Makoto jabs at Sekai, but she is quick to parry and stab him in the bicep of his left arm. As always there is no pain, but the temporary severing of muscle tissue does hamper his effectiveness for the moment, forcing him to fall back and stay out of her reach. Once his wound finally disappears, he goes on a strong offensive as he comes at Sekai thrusting and striking. She stands her ground and continues blocking and parrying each of his attacks as Makoto's swings become ever wilder and less controlled.
Irene momentarily tightens her lips then slowly shakes her head while Kotonoha merely watches passively.
That is when Sekai turns the tables on him and begins pushing her own attacks, which are more controlled with none of the wild swings associated with anger. Makoto is forced to go on the defensive now and back away as the effort of trying to keep up with her attacks increase. He does not want to have the embarrassment of getting skewered by her once again.
"You are absolutely pathetic, Makoto, you know that?" Sekai jeered. "If Katsura has any sense in that pretty little head of hers, she'll leave you."
"Shut up!" Makoto shouted while trying to keep up with her attacks. "Kotonoha is a very forgiving girl, unlike you!"
"All that means is you get another chance to break her heart, just like you broke mine," Sekai snapped as she effortlessly keeps up the pace with Makoto. "But hey, look on the bright side," her tone now sarcastic. "You get to screw all the girls you want now without consequences. No pregnancies, no venereal diseases."
"I'll only feel emptiness," Makoto suddenly said in a surprisingly calm manner. "Just as I had before I took Kotonoha back."
"Oh is that so? Well now, you're going to feel it again after Kotonoha dies. And you'll feel it for eternity."
Makoto feels his concentration breaking, causing him to increasingly go on the defensive, which begins faltering. Sekai grows bolder and more vicious as she repeatedly stabs and slashes him from head to toe. The sound of his flesh being repeatedly punctured is heard clearly. Makoto feels overwhelmed by the barrage of attacks.
Sekai slashes him across the eyes, causing blood and eye fluid to gush forth and soak his cheeks. Makoto drops his sword while crying out as if in pain and plants his hands over his ruined eyes. Already he can feel them tingling, so he understands that it's not permanent.
Sekai takes the opportunity to trip him, causing him to fall upon his front. She is quick to stand behind him.
"You're despicable!" Her tone now one of contempt instead of what had been anguishing rage, then stabs him through the back.
Sekai expected him to roll over onto his back and sure enough, he does so; even though Makoto realizes what will be coming next as he next feels Sekai straddling him. His eyes are now halfway complete, but he is yet to see through them.
"Wanting happiness only for yourself," Sekai berated contemptuously this time as she holds her sword high, "with Katsura!"
And she stabs him again. And again. And again. And again.
Sekai finally stops, keeping her blade stuck in him as she rests upon it while staring down at Makoto. His eyes are now fully regenerated with pupils and irises as shimmering dots of anger, further emphasized by the blood and eye fluid smearing his cheeks.
She removes her helm, revealing her gloating expression.
"Did that remind you of the last time we were together, Makoto?" Sekai crooned mockingly. "Did it!?" Quickly twisting her blade for emphasis while gnashing her teeth. "Hey, Katsura, that's how it happened," she next taunted with a simpering smile and brief leer at her before fixating her attention back down at Makoto once again. "And you know what he was doing as I was sticking him like a pig over and over again . . . ? Nothing!" Twisting the blade quickly in the other direction with a gnashing of her teeth. "Absolutely nothing!" Twisting the blade in the other direction with another gnashing of her teeth.
"But why?" As Sekai leaned over him. Her tone now tender, almost pleading. Yet at the same time, mocking. "Why didn't you fight back, Makoto . . . ? Why didn't you fight back, huh . . . ? You did have a moment of opportunity to put up a fight when I first stabbed you because I hesitated for those few seconds . . . Even with a gut wound, you still should have been able to overpower me."
"But you did nothing except fall on the floor," as contempt saturated her tone and she leans closer over him while twisting her blade back and forth over and over again, "moaning and groaning in agony as you tried to crawl away from me like a frightened little boy."
Makoto only glowers back up at Sekai. Throughout the jeers and taunts, he just silently lies there with his arms stretched out from his sides. Unlike before when he was being overwhelmed by pain and terror, it is only anger that he now feels. Anger that keeps increasing as his shrinking pupils and irises show, along with his gnashed teeth.
