ALL NOVEL Chapter 62: Saturday
I was able to gain 21456 points before Saturday. Some were more resistant than others, but overall, it went well, I’d say.
I ate my breakfast, wondering when Steffi would show up.
“You guys coming with me?” I asked the girls.
“For what?” Nikola asked.
“Weren’t you here when Steffi came last time? We’re going to Castle Xeneon with her sister.”
“Oh, right.”
“Can we come?” Benard asked.
“Ah, I don’t know if there’ll be enough room for everyone,” I said.
“Aww.” He groaned. “When will I get to see it!?”
“Benard, volume,” Terrie said before putting a spoon of beans in her mouth.
“Oh.” He looked around to see if people were disturbed by him. “Sorry.”
“So you guys coming or not?” I asked them again.
“I’ll come,” Terrie said.
“Then I’ll come too,” Nikola said.
“Okay.” I looked at the door and commented aloud, “She was early last time.”
***
As soon as the door to our room closed, Otto’s arms wrapped around me, his lips touched my neck, and his groin pressed against my ass.
“Hehehe…” I chuckled. The boys have been treating me well, real well, ever since the apology. I grinded my ass on him as I ran my fingers through his hair with a big smile.
Sterling sat down on the bed and asked, “When are we moving to Xeneon?”
I kissed Otto’s hair and said, “I don’t know. It depends on how long it’ll take to renovate the place.”
“Okay, how long will the renovations take?” He asked.
I stopped grinding and said, “I don’t know, honey. I have to talk to the renovator, Steffi’s sister-in-law. That’s what I thought I’ll be doing today, but we’ll see. If she doesn’t show up today, I’ll go to her office tomorrow, babe.” Then I started grinding again.
“Alright.” He nodded. “How much is the renovation going to cost? The house was 287 platinum, right?”
I sighed and stopped grinding. “Yeah, babe. I don’t know how much it’ll cost. She’ll have to tell us.”
“Nikola said there was mold on the walls. Is it true? Do we have to fix a lot?”
“Yeah, a lot of it needs to be renovated. But it’ll cost less than what she wanted, which was to buy another house with less land and… Nikola doesn’t know anything about long-term investment. Which is what a house is.”
“Okay. Can I come with you guys to see it?”
“Honey, like I said to Benard, if there’s enough room. It wouldn’t be fair if I just took you.” Even though Sterling and I were having a conversation, Otto continued to fondle my tits and grind up against me.
“So when will we get to see it?”
“Well, I already have the keys… If you want, we can go tomorrow for a visit.”
“Oh, really.”
“I don’t know why you can’t wait, though? I was hoping to go check on the rest of my costumes tomorrow.”
“So you don’t want to take us.” His lips were flat and emotionless.
“Honey, you’ll see it when we move in. Aw!” Otto pinched my nipple.
“When it’s been renovated?” He asked unenthusiastically.
“Yes. Just wait till everything’s fixed. Be patient.” I told him.
“Then what about-”
There was a knock at the door.
“That must be her, now.” I turned and gave Otto’s crotch a tap.
“Hey!” He stopped his actions.
I smiled and said, “We’ll pick this up later.”
He let go of me, and I opened the door. There was Steffi, and beside her were two women. One was a blond with round glasses, and the other was a brunette with short hair.
“You ready to go?” Steffi asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been ready since this morning.”
She smiled, “Alright, come on, the carriage is waiting outside.”
“Terrie and Nikola wanted to come,” I said.
“Okay.”
“The boys wanted to come too, but I’m going to assume the carriage is too small.”
“It’s the same as last time.”
“Yeah.” I turned around and said, “Sorry, Sterling.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“I know.” He said. Overcome with disappointment, he melodramatically collapsed on the bed.
I smiled wryly. “Alright, lock the door,” I told Otto and left.
“This is my sister-in-law, Stace, the one I’ve been telling you about,” Steffi said, gesturing to the blond one with glasses.
I guessed one of them must be, but who’s the second one. “Nice to meet you.” I extended a hand.
She shook it and said, “Likewise.”
“She’s doing me a huge favor. She’s a busy girl.” Steffi teased.
“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll have my assistant, Bella, here,” she made a slight gesture with her head towards the short-haired woman, “take care of most of it. I’ll only be looking in. Tweaking things if anything needs to be tweaked. I hope you’re fine with that.”
“Ah, yeah. As long the renovations are done… I’m good.”
Bella extended her hand to me. “I heard of the condition from Steffi. It’ll be as good as new when we’re done with it.” Her face was handsome and squarish in nature. She exuded confidence.
“Yeah, sounds good.” I shook her hand.
“Bella’s been with my sister since the beginning. Sherrie, you’re in good hands. She’s practically been doing all the work for my sister anyway.” Steffi said.
