Taking the bus is one of my least favorite things about city life. Public transit as a whole, for that matter, is just something that makes me inherently nervous. However, every experience that formed that opinion, every negative memory of public transportation I've ever had pales in comparison to the bus ride getting into the city today. The first time I considered that idea along the way, I passed it off as a hyperbole, but during the fifteen or twenty minutes Miia and I were on the bus, that sentiment quickly worked its way into being the truth.
Everyone who was on the bus when we got on, in addition to everyone who got on the bus after we were already on, gave either me or Miia some kind of look. Most of them were simple fascination or vague vicarious amusement, but there were also a few that were a mixture of earnest questioning and judgment. Regardless of how any of them feel on an individual level, though, I resent every moment of it all the same.
Being stared at by too many people is something that always makes me sink into a state of panic. It's part of why I tried to fight doing this whole city excursion so soon after the last outing, even if that was nearly a week ago now. Maybe that's just a subtle sign I'm never going to feel ready for this, in fact that seems as likely as anything else, now that I really think about it. But that's all just surrounding how off I feel about everything the whole way. However, as the bus pulls up to our stop and I get up to get off, Miia rising in a similar fashion behind me, I can no longer negotiate the position I'm in, at least in any meaningful way, so I may as well not worry about it that deeply anymore.
"A date~, we're on a date~, I'm out on a date with my Darling~!" Miia hums to herself, just loud enough for everyone we pass by to hear it in perfect clarity. It turns me once again to questioning how I got here, negotiability of the circumstances be damned.
After Smith relocated my leg, she insisted on staying longer, partially to more or less force me into making her the free food she wanted, but she also had something else to tell me that she forgot to brief me on initially. To the surprise of nobody except for her, though, it was information I was already aware of. In fact, it's a little insulting to have someone tell you that you need to take someone who's supposed to be here to learn about society into society; that's likely why I'm a noticeable amount more bitter than I usually would be at the moment.
I also tried to tell her that I'd already worked on that before the construction stuff had all begun and I was looking into taking her out into society more after I got my other adult obligations taken care of, but that didn't even work in the short term. After telling me condescendingly that once a week isn't enough, she told me she had already called Mayumi and basically forced her to take me off the schedule for today ahead of time. If I had to go with my gut, that was what she was doing outside the house between when she left and when she came back. That's really a baseless thought that borders on conspiracy, mind you, but at this point, I'm finding it hard not to feel like she's a lot more competent than she lets on and she's using it all for the wrong reasons.
Regardless of when it happened, after that I naturally couldn't argue, but as if to add further insult to it, she still detailed specifically that they're 'always watching, so don't take her to some out-of-the-way love hotel in a back alley'. It really does continue to make me wonder how much she's picking up on and how much she's deliberately ignoring. But as I continue lamenting my growing disdain for Smith's continued presence in my life, I'm eventually interrupted by Miia's growing excitement, which has evolved halfway to dancing like we're meant to be the leads in a corny Broadway musical. I can feel the stares towards us growing in number with each doorway we walk past. "A date with Darling! Darling's taking me on a-"
"Miia, I'm begging you, please stop with that," I wince, taking a few deep breaths quickly following as covertly as possible, my awareness of everyone around us only beginning to grow. "This isn't even a date, this is just supposed to be another thing where... you know, I show you how human society is built, the things run by the public for the public."
"Then you're taking me on a date to see how human society is built!" she giggles teasingly. "Now, stop being silly and let's get moving, Darling!" She grabs my idle hand with hers and starts trying to pull me down the street. I can't say I'm ever expecting to be pulled along like this (although I should likely start expecting it at this point), so I stumble behind a little too much for her liking. I can easily tell it's too much for her liking because she abandons holding me by the hand altogether and instead uses a small amount of the ending length of her tail to wrap around my waist instead. "Miia!" I blurt in total panic. "I can't- We talked about this!" But she clearly didn't intend on letting me go now. She's setting the pace whether I like it or not.
And that goes for far more than the sidewalk portions of the outing, too. Over the course of approximately two and a half hours she proceeds to drag me into at least half a dozen different buildings. Anything that has ever been a buzz word for a location where people go in groups for fun seems to catch her eye, so we wind up in everything from a diner to an arcade to multiple different sorts of consumer media stores. Although I can't say I didn't contribute to the costs myself at certain points myself, I'm still positive that Miia accounted for a significant portion of the twenty-two thousand yen that I've spent thus far. At the very least, though, since about the third or fourth stop she's been slowly calming down, even if mostly on the outside.
She's still in the midst of excitement after our sixth location and she's still clinging to my arm actively, but when she speaks up this time it's at a much more sensible volume, like she's really trying to keep it between just us this time. "It's amazing, there's so much to do just in this area! I've always heard how formal and traditional Japan still is, but there's so many things to do it's almost overwhelming!" Despite that supposed overwhelming level of options, she's giggling and grinning ecstatically, so she's clearly not that daunted by that array of options.
"You'd be surprised how much Japan in particular loves their public entertainment facilities," I follow up. "There's quite a few countries that basically don't have any of this stuff."
