I hung there for a second, my back pressed against the cold stone, staring into Esdeath's intense blue eyes. For a heartbeat, I actually thought she might go through with it. The air was thick with that weird, self-sexual tension that I was starting to realize was just a side effect of meeting myself in a different body.
But then, the pressure on my collar vanished. Esdeath pulled back, her expression shifting from predatory to business-like in a way that was almost more terrifying. She reached into the front of her uniform and pulled out a crisp, official-looking sheet of imperial paper.
"I have been preparing this upon hearing their is still a male us," she said, clearing her throat and holding the paper up. "As my Right Hand Man, your duties will be as follows: You will accompany me on all campaigns, you will share my private quarters, you will manage my personal affairs, and you will enter into a legally binding union with me."
I stared at her. "Union? That's just a marriage contract, Esdeath. You're literally trying to draft me into a wedding."
"But it isn't," she countered, her eyes flicking toward the paper again. "It ensures that our shared soul remains unified under a single household."
"I'm refusing," I said, crossing my arms as my feet finally touched the ground. "Look, I'll admit the thing with Koneko happened, but that was a one-time transaction to settle a debt. I am not going further than that. I'm not marrying myself. That's where I draw the line on the weirdness scale."
Esdeath didn't look discouraged. Instead, she took a slow step toward me. With a casual, practiced motion, she hooked a finger into the waistband of her skirt and tilted it just enough to flash me a glimpse of her black lace panties.
"Are you absolutely sure about that line, Katsuya?" she whispered, her voice dropping into that smooth, sultry tone.
I felt my face heat up instantly. My resolve, which I had tried to keep absolute, started crumbling like a sandcastle in a tide. She moved even closer, her body heat radiating off her, until she was practically molding herself against me. She grabbed my hand and guided it, letting me feel the curve of her waist—my own waist?
The sensation was dizzying. It was like a feedback loop in my brain. Touching her felt like touching myself, but the physical feedback from her body was so different, so soft and firm in all the right places, that it was overwhelming. I was definitely feeling the physical effects of that ten-inch upgrade again, and it was making it very hard to think straight.
"Sign the mutual consent paper, Katsuya" she breathed against my ear.
I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a shaky breath. "No. I... I won't sign it. I'm not signing a marriage contract just because you're hot."
Esdeath let out a long, dramatic sigh, pulling away just enough to look at me with a disappointed pout. "You are incredibly stubborn. Fine."
She reached into her uniform again and pulled out a second, smaller piece of paper. "Then answer me this. Are you okay with being raped?"
I blinked, the whiplash of the question nearly giving me a stroke. "What? No! Of course not!"
"Then it's not even rape at that point," she said, her logic taking a sharp, bizarre turn. "If I do it and you didn't consent, but then we both enjoy it because we're the same person... it's more like a mutual rape. We'll just bypass the consent and call it that."
I stared at her for a long, dead-silent moment, my brain trying to process the sheer, unadulterated nonsense that had just come out of her mouth.
"That is... STUPID," I finally blurted out, throwing my hands up in the air as I stood in the middle of the imperial hallway. "That's not how anything works! 'Mutual rape' is a complete oxymoron. It's just regular sex with extra steps and a terrible, logically bankrupt name! You're me so how did you even let that sentence leave your mouth?"
Esdeath's predatory expression faltered, replaced by a look of genuine irritation. She let go of my collar, allowing my feet to hit the floor with a soft thud. She crossed her arms, her face still a vibrant shade of pink, and let out a long, dramatic sigh that echoed through the marble corridor.
"You are being incredibly difficult, Katsuya," she muttered, looking genuinely upset that her "tactical maneuver" hadn't immediately resulted in me caving. "The logic was sound. If we both have the same soul, then the act is essentially an internal dialogue between two halves of a whole. Consent should be implied by existence."
"It really, really isn't," I countered, smoothing out my jacket. "I don't care how many souls we share; I'm not consenting to that, and I'm definitely not consenting to you 'raping' me. It's weird, it's unnecessary, and it's myself no less"
Esdeath bit her lip, looking at me with a mix of frustration and longing. She reached into the front of her uniform again. I expected her to pull out a weapon or maybe just freeze me where I stood, but instead, she pulled out a thick stack of papers—dozens of them, all neatly clipped together.
She began flipping through them rapidly, her eyes scanning the text with military precision.
"Fine," she sighed, her tone shifting into something that sounded like a desperate bureaucrat. "If you won't accept the previous terminology, perhaps you will find one of these alternatives more... palatable?"
She cleared her throat and began reading from the first sheet, her voice perfectly deadpan.
"Would you be open to... 'Aggressive Snuggling'?"
I stared at her. "No."
She flipped to the next page without missing a beat. "How about 'Tactical Body-to-Body Calibration'?"
"That's just a long way of saying sex. Still no."
"'Non-consensual Cooperation'?"
"That is literally the same thing you said before!" I groaned, rubbing my temples. "Esdeath, stop. You're just trying to find a loophole in my brain!"
She didn't stop. She was on a roll now, flipping through the pages faster and faster, her pronunciation becoming more formal as she tried to make the act sound like a mandatory imperial decree.
"'InvoluntarySoul-Merging'?" she tried, looking up at me hopefully. "Or perhaps the more traditional 'Surprise Intimacy'?"
