In Which Mackenzie Doesn’t Flash A Bunch Of People Inside An Upscale Eatery
It ended up kind of a toss-up whether it would have been a bigger headache to go ahead and get the torte or not. Sooni ate the cheesecake even more slowly than she’d eaten her dinner, and I didn’t want to just chow down. I tried not to take more forkfuls than she did, though I couldn’t help it if mine were slightly larger… I just couldn’t bring myself to scrape off the teensy little portions that she did.
Waiting for my turn in between bites, I watched Sooni, for lack of anything else to do, and sipped what was definitely going to be my last cup of wine. I hadn’t caught the name, but it was kind of pink.
Sooni had very chubby-looking cheeks. It was part of the general foxiness of her face, but it made her look a little babyish. Not in a creepy, “Kai in a diaper” way… more in a “holy shit we’re both so young” way. What were we doing, eating in a fancy restaurant with cloth napkins and wine lists and stuff? We should have been eating in the food court then, I don’t know, sneaking a box of wine up to one of our rooms and fumbling around on the bed or something.
I mean, if we were going to do something like that. It seemed pretty likely at this point… but I wasn’t at all sure it would be happening if Sooni hadn’t been following her script. Would she be into me at all if she gave up whatever game she was playing? It was hard to imagine… Sooni was so… so…
What was she, exactly? She could act poised and put together, but she flew to pieces so easily. She projected this kind of exotic sophistication, until Sunday morning at five when she started singing along to the Science Princess theme song. I’d seen her mimic pitch-perfect manners, but she seemed to literally not understand that other people’s feelings were as valid as hers.
What was the real her? How did a person made up of so many jagged pieces even begin to fit together?
In any event, if I ended up eating a little bit more of the cheesecake than she did, she didn’t complain. I finished her last glass of wine when she pushed the glass away, too. It was growing on me. When the waitress asked if she could refill for us, I said yes without even thinking.
By the time Sooni settled up and we retrieved our coats, I was feeling really good about the whole evening, and the night to come. The insulation spell around the pavilion was so perfect that I didn’t even think to redo the one on my jacket until we stepped across the threshold and into the shockingly cold night air.
Even though they must have felt the chill, too, people looked at me like I was crazy as I shrieked and jumped backwards, forgetting about the step up and landing on my ass just inside the restaurant. The groups that had been coming up the walk into the restaurant continued to stare at me as I laid sprawled, my legs and dress in a bit of a disarray. I could feel the beginning of the old burning shame, the all-enveloping horror that had once crawled over my skin every time I felt people staring. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe.
“Miss Mackenzie, what is wrong?” Sooni asked, and the spell was broken.
“It’s freaking cold, that’s what’s wrong!” I said. “Let’s get a cab.”
“But… we will have to walk to the street, anyway,” Sooni said. “The inn would not be much further, and it is not that cold.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “You’re the one with fur.”
“I am not!” she said, stomping her sandaled foot near the hem of my dress. I scurried backwards. “And… you’re showing your underwear,” she whispered.
“Eep,” I said, sitting up and trying to straighten out my dress. Sooni helped me to my feet. Her coat sure looked like it was fur, but if she said it wasn’t, I wasn’t ready to argue.
“Is there a problem, ladies?” a man asked us. “Would you like for me to get you a cab?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Thank you, but it won’t be necessary,” Sooni said.
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking from her to me. He was kind of staring at me, actually… so long that I started to wonder what the hell his problem was.
“Quite sure, but thank you very much for your concern,” Sooni said, giving a small bow. “We are staying at the Crystal Palace tonight.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, if you’ll wait a moment, I’d be more than happy get one of the busboys to walk you over.”
“You are entirely too kind, but we were looking forward to enjoying the walk alone,” Sooni said, bowing several times as she spoke. “But we will certainly remember your courtesy in the future.”
“What was that about?” I asked.
“I think he was the manager,” she said. “That is how you act when you are talking to the person in charge.”
“No, I mean… why’s he all concerned about our business?”
“I think…I think that establishments bear some responsibility for what happens to patrons they intoxicate,” she said.
I stared at her for several moments before the meaning of her words sunk in.
“Sooni, are you drunk?” I asked her, point blank.
“I think perhaps we had a bit more wine than we should have,” she said. “But it was all so sweet!”
I shook my head at her. She probably shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place. She was just a silly girl playing dress-up, after all.
“You’re lucky you have me here to look after you,” I said, heading off in the direction I expected the inn to be.