"Well, I'm very grateful to be here already, but..." Miia trails off from there, but after letting out a sigh, she picks back up. "I just wish we could have tried karaoke."
"Yeah, I would've thought they'd have modified those faster than some of these other places," I muse absently. "Not that I ever knew how small those rooms actually are. I'm not a good singer, so I've never really bothered with anything like that."
"You know that wouldn't have stopped me from enjoying it anyways, Darling~!" Miia counters, looking over her shoulder to shoot me a smugly affectionate smile. I open my mouth to say something, although I'm not quite sure what. That gap in my thoughts is mostly the product of Miia tugging my arm forward again, though. She rushes the pair of us forward, towards a sign outside an ordinary shop's simple glass door that's been propped open.
The sign reads 'Summer Collections Now On Sale, Extraspecies Lines for All Sizes Included!' Almost as soon as I can register what that description entails, I can feel Miia trying to tug me through the door. "Come on, Darling, it is going to be summer in a few weeks, isn't it?" she states.
I almost fall over, but this time I manage to catch myself before I can kinetically acquaint myself with floor. As my head comes back up from that dip, I realize my notion was correct: I have been walked into a clothing shop that has started deliberately pushing its swimwear. "Miia... We're in Japan; June and July are the rainy months in this country. The actual hot part of summer doesn't happen until it's almost August," I tell her. Although that isn't untrue by any means, I do purposefully leave out the amount of dread I'm currently feeling.
"Yeah, but if we need to buy it then there won't be as much of a selection, will there?" argues Miia, once again totally overpowering me and taking me straight into the section entirely dedicated to two-piece women's swimsuits without leaving room for debate.
It only dawns on me for a moment how this time she waited until I had regained my balance, but that's quickly drowned out in my head by the stares we're getting from other people around the shop burning into me again. Some are from the other customers, but the one that's mainly catching my attention is that of the one young woman who seems to be working here right now.
In an attempt to defy my surroundings, I turn to a particular wall, or rather a section of a wall, that has nothing going on, and I set in with the intent of staring at that wall for as long as it takes to make the awkward feelings go away. Unfortunately, that's not how anything about anxiety works, and within another handful of minutes, Miia taps me on the shoulder. That's somewhat difficult not to respond to, so I turn to look at her.
She lifts up two different bikinis, one of them at least one bust size too small but almost perfectly matching the color of her scales, and the other more within Miia's size but also a rather unpleasantly clashing bright green color. "Well, Darling? Which one would you rather see me in?" she asks with a few quick bats of her eyelashes, like she knows anything below her smooth shoulders will entice me.
"I... don't think I'm an authority on women's fashion... Given," I motion vaguely to my casual young adult's attire of a T-shirt and jeans. I'm able to contain any nervous shaking and the like at first, but she knows how to put me on the spot at this point.
Miia flashes me a pout and holds them up even more directly in front of my face. "Then which one do you prefer from an artist's perspective?" she rephrases.
I try giving an answer for a moment, but fail, leaving my arms gesturing to an empty idea like a sitcom character. After a few seconds of looking like a complete idiot, though, I manage to form words that are decipherable. "One of them matches your color more directly, but also I don't really feel strongly about either of them past that," I give her, my shoulders tensing upwards significantly the further I get into my answer. My real internal thought is that I'd rather she get the one in the right size, but the more she accosts me, the more I can feel everyone else looking, and by extension, the more I can feel all well-formed thoughts leave my head.
"Alright, then I guess there's only one way to know for sure," Miia hums, surprisingly without even a shred of disappointment. Before any alarm bells can go off in my head, she's turned and started heading into one of the shop's changing booths, and in almost the same moment, she grabs me around the shoulders with nearly half of her tail, and she viciously begins pulling me in behind her.
"What the hell are you doing?" I exclaim as the curtain passes over my head and leaves us in the tiny box together, no more than inches of space for each of us to move, and that's not accounting for her tail that's also taking up a wealth of space on its own.
"Well, we have to stay together anyway, don't we?" she answers, shooting me an especially smug expression before turning to the mirror in the booth.
"I don't think anyone would dispute it if I just... stood outside here and waited," I debate. It's admittedly a completely logical point to bring up here, but that doesn't stop it from being rendered completely ineffective immediately, both in my head and in practice.
With a seemingly totally fluid motion of her arms and upper body, her shirt nearly flies off of her and crumples on the ground near the curtained entryway. "C'mon, Darling, I like it when you look at them," she teases, turning back to me and once again holding up the swimsuits again, this time with enough space between them to allow me to also see her completely naked upper body, too. In fact, the distance she's holding the swimsuits apart at seems deliberately just wide enough to see all of her breasts without anything in the way. "So, which one do you think would make me look sexier for you?"
My breath swirls uncomfortably in my airways as I try to put out anything coherent, but once again I find myself lagging behind on that quite noticeably. "I-I... They both work... and for totally different reasons, so let's just get both of them! Problem solved!" I weakly suggest, falling short on anything that might have a better chance of working. Knowing that's the kind of answer she won't accept, I abruptly turn without thinking and start making my move to leave the booth. As my stress levels continue to rise, it only becomes more and more apparent how many simple things I'm forgetting.
