[Can’t Opt Out]

Watching Yujao play with his prey was always amusing, but Emilia had to admit: there was something impossibly more enjoyable about watching his dance of ineptitude play out as an observer whose expressions, body languages, tone of voice, and a dozen other things couldn’t give away the plot.

To be a member of the Inner Court was to live as a doll, always playing the part that had been assigned to you, by yourself or someone to whom you owed allegiance or who owned your person through bribes and blackmail. Your limbs and face moved as directed by the current role you were beholden to. It was something that was both impossibly difficult and as inherent to her existence as her actual personality—after all, even at this point in time, she, Yujao, and Hurinren had played their specific roles for over a decade and a half.

Of course, she and Hurinren had played their roles a little longer.

“You should stop,” a little Hurinren had told her, a few days into their acquaintance. They’d seen each other around the Inner Court before, of course—or, she had seen Hurinren, at least. Her friend had always been such an adorably grumpy child, and all Emilia had wanted to do was make him smile—give him a friend because he hadn’t seemed to have any. Later, she would learn that Ryukan was his friend, but the young man was so much older than she and Hurinren, and while Emilia could be friends with people younger and older than her… there was a different flavour to such friendships.

Looking back on being a friend and parental figure to some of the children and teenagers who would come east with them, Emilia could see the strangeness of it. They were the sweetest children in the world, filling her heart up, but there was a difference in the things they had been able to share with one another, back when they were all young.

It wasn’t like Emilia had been able to lay her pain upon them the way she tucked their pain away within herself.

Even when they’d been young, some of those kids, like Porsq and Xavier, had been allowed to know most of her pain because hiding things from them had been some mixture of impossible and cruel. For many of those kids, however, there had been a power imbalance between them for many years. It was lesser now—how could it not be, when so many of them had stretched their lives in eons?

What was the power imbalance of a decade or two’s worth of biological years when everyone held thousands of years within their soul?

Regardless of all that, Ryukan had been Hurinren’s friend, but it hadn’t been the same as a friendship with someone closer to his own age would have been, and Emilia had wanted to offer that grumpy little boy her hand.

She’d been told not to talk to him, and for once, she’d listened: that was how terrible the Inner Court could be, the place terrifying enough to even pull her to heel… for a while.

Later, once she had Hurinren and their lo’lu’s power behind her, she had stopped caring much about what she should and shouldn’t do in the Inner Court—that was part of the role she played.

“Doing what? Being nice?” a little version of her called through the world of Emilia’s memory, and Censor or not—either at the time or now—Emilia could picture herself, a young girl with her hands planted on her hips, glaring at Hurinren.

“Yes,” he had agreed before trying to walk about.

One scuffle and two black eyes for each of them later, Emilia had managed to force the truth out of the boy: he was starting to like her, and that was dangerous.

“If people know we’re friends, they’ll try to use you against me,” he had cried, and Emilia could see her friend as clearly within her mind as she could see anything: Hurinren, curling in on himself as he sobbed into his knees and begged her to stop being nice to him—to stop making him like her. “I don’t want to be the reason my only friend dies.”

Much later, once Yujao came to the Inner Court and began to collect facts and rumours like bugs to pin up and dissect, she learned that the first friend their lo’lu made, after being adopted and brought into the Inner Court, had been tortured by someone trying to force the young Kouren Shokran to bend to their will. That friend had survived, but their story had not been a happy one, and Emilia hadn’t been able to blame Hurinren for being afraid for her—for them.

Now, of course, they had power enough to ensure that Yujao was always safe. As much as he could protect himself without their aid, no one dared touch what was theirs… not that this random ryohua seemed to realized that, his fingers gliding over the fine edges of Yujao’s long sleeves as they chatted.

Even had things not gone the way they did, the dude would have been lucky to have not lost that hand in a tragic accident sometime in the future.

Back when she had Hurinren had first met, they had only the protection of those above them. Burgeoning monsters or not, they were so young and had no power themselves within the Inner Court. Had Hurinren died, their lo’lu would have been found another heir. Had she died, her father would have quit his job, but Baalphorian-Dionese relations would have stayed the same as they were.

So, they had promised to never be friends in public, devising roles for themselves to play for the foreseeable future—for the rest of their lives, perhaps.

All that acting added up, and after long stints of pretending to hate one another without a single second to breathe, it hadn’t been uncommon for the two of them to find themselves entwined in one of their beds, snuggling and making sure they both knew that any animosity between them was nothing but lies. They played their parts so well that sometimes it was impossible not to feel the sting of words, internalizing the flinches and unshed tears they let the Inner Court see until they were releasing them into whispers of love into the other’s skin.

Emilia had given Hurinren his first handjob like that: snuggled into bed, shortly before Yujao entered their life and brought a storm with him. Hurinren had awkwardly returned the favour, slipping his fingers between her legs and being talked through the process because she had experience where he had none. Decades later, Emilia was sure that she was the only girl Hurinren had ever been with, although there had been other boys, joining her lotyung and Yujao, from time to time—Levi, for instance, a few clones as well.

Mostly, those boys had been people who played parts in their game of tugging the Inner Court into whatever configuration of power would suit them best. Maybe there had been other random boys, unconnected to the Inner Court or their unit, in the last decade. Maybe there had even been other girls.

