Thank you to all my loyal fans who actually came back for the 2nd chapter. And those of you who gave feedback! (52 hits! I'm rilly super happy!)
By the way, I'm using the anime's costumes for this. Why? Because in the anime, Kougaiji doesn't wear a shirt, which is very nice for someone who gets to be around him a lot. Like Yaone.
(By the way, I don't own Saiyuki, that's Kazuya Minekura, and I don't own the concept of spandex space, or pulling various objects out of nowhere. That's Sf.)
Tracking down Sanzo's party had been hard, and tracking down sutras was way harder. Kougaiji, Dokugakuji, and Yaone had tried to leave Houtou castle early this time- one thirty in the morning to be exact- but it didn't matter. As soon as they were too far to turn back, Lirin had popped cheerfully out of the trees and followed them.
So the four of them set off once again, and three of the four had something heavy on their minds.
Yaone went over her supplies one last time. Aside from the usual materials for explosives and knock out- gases (most of which Dokugakuji had offered to carry, them weighing half her body weight and all) she had a few extra things.
Not much, she didn't need a lot. A few drops of honey, some jasmine… somewhere in her pockets, hidden between smoke bombs, she had three whole rosebuds. Those were important. (There were a few others too, but due to their excessive simplicity, I won't mention them because I don't want all you fangirls going out and trying to drug your manga)
She hadn't actually made the mixture yet, both because it went bad quickly and because… well… she was still sort of debating the moral implications behind drugging her boss.
Her mind was quickly leaving these moral issues behind, both because she was sure he really liked her too, and also because he was wearing some really tight pants today, and from her respectful distance behind him, she was getting a very nice view.
Once she had decided to do it, there was then the question of how to administer it. Mixed and boiled, the simple ingredients would form a thick, sweet syrup. This syrup, in some form or another, had to got into the- well, usually when working with drugs Yaone would say victim, but that word didn't really seem appropriate- the recipients mouth.
And this would be incredibly easy. Why? Because food was generally needed when traveling. And Yaone did the cooking.
While this may seem sexist, to make the only woman do the cooking, there's really more to it. Lirin couldn't cook anything that wasn't at least 20 sugar, and Dokugakuji's culinary talents were basically limited to ramen.
And Kougaiji?
He had tried cooking once.
Just once.
The smoke alone had caused a mass exodus from a nearby town. They had been forced to leave what was left of the charred mess in the forest. Yaone had heard that the same forest was now cursed by a mysterious plague, and all that entered were found later with the flash melted from their bones.
So Kougaiji wasn't allowed to cook anymore.
Now, as the aforementioned demon was summoning a fire from a dimension far beyond our own, Yaone unloaded her materials. No one really paid attention, as Lirin was busy climbing trees and Dokugakuji was making sure there were no large carnivorous giants around.
No, I'm kidding. He was looking for water.
By the time he came back, chicken curry was cooking quickly over the fire. To the side there were some smaller vessels. Two of them were just decoys, but the third one was what Yaone had taken to calling her 'love poison.'
Lirin sat beside the fire, staring hungrily at the food. If it had been the kitchen at home, she would have pulled a piece of the meat out while no one was looking. She never did that when Yaone cooked, mostly because of the woman's tendency to cook food and poison at the same time. It was hard sometimes to tell which was which.
"This ready?" he asked, breaking the silence.
"I wanna eeeeat!" Lirin whined.
"Whining won't make it cook faster," her brother told her. He was sitting back from the fire. In the darkness, the yellow firelight danced over the light brown of his skin, making the red of the stripes on his face stand out quite beautifully. Firelight really brought the best in him, Yaone decided, taking advantage of the fact that he still wasn't wearing a shirt to admire-
The curry boiled over, taking Yaone totally by surprise. Instant panic reflexes took over and she grabbed it off the fire, forgetting that she wasn't wearing the leather gloves she usually wore when heating things. And the long and short of this is that she burned her hands. Not to bad, but it really stung.
She looked at her palms in the dim light. They didn't look swollen or anything.
"Are you okay?" Kougaiji's voice said from beside her.
"Yeah, I'm fine-"
She didn't get a chance to finish because he took her hands in his own, carefully not putting any pressure on her palms as he drew them toward him.
And, her arm length being only so long, when her hands went forward, her body really didn't have any choice but to follow, so it really wasn't her fault that their faces ended up almost touching.
Too bad Kougaiji was looking down at her hands instead of her face, or the whole aphrodisiac thing wouldn't have been necessary at all.
"Have you got anything for this?" he asked, and for a second she wasn't sure what he was talking about.
"Oh, um, yeah."
From somewhere in spandex space, Yaone produced a small tube of something that was almost but not entirely unlike Vaseline. Rubbing it in hurt a bit, but by the time she was done she couldn't feel the burn at all. Kou watched her the whole time, something in his face that was like regret, but not quite.
Lirin and Dokugakuji watched Kougaiji, eating the curry out of the pot.
Remembering the love poison, Yaone pulled the three jars away from the fire. She opened the full one, and the smell that wafted out was absolutely heavenly.
"We have bowls, you know," she told the two demons. They didn't seem to care one way or the other, and Kougaiji seemed to be taking their side, so she sighed and put the bowls away.
"Do whatever you want."
"Gotcha," Lirin agreed, sticking her chopsticks into the pot again.
"Don't you want any?" Dokugakuji asked.
"I'll be right there," Yaone told them.
There were still drinks after all, and this syrup wouldn't last until their next meal.
But, still, when she put Kougaiji's drink in front of him a minute later, there wasn't a thing in it.
Her conscience wouldn't let her off that easy.
Heh, don't worry. Drugging somebody's food is pretty low, but … she'll get it to him somehow. Heh. Heh heh. dissolves into maniacal giggles
And how's she gonna do it? Well, I'm not telling, but any guesses are welcome. And I hope it's not too obvious. By the way, I'm trying to write this really as well as I can. My last romance was a tragedy, and this one isn't. So if I did something wrong, tell me.
braces