I leaned back into Marianne's embrace, my shoulder blades resting on her chest as she hugged me from behind. Susy jumped into action, turning it into a mini photoshoot, even directing us a bit. There was zero doubt in my mind that these were ending up on a fan page somewhere by the end of the day, but being seen in my boxers with a hot nurse draped over me could only be a positive. I insisted on taking some selfies with Susy as well. These, outside of the one or two where she wasn't bright crimson, I suspected would be saved for her private collection.
Thankfully, a few pics with Susy were all it took to break through her starstruck silence. She must have been fairly gregarious when not around a crush; Marianne asked a few questions about the Shrine, and it was off to the races. I got to focus on eating a second and third bowl of rice while Susy explained her duties, her family structure, how she was going about her magical training compared to her cousins and siblings, and all about the wild morning the Shrine had as the news slowly filtered through about the Bell Street exorcism and my new status as an adopted member of the Ishida Clan.
She even excitedly bragged about how she'd driven Ishida Ai here after helping make the rice with her mother, adding very, very conspicuously that she had only gotten her license after turning eighteen but how that was still faster than basically all of her friends. Marianne and I shared an amused glance at that.
"And then I knocked over the bowl right after Auntie told us to not disturb your rest, haha. Sorry about that, James. Um, doesn't look damaged to me though."
Marianne sipped her teeth. "About that bowl, James, that I have to say, is a very interesting design choice on your end."
I immediately decided to play stupid. "What do you mean? Jade eggs and golden cherries are way better kitchen decorations than wax fruits. Check it out," I said, pulling a pair of rin-no-tama out of the bowl, the Japanese equivalent to Ben Wa eggs. "Silk stems too – not sure why they're so long, but hey, more silk, more impressive in my book. Don't think it's real gold though."
Marianne looked skeptical of my three-Success-lie but graciously didn't call me out on the matter. Susy was holding back laughter but did appear to believe that I believed I was telling the truth. The Producers helpfully fed the information to my subconscious that the bowl was meant to contain party favors and that its position had more to do with it being on the way out of the apartment, rather than because of its proximity to the kitchen. I also felt assured that the bowl would replenish any contents given as gifts, though not any I sold off.
I was firmly of the opinion that offering sex toys as parting gifts was completely insane, slimy, and weird, but, I did think the idea of accidentally giving out sex toys as gifts was pretty funny.
"You're free to take a few by the way. The bowl came with a ton, I think they were intended as, like, party favors."
"R-really?"
"Sure." I shrugged. "You'd be doing me a favor. Like I said, got plenty more taking up space in storage. Grab as many as you like."
Susy picked up the largest of the eggs which sat heavy in her palm, staring at it with a mix of fear and awe. Marianne quickly rushed around to her side and put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh honey, no. Let's talk this out, yeah? James, go do pushups or meditate or some other martial artist thing. We need a girls' chat."
"That's right! Thanks for reminding me. I'll be in my meditation chamber; knock if you need anything."
Maki and her mother were on the couch, having a hushed emotional heart-to-heart. I slipped around them and into the Viewer selected Base Upgrade.
Sunlight, bright, hot, and wonderful greeted me on the other side of an otherwise unremarkable door. It was good that I had only opened it wide enough to enter; this would certainly have interrupted the ladies' conversations.
I was standing on the covered narrow wooden patio that bordered an elaborate and beautiful Zen garden. The interior of the meditation chamber was very reminiscent of that of the Little Tokyo Shrine, if smaller than their large central chamber, in that it was expertly designed to appear as the outdoors. The large grass mounds that sat like islands amongst the freshly raked gravel, were bright green and very much alive, as were the bamboo and other trees that were used to mask the boundary walls, making the room seem larger than it was. Above it all was panel lighting mimicking a clear blue sky. I couldn't wait to see what it looked like at night.
Fully impossible without serious magical effort, were the two flowering trees in full bloom despite the season. On one side of the room was a large cherry blossom, its petals occasionally dancing down on some ephemeral wind. On the other, behind a torii, was a plum blossom; from a large branch, hung a bell on a rope over a small altar that had been swallowed by the tree's roots. I imagined that was so I could say a prayer and converse with Funikugami, should I ever find a need to. I was curious to see what became of the place once I reunited with Mars, who had built a shaman. Would the room expand? Would the altar grow more elaborate so that she could entreat her spirits the way that Maki might her Kami?
