Chapter 17: Look but Don't Touch! How to Survive a Succubus

The brush glided over the toenail with a patience Izuku didn't know he had, leaving a line of bright red polish without a single smudge around it. He was sitting on the living room rug, with Yu's foot resting on a cushion in his lap and a row of colored bottles lined up beside him.

"Okay, tell me again why I have to do this," he said, blowing gently on the fresh polish.

Yu, sprawled on her side on the couch with an open magazine she wasn't actually reading, didn't even bother to look up.

"Because you made decisions for me, dragged UA into my life without asking, and set up a whole circus with Nemuri in the front row," she recited, wiggling her toes to make him keep working. "A competent assistant checks with his boss before changing her schedule... especially if he's gonna drag that rat principal into it. So until my temper cools off, you're gonna be my personal manicurist. Consider it a lesson."

"You got over being mad days ago," he replied, carefully switching to another toe. "The truth is you just like how I do your nails."

Yu huffed, looking away with a barely contained smile.

"That's got nothing to do with it. Keep working. You should be grateful I'm not charging you for the session."

"Huh? Why would you charge me, you ruthless woman? I'm the one you should be paying. Besides, yesterday you asked me to do your feet again and you hadn't even ruined the previous coat."

Yu lowered the magazine just enough to peer at him over the edge, one eyebrow arched and her mouth twisted into a threatening smirk.

"Ooh... watch it with those insinuations, assistant. I can still grow twenty meters... and use you as a doormat at my agency's entrance. You really wanna test me?"

"It'd be an honor to be part of the decor," Izuku said, unfazed, moving on to the pinky toe.

She burst out laughing and sank back into the couch, satisfied. The truth was they'd been like this all morning, with the TV on in the background playing some show nobody was watching, and Sunday slowly melting over them, and Yu couldn't remember the last time a weekend had felt this comfortable. Ever since the night that boy had caught her crying on the couch and, instead of running away, had wiped her face with a tissue, things between them had shifted somewhere without her noticing exactly when.

Now she had him in front of her, kneeling, painting her toenails with comical seriousness, and instead of annoyance she felt a silly warmth in her chest that she'd rather ignore for now.

What a weird situation..., she thought as she watched the green head of hair bent over her feet. He's shameless, a pervert, and hopeless at understanding how normal people work... A smile tugged at her lips. ...but for some reason, he always ends up making me laugh. Even on a Sunday morning.

"Hey," she called out, nudging him with her other foot. "This one too."

She pointed at her pinky toe and grinned mischievously.

"And this time don't you dare skip the little toe. I know you can't be bothered, but it's still part of the foot, got it?"

"The little toe's already painted, boss. It's just so tiny you can't see it."

"Hey, a little respect! My feet are a work of art! I'm absolutely certain any sandal brand would pay me a fortune just to photograph them. You gotta invest in beauty when you've got it!"

"That's why I take care of them like treasure," Izuku answered, taking her other foot in both hands and pressing with his thumbs. "Besides, the cherry red suits you way better than the pastel pink you picked last week," he added without looking up. "With the pink you looked like something out of a doll catalog."

"Oh, so now you're a fashion critic too?"

"I work for the vainest hero in all of Japan. Something was bound to rub off."

"I'm taking 'vain' as a compliment, just so you know. But don't get too cocky, slave. Keep running your mouth and you'll find out a giant can crush your ego real easy."

Yu held back a sigh. The kid had discovered the exact spot on her foot that turned her whole body to jelly days ago, and he used it mercilessly every time he wanted to win an argument. She sank a little further into the cushions, eyes half closed, the magazine forgotten on the floor.

"Don't think... that a massage... NGH... is gonna... b-buy me off," she murmured. "I'm still mad at you."

"Of course you are, boss. Furious. Anyone can see it from a mile away."

"You have no idea how much. I'm practically steaming out of my ears," she grumbled, sinking even deeper into the cushions while he kept massaging her foot. "Mmh... don't stop. That feels too good."

And there was a problem, or at least there was one from Izuku's point of view, since he'd been waging a silent war inside his own head for the last half hour.

Because Yu hadn't gotten dressed that morning.

Or rather, she had gotten dressed, if you could call a short cream-colored silk robe with a waist tie so loose it threatened to give up at the first breeze "clothing." The fabric hit mid thigh when she was standing, and now, with her sprawled on her side and one leg stretched toward him, the robe had decided to cooperate with the forces of the hentai universe conspiring against Izuku's sanity, sliding up centimeter by centimeter with every movement of the foot he was holding.

