Chapter 351: Condom Roulette
Nash closed his mouth, forcing his face back to neutral, but something in his expression had already changed, and Rei saw it immediately.
"It’s not—" She crossed her arms even tighter over her chest, trying to hide her breasts. "It’s the house style, okay? I didn’t choose to walk around half-naked. They gave me this and told me to wear it. Period."
"I didn’t say anything," Nash said.
"You don’t need to. Your face is doing all the talking."
He stood up and approached her without rushing, keeping a reasonable distance, close enough to speak quietly, far enough not to overwhelm her even more.
"Rei."
"What?!"
"Relax for two seconds."
"Easy for you to say. You’re not the one walking around half-naked in front of an entire building full of—" She stopped short, shaking her head as she realized she was almost shouting. She lowered her voice, throwing a quick glance toward the ceiling, toward the small cameras she now knew were everywhere. "In front of all these people," she finished, quieter.
Nash let out a short laugh, almost despite himself.
"Well, nice job checking the camera. Want to wave at them too while you’re at it, just to show we’re focused on that?"
"Oh, beat it... You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?" she said, narrowing her eyes.
"A little, yeah."
"You’re serious right now."
"Listen," he said, "I’ve spent the last hour with my head full of things that aren’t funny at all. You showing up like this, all red, yelling at me about a bunny costume that, I have to admit, really suits you... it’s kind of the first thing since this evening that didn’t make me want to punch a wall."
Rei stayed speechless for a moment, searching for something to reply, but nothing came out. She felt her cheeks heat up even more, for a completely different reason this time.
"You’re really weird," she finally muttered, looking away.
"Jinzo tells me that a lot. Shame it won’t happen anymore."
They walked together to the door of the assigned room, Rei one step ahead, still a little stiff in her movements because of the heels, and fully aware that every step revealed the lower curve of her ass.
Nash walked right behind her, openly enjoying the view of that firm, toned backside without the slightest shame, hands in his pockets, his face once again perfectly calm—almost too calm.
The door opened onto a room bathed in soft golden light. A large bed covered in dark red sheets, a low table with an already opened bottle of wine, and certainly something else than wine inside it, and two empty glasses sitting next to it.
Rei entered first, her heart pounding hard, feeling the weight of everything she had rehearsed in her head during the walk over.
This was it. The big night. She was finally going to lose her V-card.
She turned toward Nash once the door closed behind them, taking a trembling breath, trying to summon courage she absolutely did not have.
"Alright," she said. "I’ll— I’ll be in your care tonight. I hope you’ll take care of me."
She stood there, hands joined in front of her, in an almost schoolgirl posture, as if she was waiting for an instruction manual. Her eyes were fixed on a vague point above Nash’s shoulder rather than on him directly.
Nash didn’t move. He just watched her for a moment with something between amusement and a poorly hidden hint of tenderness.
"Sit down," he said simply, pointing to the small sofa near the window.
Rei blinked.
"What?"
"Sit down," he repeated, going to sit himself in the armchair across from it, crossing one leg over the other, completely relaxed. "It’s been a while, hasn’t it?"
"A... while?" She stayed standing a second longer, completely lost. "What are you talking about? Are you insane?"
"Play along," he said, a slight smile on his lips. "Like we haven’t seen each other in weeks, right? Tell me about your life."
Rei eventually sat down, more from lack of anything else to do than from actual understanding of the situation. Her hands settled nervously on her knees as she mechanically tugged at the much-too-short hem of the costume.
"What the hell is this," she finally said, voice low. "We’re supposed to... you know. The plan."
"We’ll get to it," Nash said. "So. Baby-Boom. How’s training been going lately?"
She stared at him, incredulous, searching his face for any sign that he was joking. But he was actually waiting for an answer.
"Fine," she said at last, completely lost. "Kai improved her footwork. Uh... Miko keeps calculating stuff no one understands..."
"And you?"
"Me what?"
"You. How are you doing."
The question, asked in that simple and direct tone, unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. What was his problem exactly? What was he even talking about?
She looked away toward the window, where the golden lights of the Spires filtered through a semi-transparent curtain.
"I don’t know," she said finally. "Stressed. Like, a lot. I’m... supposed to be doing something specific right now or everyone’s in danger, and there’s a lunatic talking to me about the weather."
Nash nodded, holding back a laugh.
The silence stretched a little, not uncomfortable, but strange. Rei threw a quick glance toward the ceiling.
