Chapter 9: Soap Was an S-Grade Seduction Artifact
Chapter 9: Soap Was an S-Grade Seduction Artifact
"Climb," she gritted out. "Now."
I used my other hand, then my feet, scrabbling against the brick, finding purchase, hauling myself upward while she pulled. Together — straining, gasping, neither of us strong enough alone — we got me onto the roof.
I lay on my back staring at the grey sky, my heart hammering against my bruised ribs.
"You’re heavier than you look," Liora panted.
"Thank you."
"That wasn’t a compliment."
I turned my head to look at her. She was sprawled beside me, her chest rising and falling, her tail limp on the concrete. The timer flickered.
[Manifestation Remaining: 34:08]
Nearly seven minutes. That was what the escape had cost her. Every second she stayed, she was spending her remaining manifestation on keeping me alive.
I didn’t tell her. Not yet. But I filed the number away as something to repay.
❖ ❖ ❖
The neighbouring apartment was empty — not abandoned-empty like mine, but evacuated-empty. The family who’d lived here had packed and fled in the first days of the Merge, leaving behind the heavy things: the furniture, the books, the canned goods in the pantry that were too bulky to carry.
Liora swept the rooms while I leaned against the doorframe still catching my breath. Her knives were out and her ears swivelled constantly, cataloguing sounds I couldn’t hear.
"Clear," she announced. "No monsters or humans inside the apartment. Something has used the maintenance ducts recently. Also, one dead plant."
"The plant was probably dead before the apocalypse."
"Still clear."
She moved to the kitchen and I followed more slowly, one hand still pressed against my ribs. The pain was duller now. Level 2 had helped, and Level 3 would help more — if I survived long enough to reach it.
"Water heater," Liora said, crouching beside a closet near the bathroom. "Still has water in the tank. Your world’s infrastructure is strange, but it has advantages."
"You know how to drain it?"
"I’ve found water in salt flats, ash tunnels, flooded ruins, and sealed monster dens." She was already working on a valve. "This is not difficult."
Within minutes she had filled a pot with clean water. She found canned soup in the pantry, instant noodles, a small butane stove that still had fuel, bandages, antiseptic cream, and spare clothing folded in a bedroom drawer. She set the water and the supplies on the counter.
Then she extended her hand. I looked at it.
"What?"
"Pat my head."
I stared at her. Her expression was serious, her ears forward and expectant, the tips slightly tilted.
"You’re a grown woman."
"A grown woman who found your water."
"Those facts are unrelated."
"Not in my culture." Her tail curled. "Physical acknowledgment after successful work. It’s traditional."
"Is it really?"
"Absolutely." Her ears flicked. "You can refuse."
I believed her. That was the strange part — I believed she would accept refusal without argument, without punishment, without the entitled confusion Velisara had worn when I objected to her hands.
Liora asked. Liora waited. Liora made it clear I could say no.
I reached up and placed my palm between her ears. Her fur was softer than I’d expected, the base of her ears warm, and when I moved my fingers gently through the short black hair she made a sound that was almost a purr. Almost. She caught it before it fully formed. Her ears lowered and her tail curled around her own ankle.
Her expression remained composed. Her ears betrayed her completely.
[Resonance updated.]
Desire: 74 → 75
Trust: 6 → 8
Resonance: 2%
My class had changed two relationship values over a head pat. Apparently dimensional analysis came with bookkeeping. Somewhere in the multiverse, Velisara was probably laughing.
Liora stepped back after a moment — five seconds, maybe seven, I wasn’t counting — and cleared her throat. "Good. Now wash."
"What?"
"You smell like blood and dirt and something that died in a basement." She pointed toward the bathroom. "I can’t protect you if every monster in the district can track you by scent."
"Right. Tactical bathing."
"Very tactical." Her eyes glinted. "Tell me if you faint."
"Why?"
Her tail swayed. "So I know whether to rescue you immediately or wait until you’re less naked."
"Immediately."
"Disappointing, but reasonable."
She turned her back as I entered the bathroom — guarding the door, ears swivelling, knives still in her hands. She wasn’t watching. She wasn’t peeking. She was making shameless jokes through a closed door while keeping her word, and somehow that was more attractive than everything Velisara had done.
The thought startled me. I didn’t examine it too closely.
The water was cold, but it was water. I used it sparingly: a damp cloth, a careful rinse, working through the grime and dried blood and two weeks of accumulated despair. The bruises were still there, purple and black across my ribs, faint yellow at the edges where healing had started. The split in my lip had closed completely, though the skin was still tender. I scrubbed my hair until it was silver-white again instead of the greyish-brown that dirt and neglect had made of it, then found a dark fitted shirt in the bedroom, clean trousers, and my own shoes wiped down as best I could manage.
When I looked in the cracked bathroom mirror, a stranger stared back. Still thin. Still bruised. Still visibly recovering from two weeks of starvation.
But clean. And absurdly, unfairly, almost offensively handsome.
Charisma 100. The stat that keeps giving.
I opened the bathroom door. Liora turned. And stopped.
Her ears went straight up, then forward, then slightly back, as though she couldn’t decide which direction meant what the hell is happening to my composure. Her pupils dilated — wide, then wider, the amber nearly swallowed by black. Her tail went rigid, then puffed, then curled into a shape I’d never seen before.
She pointed at me.
"That was under the dirt?"
"Apparently."
"Put some of it back."
"Why?"
"I could think when you were dirty."
She wanted me at seventy-five while I smelled like blood, sweat, and failed survival. Apparently soap is an S-grade seduction artifact.
[Presentation penalties removed.]
[Charisma expression recalculated.]
[Resonance updated.]
Desire: 75 → 92
Ninety-two. Ninety-two percent Desire. I had gained seventeen points by taking a bath.
The Goddess of Indulgence would be proud. Or jealous. Or both.
Liora was still staring, her tail beginning a slow unconscious sway. "I need to—" She stopped. Swallowed. "May I touch your hair?"
She asked. Even now, with her pupils blown wide and her ears quivering and every catlike instinct presumably screaming at her to pounce, she asked.
"Just my hair," I said.
She stepped closer and lifted a strand of silver-white from my shoulder. The touch was feather-light, barely there, as though she were handling something fragile or sacred or both.
"Your summoning class," she murmured, "should have come with a warning."
"For monsters?"
"For women with functioning eyes."
Her fingers traced the length of the strand and withdrew. She didn’t touch my face. Didn’t touch my chest. Didn’t let her hand drift anywhere uninvited.
Restraint. From a woman whose Desire is ninety-two percent. Velisara could learn something. Assuming goddesses can learn anything.
"We need food," Liora said, stepping back with visible reluctance. "Real food. Then we discuss the grocery store."
"The grocery store?"
"Ground floor. Connected through a maintenance passage. I could smell it while you were washing." Her ears angled forward. "Preserved food. Bottled water. Several monsters. One stronger than the rest."
"How much stronger?"
She paused. "Around Level 5. Maybe 6. Something with scales and bad breath."
Level 5. Four levels above me, three above Liora’s manifested form. But there was food there. Water. Supplies to keep me alive.
[Manifestation Remaining: 24:31]
Less than twenty-five minutes. She couldn’t see the timer, but she clearly felt the connection thinning — it showed in the slight tension in her shoulders, the sharper movement of her tail, the occasional flick of her ears toward sounds I couldn’t hear.
"We have time for one meal," I said. "Then we go."