From the floor, with his head bowed over his work, Izuku had a full panorama right in front of his eyes. The tour started at the freshly painted red toes, climbed the curve of the ankle, ran up the smooth calf and the knee, and continued up the thigh toward a shadowed zone that the robe covered out of pure goodwill and nothing else.

Eyes on the polish, he ordered himself, gripping the brush tighter, a gentleman looks at the polish and nothing but the polish.

He closed his eyes for a moment and began to recite, moving his lips silently, the mantra he'd found the night before on an internet forum called "How to Resist Temptation According to the Mountain Monks." He'd read it at three in the morning with the vague hope it might be useful for something, and now he repeated it like a prayer.

My mind is a calm lake, he repeated to himself, my mind is a calm lake, there is no thigh in the lake, only serene water and peace and a very, very calm lake with nothing inside it but water.

"What are you doing?" Yu asked, cracking one eye open.

"Concentrating," he said, his voice a little strained. "The pedicure is a delicate art."

"What are you doing? You're moving your mouth like a fish."

"I'm reciting a breathing technique for a steady hand. A steady hand is essential for the finish, boss."

"Uh huh." Yu closed her eye again, completely unconvinced, and stretched her leg even further, resting her heel against his thigh. "You're such a weirdo... Well, as long as it keeps feeling like this, do all the weird breathing you want."

The heel against his leg was the drop that shattered the calm lake. Izuku felt his heart jump and lodge itself somewhere between his throat and his ears, and for a second he had to remind himself how the simple act of breathing actually worked.

Being a gentleman is way harder than they make it look in manga, he thought, with genuine philosophical anguish. The heroes in those stories withstand villains and burning buildings without breaking a sweat, but not one of them ever gets planted in front of a succubus in a robe at mid morning and told to hold out without looking.

Because that's what his boss was, he'd decided some time ago: a beautiful and lethal succubus with a professional hero license who wandered around her own home shedding clothes at will, and who, to make matters worse, didn't even seem to notice the disaster she was causing around her.

He finished the last toe with admirable steadiness considering the erotic circumstances, and set the brush inside the bottle with exaggerated care.

"Done," he announced, releasing her foot with the utmost care. "Cherry red on both. Flawless and completely PERFECT."

Yu raised both feet in the air, turning them to inspect the work against the light from the window, and a satisfied smile spread across her face.

"Mmm. Not bad, Izuku." She slowly sat up on the couch, stretching her arms above her head with a long yawn. "You've still got the second part of the punishment left, so don't celebrate yet."

Izuku, still sitting on the rug and gradually regaining control of his body, looked up at her and immediately wished he hadn't.

"The second part?"

"Now that you're done with the feet... the shoulders are next." Yu turned on the couch to give him her back and swept her hair to one side, leaving her neck exposed. "I slept terribly and I've got a knot back here that's killing me. Lucky for me, I happen to know a certain assistant with miracle hands... and a nice big debt to pay off. Come on, get up. Get behind me."

"Boss, I think it'd be more appropriate if..."

"Up. Now," she cut him off without even turning around. "Or I can add bathroom cleaning to today's chores. Your call."

There was no arguing with that kind of logic. Izuku got up from the rug, settled at the back of the couch behind her, and rested his hands on the silk covered shoulders, and the instant he did he realized the second part of the punishment was gonna be infinitely worse than the first.

Because from up there, looking down over Yu's shoulder, he had an entirely different kind of view.

The robe, already loose to begin with, had loosened even more when she'd turned. The waist tie was barely doing its job, and the silk lapel had parted enough to reveal the start of a generous neckline that the fabric held up by pure miracle and good manners. She wasn't wearing anything underneath, not the slightest layer of defense between the treacherous silk and the world, and Izuku, from his privileged position, could see everything with a clarity that made him break out in a cold sweat.

Back to the lake, he thought, gritting his teeth and digging his thumbs into the knot of tension in her shoulder, a calm lake with serene water and nothing more than a back to be massaged with total professionalism, because I am the most professional assistant in all of Japan.

"Ahhhh... mngh... There, right there," Yu moaned, letting her head fall forward. "A little harder. Ahhh... oh, yeah, that's it. See how you can actually be useful when you want to?"

"I live to serve," Izuku answered through clenched teeth, his eyes fixed with heroic determination on the far wall.

"Higher up, toward the neck, that's where it hurts the most," she requested, tilting her head to give him better access. "And don't press so hard, I'm not one of your training bags."

"A second ago you asked for harder."

"And now I'm asking for softer. It's called having judgment. You should try it sometime."

"Noted, boss. Judgment that changes by the minute," he murmured, easing up on the pressure. "Very helpful for planning the rest of the day."