“Hey, what does that mean?” Stace asked.
I knocked on Nikola’s door while they had a playful argument.
“I heard from my brother that Bella even did your house’s renovation.” Steffi smiled.
“No, no, no…” Bella denied it.
“Is he talking about the stupid chandelier he wanted installed?” Stace asked. “Because of that stupid magazine.” She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” Steffi shrugged, “he didn’t tell me the details.”
“Yeah, your brother wanted to install a death trap in the house,” Stace said.
“It wasn’t a death trap,” Bella mumbled.
“Well, it’s not now! Because- What he made you install wasn’t what he originally told me.” Stace shook her head. “You know what he wanted was…”
I stopped listening to them. I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, to begin with.
Nikola opened the door, and when she saw us, she asked, “Oh, we’re going already?”
“Yes. Get changed.” She was in her panties. “I’ll go get Terrie. Get changed and come downstairs.”
“Okay.” She left the door open and went to get her pants. I closed the door and moved on to Terrie’s door. They continued to argue while following me. I paid them no mind and knocked on Terrie’s door.
Benard answered. He looked at me, then turned his head and said, “Terrie! Sherrie and the realtor are here!”
“Okay, I’m coming out.” A voice came from the bathroom.
“She’ll come downstairs,” Benard said, looking back at me.
“Okay, tell her we’re waiting in the lobby.”
***
“It’s worse than I remember,” Nikola said as soon as she stepped off the carriage.
“Oh, will you shut up?” I said.
“This isn’t so bad,” Stace said while looking at a wall where half its paint had chipped off. “We can easily fix this.”
“See,” I said.
“Let’s go in.” Nikola led the way even though she didn’t have the keys. So when we got to the door, she had to step aside, and I opened the door.
Stace asked, “What kind of style are you going for?” As we entered the mansion. “Classical? Eastern? North? Elven? Eastern Island? Souther Lio-”
I had to cut her off from listing everything. “I don’t know.” Then I turned to Nikola and Terrie. “You guys have a style in mind?”
Terrie shrugged, and Nikola said, “I’m fine with the human style.”
“Right.” What the hell’s human style? “Just modern will be fine.”
“Alright, I understand.” She held her chin between her thumb and index and looked around the entrance hall.
“Come on, you have to look at everything,” Steffi said. As the realtor, she took on the role of guiding everyone through the mansion.
We walked around the mansion, and with each room, Bella and Stace told us what we could do to fix it. I nodded along. Mostly we listened while they discussed amongst themselves what to do.
Really the only things we: Nikola, Terrie, and me, could comment on were the colors.
Bella assured Nikola that the mold would be gone and everything would look brand new when they were done with it.
We arrived at a wall with a hole on it, and Stace said, “We can tear down this wall and erect two pillars here and there,” she pointed, “if you want.”
“If you think that’s the best,” I said with a shrug.
“Stace, I thought we could just cut that part out and turn it into another door. That way, they’ll still have two rooms. I think they’ll like that better.” Bella looked at me.
“I’m good with anything.” I shrugged.
Bella turned back to Stace and said, “And I think Mia will like that better. Less work for her.”
“Oh, right. I wasn’t thinking of her. You’re right; let’s go with that.” Stace agreed with Bella. Then she turned to me and said, “We’ll put a door here. You’ll like a door a lot more.”
“Okay.” I just went along with it.
More than an hour passed as we made the rounds around the house.
After seeing all the rooms, and as we were about to exit the mansion, Stace said, “When we usually pick up a job like this, we also do the furniture. We’ll buy the desks, the beds, the refrigerator - the current one doesn’t seem to have been used in- I don’t know how long. You do want us to furniture the mansion as well, correct?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Yeah.” She nodded as well. “I only asked because we had a recent customer…” She gave Bella a tired smile. “I don’t want to go into the details, but she didn’t want us to buy the furniture. And demanded we remove it.”
“We even had to break off the window to bring in the desk.” Bella shook her head.
“I forgot you had to do that,” Stace said.
“Well, I didn’t.” Bella frowned.
“Guys, they don’t want to listen to you two reminisce. They want to know how much all of this is going to cost them.” Steffi said.
“Oh, right.”
“Actually, I was hoping we could take a look at the building outside,” I said. “I want that renovated as well.”
“Oh, sure, we can do that,” Stace said.
I led them out of the mansion and into the small building at the back of the house. There was a stone path from the house to the building. It was a good 2-minute walk from the back of the house.
As we entered the structure, I said, “I want you to replace the tiles with a uniformly flat surface.” I felt more comfortable talking about this than the house since I had an idea of what I wanted in my head. “I would also like a furnace to be installed here. So you’ll need to install vents. Also, I need two metal desks here. It should be… from here to,” I marked a spot on the ground and took a few steps before saying, “here. And the other one can be over there.” I pointed. “They should both be the same length.”