This time, instead of using her tail to try and hold me back, she grabs my arm just using her hand. As soon as I try to push past that attempt, though, she goes back to her usual option, wrapping a small section of her tail around my upper leg and letting go of my arm. I could have probably told her how bad of an idea that particular move would have been, but it's a bit too late to address it now that I'm falling forward again.
With the curtain directly in the way, though, my weight and total lack of uptake on catching myself pushes my falling body onto the cloth of the curtain itself with just enough under me not to fall through it cleanly, instead falling on top of it. If anything, that being the process of how things go throws me off even harder, and I only realize Miia tried to save me when her own upper body gets pulled down alongside me by the arm. That's where the rod holding the curtain in position can't take it anymore and, with a loud series of percussive metallic and plastic snaps, we both suddenly hit the floor and the fallen curtain flops out below me, only barely missing a hit to my forehead.
The issue with that is that there's nothing to cover up Miia and I's position on the floor and we're greeted to what handful of customers are in the store plus the clerk again. I feel white-hot shame smother my chest cavity, but I still can't stop myself from looking back up at Miia, who looks down at me like she's feeling along the same lines. When I look back down to how we've fallen, though, I discover that her reaction may be more directly related to the fact that her bare tits are visibly dangling mere centimeters from my face, and through a thoughtless process of natural reaction over someone falling on top of me, one of my hands have taken firm grasp of one of them, the other having grabbed her by the midsection.
It paints a scene of intimacy in a public place without any further explanation or context, and I can feel my heart rate increasing with every passing moment we stay this way. As soon as we've both registered that factor independently, which feels like a far longer process than it needs to be, our eyes meet for a brutally embarrassing moment and then she bolts off of me, scooping her fallen clothing into her hands and slipping into the other booth to the left of the one we'd just defiled. If there was any stroke of luck in all of this, it's the fact that the second changing booth was empty.
I get off the ground and dust myself off before awkwardly trying to slink out of sight to the side of the changing rooms, but I can feel the clerk's gaze follow me closely for an additional quarter-minute at least, questioning everything that just happened with a mixture of exhaustion and confusion. That combination of feelings makes me feel a little less persecuted, but I can't help but relate to those feelings in a way that also makes me feel ill on the inside. And unfortunately, all I'm left to do is wait for Miia to calm down and re-dress herself so we can leave. "Fuckin' Smith," I mutter to myself with a shaky, vengeful breath.
Walking out of that store with a new bag in hand felt just as awkward as being dragged into the store, if only by virtue of everyone having now seen Miia accidentally straddling me topless. It made the simple process of exchanging money for goods feel like it was projecting some kind of feelings to the outside world, feelings that nobody in the store had anything resembling full context on. Miia seems to feel similarly awkward, even if she still remains closely by my side. As we get out onto the street and start walking along its sidewalk again, an awkward silence falls over us for a few moments, just long enough for that potent dread to start creeping back in.
As soon as I find myself questioning how upset Miia is, she finally speaks up to give me a hint. "I can't believe you, feeling me up in public like that." Her voice is stern but not veering over into actually angry, at least by my best measure, although that can't stop me from feeling awkward as all hell about it anyway. "If you wanted to play with them, all you had to do was ask me nicely."
"Well, I would have if I had ever set out to do that on purpose," I sigh. "That being said, I'd really rather just... forget that happened, if it's all the same to you."
"Darling, you're not upset I dragged you in there still, are you?" she questions, shooting me a look over her shoulder that holds a few compromised emotions.
"It's... not the dragging me in there, I can get over that," I answer. "Either way, it doesn't matter now, I'll live."
While it doesn't seem like admitting I'm somewhat upset has dampened Miia's spirit completely, she does look to be a little disappointed in some form. My train of thought wondering where that disappointment might be coming from is quickly shifted, though, as I hear the chattering of people from no more than a quarter of a block behind us. "Oh, god, that thing called him 'Darling'." The first one I hear is a male voice, likely no older than the mid-twenties in age and with the definitive presentation of someone who was born and raised in an urban setting. A cold feeling starts to creep under my skin as I hear him, that kind of feeling like you want to lash out, but you also want to just run away and you can't properly decide which to do.
"Ugh, I can't even tell where the human part starts and the snake part ends," a female counterpart adds, snickering in a similarly uncaring tone. "I can't believe a person would actually be into that thing."
I wince hearing that comment, although the visible flinch doesn't seem to catch Miia's attention at all. "I can't believe someone would take her in, what a fuckin' psycho. I bet she's barely even housebroken," the man cackles, volume raising to a point where practically the whole street can hear.
It only takes a glance over to Miia to tell she's boiling mad at a level I haven't seen thus far, and seeing her like that is what stops me in my tracks. In turning around, I see the two people shit-talking us are less than a block away from us. That puts them in a dangerously close distance if we're accounting for how long Miia's reach is with her tail, as well as letting me see the series of studs and piercings dotting both of their faces with no discernible arrangement other than having a lot of them. Their hair is frizzy and unkempt at a level that looks unappealingly strange and they're both clothed like urban American teenagers with only enough money to buy thrift clothes. The difference is they are clearly doing it on purpose rather than it being the best they could get, which is fascinating to me because it also doesn't look good, in fact it looks almost purposefully uncoordinated to a certain degree. Like some sort of attempt at an 80's British punk rock look, minus all of the passion and spirit that would make it work. And yet, they both look on at Miia and I like we're the eyesores.