The problem with staring at the far wall was that, sooner or later, the human body needs to check where its hands are, and every time Izuku glanced down for a second to readjust his grip on her shoulders, the neckline reappeared in his field of vision like a well coordinated ambush.

Yu, meanwhile, was purring with pleasure, seemingly oblivious to the torture she was inflicting on the poor boy. Or maybe not so oblivious, because the truth, which she'd never admit, was that she was enjoying this as much as she pretended to suffer from it. She found it amusing to have Izuku on the ropes, to watch him fight with himself and notice how his eyes lit up every time she moved a little more than necessary.

Heh... This brat thinks he's such a gentleman, huh? she thought, holding back a wicked smile he couldn't see. Let's see how long it takes you to lose your composure, hero.

"Hey, Izuku," she said in a honeyed voice. "Don't you think... I'm a little tense up here in the front too?"

And to back up her point, she leaned forward stretching her arms toward her own knees, a completely innocent looking movement that had the very not innocent effect of crumpling the robe entirely and opening the lapel even further, so the silk slid off her shoulder and exposed a strip of skin that ran from her neck to territory no assistant was trained to witness without consequences.

Izuku felt the world grind to a halt around him. His hands froze on her shoulders, the mantra evaporated from his head along with every coherent thought he'd ever had in his life, and for one glorious and terrible moment he could see, with absolute clarity, way more than he'd ever dreamed of seeing of the number whatever on the national ranking.

The lake, he managed to think amid the total shipwreck of his brain, has run dry.

"Boss... Uh... Your... your robe is..."

"Mmm?" Yu didn't move a millimeter to fix it. On the contrary, she turned her head to look at him over her bare shoulder, eyes half lidded and a slow smile that was the most dangerous weapon in her entire arsenal. "My what, Izuku? Speak clearly. A good assistant informs his boss of any important detail."

She had him cornered, sweating, hands trembling on her shoulders. Yu licked her lips on the inside. This was the exact moment she'd been hunting for all morning, the instant when the shameless boy would break and stammer and beg her for mercy with his eyes, and she had him now, she'd won.

Or so she thought, for the three seconds her victory lasted.

Because Izuku, against all odds, took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again all the embarrassment had drained from his face. In its place was a strange, resigned calm, ready to go down with dignity.

"You're absolutely right, boss," he said with impeccable seriousness. "A good assistant informs. So I'm informing you: your robe has fallen open, I can see practically your whole chest, and with my right hand I'm just a few centimeters away from committing a crime."

Yu blinked. That wasn't in the script.

"And since we're being honest," he went on, not taking his eyes off hers, with a devastating calm, "I'll confess I've spent the last half hour reciting an anti temptation mantra I downloaded from a forum of monks, because you, boss, with all the professional respect in the world, are the closest thing to a succubus that's set foot on this earth since sin itself was invented. And holding out without looking is, by far, the hardest mission you've assigned me since I started working for you."

The speech hung suspended in the air of the living room.

Now it was Yu who was red. The blush climbed up from her neck and reached the tips of her cheeks at a speed even she couldn't explain, and for the first time all morning she was the one who didn't know what to say. The wicked smile had vanished from her face, replaced by a look of bewilderment, because she had the melts-at-my-charm crowd figured out, and she had the gets-nervous crowd figured out, but nobody, ever, had thrown the punch back at her with that much nerve and that much honesty at the same time... Nobody except... Izuku.

"You...," she stammered, bringing a hand to the lapel of her robe to close it while she looked away for a second. "What the hell is wrong with you? You can't say stuff like that with a straight face..."

She huffed, cheeks still red, and then lifted her chin as if nothing had happened.

"Don't you know when a girl's trying to make you nervous? You were supposed to be the one blushing, not me. Aghhhh, sometimes you're so frustrating!"

"You asked, I informed. It's what a good assistant does," Izuku said, going right back to her shoulders as if nothing had happened, picking up the massage without a trace of guilt after having blown up the domestic peace of the entire building.

"I didn't mean for you to report exactly that, you idiot!" she protested.

"You were very specific about important details, boss. I was just following orders."

"Seriously! How can you say all those embarrassing things without moving a single muscle in your face?"

"Should I keep going with the massage or would you rather I freeze up in shock? Because I can do either one, but not both at once."

Yu opened her mouth to answer, found nothing to say, and finally slumped back against the back of the couch letting out a growl of defeat, crossing her arms over the now firmly closed robe. Her face burned, her heart was pounding a mile a minute, and, most humiliating of all, an idiotic smile was fighting to break out on her lips without her permission.

