My Taboo Harem!

Phei did not look up immediately.

He had been half-expecting this particular ambush for weeks. Ever since the second time he’d talked cheerfully dinged in her presence, he had known the fairy who already read his mail, his memories, his grocery lists, and apparently his entire anime backlog would eventually notice that something else was reading him…

She knew something about the system but not really what it was.

He was also, under no circumstances, in the mood to explain a video-game reward interface to an entity older than the concept of written language.

So, he lied. Beautifully.

“It’s a… cosmic ancient reward thing,” he said in the relaxed, slightly bored tone of a boy describing a mildly embarrassing rash. “When I accomplish something of significance, something rewards me. I don’t really understand the mechanism. Came with my awakening. Tied to my bloodline, I think. Never really dug into the rules.”

He delivered the entire sentence without breathing.

Without blinking.

With a face so studiously casual that a polygraph would have spontaneously combusted.

Eira, to her credit, did not immediately call him on his spectacular bullshit.

She had been bound to him long enough to recognize the pattern: every time Phei achieved something meaningful, he changed — sharper edges, new powers, another architectural upgrade to the half-feral boy she had first met.

She had been waiting for the conversation in which he would explain it.

She had apparently been waiting to see whether he would do so voluntarily, or whether she would eventually have to pry it out of him with the delicate tools of ancient manipulation.

He had now, technically, explained it.

Very, very badly. Like a teenager explaining why there was a broken lamp in his room and why the neighbor’s cat was mysteriously asleep on his pillow wearing sunglasses.

She could smell the lie. Every fragrant molecule of it. Eau de I Am Lying To My Fairy, vintage this-afternoon.

But in the older, wiser part of her — the part that had outlived entire Earth civilizations and knew precisely when not to press — she decided, quietly, that if her Master needed a little privacy inside his own skull, he could have it.

He had given her something precious.

That was more than nothing.

She filed Master lies badly and I love him anyway under long-term concerns and smiled sweetly.

“Oh,” she said mildly. “Like those things in novels?”

“…Similar. But older. Less flashy status screens, more… whisper from something ancient.”

“Tied to your bloodline, you said?”

“That’s what the — thing — says.”

That landed differently.

He watched her face shift in real time. Faint curiosity softened, not into deeper suspicion, but into quiet understanding. Ah. An ancient reward structure baked into a dragon bloodline.

“Yes. Of course. Absolutely that would exist. No further questions, Master.”

Phei nearly laughed aloud. The sheer cosmic irony of successfully bullshitting an ancient fairy with the truth wrapped in mediocre lies was almost too delicious to bear.

Small mercies. Small, beautiful, devious mercies.

“Wait,” he said, tilting his head at her with theatrical suspicion. “Have you been — binge-reading novels and manga?”

Her small pale cheeks flushed an instant, guilty pink.

“Mmm. And anime. In my free time.”

“Since when?”

“Since I first bonded to you,” she replied, fluttering her wings once like a duchess adjusting her skirts before delivering a killing blow. “I read your memories. Watched what you watched.”

“And?”

She sucked her teeth, genuinely offended. “And with respect, Master, your taste was garbage. Catastrophically, unforgivably garbage. I had assumed, based on the tragically small sample you had consumed in your short life, that humanity in this realm had simply given up on producing good stories.

“I thought I had bonded to a species in terminal decline. Then I discovered — through other channels — that your personal library was not, in fact, representative of what your kind was capable of. I have been correcting the oversight in my off-hours. At considerable personal investment.”

“Other channels.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Eira.”

“I said don’t worry about it, Master.”

He was grinning now, wide and helpless. “Are you streaming from the Wi-Fi I’m paying for?”

“Master, I transcend your pathetic Wi-Fi.”

“Uh huh. Tell me some.”

“Jujutsu Kaisen,” she continued firmly, like a woman pretending she had not heard the last question, “is superior to every single thing you have ever read. I will not be taking questions.

“Frieren should be required curriculum for all dragons. Vinland Saga is what masculinity is supposed to look like, and I would like to submit it as corrective therapy against several of your recent life choices.

