we sat, a lively fire on a rock in the center.
I sat on one of the less flat rocks, slightly above the guys, and I lounged on it like it was a throne.
Oskar sat to my right, and the rest of them were arrayed mostly in front of me.
They all wore expressions that ranged from acceptance to worry.
I cleared my throat loudly before I began speaking, not that I needed to grab their attention.
“Need for secrecy or not, it was quite cruel to let me believe that you all were going to die. I have decided to forgive you for that, but I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us.
I’ll be frank and honest with you, and if you agree, you’ll be frank and honest with me too.
Are we in agreement?” I asked them, Bartosz was nodding before I even stopped speaking, and so was Jin Woo, but Ettore was looking at me seriously.
“I agree to be forthcoming with my secrets, but not with the secrets that are not mine to tell.”
“Fine,” I agreed. I wondered if he had a law degree; there was a charming level of pedantry in him.
Once that was settled, I leaned back onto my hands, looking them over.
“I’d like to speak about two things,” this was the awkward part, they were on the wrong foot, as they felt guilty, but being this transparent still felt too vulnerable, a slicing of my side and baring my flesh and bone to them, “do you want to keep in contact after we leave here?” knowing that would allow me to plan, to structure the time we had here, and, honestly, find a way to numb the sting of rejection that I knew I would feel.
“Ettore and I would like you to become our partner,” Jin Woo said directly.
My jaw dropped open so abruptly and so aggressively that I heard my jaw click.
“Really?” I couldn’t help but say, “but...”
Ettore interrupted smoothly.
“I had meant for it to be brought up with more tact,” he shot an exasperated look at his fiancé, “but we adore you, and would love to have you in our life long-term,”
“Forever,” Jin Woo interjected with a wide smile on his face.
“Forever,” Ettore repeated.
I couldn’t be more shocked if they had slapped me in the face with a prize-winning trout.
“But what about, well, everything,” I said, “ your responsibilities, and wait–I’m not Renai. What has changed to make it so that I can now be with Renai men?”
Jin Woo’s face was serious, “Most likely, your adverse reaction to being around a Renai for so long was due to being so young, you would have to be carefully monitored, all of us would, and you would probably would have to take a couple of long vacations away from us a year, two or three weeks each to be careful, but we could make it work if you wouldn’t be against it. ”
“Renai, due to our possessiveness and the way our relationships work, tend to marry or formally mate shortly after they meet and click, but since you are not Renai, we could date if that would work, or visit you wherever you live, or have this conversation when we are not shipwrecked,” Ettore finished.
Jin Woo was twitching, obviously on the ‘live with them forever starting now’ side of things.
“I think I would like that,” I said slowly, “but-” I glanced at Oskar, who didn’t look particularly annoyed.
“You forget naekkeo, that Renai relationships are larger than normal human ones are, Oskar would be more than welcome. Ettore has always had a thing for redheads.”
Ettore winked exaggeratedly at Oskar, who only smirked.
“Bartosz could come too if he promised not to be an asshole,” Jin Woo finished.
“Of course he wouldn’t be an asshole,” I said, “I wouldn’t let him be.”
“You’d want me too?” Bartosz’s eyes were wide.
I held back a joke about how I needed to complete the set; Bartosz obviously needed to know that he was just as wanted as the other men.
“Of course, Bartosz.” I smiled at him, and his shoulders relaxed in something like relief.
I looked at Oskar, not quite asking permission, but sinking back into the state where we were part of each other. Of course, you would want to use both parts of your brain when you have an important decision to make.
He knew exactly what question I was asking.
“I think that this is a good plan, I am Renai after all, and I want you to have the best, and they’re pretty good.”
“Pretty good?” Bartosz scoffed, once again full of confidence.
Oskar shrugged.
“I haven’t really noticed you at the conferences, but I know that even Renai women with full beds have tried to get Ettore and Jin Woo to join them.”
Jin Woo blushed in light embarrassment, while Ettore just looked smug.
“Is that where you all were heading? To some type of Renai conference?”
“Yeah, but it’s basically a matchmaking conference,” Oskar answered, “basically, all male Renai who are unattached and of marriageable age are required to attend. Female Renai with two or fewer partners are also required to attend. After World War One, our numbers got quite thin,”
“World War One, also our fault,” Bartosz added.
“So the conference became mandatory to make sure that we don’t go extinct. Our numbers are steadily climbing up, but it’s slow going.”
“Hmm. So the people at the conference know that you were en route, yes?”
I asked.
“Yes, exactly, and even male Renai are valuable since there are so few of us, so there’s a chance that the Renai searchers will find us sooner than the Norwegian coast guard,” Oskar responded.
A thought hit me.
“They won’t be happy with me being together with you, will they?”
Jin Woo was all black ice and intensity.
“Leave that to us.”
“I personally think that you may have some Renai blood in you,” Ettore mused, before Jin Woo checked him hard on the shoulder.
“Don’t listen to him, Mina. Every female Renai is obsessively tracked; it’s crazy, you have to basically report anyone you have sex with, and they track them for ten months to make sure they don’t have your child.
Every living female Renai in the world has attended MacBeir school in Scotland unless they were incredibly ill.
The idea that there would be an unidentified female Renai would be inconceivable. ”
“So there aren’t a lot of mixed human-Renai people out there?” I asked
“No, it’s incredibly hard for a Renai and a non-Renai to have children; most Renai are 95 plus percent Renai, and all Renai genes are dominant. It’s very much that you are either Renai or not, there isn’t really a gradient.”
Ettore didn’t seem sold, but he didn’t contradict Jin Woo.
Plus, how could I have been Renai? My parents had gotten divorced almost immediately, which didn’t seem like a Renai thing to do.
For a moment, I had hoped that I was Renai, so everything would go easier, but I should have known getting shipwrecked in the twenty-first century was weird enough; being some secret Renai princess would be like being struck by lightning twice.
The ‘after-this-place’, the fuzzy possibility of something good coming, was solidifying into something exciting, one conversation at a time.
It made my stomach toss as it used to when I was at the starting line of a cross-country race, anticipation and trepidation mixing and separating within me like balsamic dressing.