"It's not a 'surprise' if you're reading it off a legal document!" I shouted, though I was starting to lose the battle against my own amusement. The sheer absurdity of the Empire's strongest general trying to use different pronunciations and synonyms to trick me into a bedroom was almost as funny as the "hand-holding" comment.
Esdeath let out another frustrated huff and slammed the stack of papers against her thigh. "You are impossible! I am trying to be accommodating here! I am offering you a variety of ways to frame this so that your stubborn moral compass doesn't feel compromised!"
"My moral compass is fine!" I argued. "It's my common sense that's the problem! Why can't we just... I don't know, walk around the palace like normal people?"
"Because," she said, taking a step closer until our chests were almost touching again, her blue eyes flickering with that predatory heat. "I can feel your heart rate from here, Katsuya. And I know you're just as affected by this body as I am by yours."
"Look, Esdeath, we really need to—"
I didn't even get the chance to finish. She lunged forward, slamming me back against the marble pillar for what felt like the tenth time tonight. Before I could even complain, her lips were crushed against mine.
Mmph! Sss-luph... smack.
It wasn't a gentle kiss.She forced my mouth open, her tongue invading with power.
Chulkh... slurp... mmnph.
The wet, echoing sounds of our spit mixing filled the quiet hallway. My brain sparked, and the physical feedback loop between us was becoming a deafening roar in my head. As I felt her hands roaming over my chest and hips, a sudden, existential crisis slammed into my mind, making me freeze even as our mouths remained locked.
'What am I actually doing right now?'
I stared into her half-lidded, predatory blue eyes and felt a wave of genuine confusion. If I'm attracted to her, does that make me gay? Because she is me. We have the same soul. But she has a woman's body. So, am I straight because I'm into the curves and the soft skin? But she is also attracted to me, and she used to be a guy. Does that make her gay, while I'm straight? Or are we both gay for wanting ourselves?
My thoughts spiraled even deeper. If I'm attracted to her, and she's technically a man's soul in a woman's body... does that mean I'm attracted to transgender people? Or is this some entirely new category of narcissism that hasn't been named yet? I was essentially making out with a female version of myself, and the fact that it felt this good was making my internal moral compass spin like a broken record.
Nngh... mmm-slurp... smack.
She broke the kiss for a split second, a thin trail of saliva connecting our lips as she breathed heavily against my face. Her eyes were dark with a hunger that was honestly terrifying.
"Wait!" I managed to gasp out, my face burning with a mix of arousal and sheer identity-crisis panic. "Not that! Esdeath, seriously! No 'soul-merging'! I'm not doing it! I haven't even figured out if this makes me a lesbian yet!"
I scrambled to find a compromise—any compromise—that wouldn't result in me technically losing my virginity to a gender-swapped reflection of myself. After a desperate, frantic back-and-forth where I had to practically use my brute strength just to keep some distance between our lower halves, I finally managed to talk her down from the "mutual rape" plan.
———
[Two Hours Later]
I sat on a velvet-cushioned chair next to the massive canopy bed, my head hanging so low I was staring at my own knees. I felt like an empty juice box.
I let out a long, ragged sigh, staring blankly at the dark blue carpet. My legs felt like jelly, and my entire body felt completely and utterly drained of every single ounce of life force I possessed.
I looked over at the bed. Esdeath was sitting there, smoothing out her white uniform and huming a small, satisfied tune. She didn't look tired at all. In fact, she looked like she had just finished a light warm-up.
I had managed to persuade her away from actual intercourse, but the "alternative" she settled on was a grueling marathon of endurance. I had been sucked off twelve times. Twelve. Straight.
Twelve. I didn't even know that was possible without my organs shutting down, but apparently, with my new ten-inch anatomy and her monstrous stamina bypassed my imagination.
By the eighth time, I was literally begging her to stop, but she just kept going with that same relentless focus. I was surprised she was still sitting there looking like she wanted to go for a jog when I was currently seeing three of her.
"I'm done," I croaked, my voice sounding like it had been dragged through a gravel pit. "I'm going home. I can't... I can't do any more 'body-to-body calibration' tonight. My soul is leaving my body through my tip."
Esdeath tilted her head, a small, smug smirk on her lips as she licked a stray drop of moisture from her thumb. "Already? And here I thought we were just getting started on the second dozen. You have such little stamina for someone with such... impressive gifts."
"No," I said firmly, or as firmly as a man who had been through a spiritual vacuuming could manage.
I didn't wait for her to try and pull out another legal document or use her "mutual rape" logic.
I summoned the system interface with a trembling, shaky hand and hit the [Return to Native World] button.
The cold, imperial palace vanished in a blur of blue light.
I was back in the dark, quiet corner of the Beacon ballroom. I materialized right on top of my sleeping bag, the transition making my stomach flip. The silence of the room was a godsend.
I collapsed face-first onto the sleeping bag, the soft fabric feeling like the only thing keeping me on this earth. My body was heavy, my brain was a chaotic mess of "am I gay?" questions, and I was pretty sure I had been drained of all my vital fluids.
I didn't even have the energy to worry about the orientation tomorrow. I just closed my eyes, felt the heavy weight of the day—and Esdeath—finally catch up to me, and drifted off into a deep, dreamless, and very much needed sleep.
'I swear...im not gay'