Emilia didn’t find she liked that idea much—for as much as she liked sharing herself, she’d always been a little more possessive on her side. It wasn’t so much that she’d ever demand her partners only fuck her or one another, but…

Well, there was a reason her partners had often been bisexual, able to find as much enjoyment in one another as they did her.

Attention turning back to the… was this flirting? It was so unclear that Emilia didn’t know what to think of the ryohua. If it was flirting, the guy was painfully bad at it.

Read the room, seriously. Jin’kori had already been uncomfortable with the conversation and attempting to leave before Yujao strolled up to them. This was fair—not only did Jin’kori have places to be, but the guy had been trying to force her to try a pastry that would kill her.

Allergies were moderately rare in most nations these days, knots being placed on children who had any to control the symptoms, or at the very least, make sure the allergy wasn’t going to kill them. All knots, however, caused shifts in other aspects of the person’s genetics. In the case of people with irregular deviations, as well as those who were Dyads and non-devs, the knots to control something like an allergy could completely mess with their abilities and Perfect or Excess D-Levels.

For instance, some silverstrains really hated their high sex drive, and there were knots that could be used to dampen it. Emilia had asked about Doctor Vickers about it once, not because she had wanted the knots, but because she was curious about what it would entail. Most notably, getting such knotwork done would have raised her D-Level by three to five levels. No more non-dev Emilia—not that such an Emilia existed any more anyways.

The same went for someone like Jin’kori: her rumai’se abilities would have been severely affected by any knotwork done to remove her allergy. So, unless she was willing to give up her abilities—which, no fucking chance—she was stuck with it. The woman’s allergy was so severe that, after meeting Jin’kori… at some point that Emilia couldn’t remember, Halen had created a portable device for her, which contained a skill for clearing flour from the air, as even inhaling flour could set her into anaphylactic shock.

In other words: Halen was stupidly kind—it wasn’t like he’d been paid, and even today, Hail was still mandated to provide similar allergy-control devices to people for free—and this dumbass ryohua was quite seriously encouraging Jin’kori to go kill herself.

Jin’kori had pointed this out to the guy. It was unclear if he’d ever heard her, as he’d continued on recommending deadly foods to her.

Once Yujao arrived, he had burst in with questions to Jin’kori about how he was pretty sure she’d told him she couldn’t eat pastries—Yujao was constantly popping up with cakes and breads from small bakeries outside the Inner Court. They were quite coveted—her friend would never tell anyone where he was getting them from—and to be offered one was considered a great honour, to refuse one without good reason a death knell for one’s favour within the Inner Court.

Said sweets were also treated as threats. To be surrounded by others as they received a gift of acceptance from Yujao while you yourself received none was a message of being on the outs—was a demand that all those who received one of the mouth-watering gifts leave you to your fate. To find such a thing waiting for you, placed upon a kitchen counter, a pillow, a work desk, was even more a threat: that pastry may very well be poisoned, but if not consumed, death would surely find you another way.

Ironically, as Hurinren was always the one seen ordering and passing along the pastries to his boyfriend, everyone assumed Hurinren was the one responsible for ordering him about and organizing who received what, and when, and whether it was liable to kill them or not. Hurinren was, in the end, simply his boyfriend’s errand boy, and it was adorable.

Yet, in public, he played the role of the controlling partner. He was cold and demanding and grumpy. In private, her friend was still something of a grumpy boy, but he was also loving and subservient, enjoying tending to her and Yujao’s needs in whatever way he could, knowing that eventually, they would lather him with affection.

In public, Emilia was the chaotic agent, no one ever quite sure how involved she was in this scheme or that, but fully aware that, when she was involved, people should run. So much of her life in the Inner Court was spent pretending she and Hurinren rarely collaborated. He did his thing; she did hers. Yujao was the connecting piece between them, the two of them coming together to make people suffer for his sake and nothing else.

So, whenever they really were involved in schemes together, one of them had to pretend to be elsewhere, lest anyone actually realize they were working together. There were so many memories of her causing problems elsewhere in the Inner Court, all so she could have an alibi. There were many more records of her being slipped into the dungeons on Hurinren’s orders, all because she’d caused problems with her own schemes and he was not happy.

He was, of course, always in on it. Never were they not involved in everything the other was doing—at least, that was how it used to be. These days, they had a little contact, mostly through Yujao and a few of the kids, who loved their uncles and yushari with their everything—who were loved endlessly in return.

A spark of want shot through Emilia as she watched Yujao attempt to shake the ryohua off, a note of annoyance floating through his features that wasn’t entirely fabricated—at least, Emilia didn’t think it was.

Part of why watching her friend now was so enjoyable was simply the reality that even when they’d been young, she had rarely been allowed to watch him work. To watch Yujao play his part would be to tell the ever-lurking eyes of the Inner Court that something was going on, and to do that was to risk the death of not just themselves but all those they loved as well.

A fan slipped free of Yujao’s sleeve just before he smacked the hand of the ryohua, once again reaching out as though to touch him—such liberties this ryohua takes!

Really, Emilia couldn’t say the man didn’t deserve everything that would come for him, barely more than a single day from now—if he was this touchy and pushy with someone like Yujao, Emilia couldn’t imagine how incorrigible he had been with people who were not in possession of terrifying power both within and without themself.