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Chapter Nine - Responsibility

It felt good to sit on my couch, in my living room, in my home, under a blue sky. It felt like I'd spent a full day in that other world. The wall clock said I'd been out for less than an hour. Chalk it up to the magical time compression of closed space.

The color of the sky seemed a richer blue, but otherwise, the world hadn't changed. I had faithfully performed the sadistic dungeon master duties Haruhi assigned me and all was well with the universe again—assuming Haruhi still had her head.

After dumping my shirt, slacks, and underwear in the hamper, I changed into my pajamas and fell back onto my bed. What a crazy adventure! Especially those last few minutes. My hands still shook. My cock still ached from the release. What the hell? I just tortured the shit out of Haruhi Suzumiya—literally—before fucking her to death. I wasn't going to fall asleep tonight without some assistance.

My mom worked second shift today and wouldn't be home for another couple hours, so I trotted to the kitchen in search of more Ling Family Chardonnay. I found three bottles in my mom's secret stash under the sink and pilfered one of them. She'd miss it, but I didn't care. I was tempted to chug the whole damn bottle but decided instead to drink it one thoughtful glass at a time. By the fourth glass, my nerves had calmed, and I managed to fall asleep.

The following morning, I woke without the aid of my alarm clock. To my surprise, I didn't have a hangover or feel any queasiness.

My phone chimed. A text from Haruhi read, "Come to school an hour early. We need to talk."

"Okay," I texted back.

For some reason, I wasn't nervous. In fact, I looked forward to our meeting. Unbeknownst to Haruhi, I knew we had already cleared air between us. I felt that at my core. As the clueless master of this universe, Haruhi didn't need to know the truth about the reality of our adventure to feel this at her core, either.

My early morning walk up the hill was lonelier than usual. Normally, I normally joined a stream of fellow students through the front gate. I now entered with only a handful.

When I approached my shoe locker, Haruhi Suzumiya sat on the wooden bench across from it, legs crossed, studying her fingernails. When she looked up and saw me approaching, Haruhi rose to her feet. She didn't say a word until we were an arm's length apart.

We said each others names at the same time.

"Kyon."

"Haruhi."

I looked down. "Hey Haruhi, about yesterday. I'm—"

"Me, too," Haruhi said, looking down as well. "I was way out of line."

"We should talk," I said. Several students changed their shoes around us, so I added, "In private."

Haruhi nodded. "Meet me in the clubroom in ten minutes." She rushed off.

When I stepped into the club room five minutes later, Haruhi waited for me at her desk with her arms crossed. "I called Mikuru yesterday to apologize," she said. "And we're having lunch together today. What I did to her was out of line. I had no right humiliating her like that."

I sat in my seat at the table. "And I was wrong to spank you. Like that."

Haruhi did her best to suppress a smile. "You did go a little overboard, I'll grant you that."

"And I need to take responsibility for my actions," I said, echoing what Haruhi had told me in closed space.

"My thoughts exactly." She reached into the book bag hanging from her desk and pulled out a shallow jar. "Did I ever tell you about my cousins?"

Haruhi plopped down on the table to my right. "Owwwwwwwwww." She hopped to her feet. "I keep forgetting I can't sit down too fast." She rubbed her bum and continued. "I have two cousins, Kino and Juni. A while ago, when Kino was five and Juni was eight, Juni started playing near a table with a cup of tea on it. My Aunt Resa told Juni not to play there because playing around glass was dangerous, but Juni didn't listen. He knocked the cup off of the table and it shattered on the tile. When Kino ran over to see the commotion, he stepped in the broken glass and cut his foot—badly. My little five-year-old nephew had to go to the hospital to get stitches."

"That's not cool." I wondered where she was going with this story.

"Kino was just a little guy and his wound required a lot of attention. His bandages needed to be changed twice a day. Aunt Resa could have done this, but she wanted to make an impression on Juni, so she gave him the responsibility of changing his brother's bandages. So he did this, twice a day, for two weeks, like the doctor ordered."

Haruhi took her seat on the table again, this time softly. "As you can see, I'm having a little bit of trouble sitting down right now thanks to my injury, but my grandmother makes a salve from a special herbal recipe that's fantastic for healing bruises. You said you needed to take responsibility for what you did, and I agree. I'm not saying that I didn't deserve some correction for slapping Mikuru, and I'm not saying what you did was okay. But..."

She handed me the jar. "Here. I'm going to need three treatments per day. Once in the morning, once in the early afternoon, and once after classes." She got to her feet, turned, and bent over the table at the exact location where I'd spanked her.

I examined the bottle. "So you want me to apply salve to your, um, to your injury?"