Luckily, that also puts me just barely within distance of Miia to lunge forward as I see the middle coils of her tail swish and shift like they're about to shoot outwards. It's admittedly rooted mostly in instinct to intercept her, but regardless of what compelled me to do it, I manage to grab a small section of her tail right before it shoots out behind her.
A familiarly hollow, percussive pop resonates along the strip of street we're on, straight from the core of my shoulder. The buildings bounce the sound back and forth as if to try and drive home the sudden, albeit minor dislocation of my arm to everybody nearby. A remarkable number of muscle groups in my body tense up as familiar searing pain radiates along my entire right side. I manage to bite my lip and stop myself from making any significant noise, but my emotions have reached a serious fever pitch and while Miia rebounds her tail, her attention turned to me with a wealth of shock within it
I bite every urge I have to scream every profanity that can come to mind regardless of language and physically lash out from the pain. I'm able to quell those urges for the most part until I turn to the two who were mocking Miia to begin with. My already frayed emotions abruptly boil over; suddenly all that's in my head is how my arm wouldn't be out of its place if they had just stayed quiet, or better yet, if they just weren't so goddamn judgmental.
"You!" I address them bitterly through tightly gritted teeth, my voice raised but not shredding my throat to get there. I use my uninjured left arm to gesture to the dislocated right one. "This is your fault, so you better feel real lucky it didn't actually happen to you, because by god, it FUCKING should have." The uptake in my breathing is hard to see, but I'm pretty sure Miia notices it in the movement of my chest with how close she is.
"Whatever, freak-fucker!" the girl blurts back, tugging on her companion's arm as if to signal they're moving out.
I can't help furrowing my frown and flaring my nostrils as I frustratedly nudge my arm back into its place with a short push. It's another surge of sharp, hurtful feelings, but I manage not to hurt my jaw despite the vicious force I'm using to grit my teeth together. "Yeah, real ironic coming from you, cuddling up to a fucking bigoted piece'a shit," I mutter through my twisted grimace, stretching and rotating my reset arm as the immediate pain phases away into a much more absent, dull aching.
"Uhh, Koruto?" Miia chimes, lightly tapping my unaffected shoulder. "People are starting to stare."
Hearing that makes me explicitly not want to look around, but the movement comes impulsively anyways and, as I look about the open street, I see at least a half-dozen people already pulling out their phones and, in turn, I can feel my throat suddenly clamp inwards in sudden, vivid discomfort, a far cry from the emotional outburst I'd just had. "Come on, you can't just... There's- you can't just start-" No matter how I tried to start that sentence up, all I can see is people doing it anyway without any intention of stopping. I swivel on my heels and grab Miia by the shoulders "Gah, fuck this! Miia, I'm gonna have a panic attack, we have to get the hell out of here, please!" I beg her.
Miia makes a confused and stressed noise that I can't describe as anything other than total disorientation portrayed with a single syllable, proceeding to grab my hand and tug me in a random direction with an open passageway through the forming crowd. This time I have no trouble keeping up and, as adrenaline fills my body top to bottom, things around us start warping out of my working memory. We keep rushing off in some direction with a lack of people around, but for a good five minute period, I entirely stop questioning the things that aren't directly in front of me.
By the time I'm mildly lucid again, we've stepped into an alleyway off the beaten path of most of the more interesting things this area of the city has to offer. In fact, there's really only one reason why someone would come back here and, as my adrenaline finally starts getting diluted and my senses start coming back, I realize that fact pretty quickly. The sign for the building in front of us, likely our only guarantee to make sure nobody follows us this far, reads "Prime Privacy Inn" in Katakana, followed by a list of hourly rates for rooms under it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what kind of place this is, only one type of hotel operates off of these kinds of hourly costs and they exist most notably in Japan, but the scathing irony makes me wish it did take a genius to recognize so I could remain ignorant for even just moments longer.
"Should we go in?" Miia asks, peeking over to me with concern.
The door to go inside is once again made of glass, but this time the view inside has been blocked by some form of black construction paper or cloth, so it's hard to tell exactly what's going on right inside. I question for just a fraction of a moment why they didn't just get tinted windows, but upon a greater impulse rolling in, I look over my shoulder back down the alley we came through. I can see a few figures pass by the opening between buildings quickly, at least one of those figures mildly familiar in shape. That's enough to convince me. Turning back to Miia, I draw in a deep breath. "It's our only guarantee to get away from the crowd," I decide, leading on through the building's front door.
Lucky for my nerves, or what's left of them, the immediate inside of the building's lobby looks as mundane as any other Japanese hotel would. The one thing that gives it away is a copy of the hourly rates above the front desk and what appears to be a package of additional sexual protection for sale on the counter behind the person manning the front desk. I ignore those to the best of my current fried abilities and pull out my wallet as I approach the front desk. I have a feeling I'm going to regret this sooner than most people walking into these places do.