“This sounds like a blacksmiths workshop,” Stace said.
“An alchemical workshop. Yes.” I said.
“I see.” She nodded. “We’ve done that before, haven’t we?” Her question was directed at Bella.
Bella nodded. “Yeah, for the shop in West Delaron. And we had to do a blacksmith’s too a few years ago.”
“I thought you stuck to houses?” Steffi said.
“We do. But sometimes we install a window for them or something, and they want you to do their whole shop.” Stace shrugged.
“Hm.”
“So, you can do it?” I asked.
“Yeah, it shouldn’t be a problem. We can extend…” They discussed at length about my lab and how it should be modeled, and this time I was able to jump in with a few of my own suggestions. While we were having a lively chat, Nikola and Terrie were bored.
Finally, I asked, “So how much will it cost?”
“Ah…” Stace thought about it. “To fix the chipped-off paint at the front, it’ll be…” She went off to list every single problem we’d seen in the mansion. It was impressive how she remembered all of it. She clearly didn’t become a successful entrepreneur for no reason…
In all honesty, halfway through the list, I just wanted her to say the total, but she was professional and went on with the whole account. In the end, when she said the total, I was surprised; it was more than the custom carriage.
“Wow, that was more than I thought. But okay.” I said. I didn’t know whether I could get it done cheaper with another renovation company, but I didn’t want to waste time looking for one.
“Sherrie, trust me, you’re going to be happy you paid this much. My sister is the best at this.” Steffi stuck up for her sister-in-law.
“Alright, 30 gold, right?” I nodded. “I can have the money ready for you tomorrow.” I made the list of things I needed to do tomorrow in my head: go to the custom cloth shop, go to the bank…
“I’m not at the office tomorrow,” Stace said. “I won’t be in till Monday. And you only need to pay half now. You can pay the rest when it’s finished.”
“Okay, I’ll send Garth to your office on Monday,” I said. “When can you start?”
She looked over at Bella. “I can make the schedule… plan today. Then, we can start on Monday.” Bella said. “Sounds good?”
“Yeah. The sooner, the better.”
***
I had the window seat on the carriage ride back to the hotel. I had the weight of my chin in my hand as I stared out at the passing buildings. We passed by a cafe, and I turned to Steffi and said, “Can you drop us off here!”
“What?” She, along with everyone else, was surprised by my sudden outburst. “Here?”
I thought this was an excellent opportunity to have a private conversation with the girls. Usually, the boys are always around us. I’ve been hoping to have a private conversation with Nikola for the past few days, and what better time than now when the boys aren’t around.
“Yes, here. I want to go to the cafe.”
“Are we having lunch at the cafe?” Terrie asked.
“Sure.” I shrugged to answer her. Then, again I asked Steffi, “Can you stop the carriage?”
“Oh, sure.” Steffi knocked on the little window and got the driver to stop the carriage.
“Thanks,” I said as we stepped out of the carriage.
“Yeah, sure.” Steffi shrugged. We were only a few blocks away from the hotel. It made no difference to her.
After the carriage drove away and it was only the 3 of us standing on the sidewalk, I said, “Come on. Let’s go to the cafe we just passed by.” So I started retracing the path we’d driven on.
“Why did we get off here? We could’ve had lunch with the boys.” Terrie said.
They followed behind me.
“Yeah, what’s so special about this cafe?” Nikola asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why?” She complained.
“Will you just follow me? I want to talk to you about something.”
“Something you can’t say in the hotel?” Terrie wondered. “In front of the boys?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Hmm. Okay.”
“What is it?” Nikola asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get to the cafe.”
***
I ordered only tea, but they ordered drinks and meals.
“What is this you can’t say in front of the boys?” Terrie asked while they waited for the food.
“Well, it has more to do with Nikola.” I directed my gaze toward her.
“What?” Nikola was surprised.
“You’ve been using the bracelet, right?”
“Yeah…” She said hesitantly, then shouted: “Is this another lecture?”
“No,” I stated clearly. “That’s not it. I’m just wondering how it’s going.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what I meant.” I shook my head and put my thoughts in order. “I mean… Okay, I’ve been using it more lately, and for the most part… even when they resist, it’s kind of a faux resistance, right?”
“Yeah, I know how the bracelet works. Guys who wouldn’t even look at me before are happy to jump in bed with me.” Nikola said while sipping on her milkshake.
“Yeah, for the most part, but there are guys who resist or try to resist, right? Obviously, it’s less than before. And their resistance is kind of… I’m sure the guys resisting me now wouldn’t even let me into their homes if I wasn’t wearing the bracelet, but what do you do when they resist?”