"Nash," she said, quieter this time. "Seriously. The cameras. They’re going to find it weird if we just sit here talking."
"Let them find it weird."
"What?" She straightened slightly. "That’s not... that’s not the plan. We’re supposed to—" She lowered her voice even more, her cheeks flushing again. "We’re supposed to, like, do something... the two of us. So it looks credible."
"It’ll be credible," Nash said without flinching. "Just not in the way you’re thinking."
Rei frowned, trying to follow his reasoning, vaguely sensing that he was plotting something without her grasping the logic yet. It was Nash, after all.
"Listen," he said, leaning slightly forward, his voice dropping a tone. "The longer we stay here without anything happening, the more Monique is going to start getting impatient. The more impatient she gets, the more mistakes she’ll make. Moving people around, changing plans at the last minute, panicking a little. That’s exactly what I need."
"Wait." Rei stared at him, the pieces slowly starting to come together in her head. "You’re saying that... you’re doing nothing on purpose?"
"Yeah."
"Like, the plan is... to do nothing at all? Like we’re not going to..." She stopped, unable to finish the sentence.
"We’re not going to Poundtown, if that’s what you want to hear," Nash said. "I’m waiting for great things from the idiot who hasn’t been able to fap for weeks. I’m just waiting for a kind of signal, and then shits will go down."
Rei stayed silent for a long moment, digesting all of it. One part of her admired the intelligence of his reasoning. Another part, deeper, more annoyed, was frankly irritated that, once again, nothing was going to happen between them.
"So basically," she said finally, her voice a little dry, "we just sit here talking about nothing while Aiko is somewhere alone with that psycho waiting for her."
"For now," Nash said. "I’m watching. As soon as I get my signal, I move."
Rei clenched her fists on her knees, the worry for Aiko coming back full force, mixing painfully with that other, more selfish frustration she refused to fully admit to herself, that stupid, stubborn little voice that, despite all the danger, despite how serious the situation was, kept thinking why not us, why never me.
"You’re really annoying, you know that," she muttered, half to him, half to herself.
"Yeah," Nash said, a small smile reappearing. "I tell myself that a lot."
Monique had been staring at the screen showing Rei and Nash’s room for a good while now, her golden fan snapping open and shut at an increasingly fast pace, almost aggressive, a metallic clicking sound cutting through the room’s silence with every movement.
"Okay," she said finally. "What the hell is going on here."
Nobody answered right away. On the screen, Rei and Nash were still just sitting there, each in their own chair, chatting casually like two virgins from a rom-com wasting the money on a motel room just to stretch the plot out.
"They’re supposed to be fucking, so what’s this shit?!" Monique said, louder this time, the fan snapping against her palm. "This is porn, not a dating show, for fuck’s sake!"
Jinzo wasn’t even listening anymore. His eyes were completely locked on another screen, the one showing the room Aiko had just walked into, his knee bouncing against the console.
"She’s there," he muttered, almost to himself, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "She’s really there."
Harlan, standing a bit off to the side, felt a cold bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. His eyes kept darting between the feed of Nash and Rei and the one of Aiko, his brain scrambling to find some way, any way, to hold Jinzo back just a little longer.
"Maybe they’re just nervous," he tried, his voice coming out a bit too high. "I mean, this place is intimidating, right, for a first-timer, takes time to get in the mood—"
"Nobody asked you, Harlan," Monique cut in, not even looking at him, her eyes still locked on Nash’s feed.
He shut up, swallowing the rest of his sentence, his hands twisting nervously against each other behind his back.
Saya, who’d stayed quiet in her corner for a while now, watched the whole scene with a confusion that kept growing. She looked at Nash on the screen, that total calm of his, that easy way he had of talking like nothing was wrong, and she could feel that something was going on, but what exactly, she had absolutely no idea.
What’s he doing, she thought, her eyes flicking fast between Nash’s screen and Aiko’s, then to Jinzo, who was already slowly straightening up in his seat. Why isn’t he moving? He knows time’s running out, right? He’s gotta know.
She glanced over at Harlan, looking for some explanation, some sign, anything that might help her figure out where she was even supposed to fit into all this, but Harlan looked just as lost as she was, his eyes darting everywhere without ever landing anywhere.
Nobody told me the plan, she thought, frustration building up in her chest. I’m not even supposed to still be here... So why does this clown look so nervous? Are we good or not???