Haruhi glanced back over her shoulder. "That's right. Three times a day. Till I'm healed. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Well, no. But are you saying…?"

Haruhi arched her back and wiggled her skirt-covered bottom.

"Okay, then."

Repeating the procedure I used yesterday, without the arm twisting, I lifted Haruhi's skirt and laid its fabric at the small of her back. Then I kneeled and pulled her panties down to her ankles.

Haruhi Suzumiya's real-life naked bum was magnificent, though this version did have a few bruises. When I ran my fingertips over them, her body tensed.

"Does it hurt when I do this?" I asked stupidly.

"A little bit." She bit her lip. "But that's nothing compared to when I sit on it."

I opened the jar and put some of the salve on my hand. Haruhi winced when I rubbed the fragrant yellow cream into her bum cheeks.

"You don't need to be stingy," she said. "I've got a vat of this stuff at home."

I liberally coated Haruhi's bottom till it shined like a freshly waxed car. Toward the end of my application, Haruhi sighed pleasantly. "That feels so gooooooooood."

Once I finished, I raised her panties up to her waist, lowered her skirt, and helped her stand facing me.

"You need to own what you did, Kyon," Haruhi said with a straight face. "So I'm giving you total ownership."

"Total ownership?" I asked, making sure I heard her correctly.

Haruhi turned her back to me and put the her hand at her belt line. "Total ownership from here." She dropped the hand down to her thighs. "To here. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," I said. "I understand what you're saying."

She turned to face me with her arms crossed over her chest. "Good."

"Suppose I need to discipline you again?" I asked, confidently meeting her gaze the way I had in closed space.

Haruhi put her hands on her hips. "You will never, ever, ever spank me again in front of the other Brigade members. You got that?" She poked her finger into my chest.

When I looked down at the finger and cleared my throat, Haruhi pulled it back like she'd touched a hot pan.

"Please wait till I've recovered a bit before you spank me in private." She lowered her eyes and smiled. "That salve works pretty fast, so you won't have to wait too long." Haruhi snapped her head toward the clock to disguise her flushing cheeks. "We've got to go. Class is going to start soon." She jogged to her desk, grabbed her bag, and dashed past me out the door. "See you in homeroom."

The door to the SOS Brigade club room shuddered after Haruhi's sudden departure. I rubbed my hands together and scratched my chin. As the new owner of some very choice real estate, I had some decisions to make. I sniffed my palms. They smelled amazing. Was it the pleasant fragrance of the salve, or Haruhi Suzumiya's bum?

We still had some time before class started, though I didn't blame Haruhi for wanting to make a quick departure. What had we become? And where was this going? I snapped my head toward the opening door. Had she returned for another treatment?

Gripping the doorknob, her eyes staring blankly into mine, stood Yuki Nagato—fully clothed.

"Yuki."

Nagato acknowledged me with a small nod, then walked past me to her seat by the window. She looked up at me and said, "I am pleased to see you in good health." She turned her attention to the book in her lap.

I sat in Haruhi's chair opposite the bookworm. "I'm glad to be here. I bet you didn't think I was going to make it after I dropped into that dome, did you?" I suddenly remembered buttfucking her seconds before dropping. I looked away. "That is, if you were awake for that."

She looked up. "Though I don't recall the event, I am pleased that you survived it."

"Look. Yuki. There's something I feel we should talk about."

Her face remained expressionless.

"How much do you remember about what happened last night?"

"After Itsuki Koizumi and I merged in the transition zone, his esper composition gave us access to Miss Suzumiya's closed space. Once inside, Koizumi augmented his esper abilities with mine as I gave him full access to my facilities."

I winced when Yuki said, "full access to my facilities." I took a deep breath. "While you were sleeping..." I had trouble continuing.

Yuki filled in the silence. "Yes, I remained in a dormant state."

"Look, Yuki. There's something you need to know about the way Koizumi and I, um, utilized your facilities. Some of the things we did could be viewed as… inappropriate."

"When presented with a quandary, Itsuki Koizumi always chose from a list of options generated by my positronic brain."

"He told you that?" I asked.

Yuki nodded.

"To his credit, he's not lying." I turned away. "But I don't think he always made his choices from the top of the list."

Yuki's face remained expressionless.

"Is there any way you can play back those tapes?"

"When we separated after the collapse of Miss Suzumiya's closed space and I awoke, Itsuki Koizumi requested I respect his privacy in that matter."

That bastard. But who was I to criticize? After all, my dick, not his, violated all of Yuki's orifices.

I contemplated this fact for about a minute. "Go for it," I finally said. "As your partner in closed space, I insist that you access your memory files."

Yuki nodded and glanced to the left. Five seconds later, her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and her cheeks flushed bright red.