The prices weren't particularly kind, but I had just enough on me in cash to cover a room for one hour, and that's more than I could imagine us needing if we wanted the crowds to pass by. The downside is that I now have to sit in a room in a love hotel for an hour with my extraspecies homestay and hope nobody saw us come in, which I can't say I have a positive outlook on at the moment. That may just be everything around me perpetuating my pessimism at the moment, though, because I can't help looking around the dimly lit room covered in all manner of cool purples and unobtrusive gentle, romantic darkened reds and hear the irony ringing in my skull and it's keeping me narrowly balanced on the edge of a total panic attack.
To be fair, I'm surprised I've been able to escape spiraling into a panic attack thus far, but I feel like this is one of the worst possible contingency plans to have been stuck with and it once again makes me question the validity of the concept of 'God' as a whole. As soon as that existential bitterness starts getting old, I emotionally give up on that and transition quickly into just feeling thankful we're away from the prying crowd at all, even if this is possibly one of the least comfortable places I could think of being in my current situation.
That's when the bathroom door to the left of my seat on the bed opens and Miia comes out in a bath robe which manages to safely cover her chest and enough of her lower half that I can ignore anything around her crotch. A thin trail of steam emerges from behind her as she whips the towel out from around her neck and tosses it back into the bathroom. "This place is pretty comfy for being so small and out of the way," Miia comments with a chuckle. "Even if I don't have any good clothes to sleep in."
"Well, this isn't an overnight hotel, so I wouldn't worry about that," I say, scratching at the back of my head idly.
"Then what is it for?" she asks as what I'd said was a silly statement.
"You'd probably have caught on if you'd read the building's signs a little closer," I sigh, really wanting to avoid explaining the nuances of it to her, at least right now.
Instead of responding to what I'd said, Miia's attention had already shifted by the time I had finished my sentence. Her gaze had fallen over to the nightstand and, approaching the stand, she grabs a small almost cylindrical package. "What's this stuff?" she questions, holding the package up for me to see better.
I lean in to get a better look but it takes less than three seconds for me to recognize it. "That's... Like a lotion. It makes stuff slippery and... unfortunately for me, it's also non-toxic," I explain with a deep breath. "I don't- Just don't worry about any of the little wrapped things in here, Miia. We're not gonna be here very long, we're just waiting out the crowd."
As if to deliberately shove it in my face that she's ignoring me, she holds up a wrapped condom with a similar quizzical look about it. "Is this some kind of complimentary gum?"
I scoot over on the edge of the bed to get closer and pluck it from her hand. "No, it isn't. Don't worry about the stuff in here, seriously, I'll explain it all later," I assure her as vaguely as I can manage. "When we're in a place that... isn't here."
She looks at me a bit dejectedly and maneuvers herself to sit down in the open space on my right side, the bed's springs lurching just enough to be audible as she sits down beside me. Other than that noise, though, the room takes on a sudden and uncomfortable level of silence between us. After a minute or two I look up at her to see if something's visibly on her mind, but she's taken to looking down at the floor, similarly to how I had been while she was in the shower. "... I guess people really do only put up with us 'cause it's the law now, huh?" she poses with an immediately apparent sadness in her voice. "We really are still just creatures to this place."
"What?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.
"I bet you've been doing all this just so you don't get punished, too," continues Miia. "You probably signed up for this all for the money."
"I- You know that's blatantly untru-"
"Do you want to feel my boobs again?" she cuts me off with an aura of pleading behind her eyes. With one swift motion of her arms, Miia pulls her robe open and presents her breasts to me again. "You can touch me anywhere you want, Darling. It won't hurt me. And even if it did hurt me, I'd still let you do as much as you want to me. I want you to; I want you to have your way with me."
"I... Miia, I can't do this," I tell her. "It's not that I wouldn't want to or anything like that, but I can't just..." The struggle to figure out how to articulate the feelings of why it's wrong in words dawns on me as something that I just don't have the capacity to express with words. Hell, I'm still having trouble figuring out how to feel the emotions over this let alone explain them.
"Could you-... Are you actually scared of me, Koruto?" she questions, veering towards bursting into tears.
"Why would I be sca-" Once again I find myself cut off, but this time from something far different. The door lurches with a sudden smashing against it from the other side. While I only jump inside my skin, Miia shrieks out loud and, despite her reappearing emotional reservations, she immediately scoots in to cling to me for safety. Within seconds, another smash echoes into the room, but this time the door separating us from whoever is there splits in half and folds to the floor with a clattering of wood and splinters. Without delay, a mob of at least a dozen armored police in full riot gear and armed with full riot control weaponry pour into the tiny room. Before I can even really figure out what's going on at even a basic level, they've surrounded the bed where Miia and I are sitting, weapons all trained on us directly, some of them only single steps away. It's then I notice I've got an arm in front of Miia, in addition to about a quarter of my torso itself. I had fallen into shielding her from the ones in front of me, although obviously instinctually in some way.
