Day 8 — Night 2/2

Lizzy sat near the middle of the bed with her stuffed dragon, Martin, tucked under one arm while Mara stood at the dresser brushing out her hair.

"They made a poster of her," Lizzy said. "At the Starlite. She was sitting on the counter with a milkshake and a cherry, and it said MEANT FOR SHARING across the bottom."

Mara stopped the brush halfway through one stroke. "Oh, Claire."

"Cassie was very vocal about it."

Mara's sympathy failed. She covered her mouth, but the laugh came through anyway.

Lizzy hugged Martin closer. "That's what Claire said. Cassie already made every possible joke."

"I'm not laughing at Claire." Mara set the brush down and turned toward her. "I'm laughing because, on the scale this place usually operates at, a tacky malt-shop poster is almost restrained."

Lizzy tried to hold the expression for Claire's sake and lost. A laugh slipped out. She shifted Martin beneath her arm and tugged absentmindedly at the hem of her sleep shirt. "Yeah. I understand."

The fabric settled back against her stomach when she released it. Mara's eyes dropped to the movement for less than a second before she returned to folding the clothes she had taken off.

"How are you doing with tonight?" she asked.

Lizzy blinked. "Tonight?"

"Fiona’s date night."

Understanding arrived, followed immediately by a small giggle. "Oh!"

Mara waited.

Lizzy looked down at Martin's stitched face. A few days earlier, the question might have required more work. She would have compared herself to Fiona before she could stop, then compared the date, then wondered what the Hotel was planning and whether Van would like whatever version of Fiona emerged from it.

Tonight the thought barely found anything to catch on.

"Honestly, Fiona is probably the last person I'd worry about," Lizzy said. "She has been very clear that she isn't interested in Van. Extremely clear. I don't think I could dislike someone that forcefully if I tried."

Mara smiled. "Fiona does have range."

"And Van isn't going to suddenly decide he wants someone who spends half her time telling him everything wrong with him." Lizzy adjusted Martin across her lap. "I mean, they seem less angry at each other now. That's good. But Fiona wanting him? I can't picture it."

Mara studied her for a moment, then nodded. "I'm glad."

Lizzy's smile turned wary. "That sounded very counselor-like."

"Occupational hazard."

"You aren't a counselor."

"I have spent a lot of time around frightened civilians and stubborn heroines. The skills overlap."

Lizzy laughed again. She put Martin upright beside her, keeping one hand around his middle so he didn’t topple backward. "I'm more worried about the challenge."

Mara's folding slowed.

"Verena keeps saying it can be anything," Lizzy continued. "That's not reassuring. 'Anything' includes combat."

"It also includes almost everything that isn't combat." Mara sat on the edge of the bed beside her. "Half of us have powers that aren’t combat-focused. Yours, mine, Naomi's, Katherine's. Even the others can do things besides fight. If the challenge really can be anything, it could be a foot race. Or a puzzle. Or a pie-eating contest."

Lizzy stared at her.

Mara lifted both hands. "I don't know. Pie seems possible."

The image arrived before Lizzy could stop it: Katherine sitting perfectly upright at a long table, eating pie with the concentration of a woman defusing a bomb, while Evelyn beside her approached whipped cream like a hostile negotiation.

Lizzy folded forward over Martin, laughing into his head.

Mara joined her. "What?"

"Katherine and Evelyn." Lizzy had to stop and breathe. "In a pie-eating contest."

Mara made the mistake of imagining it too. By the time they recovered, Lizzy's eyes were wet and Martin had been squeezed almost flat between them.

She sat back and wiped beneath one eye. The laughter left slowly, taking some of the tension with it but not all.

"I just want to do well," Lizzy said.

Mara let her continue.

Lizzy stroked one thumb over Martin's fabric wing. "Not just for points. I know everyone keeps saying one bad result isn't the end of the world. But the permanent punishments scare me. The transformations already change things we didn't choose. Clothes. Powers. Feelings, sometimes. Verena keeps talking about correction and development like those are normal words for what happens if we fail."

Her fingers tightened around the toy.

"What if I do badly enough that they decide the part of me they don't like is the part that needs correcting? What if I stop being... me enough to know the difference?"

