Returning home several minutes later, Furuichi slipped out of his trench coat and snuck up the stairs. It would be rather uncomfortable for his family to get any ideas about him going out on the town in such shady attire. They already thought he was gay (or a pedophile, depending on who you asked), he didn't need any more help lowering their opinion of him.

He could smell dinner cooking. Nabe? At this time of year? That meant there wasn't much time left until dinner, and he'd have to keep that in mind. Slowly, he eased his way into his bedroom and turned on the lights.

To his surprise, someone was already waiting for him.

"GAH!"

"Calm down a little," muttered Lamia, her pink eyebrows drawing together in irritation.

"What are you here for!? I haven't done anything! I don't know about the pictures!"

"I'm going to ignore that last bit..." Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she sidestepped his perversion and went straight to business. "I'm only here to check up on you. Don't let your imagination carry you away."

Imagination? True, Furuichi had a powerful drive when it came to his fantasies. He let his eyelids droop, breathing in and assuming a meditative stance. This scenario would have played out so nicely if instead of the nurse a certain well endowed, red haired girl had been seated on his bed. He mentally closed the loli out of his consciousness and allowed his mind to wander.

A beautiful girl in my room... waiting for me to return...

Of course when he returned to reality, there was only Lamia.

"Shame..."

"I don't even want to know what you're thinking..." she grumbled, eyes narrowed in disgust. "Just get over here." She tapped the spot next to her on the bed.

"Eh?"

What's with this AV-like scenario? Am I really a lolicon? Furuichi shuddered up and down. What would the Red Tails think? Actually, not much would change in that department...

"I need to extract the toxins from you, stupid. You've been using those tissues a lot less recently, so the daily visits have gone down to weekly, but it's still problematic when too much builds up inside of you."

"Woah, woah, daily visits? When did this happen? What extraction method do you use?" Despite his completely serious expression, his eyebrows were waggling up and down like window shutters in a hurricane.

She blushed. "Don't think dirty things! Do you want to go blind?" Furuichi relented and took a seat next to her, and she turned to him with crossed arms, keeping appropriate distance. "For the last few months, I've had to come over every night to apply a treatment Muumuu. You were far too reckless with your contracting as well."

Aaaah, so that was why I kept waking up with no injuries.

The tactician recalled his earlier fights with Kanzaki, when he had gone home everyday with bruises of varying severity depending on which demon he had summoned that day. That stubborn guy had fought way too hard for the spot of Oga's second in command. Just because he had the first King's Crest, he thought he deserved the right to control Ishiyama in Oga's name.

"Ah, wait, please tell me you didn't come in through the front door. Or the wall, for that matter, as that's apparently something I need to watch out for around demons."

"Huh? Well, you were usually sleeping by then, so I just asked your mother to let me in."

Pause.

"What?" she asked, genuinely confused.

Furuichi broke into a cold sweat. Oh god, how long has this been going on for? My family is definitely taking this the wrong way. He could just imagine Honoka and his parents whispering around the living room 'There's that girl again.' 'She comes here every night to see him.' 'Should we call the police?' 'Well, if she's coming here of her own accord...' 'But what if he's blackmailing her? Or he's deceiving her?'

He was surprised this hadn't come up at dinnertime. Now that he thought about it, he had been getting a lot of suspicious stares at home recently...

Dammit, I thought I outgrew lolicon-furuichi!

Though not much had changed at school either when he took over for Oga. Sometimes he felt like the position just held no prestige.

Furuichi shook his head free of depressing thoughts. He had finished with those for today. Yes, now was the nighttime, when perverts could be true to themselves without being judged by others... wait, what the heck was he doing acknowledging that he was a pervert?

"Today is a sad day for the King of Ishiyama..."

"You're still calling yourself that?" Lamia snorted. Like I said, no prestige. Maybe he was expecting too much, but being the one ingesting toxins to drive away challengers should have at least one or two positive consequences. Where was his harem, or at least his love triangle? Where were the idolizing freshmen singing his praises and begging him to mentor them (besides Yamamura of course, he was an exception)? Where was the mob character who went to fetch him his juice?

Furuichi sighed deeply, hanging his head. "I want to be a cliche banchou..."

"Who cares about that, just lie d-down!" She gave him a quick sucker punch and forced him to lie back on the mattress. He gasped for air as she, in a sudden turnaround, gently applied the large gelatinous Muumuu to his chest. Ah yes, the most convenient blob on/under earth, even functioning through clothing and healing more or less all non-plot related illnesses. They also came in designer colors for some reason. Furuichi's favorite was deep red, like the one atop Lamia's head, the same shade of her cheeks.

"Hey Lamia..."

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think I'm working hard?"

She thought about it for a second. A little longer than a second. A little too long actually.

"Oi, oi, shouldn't this be obvious?" Furuichi asked, almost begging for sympathy. "That was, like, three panels worth of pausing right there!"

"Hold on... yes, I guess you could say that," she muttered, absorbed in her thoughts and paying him no heed as he slowly grew more desperate.

"How cruel! I've been fighting almost every day for the past three months! How can you not see how difficult this is?"

"Well, you don't exactly need to fight," she advised. "I'd feel a lot better if you didn't get in trouble as much as you do. I mean, you're just creating more work for me!"

What did she mean by 'you don't need to fight'? Of course he needed to fight, he was filling in for Oga. Oga took on every challenger that came his way with a smile and never looked down on people who tried hard. Oga went through all of this without relying on demon contracts or treatment Muumuus. That's why he had to go out to meet anyone who wanted to prove their strength. He had no right to decline. Frankly, he didn't want to decline.

