Chapter 80: Mana Transfer Exercise

Post-nut clarity hit me like a truck after that.

[Lily saw her naked.] I banged my head against a wall. [And now instead of being able to relax in the baths, she walks in and finds me getting my dick wet like everything is fine.]

I banged it a second time.

[She might actually kill me.]

Odette was putting her clothes back on, completely unaware of my current struggle.

"T-That was... enjoyable enough."

[Oh? You’re gonna pretend like you didn’t take my dick in positions that would make most gymnasts jealous a few seconds ago? That’s a brave strategy.]

"Yeah."

"Perhaps... we could do it again. If you insist!"

[I didn’t insist, though?]

"Yeah."

She buttoned her shirt up to the collar. Then, she found the mark I’d left on her neck, pressed a finger to it, and did the top button up as well.

"Also, I’d prefer if this stayed between us."

"Sure."

"Not because it was anything to hide! I’m simply not interested in being part of your... your rumors!" She picked up her book. She put it under the wrong arm, switched it, then switched it back.

I replied with my face still pressed against the wall.

"Odette, half the academy already thinks I’m sleeping with everyone. If you’re that worried, you could just say you’re the one person on campus I haven’t touched."

"B-But that would be a lie!"

"So? Lie."

She opened her mouth, closed it, and put her glasses on. They fogged up right away. She left them like that, I guess because taking them off again would’ve meant admitting something.

"The schedule tomorrow is the ninth bell," she said. "As usual. I’m only telling you so you can avoid it, if you’d like."

"I probably won’t."

She left. Then, about ten seconds later, the door slid open six inches, an arm came through and grabbed the towel she’d forgotten on the hook, and the door shut again. Her footsteps went off down the hall a lot faster than before.

[Any other time, I would be feeling extremely endeared.]

I peeled myself off the wall, dried off, and put Lily’s shirt back on. The fourth button was gone for good, so I tied the tails in a knot under my tits and called it a day. Then, I stood in the hallway for a while and thought about my life.

[Okay. Serena’s had, what, twenty minutes to stew? That’s either enough time to calm down or enough time to sharpen something to stab me with. Fifty-fifty! Great odds, honestly. I’ve walked into worse rooms today.]

And so, I went back to my shared room.

The lamp was already out when I got there. I slid the door open, which is never quiet with paper doors, and stood there while my eyes adjusted.

One big futon and two lumps.

Lily was on the far left, curled up on her side with her back to the room. She’d gone so far over that one hand was hanging off onto the floor. Serena was on the far right, flat on her back with her arms crossed over her chest, and her shoulder was pressed right up against the wall.

Between them, there was about fifteen feet of empty futon.

[... Oh, come on.]

Neither of them moved. Neither of them was asleep, either. When Lily’s actually out, she breathes slowly and heavily. I’ve heard it every night for two months, and right now she was doing these careful little breaths that were way too even. Serena wasn’t even trying. Her whole body was visibly clenched.

I stepped over Lily’s hand, walked into the gap, and lay down on my back in the exact middle of it.

Nobody said anything.

Then, from the right, without moving a single muscle:

"If your tail touches me tonight, I will break you."

"Understood."

From the left, in a very small voice:

"Goodnight, Kohaku."

"Night, Lily."

I lay there staring at the ceiling. On one side, a girl who’d almost said the L-word to me an hour ago. On the other, the girl who’d made her cry into a laundry basket for a week. And me in the middle, smelling like Odette. My dick, meanwhile, was the only part of me that had gotten anything done today.

[Okay... I’m gonna have to fix everything somehow!]

---

I woke up with a yawn big enough to hurt my jaw and stretched until something in my back popped.

[No tail-breaking overnight. No knives. I’ll take it!]

Both of them were already gone, which, for a shared futon, is a pretty loud way of saying something. I got dressed and went down to the yard.

Sabine had the first-years lined up in front of her, and she had that look on her face that meant somebody was going to end up touching somebody. Usually, it was me touching her, but seeing that look out in the open like this was unsettling.