"But it just so happens that I really do know why," as Sekai slowly straightens while pulling her sword out of his gut once again, causing a sucking smacking sound to be made. She slowly raises it once again. "It's because you felt ashamed!" Stabbing him once again for emphasis and raising it once again to stab him. "That's right, ashamed!"
Sekai once again begins stabbing him over and over while punctuating each stab with the following words.
"You . . . were . . . so . . . ashamed . . . of . . . your . . . self . . . that . . . you . . . believed . . . that . . . you . . . deserved . . . to . . . die . . . ! You . . . are . . . nothing . . . but . . . a . . . coward!"
Stabbing into his heart on that last word and quickly twisting the blade for emphasis.
"Okay, Sekai, that's enough," Irene said curtly as she lays hands upon her, one upon her nape and the other upon her hands, and pulls her off Makoto, using a bit of her essence to augment her strength.
Makoto, now trembling violently while softly sobbing, slowly rises to his feet while still crouching with his head hanging. His face hidden within a shadow so that only his gnashed teeth and one of his eyes can be seen. That eye is now a solid white with a sinister sheen. His other wounds have since disappeared, with his most recent one in his heart now almost gone. His tears start dripping onto the floor, along with blood and eye fluid.
"You," he hissed slowly and venomously, before looking up at Sekai. His face twisted from rage as his eyes are in a sea of white with tears flowing down his cheeks, diluting a trail of blood and fluid down his face.
"You!" As he lunged for Sekai with a shriek with fury.
Instead, he only receives Irene's open hand against his chest, causing the slap to echo throughout the cavernous interior. In that instance, the air left his lungs in one gasp just as he goes flying backwards like a ragdoll. He flies for about twenty feet before landing and sliding the rest of the way to bang loudly into the wall. Despite having witnessed Irene send Makoto flying across the room from a chop to the neck, or stabbing him deeply through his chest with a mere finger, the girls are still in awe over how she had managed to casually fling him across the room like that.
Makoto lies there for a moment with a pained look borne from mental pain. He feels his heart tingling as it had actually ruptured from the force of the impact. He finally inhales and begins sobbing, which quickly turns to soft crying as he covers his eyes and turns over, huddling into a fetal position.
He next feels a gentle touch on his head and looks to see Kotonoha kneeling over him with an empathetic look. Irene is alongside her, yet her look is severe. Sekai is further back staring at him with a simpering smile as she slowly shakes her head.
"If you were only a mortal who managed to survive," Irene said in a tone that hints silk over steel, "you'd qualify for my empathy."
"I-It's so hard having to f-face up to her like that, sensei!" Makoto croaked with an exhausted and pained expression.
"You are an immortal," Irene continued in that tone, albeit a little louder, as she points at him. "Yet you act as if Sekai is beyond you."
"Then I wish I wasn't immortal!" Makoto snapped.
"I once wished the same thing myself long ago. Now up. I want to demonstrate something to you. But first, go wash your face."
Makoto does so in the washroom, then later returns with his face now clean. Irene is now holding another standard foil that she had retrieved from that case.
"Sekai, let's do this," she said as she gets into her stance, prompting Sekai to put her helm back on and mimic the stance.
Makoto and Kotonoha watch them dual for a time before Irene finally calls for a halt.
"Now it's our turn," Irene said to him. "But not before I give you something." As she turns away and returns to that case once again and takes out another sword, this one with a pearl white two-handed hilt and brown leather scabbard.
"This is for you," she said as she presents it to Makoto.
He takes it and unsheathes it to show that it's also a gladius with a two-foot long blade.
"Whoa, th-thank you, sensei!"
"Okay then," Irene said as she makes her sword glow while gracefully twirling it around. "Let's begin."
Makoto makes his sword glow as they take their stance, ready to dual.
"This oughta be interesting," Sekai mused.
Makoto and Irene duel. For a moment, it seems no different. Then all of a sudden, things start to go wrong for him as Irene keeps landing ever more strikes upon him until she finally stabs him, freezing him.
"Our duel was the exact same duel that I had with Sekai," Irene said.
Makoto feels a stab of regret over that revelation.
"Now you understand how your issue with Sekai can be fatal for you," Irene concluded softly, "if you ever cross paths with another immortal?"