Furuichi smiled awkwardly and pushed the issue aside. Lamia was very stubborn when it came to her patient's health, at least from what he had seen. Besides, if he contradicted her she might crush his gut again, and he didn't want that. Despite her frail-looking, childlike body, her punches were killers.

"Still, don't you think I deserve some sort of reward for taking care of things so well for Oga?"

"Ask Oga to give you something. He's the one you're helping out."

"Eheheh, don't joke about that. My heart is breaking."

"Hmmm, a reward..."

"Yeah, yeah!" he pressed, excited by the prospect of any form of compensation. Ah, to be appreciated is such bliss! "Something small, nothing too serious, just a little thing."

"Nothing serious..."

"Yeah, like a harem!"

Lamia practically coughed up blood. By the time she recovered, her raucous wheezing had turned into peals of laughter.

"A HAREM? BWAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAA! IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE EXPECTING FOR BEING THE KING OF ALL ISHIYAMA'S IDIOTS?"

"When you put it like that, it sounds like a bad thing..." he mumbled out of the side of his mouth.

She abruptly stopped laughing. "No way, it'll never happen, absolutely impossible."

"Don't just get all serious on me all of a sudden! What's with this sudden change in tone? I feel like a man on his deathbed! Is this the death of my harem dream?"

"Don't just say ridiculous things for no reason. Aren't you the tsukkomi?"

"Why does everyone keep saying that? Even Graphel called me that!" He brought a hand to his chin pensively. "Now that I think about it, if I'm the tsukkomi that makes Oga the boke, right? Then what am I when he's not around? Am I like a long black kneesock with no pair?"

"Is that another one of your fetishes?" she asked accusingly.

"Big time."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Am I really worth nothing without Oga?"

"Of course not," she soothed.

"Wow, you can actually be a nice person."

"Don't push it," she growled. "What I'm saying is that... you have your own... special charm."

"There it is. Special. That one word which says so little and yet so much."

"Unique?"

"That's worse, please stop." Looking closely, one might have noticed his soul escaping his body in desperation. He had hit an all time low. That's all folks, nothing to see here. One unique pervert with no coattails to ride on.

"Hell, you are so difficult. Fine," Lamia said, searching for one good thing to say about him. "How about... you're smarter than Oga."

"Everyone's smarter than Oga."

"Take what you can get."

Furuichi gave up. "Are you almost done yet? I have things I want to do."

"Yeah... sure..." she muttered suspiciously. Don't give me that look. Who are you, my parents? She peeled off the treatment Muumuu and rolled it back into a semi-solid spheroid shape. "Here we are, good to go. Just get some rest and take it easy." Giving him one final slap on the chest, as if christening a ship, she hopped off his bed and made her way out.

He watched her all the way to the door and waited until he could hear her footsteps going down the stairs. He exploded out of bed and went straight for his secret stash.

Now, maybe we can salvage my 'evening plans'.


"Takayuki, it's time to ea~t." Honoka trudged halfway up the stairs to call her brother. "We're having hot pot. You like hot pot, right? Come on down."

No response.

Oh god, not this again.

She forced herself to clamber up the stairs and call again. "Takayuki~. Come o~n."

Nothing.

Oh no.

She tiptoed warily down the corridor and stopped in front of his room.

"Takayuki?"

Through the door, she could hear muffled sobs.

"TAKAYUKI!" she shouted, throwing open the door. "I SWEAR TO GOD, IF THIS SICK FETISH DOESN'T STOP-"

Honoka paused. Her brother was kneeling next to his drawer chest. One compartment had been turned entirely inside out in a frantic search.

"Everything... she took everything..." he wept.

Honoka looked on with dead eyes.

"I was wondering why she was here so early... that damned Lamia..."

"Nii-san. Dinner is ready," Honoka spoke monotonously. She turned and exited robotically, visibly shaken.

The dinner table was oddly silent.


To Delvin Dracul, because you reviewed the story as a guest and I can't reply to you any other way: Thank you thank you thank you for your positive feedback! Personally, I would love to see Tamura show us his version of Furuichi's reign of terror. Okay, not so much terror as the reign of, I dunno, naval exposure or something. ("Good naval exposure!") As for what I think it would be like, well I'm hoping to capture that in this fic. I'm pretty sure it would be just like normal, but with Furuichi being the one challenged by the crazies who come after Oga.

On the subject of Lamia: it should not be a surprise to anyone that she likes Furuichi. I will try to play it down to the best of my ability, but the shipper in me is strong. I'll make an effort to control myself, so bear with me on that. This romance is not the main point of the story (at least in my mind), but it may come into play depending on what the reaction is.

This chapter addresses a slight problem of Furuichi's: those tissues are actually a bit toxic, and repeated use poisons the mind. They're kinda like cigarettes, but luckily Lamia is super goddamned convenient for these kinds of things. I just wanted to address how this predicament would get resolved.

If you have any ideas for how this story should play out (both Delvin-ku~n and other readers who want to see this continue) feel free to leave a review or PM me. Thanks for reading again, and have a nice day!

REMEMBER, NO OGAXFURUICHI. I SEE TOO MUCH OF IT. ITS NOT THAT I DON'T LIKE YAOI, I JUST CAN'T SEE OGA AS A CARING LOVE INTEREST OF ANY SORT.