"Good morning," she said. "Today’s lesson is mana transfer. Sooner or later, one of you is going to be standing next to an ally who has run dry in the middle of something important, and you’ll have the option of simply handing over some of yours. The procedure is close contact. Palms flat on the receiver’s chest. Foreheads together. The receiver holds the giver’s shoulders. Hold for a count of thirty. Questions?"

Somebody in the back said "chest?" in a very unsure tone.

"Chest. The heart is where the channels meet, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise for the sake of your comfort. Pair off! I’ll assign the odd ones."

[Oh, this is going to be great.]

And it was, for about a minute. Two Knight Course boys stood facing each other with their hands hovering an inch off each other’s shirts, both bright red, neither one willing to go first. A Saint girl put her palms on her partner’s chest and then apologized to her four times. I stood there with my arms crossed and enjoyed every second of it.

"Come on, people!" I called out. "It’s a chest! You’ve all got one! Nobody’s dying here!"

"Sakana."

I turned around. Serena was standing right in front of me.

"Huh?"

"Frostfall, Sakana. Yeah, that works." Sabine said, without looking up from her list. "Everdawn, you’re with Holloway."

"You, uh... sure you wanna...?" I asked.

Serena’s jaw was tight. She looked at me, then at the field behind me, then at me again.

"What?" she said, low. "Would you rather I do this with Lily? Are you insane?"

Over Serena’s shoulder, Lily and Cassian squared up. Lily put her hands on his chest, bored. Cassian put his hands on her shoulders and stared past her head. Their foreheads touched. Neither of them changed expression at all.

[Wow. Nothing. Not even a blush. My main couple has the chemistry of two doorknobs.]

"Begin," Sabine said.

Serena breathed in through her nose, stepped in, and put her palms flat on my chest.

Or, well. She tried. My chest isn’t really flat anywhere, so what she actually got was two handfuls, and she went red from the neck up in one second flat. To her credit, she didn’t move them. I put my hands on her shoulders. She leaned in until our foreheads touched, and I felt her mana start moving into me, cold, in a slow line from her hands down through my ribs.

[Huh. That’s... actually kind of nice.]

"Ten," Sabine counted.

Serena’s hands were shaking. Her eyes were shut. I looked down, because there was nowhere else to look, and about halfway down her dress there was a shape that hadn’t been there when we started. It was getting more obvious by the second.

[Oh no. Oh, she’s got her hands on the tits that got a full review last night, her forehead’s on mine, and she can’t move for twenty more seconds. She’s going to combust!]

"Twenty."

"Say anything," Serena whispered, without opening her eyes, "and I will kill you."

"Mm-hm!"

"Thirty. Break!"

She was gone before Sabine even finished saying the word. She went straight across the yard and around the corner of the shrine, and a door slammed somewhere on the far side.

"Well done, everyone," she said. "Again, with the roles reversed."

Lily and Cassian swapped without a word. I stood alone in the middle of the yard with my chest still warm.

---

After the lesson, a shrine hand came jogging up the path with his sleeves rolled up. Sabine let him get all the way to her before she looked at him.

"Professor. The northeast path. The third ward stone’s split down the middle overnight, and we don’t know how. The shrine hasn’t got anyone who can re-seat a stone, and with the students walking about..."

[Ward stone. Northeast path. Northeast.]

"I’m afraid my students are here on an academic excursion, not a maintenance-"

"WE’LL DO IT!"

Everybody turned. I had already hooked an arm around Lily’s waist and pulled her against my hip, and she was holding a rice ball halfway to her mouth.

"Kohaku, what-"

"Group 11 volunteers!" I said. "Community service! Building bridges between the academy and the local, uh, rock community! Honestly it would be irresponsible not to volunteer!"

"Sakana, the northeast path is-"

"Great! Thanks, Professor!"

I turned Lily around by the waist and started walking. Then, I started jogging. Behind us, Sabine said my name once, in the voice she uses right before somebody gets assigned extra reading, and I pretended not to hear.

"Kohaku!" Lily said, running now. "Kohaku, the moth!"

"Dead! Serena blew it up! There’s no more moths!"

"You don’t know that!"

"I’m an optimist!"

[Dawnlight, Take Two. Let’s go!]