Makoto finally unfreezes and lowers his head.
"I'll try to overcome it, sensei," he sighed.
"Do or do not, there is no try," Irene said. "But for now, let us take a break and have lunch, since it's now pretty close to it. Then we'll take a look around outside. I want to get a sense of the surroundings first."
After their lunch, they do so with Kotonoha leading them. Like the rest of Japan, it is a mountainous place of forests. They walk around for a few hours before returning in the evening for supper.
"We're getting up at sunrise, Makoto," Irene said as they are eating.
"Why so early?" He asked.
"Why do you think?" Irene answered dryly.
"Oh, I see, it's to fit as much training into the day as possible." Makoto starts to understand what Irene had meant by this place being the house of pain.
Afterwards, Makoto goes to have his bath. Even though the bath is a communal one, he is alone so he finishes sooner. Next up is Irene and the girls, together; causing a sense of awkwardness on Sekai's part as she bathes with both her rival and an ageless deathless Western woman hundreds of years old.
In their nudity, Sekai typifies a Japanese girl's body type. While Kotonoha is approximately the same height and build as Sekai, she has larger breasts than her. Irene's breasts are the same as Kotonoha's but look to be smaller because she is much taller than either of them, slightly taller than Makoto actually, and with a wiry physique. Her skin is like flawlessly smooth alabaster.
"You have pink nipples," Kotonoha mused.
"We redheads tend to have them," Irene answered as she briefly brushes one.
"I guess I should've expected that place on you to be like that," Sekai said to Irene.
"That I have no navel like Makoto?" Irene answered as she momentarily rubs the flawlessly smooth area on her stomach at her waist where there still should be one, only to have disappeared almost twelve hundred years ago.
"That and all other hair will be the same color too."
"I see," Irene answered casually as her eyes turn into sleepy-looking solid grey dots to denote sarcasm while a large sweatdrop graces her head.
They do their pre wash and finally soak in the large tub together, with Irene sitting in between them.
"If either of you ever go to Germany someday," Irene said, "be sure to check out the city, Aachen, for its famous warmspring. It's what compelled my father to choose that place for the new capital of his empire."
"My father has a branch plant in Cologne," Kotonoha said as she looks upward with her finger pressed against her chin. "Is Aachen anywhere near Cologne, Lamane-sensei?"
"Yes, it's over sixty kilometers to the west, along the border with the Netherlands."
"Well then, if I ever find myself in Germany someday, I'll be sure to ask father if we can go to Aachen and soak in its warmsprings."
"Ugh, I can already see the difference between me and her," Sekai groaned with a sarcastic frown that includes smaller pupils and irises to emphasis her sclera.
"And me too?" Irene asked.
"You're about as far away from normal as the sun is from Pluto," Sekai answered with her eyes as sleepy black dots, "which Makoto is also on."
"Point taken."
"Speaking of Makoto," Sekai next said with a sardonic grin, "I've come a very long way now."
"How so?" Kotonoha asked.
"Remember how I first reacted after he revealed himself to me up on the school roof that night?"
"Makoto did tell me that you crapped yourself," Irene quipped with a grin.
"Yeah, that's right," Sekai said with annoyance, "and I had to shower in the girl's locker room and wash my panties and stockings out. But," as her tone instantly turns to one of triumph as she holds a forefinger up for emphasis, "I begin getting over my shock and am no longer like that toward him. If anything, I am now the total opposite."
"Makoto did mention something like that to me along those lines," Irene said. "And it's like I explained to him: you simply adapted. In the beginning, he had the element of surprise over you. And for a while, you were uneasy about him too. But then I came along and explained everything. So now you've gotten over it as you now understand that there are other people like him out there. The more people who share an extraordinary talent, the less awesome they seem."
"That makes a lot of sense," Sekai said. "But there being only fourteen immortal people out of the billions of other people out there in the world is still awesome."
"But not frightening anymore since Makoto is just only one amongst thirteen, including me," Irene pointed out.
"But still," Sekai next stated, "do you really believe that he will overcome his mental block concerning me?"
Irene blinks silently for a moment.
"You don't think so, do you, sensei?" Sekai remarked in a hushed but eager tone with a grin while leaning closer to Irene.
Irene sighs softly while touching her forehead for an instance as she lowers her head with closed eyes before looking to Sekai once again. "I only had this gut feeling that all of us should spend some time here, that's all," she admitted while spreading her hand out.