Mara's expression lost its humor.

Lizzy kept going because stopping would make the thought larger. "I know that sounds dramatic."

"It doesn't."

"I keep imagining some version of me that looks like me but is only whatever the audience finds entertaining. Like the embarrassing parts get turned up until that's all that's left." She gave a small, unhappy laugh. "I already have enough trouble figuring out which parts of me are mine without the Hotel helping."

Mara reached over and straightened one of Martin's bent horns. "Then we will make sure to do well. Besides, you have one of the highest scores right now, so you should be fine."

Lizzy nudged her with one shoulder.

Mara smiled, then rested her hands in her lap. "The whole arrangement is strange when you think about it. The Hotel keeps grading whether we become a successful harem, and it put us here with a man who spends half his time trying to make sure nobody thinks she owes him affection."

Lizzy tilted her head.

"If they wanted the easy version," Mara continued, "they could have chosen someone delighted to have eight women pointed at him. Instead they chose Van. He spent the last few years avoiding relationships of every kind and now he’s expected to pursue eight women? He looks so lost, the poor boy."

"He really does," Lizzy admitted, and the thought made her smile.

Mara smiled. "Exactly."

Lizzy adjusted Martin against her lap. The idea stayed with her after the joke had gone.

Mara waited.

Lizzy looked toward the dark window. Somewhere several rooms away, Fiona was spending her first night in the Master Suite with the least masterful Master Lizzy could imagine.

"Maybe that's the point," she said.

Mara glanced at her. "What is?"

Lizzy tipped her head farther, thinking. "What if choosing Van was supposed to make this harder?"

"For us?"

Lizzy looked back at her. "I don't know. Maybe for him."

—--------------------

Fiona stood at the foot of Van's bed and stared upward. The mirror over the mattress was enormous. That was only one item on an increasingly offensive inventory. The black silk sheets from the sitting room view had been scattered with rose petals. Mirrored side tables reflected the low red light.

The oversized headboard was padded in black leather. At the foot of the bed sat a narrow padded bench with metal buckles and D-rings built into its frame, its purpose obvious enough even without the straps folded beneath it.

The wall beside the bathroom was worse. Paddles. Crops. Cuffs. Lengths of leather and polished metal arranged with the neatness of sporting equipment in an expensive gym.

Van stopped beside her and looked from the bench to the wall.

Fiona's mouth flattened. Beside her, Van studied the equipment with the uneasy concentration of someone who expected an execution.

She pointed at the mirror. "Why?"

He didn’t look up. "I don't know."

"That was rhetorical."

"Good, because I don't have an answer."

Fiona lowered her hand and looked at the bed again. The comfortable conversation on the rug had evaporated somewhere between the record cabinet and this room. It was one thing to tell Van she could live with what the suite had done. It was another thing to stand beside the rose-petal-covered sheets and beneath the mirror, then just go to bed like it was normal.

She folded her arms. "So how does this usually go? You're the expert."

Van's attention remained fixed on the equipment. "I’m no expert. I can't identify what most of this is for."

Fiona shoved his shoulder with the heel of one hand. "The sleeping arrangement, idiot."

He rocked half a step, more surprised than moved. "Oh. Sorry. I was distracted by the wall of things I don't understand."

"I appreciate the shock, but I will be damned if I'm explaining the leather-suited birds and bees to the Master of my harem."

Van laughed before he could stop himself.

Fiona's glare met it and failed to sharpen. "Finished?"

"Almost." He cleared his throat and made himself look at the bed instead. "Usually the guest takes the first shower. After that, most of them have borrowed one of my shirts to sleep in. There are pants too. It's not mandatory. It's just been easier than trusting whatever the Suite thinks guest sleepwear should be."

"I'm taking a shirt and pants," she said roughly. "I don't shave my legs for you."

Van's head snapped toward her. "I haven't touched anybody's legs."

The answer came out hard enough to surprise them both.

Fiona's own defenses were already moving. "Interesting that you got specific. What have you touched?"

Van's face changed. The awkwardness disappeared first. "Stop." His voice stayed low, but there was nothing apologetic in it. "You know exactly what I meant. Don't turn this into me feeling people up because you're nervous about sleeping here. You would know if I crossed a line with anyone. This place announces half of what I do to the entire cast like a sports score."

