More sobbing echoed around the room. That must have been Eric, Kevin realized. Alex and Andrew glared some more. The cat switched its glaring and hissing from the auburn-haired Andrew to Lilian.
“Munya-munya-munya… zzzz….”
All the while, Lilian slept on, oblivious to the going ons around her.
***
It took Kevin a good deal of time, effort, and shaking to wake up Lilian. Every time he thought the girl was stirring awake, it was only so she could snuggle closer to him. It felt nice. Really nice. But she needed to wake up, and he was growing uncomfortable with the glaring and sobbing of his friends, especially the sobbing.
Thankfully, Lilian did eventually wake up. She stretched her body underneath the covers, rubbing against him in all sorts of delicious ways. Then she reached up with her right fist and cutely rubbed her sleepy green eyes. Only after she’d done all that did she grace him with a smile.
“Morning, Kevin.”
She tilted her head up to kiss him on the lips. In spite of his embarrassment, Kevin found that he could do nothing more than kiss back.
Dang it. These lips should be considered illegal.
Hissing interrupted them.
Kevin could only watch in shock as the cat leapt at his girlfriend and attacked her with sharp claws.
Lilian squealed in pain as her face was scratched.
“KYA!”
She and the cat fell off the bed, hitting the floor with a dull thud, where they began to fight. They rolled all over the carpet, clawing and hissing and biting. Even Lilian got into the fight. She didn’t even seem to realize that she was picking a fight with a cat.
“You stupid cat! Get off me!”
“NYA!”
“GYA! My face! This thing’s scratching up my face!”
Kevin knew that he should stop this before it got ugly—uglier—but he wasn’t sure how to do that. While trying to figure out the most efficient method of stopping this catfight, he noticed that Lilian’s clothes were getting cut up by the cat’s claws.
“Damn, that’s hot,” Alex said. Kevin twitched as blood dripped down his friend’s nose.
“You said it,” Andrew agreed. He was also suffering from massive combustion of the nasal cavities. “Who knew a catfight with an actual cat could be so sexy.”
“Stop nosebleeding over my girlfriend!”
Several seconds later, Alex and Andrew were unconscious with two large bumps the size of Texas on their heads. Kevin stood over them, a vein throbbing on his forehead and the fists that he’d used to render his friends insensate shaking in rage.
“Stupid, dirty perverts.” Snickering brought his attention to Justin. “You wanna have my fists in your face too?” Justin stopped laughing. He shook his head. “Then shut up.”
He turned back to Lilian and the cat. “Ha… how am I supposed to make them stop? Eh?”
Sob.
Kevin twitched.
Sob, sob.
The sobbing continued. Kevin didn’t know how long the pervert had been crying for, but Eric was huddling over in a corner, his face turned to the wall. His body was wracked with shaking as he bawled and sniffled like a baby whose toy had been taken away.
“Ha! Think you’ve got the upper hand on me, do you? Take this!”
Lilian grabbed ahold of the cat’s tail and bit down. Hard.
“NYA! Nya! Nya, nya, nya!”
“Gya! My boob! You just scratched my boob!”
Sob, sob.
“What’s your problem?” Kevin asked his friend.
“I… I’ve just realized…” Sob, sniffle, sob. “How… unworthy I am… to be in your presence…”
Kevin twitched some more. Lilian and the cat continued fighting. Eric continued crying. The twins were still unconscious. The only one of his friends acting even remotely normal was Justin, and he was supposed to be the most abnormal of them all.
He buried his face in his hands. He didn’t cry like Eric, but he certainly felt like doing so.
“Where did my wonderfully normal life go?” Kevin asked no one in particular.
***
Kevin eventually forced Lilian and the cat to stop fighting. By the time he’d done it, both looked like they’d been through a dry tumbler. Lilian’s hair was a mess, her body was littered with cuts and scratches, and her clothes were ruined. The cat looked more like a giant ball of fuzz than a cat.