“Attack on Titan — the first season, an absolute masterpiece. The later seasons… we will discuss later. It is complicated. There is a discourse. I have prepared a seventeen-page position paper in your defence when we reach that particular battlefield.”

“Oh my god.”

“Also, A Silent Voice, which made me cry. And I will remind you I have not cried since the ten thousand years ago.”

Phei rubbed his face with one hand, grinning helplessly into his own palm.

“Noted. Entire list. Noted.”

“I will be making you watch them.”

“I have no doubt.”

She crossed her tiny ankles primly on the armrest. “Yeah. Well. Well. Now.” She waved one small hand imperiously at the empty space above his palm.

“Let us see what your ancient cosmic thing has gifted you.”

Phei exhaled and commanded the first box, internally, into manifestation.

It shimmered into existence above his open palm.

A box. Deep, regal purple — the colour of Void-Ice shot through with living amethyst. Draconic scales textured its surface, each one faintly ridged as though an unseen reptile had pressed its hide against the lid from within, a quiet, smug confirmation of exactly what Eira had begun to suspect.

Eira leaned in, genuinely fascinated now.

The box opened with a soft, almost reverent click.

Inside — suspended in the air above the open lid, rotating slowly — floated a ring.

It was plain. Almost aggressively plain. A simple band. No stone. No ornamentation. The metal itself was an unfamiliar shade — something between liquid silver and the reflection of a moonless sky.

But etched around the band, clean and precise, were runes.

Small. Circular. Not any script Phei recognised.

Eira went very still.

“Oh,” she breathed, the sound soft with something close to reverence.

She drifted forward until her nose was practically inside the rotating ring, pale hair falling across one eye as she read.

“That’s the Original Tongue.”

“The what?”

“The Original Tongue. The language existence itself spoke before any of the current ones. Older than anything you’ve ever heard. Not so many writes in this anymore or speaks it anymore. I haven’t seen these runes since… a very long time ago.”

“What does it say?”

She circled the ring once, lips moving faintly. Then her small mouth curled into a slow, dangerous smile.

“Spiritual Bond.”

Phei’s eyebrows rose.

“That’s what it’s called?”

“That’s what it is. These aren’t letters, Master — they’re more like a name etched directly into the object’s very nature. Calling it a ring that says ‘Spiritual Bond’ would be like describing a sword as ‘a long metal thing that cuts.’ This is an artifact. A real one.

“Whatever ancient reward system has taken an interest in you just opened the good toy chest and handed you something with actual weight.”

Phei nodded slowly.

He reached toward the rotating ring. It slid obediently out of the air and onto his palm — cool, lighter than it had any right to be, humming very faintly against his skin like a living secret.

Eira was still studying it with an expression he had not seen on her face in weeks.

He would ask her more.

But not right now.

Because even as he turned the ring between his fingers — even as Eira watched with quiet awe — a second notification unfurled across his vision, one only he could see, one his fairy companion could not read no matter how closely she peered.

The System, it seemed, had not finished its delivery.

[DING!]

[LIVE CUCKOLDING — MYSTERY BOX UNSEALED

[Item: Spiritual Bond Ring]

[Bonus Reward: Ability Unlocked!]

[ABILITY — WITNESS BIND]

Any man forced to witness Host having sex with a woman loses sexual function — permanently a woman.

EFFECTS:

[1. Permanent erectile failure a man in respect to the specific woman witnessed — whether seen in person, on recorded footage. His body will physically refuse to perform with any woman ever from then. The failure is absolute and does not diminish with time.

[2. Secondary erectile failure with respect to any woman biologically or emotionally linked to her — sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, close friends, current and former lovers, anyone whose cosmic register is bonded to hers through blood, history, or affection.

[3. Tertiary erectile failure with respect to any woman who has intimate thoughts for Host. This failure is absolute and does not diminish with time.

[4. Subconscious fear imprint — the afflicted man will carry, for the remainder of his natural life, an instinctive somatic fear response when in the presence of the specific woman or of the Host. His body will flinch before his mind understands why. His heart rate will rise. His mouth will dry. He will know, at the level of reflex, that he is prey.]

[Effect is retroactive. All previously afflicted subjects are hereby reclassified as Witness Bound.]