Fiona's arms tightened across her chest.

Van opened the dresser and pulled out a plain dark pair of sleep pants. "You can have the pants. You can have two pairs if you want. Just drop the attitude about what I've done with everybody else."

Her first response rose hot and immediate. It reached her teeth and stopped there.

Van held the pants out.

Fiona looked at them, then at him.

His jaw was set, and for once no apology waited behind the irritation. He had planted his feet on the point and refused to be pushed off it without turning the refusal into a threat.

She took the pants. "Fine."

Van nodded once.

Fiona opened the bathroom door. Before she stepped through, she looked back over her shoulder. "I'm using all the hot water in revenge."

"Good luck. I think half the Hotel's budget went into the plumbing."

She shut the door hard enough to be satisfying without quite becoming a slam. The bathroom continued the Suite's commitment to excess with less leather.

A heart-shaped Jacuzzi tub occupied one corner beneath a pair of frosted windows. Fiona stared at it long enough to confirm that yes, it was actually heart-shaped, then dismissed it as a problem for another reality. The walk-in shower took up most of the opposite wall, enclosed behind an opaque glass door with enough room inside for three people to avoid one another comfortably.

"Ridiculous," she muttered.

She set Van's borrowed clothes on the marble counter and stepped into the shower. The water was perfect. Fiona stood beneath the spray, offended all over again. The pressure hit hard enough to work the stiffness from her shoulders without stinging. The temperature adjusted instantly and stayed there.

The shampoo smelled clean and faintly herbal instead of like artificial fruit or perfume. The soap lathered immediately. Even the towels stacked on the warming rack looked thick enough to qualify as bedding in the contestant dorms.

She scrubbed shampoo into her hair and looked at the opaque shower door.

The bathroom had a real door that locked. The shower had another one. If she wanted, she could stand naked under hot water in complete privacy while Van remained on the other side of two barriers.

Back in Room Four, the bathroom had an archway.

That was it. An opening in the wall. No door. No curtain at the shower. No private changing area unless she and Cassie negotiated one out of timing and courtesy. They had one bed between them, small enough that a restless turn became shared real estate. The first few nights had taught both of them exactly how little room there was for privacy or dignity.

Van had been right in the hallway. His privacy had been trampled too. The Hotel had dug through his memories, his history, his apartment, and every quiet habit he had built around himself, then made pieces of them available whenever it found them entertaining.

But he had a door. He had a sitting room, a kitchen, a bar, a bedroom large enough to lose another person in, and a bed that could have held half the dormitory floor without anyone touching by accident.

Fiona rinsed the shampoo from her hair and thought of Cassie. Cassie was probably stretched diagonally across their entire bed by now out of pure spite. She had been talking about the empty room since breakfast with the enthusiasm of someone inheriting property.

Fiona could already hear the morning report. You know what, Kavanagh? You can move in with Van. I've decided monogamous mattress ownership is my new religion.

The laugh escaped before Fiona could stop it. It bounced softly off tile and glass.

She stared at the shower wall. "Shut up, Lin," she told the imaginary Cassie.

Imaginary Cassie was not impressed.

Fiona finished washing and stayed beneath the water another minute simply because she had threatened to exhaust it. When she finally turned the shower off, the hot water had shown no sign of weakening.

Van had been right about the plumbing.

She dried off, pulled on his oversized shirt and loose sleep pants, and discovered that both were annoyingly comfortable. The shirt fell low over her hips; the pants required the drawstring to be pulled nearly as far as it would go. She rolled the cuffs once and left the bathroom.

Van was sitting on the edge of the bed with his forearms resting on his thighs. His eyes went to her, paused on the borrowed clothes, and returned to her face without commentary.

"Any hot water left?" he asked.

Fiona dragged both hands through her damp hair. "I tried. I think you were right about the plumbing."

"Better luck next time, I guess." He stood and collected his own sleep clothes from the dresser.

Fiona moved toward the bed, then stopped. "Do you have a side?"

Van turned. "A side?"

"Of the bed. Preferred side. I don't want to step on your toes and then hear about how I violated your sacred mattress routine."