After wrapping his girlfriend up in a blanket (because there was no way he would let her walk in front of people practically naked), they wandered into the girls’ bedroom. Lilian had somehow managed to convince him to take a shower with her.
The girls were all still asleep. Miraculously. He thought the noise they’d made across the hall would have woken them. With Lilian’s hand clasping his, the gorgeous kitsune pulled him into the small restroom.
Much like the restroom that he shared with the other boys, this one barely had enough room for three people to stand in together. A toilet sat opposite the door. The tub took up the entire wall to their left. A small sink on their right held the girls’ toiletries, which Kevin noticed there was a lot more of than what he and his guy friends had. He shook his head.
Girls.
Only when the water was sufficiently hot and steam began expanding throughout the room did they step into the shower together.
A part of Kevin wondered how he could remain so calm while standing in the shower naked with an equally naked and absolutely stunning girl, rubbing and caressing and fondling her body with his soap-covered hands as she did the same to him. A part of him chalked it up to experience, but really, that couldn’t be all there was to it, right?
“This is kind of exciting, don’t you think?” Lilian asked as he washed her back.
“What?” Kevin blinked. “Oh, yeah, exciting. Right.”
“Something’s wrong.” Lilian turned around and pouted at him. Her breasts smashed into his chest. “You’re not even paying attention to me.”
“O-of course I’m paying attention to you.” Kevin tried to maintain eye contact, but it was so hard. His eyes kept dipping below her face, and every time they did, his lower body became stiffer.
A smile lit Lilian’s face. It was such an innocent and happy expression that it looked out of place on her—well, it wouldn’t have normally looked out of place, but she was currently naked. Innocents and nudity didn’t go well together unless you were talking about a baby.
Kevin almost bit his tongue when Lilian wrapped her arms around him. He could feel her, all of her. It was electric.
“L-Lilian?”
“Thank you for going along with my selfish request,” she murmured. “I know you’re uncomfortable doing stuff like this when we’re with our friends.”
Kevin felt Lilian shaking against him, and he realized that she was still afraid of what happened last night. Calming down, he wrapped his arms around her waist and nuzzled her fox ears with his nose.
“Don’t mention it. I’ll always be here for you. You know that.”
“I know. Thank you.”
Lilian eventually broke away from him, and they finished washing off.
They had just stepped out of the shower and were drying off, when the handle turned.
They looked at each other and froze.
They had forgotten to lock the door!
The door opened and in walked a bleary-eyed Christine. The girl’s sleep ensemble was surprisingly fitting: black pajama bottoms, black oversized shirt, and black socks. She cutely rubbed her tired eyes with her left hand. Her other hand held the stuffed Umbreon that Kevin had gotten for her at the arcade. She opened her mouth in a wide yawn, and it soon became clear that she was not fully awake, which explained why she hadn’t noticed their presence yet.
“Mmm…”
It wasn’t until several seconds of standing in the bathroom, allowing her eyes to slowly pry themselves open, that the girl realized she was not alone.
She froze. The slow widening of her eyes expresse
d her sudden awareness at her situational altercation more than words ever could. She stared at Kevin and Lilian, the naked Kevin and Lilian, for several long, silent seconds.
“Um.” Kevin tried to think of something he could say that would get them out of this predicament. “I'm sure you're wondering about this, um, situation. However, let me assure you that there is a perfectly logical and non-sexual reason Lilian and I are like this.”
“Really, Beloved? Do you honestly think she's going to buy that?”
Kevin shrugged. “It's worth a shot.”
Christine’s face froze over in a full-blown yuki-onna blush. Then she screamed.
“KYA!”
“Whoa!” the shout came from both Lilian and Kevin, as several dozen shards of ice tried to impale them.
“FUCKING PERVERTS! DIE!”
***
Lindsay was jerked awake by a scream.
“FUCKING PERVERTS! DIE!”
It wasn’t the kind of scream one heard often. Sitting up, she turned to where she’d heard the scream come from. She was just in time to see a naked Kevin and Lilian fly out of the restroom like two bats out of hell. Several appliances chased after them, and more screaming came from inside of the bathroom.