I hopped over the gravel, leaving the neat lines undisturbed, and sat cross-legged on a grass mound. Traditional meditation had never been my bag. James had preferred losing himself in the movements of a form, and Alan had liked long hikes alone to clear his head. But the atmosphere of the room did more than lend itself towards meditation, it almost demanded it of visitors.
I contemplated Corruption. Between the Hakkotsu no Ha and becoming the Champion of Funikugami, I'd earned myself two Permanent Points. Filling my Willpower track with either Temp or Permanent points would mean character retirement without outside help. I'd been counting on Nasim to delve into the Corruption mechanic so I wasn't as well acquainted as I should have been, but I knew from in-world knowledge that a fully corrupted martial artist was a raging demon. My mother had warned me that pursuing power above all else opened a martial artist to, little-c, corruption. It was why, she told me as a child, we took the time to spend some days not working out or studying, but simply enjoying the company of family and friends. She'd said that this was as important, if not more so, than forms or sparring.
I didn't feel any different with my two points of Corruption, but then, I hadn't felt all that different after stabilizing myself last night either. Or, I should say, I felt hornier, but I hadn't felt like my decision-making had been grossly affected, and yet I had in retrospect, been a total maniac. Ken too had told me that he hadn't felt the sword's corruptive effects until it was too late and he was already rushing headfirst into a fight he wasn't prepared for.
As I sat, it became clearer and clearer that I wasn't going to be able to find the differences in my cognition, at least not without spending Experience points and expanding my build considerably. An answer did come to me though, one for how to prevent corruption, and/or Corruption, when you couldn't personally feel the difference between levels of it.
"Friends," I said to myself.
It was simple, but the best epiphanies felt obvious after the fact. I was sure that I could have dug through the catalog of feats and invested heavily in relevant skills like Meditation and Insight to find some way of objectively measuring my mental and emotional changes. But I was equally sure that I could more than get by with people like Maki and Marianne around to cuff me on the side of the head if I ever got too out-of-pocket.
"The real enlightenment was the friends we made along the way?" I asked myself, stroking my chin in thought. It was cliché and embarrassingly saccharine but for the purpose of defending against Ego Death, it seemed sound and practical. "Yeah, I'll stand by that."
I did worry about how the others would manage it. Thankfully, only Nasim and Mars had started the game with Corruption-powered abilities. Mars would have her tribe to look out for her, and I could trust Nasim to manage on his own. The man was a veteran exploiter and min-maxer. Hopefully, the rest would be a bit more cautious than I'd been; maybe sign one fewer deals with spirits than I had or be a little more sensible about it all at the least.
There was one looming, massive problem with my plan to form and rely on a tight-knit, close social circle around me. I'd been ignoring it since I visited Ma last week, then some more that night after getting to know Marianne better, and I'd all but locked it out of my thoughts after taking Annie as a student. At the end of this, after I'd got the crew back together, and we'd found or earned a way back home, how was I going to leave them behind? Was I going to leave them behind? Was I going to leave?
This world had all the many problems of my old world. Global warming, corporate greed, corrupt politicians, extremist psychopaths, etc., except it also had the literal Devil. It had ghosts that would crawl through your window and drown your infant and ghosts that would beat the shit out of you on the street and eat you. There really were shadowy cabals of warlocks running things in the background, and the only news that wasn't fake cost tens of thousands of dollars to get access to. It would be insane to stay.
Although, to its credit, this world was a little less racist and sexist than my old one, the result of anyone being theoretically capable of training to the point where they could reliably bring their fists to a gun fight. I had to hand it to the place, that was very cool. And as much as I internally griped – I think justifiably – about being forced into porn by interdimensional perverts, their chosen location was naturally much more sex positive. How that weighed up against all the great and ancient evils populating the land, I couldn't yet say.
The door opened behind me.
"Kami-sama! This, this is—"
"Holy shit, James. Are we sure we have the same landlord?"