"I don't care. Pick whichever one you want." He reached the bathroom door, hesitated, then pointed toward the dresser. "One warning. Don't look in the guest drawer."

Fiona's eyebrows rose. "You think I'm going to snoop through your things?"

"No." Van turned fully back toward her. "That's not what I meant. There's literally a guest drawer. The Suite provides it. It changes every night."

Her offense gave way to suspicion.

"Claire found it first," he continued. "After that I started warning everyone. It has been different every time, but usually it's lingerie, or something too small to qualify as sleepwear, or toys I would prefer not to identify."

Fiona glanced toward the wall of restraints.

Van followed her eyes. "Exactly. I am concerned about how far they’ll go if this is the decor."

"And nobody opens it after you warn them?"

He considered the question. "No. They all did."

Fiona snorted.

"I'm serious. Curiosity wins." Van stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind him. A few seconds later, the shower started.

Fiona stood beside the bed. Her eyes moved to the dresser. "Fuck."

—--------------------

Cassie stood in the center of Room Four and took off every piece of clothing she was wearing with the gratitude of someone being released from a minor but persistent hostage situation.

The tank top went first. "Die mad." She dropped it on the floor.

The shorts followed. Then underwear. Then socks. Cassie planted both hands on her bare hips and looked around the empty dorm.

Without Fiona there, nobody could turn away too aggressively or negotiate bathroom timing. Cover Girl couldn’t make her clothes crawl another inch up her body to strangle her dignity.

She stretched both arms over her head, luxuriated in the fact that there was nothing to tug back into place, and headed for the bathroom humming badly.

On a whim, she collected the pink sunglasses from the dresser on the way.

The shower needed a minute to heat. Cassie turned it on, then moved to the sink and brushed her teeth wearing nothing but the ridiculous shades.

Her reflection looked fantastic. She leaned closer, toothbrush moving between her teeth, and adjusted the glasses with one finger.

"Shame they didn't lock you in here with some other hunk," she told herself around the toothbrush. "One who isn't such a passive dork."

Foam threatened the corner of her mouth. She spat into the sink and laughed. Van as a harem master remained one of the strangest jokes the universe had committed to. Cassie would have bet good money he was still a virgin. He was awkward around flirting and nudity, uncomfortable when people were angry at him, and apparently willing to turn every discussion into an apology for being kidnapped.

Then Cassie's smile slowed. She looked at herself over the top of the pink lenses. "Oh my God."

This was a harem isekai. Not metaphorically but it had the structure of one. One socially defective guy dropped into an impossible situation, surrounded by women with absurd powers and personalities, trapped inside a world that kept arranging opportunities for intimacy whether anyone requested them or not.

Van didn’t get a cheat skill; he got the system working on his behalf.

"That's worse somehow," Cassie decided, then rinsed her toothbrush. "But isekai or not, I’m not some ditzy cat girl." She turned in the mirror, examining her body. She placed a hand firmly on her own ass cheek. "He’s never even getting a glance at the goods."

The shower had warmed, so she turned away from her examination. She left the glasses on the counter and stepped under the spray.

The dorm shower was nowhere near as luxurious as whatever version the Master Suite provided, but the water was just as hot. Cassie tipped her face into it and immediately missed her phone from home.

"Perfect shower-bop night," she complained. "No playlist. How criminal."

She scrubbed shampoo into her hair and wondered what fresh nonsense the Suite had built for Fiona.

Claire had received clumsy greeting-card romance with an agenda. Cassie's own night had been games, snacks, a fighting game trying to sneak bond routes into the menu, and a bedroom that only obeyed her after Van authorized it. Other nights had produced other tailored forms of interference. Fiona's could be anything.

Cassie wished she could have seen her face when the door opened. She stopped mid-scrub. Could she have?

Nothing said she had to stay in the dorm before curfew if she was invited. Maybe she could have tagged along for five minutes, seen whatever terrible joke the Suite thought would work on Fiona, laughed until Fiona threatened homicide, then gone back to Room Four and enjoyed the bed alone.

Then she pictured Verena smiling as some invisible lock clicked behind her. Thank you for volunteering, Miss Lin. Secondary guest status confirmed. Overnight participation now mandatory.