I lost, she thought, mortified. Ahhhhh, what a total idiot. Why can't you just be easy to embarrass?! Out of all the assistants I could've had, I got a pervert.

"You know what? Forget it, smart guy... I'm not gonna argue with you, it'd be a waste of time," she murmured, closing her eyes again. "You just stay quiet and keep doing what you're doing, 'cause that's when I actually like you."

"At your service, boss. Silent mode activated."

And the worst part was that he was actually good at it, so good that Yu ended up relaxing under his hands again, her shoulders loosening one by one beneath that firm, patient pressure, while her embarrassment slowly diluted away and left in its place a confusing warmth she didn't know where to put.

They stayed like that for a good while, not talking, with the TV show babbling away to no one and the city making its noise outside the windows. Izuku worked her shoulders with a devotion that asked for nothing, and Yu let him, eyes closed and a silent truce floating between the two of them, until neither one could've said if this was still a punishment or had turned into something else.

It was the phone that broke the bubble.

It buzzed against the coffee table with an insistent hum, lighting up with an incoming call, and Yu cracked open one eye with all the laziness in the world to read the name on the screen. As soon as she saw it, a long groan escaped her from the depths of her soul.

"Oh, no, it's Nemuri."

"Want me to answer?" Izuku offered, without stopping the massage.

"Don't you dare touch that phone. The last time you talked to her you got both of us into trouble." Yu stretched out her arm, grabbed the device, and accepted the call with one finger. "What do you want, Nemuri? It's Sunday."

Midnight's voice poured out of the speaker, purring and mocking, loud enough for Izuku to hear it clearly.

"Good morning to you too, giant girl. Tell me something, do you happen to have the sexy prodigy boy with you? Because I called and he's not answering, and it just so happens that Nezu just sent me the official schedule for the supervision sessions."

Yu and Izuku looked at each other. He stopped the massage.

"What schedule?" Yu asked, already frowning.

"The first formal training session with our dear collaborator under my supervision, just like it was signed and sealed thanks to a certain meeting where someone had the bright idea of drafting me as babysitter." Nemuri's tone turned sweet and dangerous. "And guess what. Our bunny friend found out too. So get ready for the sessions, remember to bring comfy clothes, Yu, because knowing those two, you're gonna end up being the guinea pig again."

Yu's soul dropped down to her feet.

"I never agreed to be a guinea pig for anything."

"You never agree and you always end up being one. Weeeeell, dears, see you when Izuku picks his student, lovebirds." And she hung up, with a satisfied witch's cackle that kept bouncing around the living room even after the screen went dark.

Yu lowered the phone slowly, her face pale, and turned her head to meet Izuku's gaze, which already had a dangerous spark lighting up in his green eyes, the spark of the mad scientist who'd just been granted permission to play with new toys.

"Don't even think about it," she warned him, pointing at him with the phone.

"I didn't say anything."

"You don't have to. That face gives you away. You were thinking about my butt, weren't you?"

"I'm thinking about the good of heroic progress," Izuku answered with dignity, though his smile betrayed him. "Although, now that you mention it, the elasticity theory I've been developing would in fact require a test subject with the appropriate curves to..."

"I knew you were gonna say something like that!" Yu threw a cushion at his face. "The massage is over! And the punishment's over too, because at this rate I'm the one who's gonna end up getting punished!"

"You're the one who decides the punishment, boss. I just carry it out with dedication."

"Well, that's it, we're done! When it's your turn to train with Nemuri, you stick with the crazy bunny and stay with her the whole time. You hear me? And don't you dare come near me! I wanna be so far away from you two that, if I have to, I'll change zip codes. And don't even try to protest!"

"Whatever you say," Izuku said, getting up from behind the couch and stretching with a calmness that made her want to smack it off him with more cushions. "Though we both know you're gonna come anyway."

Yu opened her mouth to deny it, to swear on her career and on every calendar she would ever sell in the future that she'd never set foot in that training session, and the protest stuck in her throat, because deep down, very deep down, she knew perfectly well the boy was right.

She'd go, of course she'd go, even if it cost her the last drop of dignity she had left, and something told her that her butt was gonna end up right at the center of the day's scientific program once again.

"I hate you," she muttered, sinking into the couch and covering her face with the one cushion she had left.

"I really care about you too, boss," Izuku answered cheerfully, gathering up the polish bottles from the floor. "Should I make you lunch before you start planning how to murder me?"

From under the cushion, muffled and resigned, came the answer.

"Curry... Extra spicy."

Izuku smiled on his way to the kitchen. Sunday, after all, hadn't turned out half bad.