"This is the Cultural Exchange Enforcement Squad!" a forceful female voice shouts into the room. The figure that voice belongs to walks into the room with a pistol drawn, although pointed towards the floor. She's within a middle ground of adult male and female height averages, but dressed top to bottom in riot gear, with a bandanna and goggles covering a vast majority of her face. "We received multiple tips that someone took an Extraspecies citizen here for prohibited sexual purposes! You're to be-... Hold on,"
My limbs shiver with a firm chill through my blood as her voice mellows out and, in the process, becomes far more familiar. Even with my newfound hunch of who it is, though, no sound will come from my throat, and within seconds my breathing spirals entirely out of my control. In the meantime, she lifts her goggles and slips her bandanna below her chin, leaving it to hang around her neck. "If it isn't Miia and her Darling-Kun. I shouldn't be surprised you got yourselves-" halfway through whatever shit-eating comment Smith had in mind, her voice falls off, clearly realizing I was freaking the hell out. Her expression goes from amused to stunned concern and she swipes her weapon back into its holster on her belt.
It only takes one look to each side for her to decide on her next move, raising a hand to the squad she's apparently leading. "Weapons down! Weapons down! He's not dangerous, we don't need to scare him any more than that." With two large, striding steps towards me, she bends just a little at the knees and gets our faces at eye level. While the proximity could potentially carry a romantic connotation in any other situation, I can't say it makes me feel particularly comfortable right now, but before my reflexes try to shoo her away she looks me dead in the eyes and whispers, "They're using rubber bullets, the one I have is a dart gun and nobody will fire on you outside of my command and only my command, okay? You're safe as long as you work with me here. Deep breaths, you'll be fine."
I blink my widened eyes vacantly a few times, trying to process the sudden competence Smith has taken on as she takes a few steps back to give me space. I use that space immediately to stand up, disregarding the smothering numbness in my legs. "I- It doesn't matter anymore." I whimper. "I'm... far past okay. I'm gonna need a moment."
After a firm, unpleasantly long moment of observing the various armored police around me simply looking on with their weapons lowered, while trying to overcome my sudden balance issues, I limp and stumble my way into the room's bathroom and promptly lie down on the floor on my side without bothering to close the door behind me. The surrounding forces have clearly taken Smith's word that I'm not dangerous, or maybe they could gauge that for themselves. Either way, I curl my knees up to my chest and try my damnedest to block out everything that's outside my own head. The only thing that's going to help me right now is focusing on nothing but my breathing; the last thing this shitshow needs is me fainting.
In the midst of various people shuffling outside the bathroom for several minutes, I hear one particular set of footsteps approach the bathroom's door before pausing right outside it. "You still in there?" Smith asks in her more typical carefree tone of voice.
"Yeah," I manage to force out loud enough for my voice to croak past my positioning.
"Good, good, just making sure," she assures me. "Take your time in here, we're clearing the team out. When you feel better, I'll give you guys a ride back home." Without waiting for another response, I hear her turn and walk back into the room proper.
I'll admit that her patience with my sudden panic attack is helping my senses regain control, but it takes another few minutes for me to really gather myself into anything other than an obstacle in the room. I still take that as my cue to get up and wash my face, though, because as my thoughts start to react sensibly again, my emotions are still swirling in a hollow, negative mixture that just makes me want to go home. I splash some cold water onto my face in the nearby sink, dry myself off, and then leave to meet with Smith and Miia outside the room.
The rest of that police squad have cleared out of the room without a trace (aside from the broken door), leaving just Miia and Smith waiting for me. Only the former notices me right away, but Smith isn't far behind, and she addresses me vocally before Miia does. "You ready, Koruto-kun? Come on, let's get out of here," she pipes as she moves for the vacant doorway out of the room.
As I step forward to join Smith in leaving, Miia starts approaching at the same time, blocking my way for the most part. It doesn't catch that it's somewhat intentional until she looks over at me and tries to speak. "About what I..." She doesn't finish, instead falling silent as she scans my face. "Never mind." Before I can question anything behind that, she swirls back around and rushes after Smith. I follow behind quickly, barely making it into the elevator with them before its doors started closing, although they retract backwards upon noticing Miia's tail is in the way.
The ride to the first floor feels a lot longer than it should reasonably be, but I can easily equate that to how exhausted I am emotionally. I somehow lose track of time in the elevator, as well, but I'm quickly snapped back to what's going on when the door opens and the other to step out. Once again, I follow, but as Smith turns our collective path towards the door, I notice two people also in the lobby with us, both of whom begin laughing in a maddeningly familiar manner upon looking over at us.
It's the two pierced-up urban wannabes from before, but this time within even closer proximity to Miia and I, and seemingly they've also gotten over the previous encounter. That's all I'm left to assume given the gut-busting laughter they were engrossed in. "Holy shit, no way! He actually just came out of a room with that fuckin' thing!" the man cackled, leaning on the girl beside him.
"I can't believe it! Does that bitch have a cunt on her?" she squeals, pointing a finger specifically at Miia followed by nearly falling back into laughter, only caught by leaning on her male counterpart.