"Nope."

Although the bed was big enough for three people without touching. Fiona and Van certainly wouldn’t be getting intimate. That was ridiculous. And of course, she wasn’t sleeping with Van either. Which left—

Cassie's hands stopped in her hair as water ran down her face.

"No," she laughed at herself. Fiona wasn’t into women. Obviously. And it’s not like she was gay herself, or bi, she supposed.

She rinsed the shampoo out hard enough to send water into her nose and came up sputtering. "No, this was a waste of time. Not worth addressing."

The fact that Fiona had managed to short-circuit her brain once while naked and angry didn’t require a category change. Awareness was not attraction, and attraction was not whatever her brain had just tried to make it.

She shut the water off before the argument with herself could become a committee meeting.

A few minutes later Cassie walked back into the dorm laughing at herself, a towel over one shoulder, still naked, and looked at the bed. All of it was hers.

She grinned, took three running steps, and threw herself into the middle with enough force to bounce once.

"Worth it."

—--------------------

Fiona examined the drawers almost immediately. The first drawer contained Van's folded shirts. The second had a small brass plate set into the wood.

GUESTS

She stared at the handle, then walked away. Two minutes later she came back.

The shower continued behind the bathroom door. Fiona stood with her arms folded and glared at the drawer until the act became too stupid to maintain. She turned instead and surveyed the bedroom.

The wall art nearest the bed showed nude women kneeling with their backs to the viewer, posed with such deliberate obedience that Fiona disliked the painter on principle. Above it all, the mirror reflected black sheets, red light, rose petals, and one increasingly irritated redhead wearing a man's oversized shirt.

Fiona let herself be angry. It was easy. The Suite had provided plenty of material. She walked once around the bench, then stopped beside the bed and pressed both hands against the padded headboard. The leather gave beneath her palms. Expensive. Clean. Designed to imply something whether she participated or not.

Her anger climbed, found nowhere useful to go, and eventually spent itself. What remained was quieter. The Suite wanted a reaction.

That much was obvious. It had ignored Van when he ordered the decor changed. It had filled the bar with sexual props, covered the walls in bad art, turned the bedroom into a dungeon designed by someone who had learned human sexuality from questionable websites.

Fiona had entered certain that the point would be seduction. Push her toward Van. Make the room intimate enough, the bed suggestive enough, the night awkward enough, and eventually something would happen that earned a gold notification.

Instead she had never been less interested in sex in her life. The decor had managed to make even breathing feel aggressively themed. So what was the game?

She looked at the guest drawer again. Maybe the problem was that she kept treating every object the Suite offered as an order. Every object in the room invited her to supply the worst implication herself. The Suite didn’t have to make her use anything. It only had to place the suggestion in front of her and let Fiona spend the evening fighting it.

The shower stopped.

Fiona looked toward the bathroom door. It opened a minute later. Van came out pulling a dark sleep shirt down over his stomach. For half a second the fabric caught high enough to expose the hard lines beneath his ribs before falling into place.

Fiona's next thought disappeared.

She had seen him without a shirt before. Basketball, training, moments where the Hotel seemed determined to make clothing temporary. She knew he was built like someone who belonged in the weight room several days a week.

She had never actually asked whether he trained.

Loading dock work was physical enough that she had simply assumed the physique made sense and moved on. Seeing him here, outside a gym or a game, made her realize she had no idea what his actual routine had been.

She was halfway to asking how often he trained when Van finally got the collar of his shirt straight and looked toward the dresser.

"So what was in it?"

Fiona blinked. "What?"

He pointed with his chin. "The guest drawer."

Her attention sharpened. "You told me not to open it."

Van walked closer to the bed, rubbing a towel once over his damp hair. "I just assumed because I warned everybody after Claire found it and nobody has been able to leave it alone."

"Nobody?"

"Not one."

Fiona prepared an insult for the collective weakness of the other contestants. Then she glanced at the drawer and decided honesty would hurt less if she controlled the timing.

"I almost did."

Van smiled. "That's admirable."

Fiona frowned at him.

"Seriously. You did better than everyone else."

"I decided I wasn't going to open it just because you said everybody else did."