“They haven’t resisted since I’ve worn the bracelet,” Nikola said, confidently shaking her head.
“None of them have tried to resist you?” I didn’t believe her.
“No, they love me.”
“What about you, Terrie?”
“I haven’t really used it on anyone besides Wilf and Len.” She said and sipped on her drink.
Yeah, I thought as much. I looked at them both sucking on their drinks and… A part of me didn’t want to say it, but I also couldn’t hold it in anymore. I needed to share it with someone. “I guy slapped my face,” I said in a small voice so no one else could hear.
Instantly I regretted telling them. Nikola snorted out her milkshake and laughed. “Hahahaha… What!? Hahaha… Slapped in the face! Who?”
I clenched my fist. “Shut up, you idiot,” I said through my teeth.
At least Terrie wasn’t laughing. She was more confused than anything. “Why did he slap you?” She asked.
“Slapped in the face!” She hit the table laughing.
“Stop it, Nikola. She’s clearly upset.” Terrie grabbed her arm and stopped her.
“Oh, sorry. Sorry.” She said, snickering.
“Okay, tell us what happened?” Terrie said. I rubbed the bridge of my nose in frustration. “Nikola, stop smiling.” Terrie seemed to care about my feelings at least a little bit.
Finally, after the table calmed down… I exhaled and told them what had happened. “So, I got into this married guy’s house… Young husband, cute actually… Ah…” I left out the part about me dressing up as a plumber. “Then so…” Terrie frowned at the part where I held on to him, so he couldn’t pull out. “Then he slapped me.”
“He!” Nikola let out a laugh but immediately covered her mouth.
Terrie gave her an angry stare, and then I continued with the story. “I said sorry after, but… You had nothing like that happen to you?” I asked Nikola one more time.
“I wouldn’t get slapped like you. I’d have blocked it.”
“What?”
“Yeah, some guys have tried; because… you know how guys are about their points.” She shrugged. “But I just block it or hold them down till they calm down.”
“You’re worse than me,” I mumbled. I knew she couldn’t be clean with the number of men she’s been fucking.
“What?”
“I said, you’re much worse than me,” I said louder.
“You guys are both horrible,” Terrie said in a calm, disappointed, angry… ambiguous voice.
“What?” I asked.
“You forced him.” She shook her head.
“It’s more of a semi-forced,” I mumbled while looking at a random spot on the table.
“I’d never do that.” She said.
“You’re not going to use the bracelet?” Nikola asked.
“Ah, that… Well… Wilf seems fine with it. I wouldn’t have forced him. I just can’t… Let’s not talk about it. Here comes the food.”
The waiter put the plates down on the table and said, “Here’s your sandwich.” To Nikola. “And your fried rice.” To Terrie.
“Thank you,” Terrie said.
“You’re welcome. Ask if you need anything else.” The waiter said and walked away.
“Well, I don’t want you to force anyone, but you do need to level up,” I mumbled. Rape laws in the entire continent are pretty sketchy. Sometimes the victim gets worse treatment than the assailant, so men don’t usually report it. But, obviously, it depends a lot on who’s involved. If you rape a VIP of the queendom, it’ll be different from if you do the same thing to some random buck. But male VIPs of the queendom are heavily guarded, to begin with.
“Let’s not talk about it. Let’s eat.” Terrie knew there was no point explaining things to two women trying to level up.
“Fine,” I said. Unfortunately, the conversation didn’t go as I had hoped. However, it was understandable, given how sensitive the topic was.
Finally, Nikola decided to toss in her two cents, “It’s not rape. Men like it when you push them down and take it. They respect that.”
“Nikola, you’re starting to make me angry now.” Terrie exuded a blazing pink aura.
“What?” Nikola was surprised.
We both were; I didn’t think she’d bring out her martial aura all of sudden like that. “Nikola, just shut up, and eat your food.” I said in a low whisper, then turning to Terrie, I added, “Terrie, we’re in a cafe. Get rid of your aura.”
“I’m sorry,” Terrie said and brought her anger in control.
A few people had turned their heads toward our table, so I turned to one of them and said, “Everything’s under control. There’s nothing to see here.” She turned away, and so did everyone else who’d turned their heads.
“Hmm.” Nikola sulked and ate her food.
Terrie didn’t say anything else either and ate her food.
I looked out the window and sighed. I have to do so many more evil things before the war; maybe I can make up for some of them after the war. I never realized how gross this world is while it was a game, but it is gross, isn’t it? A man’s worth is based on how many points he’s born with, and a woman’s worth is based on how many points she can get…
Then I looked at them both eating and thought, maybe I should get something to eat too.