“The inn is this way,” Sooni said, grabbing my hand and pulling me in a different direction. “And the sidewalk is this way,” she added, moving us a couple feet to the left. “Miss Mackenzie, I thought you could handle your drinks.”
“I can handle elven assassins and hellhounds and mermaids,” I said. “I think I can handle a little wine.”
I’d just about completely frozen my ass off by the time we reached the edge of the park, but luckily, Sooni hadn’t been wrong about how close the inn was. The Crystal Palace looked like it had once been an old manor house, though not quite as old as it looked… it had been built in obvious imitation of the great big houses built by the pre-revolutionary gentry in the east.
Actually, it looked a lot like the pictures of the so-called Governor House in Phale Township. I wondered about the history of this replica… had its builder been an admirer of that type of architecture, or of the doomed Proconsul Bell?
“You are impressed, I can tell,” Sooni said, giving my hand a squeeze.
“It’s… um… very nice,” I said, and I hoped my tone conveyed what the wording lacked. I wasn’t great at conjuring up words at the soberest of times. On a scale of general fanciness, it probably couldn’t compete with the Havenwood. The modern skyscraper definitely had it beat hands down in the shmanciness department.
In terms of charm, though? I’d take the Crystal Palace.
That wasn’t to say I’d pass up another night in the Empress Suite.
“I have a reservation for Ms. Suzune Hoshinotama,” she told the guy at the desk. “It isn’t Chung.”
“Beg pardon?”
“My name,” she said.
“Uh, can I get that again?”
“Not Chung,” she said.
“I’m not showing any Nachung,” he said. “Could you spell that?”
“My name is Hoshinotama,” Sooni said.
“Oh, here it is,” he said.
“Do you have room service here?” I asked.
“Until ten.”
“Do they have cake?”
“Do not be such a greedy little piggy,” Sooni said. “We already had dessert.”
“Do you have any bags?” the desk guy asked.
“No, we do not,” Sooni said. “Thank you.”
“I’ll get somebody to show you up, then,” he said.
“Thank you.”
The bellhop was a cute girl, though she had tiny breasts. I walked in back of Sooni through the halls and to the lift, watching her brushy tail swishing back and forth. She was doing something with her hips that seemed to give it an extra jerk. I thought about Amaranth and her oral fixation on my rear. I couldn’t begin to understand the attraction there… but looking at Sooni…
She had probably had her ass kissed all her life, metaphorically. She certainly had a shapely enough rear, and that tail was enough to drive me wild. I could almost see how, if the situation was just right, my lips and tongue might end up doing a little exploring. I mean, I wouldn’t actually… I couldn’t… the thing that Amaranth wanted was a little bit far, but… well, it might be worth trying, just to see.
I’d have to try to remember to raise the subject of lists again… just so there were no misunderstandings, in either direction. We’d have to sit down and have a serious talk before anything happened. That was crucial. Communication was key in these things. Amaranth and Steff had stressed that over and over again how important it was to communicate, even if we didn’t always manage to actually do it. I didn’t have my written lists with me, but I didn’t think that would matter… Sooni was different than any of my lovers, and I felt differently about her than I did Amaranth or Steff or Ian.
Even still, there were certain things that I wouldn’t lower myself to doing, even with Sooni… certain things I wouldn’t let her do to me, under any circumstance. I’d have to be clear about that.
I’d also have to think of what they were… damned if I could come up with any. I wanted to run my tongue all over her body. I wanted to taste every inch of her… every inch. I wanted the TV-addicted astral case to turn back into the sneering teen queen long enough for her to stomp me into the carpet and walk all over me. I wanted to reach up and pull her down to my level, to break her bit by bit until nothing was left of her but the confused girl-child, and then I wanted to make her into a woman. I wanted to lie with her on the floor, the two of us writhing together, grinding myself up against her until she came.
“Miss Mackenzie!” Sooni said, very loudly and very close to my face.
“What?” I asked.
“We are here,” she said, and I realized we’d stopped outside a door. The bellhop had left us alone.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I guess I spaced off a little… must be the wine.”
“Well, don’t fall asleep on me,” Sooni said. She giggled, unlocked and opened the door, and then ushered me in ahead of her.
The room was nice enough. It wasn’t the Empress Suite, but it had a great big tub. It was pretty large for a single room… bigger than our dorm rooms, anyway. The bed wasn’t as big as the other one had been, but it would do the job.
I heard the door close, and spun around to face Sooni. Well, I spun a bit past that. The room spun even more. I waited for it to stop and then turned slowly to actually face her. She was up against the door, and had her hands on the doorknob behind her. There was a click as it locked, and she smiled.