He nodded. "I amend my statement from admirable to stubborn."

"My strongest field."

Van tossed the towel over the back of a chair and headed toward the bed. "Pick a side yet?"

Fiona looked at the dresser. "I'm opening it."

Van stopped. "What?"

She crossed back toward it.

"You just spent ten minutes proving you wouldn't."

"Exactly." Fiona put one hand on the drawer handle. "I've been thinking about this room. The pole, the bench, the stupid wall, all of it. I came in here treating every prop like it was something being done to me."

Van leaned one hip against the bedpost and listened.

Fiona kept her hand on the drawer without opening it. "I'm not using any of that garbage. The room can hang a thousand paddles on the wall and they're still just paddles unless somebody picks one up. Same with this. I didn't open the drawer because curiosity told me to. Fine. I proved I can do that. Now I want to see what the Hotel thinks I'm supposed to wear."

"That is a strangely brave approach to underwear."

Fiona looked over her shoulder.

Van lifted both hands. "I mean it. Strange. But brave."

"You have very low standards for courage."

"I grew up hiding under beds. My scale is complicated."

The joke landed softer than it might have earlier in the week. Fiona returned her attention to the drawer.

"All right," she said. "Let's see what you've got."

She pulled it open. There was no lingerie. No lace. No silk. No toys. No complicated garment requiring instructions and a map. The drawer was almost empty.

A square black velvet pillow rested in the center. On it lay a collar made of polished gold.

Fiona stared. The collar was broad enough to be unmistakable. Across the front, engraved in clean capital letters, was one word.

BELOVED

A circular gold ring hung beneath the lettering, large enough for a lead or leash to clip through. Fiona's hand remained on the drawer.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

She snatched the collar off the pillow. There had to be something beneath it. She lifted the velvet cushion. Nothing. Checked the back of the drawer. Empty. Ran her fingers along both corners as though the Hotel might have concealed a false bottom out of basic decency. Nothing.

"That's it?"

Van straightened. From where he stood, her body blocked his view. "What's it?"

"They didn't even give me clothes!"

He approached cautiously. "What did they give you?"

Fiona held the collar near her chest while she searched the drawer one last time. "One thing. One fucking thing. Not even a negligee. Apparently the Hotel's preferred sleepwear for me is—"

Van stepped close enough to see past her arm. He read the engraving. The first laugh hit him so hard he bent at the waist.

Fiona turned. "Oh, fuck you."

Van laughed harder.

He caught the edge of the dresser with one hand, shoulders shaking. He tried to speak and failed. Fiona's temper surged. She raised one hand to point at him. The hand holding the collar.

"You—"

Her eyes followed his to the gold band extended toward him, BELOVED facing out and the leash ring swinging beneath her fist.

Fiona froze. Then she threw it back into the drawer so fast it bounced off the velvet pillow. Van made a strangled sound and turned away, which did nothing to hide the laughter.

Fiona stared at the open drawer. The collar sat where it had landed, slightly crooked now, no more active than the restraint bench behind her or the crop on the wall.

She shut the drawer. "Go ahead. Get it out of your system."

Van braced both hands on his knees and breathed. "I'm trying." He straightened gradually, wiped one eye, and made the heroic mistake of looking at her again.

Fiona pointed toward the bed with her empty hand this time. "I'm taking the side by the door."

Van pressed his lips together. "Okay."

She climbed into the enormous bed and dragged the black sheet over herself. The silk was cool to the touch and slithered across her shoulders. She ignored the rose petals collecting near her knees and shoved a handful of them onto the floor.

Van's breathing finally returned to normal. "Sorry."

"Shut up." Fiona turned her head. "I already told you to stop apologizing for dumb things. The collar was dumb. Laughing at it was reasonable."

Van considered that, then nodded. "Right."

"Good."

He crossed to the other side of the bed, leaving nearly the full width of the mattress between them. Fiona reached for the lamp nearest the door and switched it off. Van did the same on his side.

Darkness erased most of the room's performance. The red glow from the sitting area reached the bedroom only as a dull wash through the open archway. The mirror overhead became only a darker rectangle against the ceiling.

Van climbed under the covers. The mattress shifted beneath his weight and silence filled the bed between them.