"Gut feeling?" Sekai frowned with a raised eyebrow.
"I think she means intuition," Kotonoha said.
"So what you're saying is that you planned this little vacation for us on a mere hunch?" Sekai said wryly.
"Do you remember what I explained about our essence, Sekai?" Irene replied.
"Yeah, yeah, I remember," as she waved in a dismissive manner for a moment with closed eyes. "A force that all you immortals have that enhances your strength, speed, senses, and mind. It increases over time, but it will increase immensely if you vanquish another immortal who has a lot of their own."
"The mental part is automatic and perpetual," Irene added. "But that's the point I'm making. It not only increases our intelligence and memory, but other mental aptitudes too. One of them being intuition. Everyone has intuitions; it's just that for many people, it's negligible. From the amount of essence that I have gained over the centuries, it has made my intuition so highly developed that any hunches I get are almost always right. And even if they ever do turn out wrong, they are never entirely wrong."
"Okay, then," Sekai sighed with a shrug. "You have a reason for all of us being here. Do you happen to know if Makoto will break that mental block of his?"
"Well now that's the problem with intuitions," Irene winced discreetly. "No matter how highly develop they happen to become, they'll always remain unpredictable and undefinable. Never once have I ever been able to accurately figure out my hunches. I only assume that something is going to come out of them. I never even know if it's going to lead to a good or bad thing. All I understand is that I need to do this or go there. Take a leap of blind faith if you will. And all this in spite of my now having superhuman intelligence too. That's how I found out about Makoto by the way. It all started a couple of months before I discovered him, when I had this hunch to go to Japan and stay there for a few years. Then on that day I discovered him, I was going to go shopping but instead got a feeling to take a walk down to the shoreline where I saw your father's yacht, Kotonoha. Even though it was so far from shore that I couldn't even tell if there were two people lying out on the bow, I suddenly got that feeling that an immortal gets from looking at another immortal."
"Makoto got that feeling too!" Kotonoha piped up as she points out.
"Yeah, that's because he was in my line of vision, even though I needed to max out my essence in order to see your faces properly."
"Well if your intuition means anything, sensei," Sekai then snipped, "it can only mean that there's no guarantee that Makoto will break that mental block concerning me." And she laughs.
"And there's also no guarantee," Irene countered icily, "that he will not break it either."
Makoto is in his room listening intently through the wall as the bathroom is on the other side. At first he could hear only mumbling through the wall as the material blocked out most of the conversation. He even used a glass to listen. It proved to be a little better, but still not by much.
That is when he thought about the essence. Is it possible that he has already built up a very small portion by now? It has been a few months ever since he had been turned into an immortal, courtesy of Sekai. He wonders over how he might be able to use whatever amount of essence he has like that.
He concentrates on trying to listen intently for the inaudible noises. Lo and behold, he suddenly finds himself filled with the sensation of a liquid rising in his ears. Sounds became even louder now. Yet it also feels as if he is trying to hold onto something slippery, so he needed to keep his concentration. Between the glass and his now slightly-enhanced hearing, he had been able to make out most of their conversation.
This includes Sekai's taunt about him not being able to break his mental block.
Makoto effortlessly releases his essence and puts the glass down while sighing. He turns away and flops down upon his bed on his back with his arms spread out. He simply lies there staring up at the ceiling, blinking, wondering.
Doubting.
Irene, Sekai, and Kotonoha get into that king-sized bed together with its pink quilted comforter, easily fitting all three of them. Kotonoha wears pyjamas while Sekai wears her green T-shirt with panties. Irene, who usually sleeps in the nude, wears a blue T-shirt with panties this time.
"Oh this is a comfortable bed," Irene said with approval as she snuggles into it between them.
"It is, isn't it?" Kotonoha sighed.
"I just hope none of you have unusual sleeping habits," Sekai said dryly.
Kotonoha turns out the light and in the darkness only rustling can be heard as the trio find their comfortable sleeping positions.
"I can bring up nightvision," Irene said. "It's just like those nightvision goggles."
Silence next falls and for awhile only the soft hissing of their breath is heard. It is suddenly broken by a loud drawn out buzzing fleshy noise.
"Excuse me," Sekai casually quipped over the din of disgust from Irene and Kotonoha.