She looked down at her own hands resting on her knees, completely useless in this room full of screens and people who, each in their own way, were just as lost as she was.
Jinzo shot up out of his chair, the seat scraping loudly against the floor behind him.
"Alright, fuck it! I’m done waiting," he said. "They wanna take their sweet time, fine. I’m not doing this anymore."
Every head in the room turned toward him.
"I’ve had enough," Jinzo continued. "I’ve been patient. I waited my turn like a good little soldier, I kept my mouth shut. But that’s over now."
He walked around the console, determined, heading straight for the door.
"We said we were waiting for the right moment," Harlan started, stepping forward slightly, one hand raised in an awkward calming gesture. "Like, if you barge in now, while she’s already impatient, it could—"
"It could what, Harlan," Monique cut in, without even raising her voice.
He froze. She wasn’t even looking at him with real irritation, more with that amused, calculating expression that froze the blood. One eyebrow slightly raised, head tilted to the side, like she was watching a child clumsily try to lie to his mother.
"Go on," she said, her voice drawn-out, almost soft. "I’m really curious to hear the rest of that sentence."
Harlan stayed with his mouth open, no words willing to come out. He realized, with chilling clarity, that she knew exactly what he was trying to do, not the details maybe, not the why, but she could clearly see the gesture, that suspicious hesitation, that insistent need to calm things down at every turn.
"Nothing," he finally managed to say, his voice dead. "Forget it."
Monique offered him a small, satisfied smile, almost tender in its cruelty, before turning her attention back to Jinzo, who had already reached the door.
"Go ahead, my dear," she said, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. "Entertain me properly."
Jinzo didn’t need to be told twice. He stormed out, the door closing behind him with a dull thud.
Saya felt her heart tighten, her eyes instinctively turning toward Harlan. He was avoiding her gaze, staring at the floor, shoulders slumped.
Oh, that idiot... he’s going to be useless tonight, she thought. He couldn’t even buy five minutes.
Harlan, for his part, felt Saya’s eyes on him without needing to look at her to know. He no longer had the strength to justify himself, even internally. He had just burned the only card he thought he could play discreetly, and for nothing. Jinzo was already gone. And Monique... Monique was looking at him differently now, he could feel it, the kind of look reserved for people you were no longer quite sure about. The worst possible position for him today.
There would be no next time for him. It was either today, or Hector would be asking for the Baby-Boom tomorrow.
In the room that had been assigned to her, Aiko had been pacing for a while, arms tightly wrapped around herself.
The costume they had given her was an ultra-shiny orange-red latex bodysuit, slit high on the hips, leaving her entire pelvis and the curve of her ass completely exposed.
The skin-tight fabric clung to her waist, topped on her red hair by two textured fox ears that moved with every turn of her head.
Behind her, fixed at the base of her lower back by a thin black leather strap, a long, incredibly bushy red fox tail dragged across the floor of the dressing room.
She had tried, without much success, to pull the fabric down several times, as if that would miraculously make it more decent.
"Great," she muttered to herself, stopping in front of the mirror for the hundredth time, grimacing at her own reflection. "Just great. I look like a complete idiot."
She threw a glance toward the closed door, then up at the ceiling, where she now knew a camera had to be hidden somewhere.
"And meanwhile," she continued in a low voice, "I bet they’re already—" She stopped, shaking her head hard, refusing to finish the thought. "No. No no no, I’m not thinking about that."
But the idea refused to leave, digging in, eating at her. She knew Nash. She knew him well enough to know that once he started fucking, he really, really had a hard time stopping halfway.
"He’s probably already destroying her," she grumbled, her cheeks turning red in spite of herself. "While I’m stuck here pacing like an idiot dressed as a—"
She cut herself off abruptly, her body freezing all at once as she felt another emotion she had been pushing down: fear. Real fear. The kind she had been trying to keep at a distance by getting angry at Nash and Rei instead of thinking about what was actually waiting for her.
She thought back to Jinzo, to that promise he had made.
"Nash," she murmured, almost like a prayer, her arms tightening even harder around herself. "Hurry the fuck up."
It was at that exact moment that the door opened.
Aiko spun around, her heart leaping in her chest, almost expecting, despite everything, to see Nash’s face in the doorway.
But her prayer was not answered.
It wasn’t Nash.
It was Jinzo, with a twisted smile already fixed on his face.