“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU TWO THINKING?! BUNCH OF FREAKING PERVERTS!”
“Hey, that’s rude! I am not a pervert!” Lilian shouted—only to squeal and duck when a razor blade flew from the bathroom.
That’s one of mine, Lindsay absentmindedly realized. She was still trying to process what she was seeing.
“GYYYAAAA!” came a scream from inside the bathroom.
“Holy crap!” Kevin shouted as he and Lilian suddenly ducked underneath…
And that’s a kitchen sink…
Lindsay spent several more seconds watching the duo dodge everything from small household appliances to kitchen sinks and toilets. Then she lay back down, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep.
It was way too early to deal with whatever was happening right now.
***
The walk to breakfast that morning was awkward, incredibly so. Kevin tried to ignore the stares at his back, the sobs coming from Eric, the chortles from Kotohime, the still shocked looks from Lindsay, and the eyes drilling a hole through his head from Christine. He attempted to pretend they didn’t exist, but couldn’t. How could he after everything that had happened?
Iris wasn’t helping.
“So, let me see if I’m getting this right. After waking up, Lilian got in a fight with the furball here.” Said furball hissed as she strode imperiously on all fours alongside Kevin. Despite having clearly spent a good deal of time and effort combing her fur coat, the black cat still looked like a ball of fluff. “You and Lily-pad—”
“Don’t call me—oh, forget it!”
“—decided to take a shower together,” Iris continued, “and you decided to use the girls’ shower for your sexy shenanigans.”
At the sight of her grin, Kevin could only blush. “I didn’t want Eric and the others trying to peep on Lilian,” he mumbled lowly.
“Okay, I can understand that,” Iris conceded. “No one wants that pervert ogling Lilian, least of all me.”
“Hey!” said pervert sounded insulted.
“So, yeah, I guess I can understand. But…” her grin widened. “… Did it never occur to you that you could’ve used the showers by the hot spring? Heck! You two could have gone into the hot springs together and had your sexy times there.”
Kevin and Lilian looked at each other. Their stunned expressions were mirrored by the other. Why hadn’t they thought of that?
“I… didn’t think we were allowed.” Lilian still seemed shocked by her sister’s ingenious solution to this morning’s problem. “The women’s showers are separated from the men’s showers, aren’t they?”
“So?” Iris didn’t see the problem. “It’s not like anyone else is awake to use them at this time.”
She had them there.
“She’s got you there.”
There you go. Thank you, Lindsay.
“… Shut up.”
“Ufufufu.”
“You too, Kotohime.”
After taking the elevator down to the first floor, they entered a hallway, which eventually expanded into a large room. Four-seater tables were situated in the center. To their immediate left, a number of booths lay pressed against the wall. On the other side, a currently empty bar could be seen.
Kiara was already awake and sitting at one of the booths facing them, a cup of what Kevin presumed was coffee sitting in front of her. Heather was also awake, but she looked half-dead. As the one-armed woman spotted them, she waved the group over.
“Good to see all of you are awake. Kotohime, did you find out what all that noise was about?”
Hiding her lips behind the sleeve of her kimono, Kotohime chortled. “Ufufufu, indeed I did.”
“But you’re not gonna tell me, right?” When Kotohime merely maintained her smile, Kiara shook her head, seemingly amused. “I figured as much.”
“What’s up with Master?” asked Eric.
“Nggg…”
“She’s not a morning person,” Kiara answered simply.
Kevin and Lilian slid into the booth on the opposite side of the two adults, while Kotohime sat with Kiara. The others arranged themselves at various tables. The cat prowled around on the ground, rubbing itself against Kevin’s legs.
“Scooch over, boya.” Iris also made herself comfortable. Lilian and Kevin were squished together, which they didn’t really mind, until the red-haired vixen’s sister draped herself over Kevin.
“Iris…” Lilian’s voice contained a hint of warning.