It wasn’t her usual smile… it was shy, and a little sweet.
She bent down and slowly pulled her dress up, revealing the tops of stockings and garters like my own, only in red. I watched breathless and hungry as she raised it higher and higher, hoping for a glimpse of what I was sure was going to be the smoothly shaved mound exposed by a cutaway. I was half-disappointed… she was wearing a tiny red thong, but if it concealed any hair, it was doing an impressive job of hiding it. I was still staring at her underwear when she got the dress off, exposing a lacy red bustier that caught my eyes next.
Then, she reached up behind her head and fiddled around with her hair, then pulled out a pair of wooden pins and a big clip. She gave her neck a toss, and a pile of hair cascaded down her back, all the way to the floor. She had a lot of hair… it framed her like a cape. Her fox ears twitched, and she wiggled her nose, then giggled.
She stood there in front of me, on top of her wooden platforms, decked out in lingerie like a model in a catalogue, and I stood there like I was paralyzed. Was I stupid? I like girls… that question had long since been settled beyond any shadow of a doubt, and yet I just stood there unable to move or act. Finally I came back to myself enough to take off my own dress. I tried to do it all slow and sexy, but I lost my balance a little bit reaching down, and again when I pulled the starry black fabric up in front of my face.
I got the job done, though, and then we were two girls… two women… two girls… whatever… standing there alone in an inn room, looking at each other.
I opened my mouth to say something, realized I didn’t have anything to say, and closed it. I thought about just walking up to Sooni and kissing her, but she looked… well, she looked kind of lost.
“I really don’t know what happens next,” she said finally. “All of my manga stops here, and picks up again the next day.”
i would guess Sooni only reads shojo/redisu manga.
if you want to get Sooni off of Mackenzie’s “back”
supply her with shonen manga and have her switch her
affections to chasing Steff.
That’d be a laugh riot.
The last line there…just makes me so sad for Sooni.
One of my partners was raised by science fiction books and Star Trek (in the sense that those were literally the only models of sanity or decency in her childhood world). Reading the past five or six chapters has made me deeply, passionately grateful that the media she chose to model her psyche on were as memetically healthy as they were.
And to anyone who finds it unrealistic that someone raised in an insane and abusive environment (as Sooni most certainly was) might choose to model herself on media rather than on the living beings around her…let me assure you that it’s not. It’s not unrealistic at all.
Agreed, Mickey. I, personally, had no decent model in real life to go by for a long time, and then I sort of patched something together by combining my church’s teachings with what I saw on Star Trek. I like to think I turned out pretty well…
You know, it occurs to me that Sooni is totally in the wrong major. Between her gorgeous, exotic looks and her ability to flawlessly pick up and follow a script, how is she not an actress? She could be a movie (MUvie?) star. Heck, she could be her world’s version of Lina Lamont! 😉
You know, looking back at my own childhood, I can kind of see where the different literature and adults had an impact on how I am today.
A little creepy to think about.
That’s modeling for you. Children copy what they see adults and other role models doing, and thus learn how to integrate into their society. Unfortunately, some of us have healthier examples to mimic than others.
I think you could do worse than to learn from girls’ manga, which mostly teach that ultimately, you can accomplish anything if you keep trying; and love and friendship are paramount; but there aren’t enough grownups in them, and given the lack of adult women in Sooni’s own life, I suspect she has no idea what comes next in a lot of ways, sexual and otherwise.
If I had money, I would pay to turn ToMU into a “galge” -so- fast. Alibiet with more yuri. (I would also “screw the rules.”)
Are you saying that you would also make the rules into an actual character to interact with?
“Screw the rules, I have money!”
Huh. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive to people saying “Oh, so-and-so character is a poor, pitiable psychopath”, but I recall that early on I had some idea that Sooni had empathy, just… not properly nurtured. Now I’m thinking that she actually has a disorder characterized by lack of empathy. I hate to play the “I’ve been diagnosed by actual doctors” card, but I guess it takes one to miss one.
I just realized that the adult yuri I’ve read is WAY less explicit than the adult yaoi I’ve read (or rather, the adult BL, since yaoi is an abbreviation of a phrase meaning, approximately, “No plot? No problem!”). Sooni probably hasn’t read anything beyond ecchi, but if she’s reading shojo or josei Girls’ Love manga, it makes sense that the only sex scenes she’s seen were so cloaked in visual metaphor as to not even be recognizable as such.