Normally, as you can imagine, I tend to be at least somewhat attentive to my surroundings, and I usually have an innate tendency not to be directly confrontational unless I'm called to be. However, I'm far past a lot of my usual emotional limits right now and, as a result, I can't help but feel like I'm being directly called out anyway. I was certainly being included in the base sentiment they were laughing at, that's for sure, and with just how burned out and generally upset I'm feeling, I can't help but slowly gravitate a few steps towards them with the boiling desire to end this one way or another. How I would end it isn't something inside my head, but that's obviously part of the problem with having a breakdown. You act without plans because the panic spilled white paint over whatever ideas you had.
The guy takes a slightly defensive stance and shoots me a confident glare like he's trying to muscle me into backing down without words, but I stop and shift my gaze between them, not even really knowing where I should start with the hot, pressurized negativity I had to spew at them. Despite that, I speak up first in a quiet, deadpan tone of voice. "Are you two proud of yourselves now? Have you accomplished what you've set out to do? Because all this was your fault."
The guy scoffs. "What? What does that even mean?"
It takes me moment to earnestly process his response and the expressions I make in the process look two steps away from agony, but I'm so worked up it doesn't cross my mind properly anyway. "Are you proud of who you are now for doing this? Y'know, bigots?"
They both look back at me like I'm speaking in tongues, but as the dots connect, they start to transition back to amusement. "You're the one fucking a half-human snake creature," the girl spits back like she's trying to overpower my volume, despite the fact that I'm not raising my voice anyway.
I consider a comeback... and then another... but judgment starts getting the better of me again and, in the course of a few incoherently insulting thoughts, I pull myself back with a deep breath. I reach into my pocket, a movement that probably seems oddly threatening to them for a stray moment. However, in a swift transition of motion, I dejectedly underhand-toss the packaged condom I snatched from Miia onto the ground in front of them. "Here, just... use this. Please. I'm begging you. If you can't figure it out, I'm sure someone here can help, please just fucking use it."
Without taking any other input from the rest of the room, I started directly heading towards the door, firmly rubbing my temples. "Fucking public bullshit," I mutter to myself in English as I check the door out of my way aggressively with my shoulder. I continue on in a straight line for another twenty feet or so before stopping, finally properly remembering about Smith and Miia over just how much I just want to go home. All I manage in terms of actual physical response before it starts making me feel physically disoriented is to turn around and look behind me, but it gets me to stop and wait for them, at least.
As the two of them catch up with me, I can see the expressions on their faces are vastly different from each other. Smith is looking at me with a level of unexpected intrigue that makes me almost uncomfortable with how suddenly it's appearing, but it's not a sexual interest. It's more like I've just given her the most exciting experience of her month. Miia, on the other hand, looks concerned and conflicted and she apparently feels it enough to cling to me similar to how she did when we first got off the bus earlier. Despite the potent expressions on both of them, neither says anything as we walk out of the alleyway, a fact that I almost don't notice, but I'm starting to get the feeling they both think this has all been enough for one day, too. Although likely in a different way than the way I'm feeling that. Either way, I'm just glad we're all on the same page for once.
I stop paying attention to things for the most part after that, although the cold feelings about it come and go in waves. Easily for about half the ride home, I'm paying very little attention to anything other than what's directly in front of me and what's in my head. It's hard to describe what it feels like when it's happening, but it's nothing of a serious nature overall, like an actual panic attack or catatonic trauma response. If something brings me out of it directly I tend to snap back from it quickly, but if nothing tries, I'll zone in and out peacefully until something significant changes around me to alert my senses. It's just one of those things that happens and you eventually learn to live with it.
In this case, the change that got me out first was arriving home. I got out with both Smith and Miia and almost immediately following afterwards. Smith handed the car off to the young man who was riding in the passenger seat (seemingly a part of the raid squad) and he carefully drove off. I didn't notice him in the vehicle during the drive somehow, but I have a feeling that might be related to the contents of the last paragraph. Regardless, Smith practically shoos us inside and I'm quickly washed thoroughly with another wave of thoughts that dethrone my attention again.
The second time I got snapped out of it is just now. I'm on the living room couch on my back and Smith calls me name and approaches me from the lower left of my vision. "Koruto-kun? You alright? You've been just staring at the ceiling since you got home," she notes, looking like she really isn't sure how okay I am.
I take a moment for a deep breath before confirming, "I'm fine. I'm just a little... tired in the head."
"Hah, I guess you would be," she chortles, cracking a smile. "You may hold a new record for the fastest I've ever seen anyone break down during a raid."
"Yeah... I'm not really qualified for being a part of any of that," I refute quickly. "Not only have I never been in a raid before, but in America, raids usually involve... a lot more hands-on confrontation and actual live shooting? Whether the target is cooperating or not? So..."
Smith sighs, although her smile only grows, and she grabs one of the two wooden chairs to the side of the room. I'd forgotten about those up until now, and on a broader scale than just today. Those were supposed to be introduced to the room after the renovations were done, but with only Miia and I here there's no real call for having them in the way all the time. Still, Smith grabs one and sits down three or four paces away, perpendicular roughly in relation to my upper legs. At least, I'm choosing to think it's my upper legs and not what's right above them.