“Oh, relax, I’m not gonna do anything to him,” Iris said, spreading herself out over the two of them. With her head in Lilian’s lap, Iris grinned like a sexual deviant. “Hey, I can’t see your face from down here.”
Lilian twitched.
A waitress soon came to take their order. Kevin went with simple eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Kotohime ordered a breakfast burrito and Iris a yogurt parfait. Kiara decided to have the breakfast special, which consisted of enough food to fill up an elephant. Lilian…
“I want waffles!” The redhead declared. “And I want them to have blueberries, bananas, strawberries, whipped cream, powdered sugar, and a lot of syrup!”
“That girl…” Christine growled. “Listen to her. How can she eat something with so much sugar and not get fat?”
“It probably all goes to her chest,” Lindsay lamented. She looked down at her modestly-sized chest and bemoaned her fate. “Some girls get all the luck… and the best genetics.”
When the waitress left, Kiara put her elbow on the table and used her hand as a headrest. “So, I think we should keep our eyes on the lookout while we’re at the beach, just in case.”
“You suspect Lilian-sama’s attacker from last night may try something again?” Kotohime wove a simple illusion around their table. It wouldn’t do for the other humans they were with to overhear this conversation.
Kiara nodded. “The way you two—” she pointed at Iris and Lilian. “—described her reminds me of an assassin. Assassins never let their targets get away. She’ll strike again for sure. We’ll need to be ready for anything.”
Kevin and Lilian shared a look. Neither of them were pleased with this assassin business, but they also wondered why an assassin would be after Lilian. While she was a member of the Pnév̱ma Clan, that didn’t make her a high-profile target for assassins. If anything, Camellia should have been a more tempting target, since she had five tails. Then again, her mind had regressed to that of a child, so she didn’t pose much of a threat.
“I’m still not sure I understand why this assassin is going after Lilian,” Kevin said. “I mean, if they wanted to hurt the Pnév̱ma Clan, there are other targets they could go after that would be more damaging to them in the long run.”
“Now that’s just rude.” Iris defended h
er lovely Lily-pad. “You make it sound like she’s not an important target.”
Lilian blinked her big green eyes. “But I’m not.”
“Lilian!”
“From a purely objective standpoint, Lilian-sama and Kevin-sama are indeed correct, Iris-sama,” Kotohime supplied. “In the grand scheme of things, Lilian-sama’s importance to the Pnév̱ma Clan as a whole is minimal at best, especially as Lilian-sama’s refusal to mate with Jiāoào-san has effectively nullified whatever political advantage she could have provided for the clan.”
“Don’t expect me to apologize,” Lilian declared.
Kotohime smiled. “I would never expect you to apologize, Lilian-sama, not when you’re in the right. I was merely stating the facts. Your most important role was to mate with Jiāoào-san, or another noble from the Shénshèng Clan, in order to build an alliance between the two great clans of Pnév̱ma and Shénshèng. Now that you have disgraced Jiāoào-san by refusing to mate with him and choosing a human instead, an alliance with the Shénshèng Clan, or any clan that has expressed an interest in you, has vanished.”
“Do you think that’s why she’s being targeted?” theorized Kiara. “Maybe one of her siblings or the matriarch felt she was a liability and decided to make her disappear.”
A heavy silence settled on the group. The idea of family hiring an assassin to go after their own kin was anathema to Kevin. However, with the idea implanted into his mind, the possibility suddenly seemed much more real.
Lilian shivered, which caused Kevin to wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her close.
“Pnév̱ma-denka would never hire an assassin to dispose of someone from her own clan,” Kotohime dismissed Kiara’s theory. “It’s not her style. Nor would she let a member of her clan hire an assassin to kill her granddaughter. If one of them did do this, it wouldn’t matter how far up in the hierarchy they are, or how important they are to the clan, she would have them publicly executed for going against the orders of their matriarch.”
The group breathed a collective sigh of relief. Worry was still clearly reflected in their eyes, but they all knew that Kotohime’s words could be trusted.
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