"Koruto-kun, Japan's gun laws are very, very serious business," she starts, crossing her legs and leaning back in her seat. "There are two scenarios where we're allowed to call for live ammunition to be used for my department. It's when we've confirmed it won't actually hurt the target at all but it will hinder them, or if live ammunition hitting someone is already a part of the situation we're walking into. All other times we don't even carry live ammo on us, good old father law's demands!"
"That would've been nice to know before all of this, but... it can't be helped anymore, can it?" I groan. With Smith only raising an eyebrow and smiling smugly in response, I take another deep breath and raise my hand up to rub my tired eyes, but along the way I'm met with an uncomfortable, dull pain in my shoulder, to which I rotate the joint a little again before actually getting to my eyes.
As I reopen my eyes and my vision starts clearing up more concisely, I push myself up to sit against the couch's inner corner, more or less putting me facing Smith. In the process I can feel my shoulder again. It's uncomfortably raw and tender outside its resting position. "If I'd known how lax the police are around here, I would've punched that guy in the throat properly..." I mutter to myself, stewing in my own feelings on it a little. I'm not really a violent person outside of the occasional rogue dark thoughts, so it's a very empty sentiment, but the idea of those two getting more comeuppance than someone getting upset at them was a satisfying notion to think about regardless.
"I wouldn't go that far, but you certainly would've gotten away with it after all that," Smith giggles. "But you also don't need to worry about anything like that now. Trust me, they'll be more... mindful after we've settled things officially."
I pretend like that statement didn't sound concerning. At this point, it's not particularly hard to be uncaring for those two, but I'd be lying if I said the fatigue of the whole day wasn't also helping in its own way.
"Speaking of things that are settling, did you hurt your arm again?" she questions with a gentle cock at the eyebrows.
"Yeah... Is that weird suddenly?" I hesitantly deflect.
"No, no. It just seems like it's the same place again and that-"
"Yeah, it was the same place again, it's just something that aggravated it," I butt in, maintaining a calm tone the whole way but not being denied all the same.
Smith shrugs. "That makes sense, that's fine. Just make sure you rest that up too and you'll be alright." She stands up quickly while giving me one final self-satisfied look and saunters out.
"Will do," I punctuate. A feeling of relief tingles me distantly, but that still leaves me tired and sore at root. As I'm sitting up, I spot the waning slits of Mia's eyes from just beyond the same doorway Smith left through.
"Koruto... Why did you go out of your way like that?" Miia asks as she slithers gently into the room's light.
I scratch at the front of my neck with my unaffected arm. "I... I mean, I know it sounds really simple but I just really, really hate racists."
"No, I mean why did you... Why did you grab my tail when I was going to hit them with it?" she rephrases, worry setting more firmly into her face.
"'cause that's an international incident, are you kidding?" I laugh reflexively. "If you knock someone out or even threaten to knock someone out, a bunch of people are going to say you're an angry foreign invader showing their true colors. I'm entirely genetically Japanese; no matter what I do in this country, I'm just some poor bastard who's losing his mind and nothing more."
"That's... that's so demeaning," Miia mutters.
"Maybe, but it's a hell of a lot more accurate than saying you're some violent, entitled foreigner making a mess on purpose," I respond with a breaking smile. "Besides, it's not like they could do anything in response to what I did." I know she's right, it is demeaning. Regardless of angle, it does hurt a little. But really it hurts because it's openly true and yet people ignore it when it matters the most. From the other side of things, that somehow makes it feel like I hold a manipulative power over them that they'll never be able to understand. I'm okay with the idea of using that to protect Miia from the people who can't help going out of their way to be bigots.
I'm left to assume Miia's more than okay with that idea herself as her body language makes a fluid shift from hesitant and fidgety to restlessly affectionate. I swear for a moment I see her tail's spiraled coil rigidly become a spring, but regardless of how it was done, she impacts me full-contact and I find myself in a relatively familiar situation.
Her tail wraps up my body down to the lower legs while Miia's arms wrap around me closely enough to rub her chest against mine. From that position she slowly starts rubbing her chest further upwards until I'm once again trapped in her cleavage. "I never should've doubted you, Darling!" The more things change, the more they stay the same. She only lets up enough pressure to pull back and loom over me. She bites her lip and lifts up her shirt to reveal her bare breasts again. "Shall we continue from here?"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, WE JUST STOPPED YOU GETTING DEPORTED!" I choke out as hard as I could.
Miia ignores the signs of my failing respiratory system and tugs at my shirt impatiently. "Well, if we get this 'first time' out of the way already, nobody will ever be able to prove the difference after a while!"
I wheeze in protest, but there's no telling how little that does to dissuade her. And then suddenly the door cracks open with a sharp, metallic clank of the doorknob serving as the only brief warning. As an alarmed Miia props herself upwards, her shirt falls back over her chest and we're both left plenty of room to look up at Smith. With a seemingly ignorant smile on her face, Smith gently questions "Hey, what're you making for dinner tonight, by the way?"
And somehow, I find myself asking again how it could possibly get crazier than this. And somehow, I once again feel like there's only one way to find out.
a/n: No escaping pain, but I'm clingin' onto life by the skin of my teeth.