Feelings so strong, we just must carry on, on to our magical world

Decades from now, when people rewatch old footage of Harem Hotel: Island Holiday Season, discussions will be had on what the greatest twist of the season was. A common argument will be that the revelation of Dakota’s existence and her subsequent resurrection was the biggest “holy shit, I didn’t see that coming!” moment up until this point, with the tie for Dani’s first transformation being a distant second.

But true scholars will tell you that the greatest twist of the season, in fact, was that Holly had dressed up for her date with Nick.

She hadn’t put on anything fancy, she wasn’t dressing to wow him like Gina or Dawn had. But she actually looked nice, picking out a black overalls dress over a white shirt to give her a casual, friendly look. She just finished adjusting her grandmother’s shawl when a knock on the door got her attention.

“Mary?” Holly asked, surprised to see her friend. “Come to wish me luck?”

Mary looked nervous, which wasn’t unusual. She bit her lip, fidgeting a little as she glanced past Holly and at Dakota, who was watching them intently from the satin bed.

“Yeah, sorta,” she nodded. “I just… well… please don’t do anything bad!”

Holly raised her eyebrow. “…I wasn’t planning on it, but-"

“Look, Holly, I-I know what you said before, about how Nick treated you, but… I don’t know, I don’t think I believe that anymore,” Mary admitted.

“…So you’re calling me a liar?” Holly asked, her face souring.

“N-NO!” Mary gasped, shaking her head rapidly. “What I mean is… well… there’s two sides to every story, right? You have your side, Nick has his side, and maybe… well, maybe the two of you should just talk, and figure out what went wrong. That way you can be friends again.”

Mary looked so hopeful. Holly's heart went out to her.

“I already know what went wrong,” she sighed.

And it’s your fault, the voice in the back of her head whispered.

“Well… um… okay then…” Mary mumbled. “But Holly… you’re last place in the popularity poll, you know that, right? If you keep being so hostile to Nick, then won’t bad things happen? You could get kicked off! That Auditionee is coming in a few days, too, so…”

“I know,” Holly sighed. “Don’t worry, Mary. I understand what you’re trying to do.” She flashed her friend a smile. “Thank you for looking out for me. But I want you to take care of yourself, too.”

“So you’ll talk to him?” Mary asked, lighting up with glee. Oh, how lovely would it be if the three of them could become friends again?

“This conversation is a long time coming,” Holly nodded. “I think it’s time we both found out where we stand.”

At his bedside, watching him knock up a girl far more deserving of his cock than you, answered the voice in her head. That’s where you’ll stand.

Holly’s eye twitched as she pushed that thought out. “See you tomorrow, Mary.” She wished her friend well. If this went as she hoped it would, neither she nor Nick would be heard from until the next day. Unless he walks out in the middle of it...

Mary said goodbye and Holly began to close door, only to have a hand smack it shut from behind her. She whirled around to see Dakota looming over her, her face cold and intimidating.

“Wh-What is it?” Holly asked. She’d been living with Dakota for seven days now, and she still had no idea what the girl was thinking.

“I know what you are,” Dakota hissed in her ear. “You think you hide it with how you act, but you don’t. Nick and the others might not be able to see the real you, but I do.”

Holly froze. The lockbox key she wore around her neck burned cold against her chest.

“I-I don’t know what you mean,” she muttered, trying to get around Dakota, but the taller girl wouldn’t let her.

Dakota leaned in and pressed her lips against Holly’s ear, her breath like the icy chill of ****. “I know what you are,” she repeated. “Because you’re just like me.”

Holly tensed, hardening her resolve, and pushed past Dakota.

“I’m nothing like you,” she spat. Dakota just smirked and watched her walk back to her dresser, golden eyes shining all the while.

---

Up until this point, Nick’s dates had run the gamut in terms of stress. Some girls had been nice and easy to get along with, some had started a little awkward but turned nice, and some had started nice, and then turned awkward.

None of them had been more worrisome than his date today.

He and Holly used to get along well. They’d enjoyed each other’s company and, even though they hadn’t been in a relationship, had gone out together and done activities that could be viewed as dates from an outside perspective.

That had all fallen apart when he confessed to her, and the resulting fallout had been bloody.

And now he had to go out with her again.

If he had the option, he would have run and shut himself up in his room like he’d done for years. But he didn’t have that option. His presence was required by Sylvia- or bad things might happen.

She stayed intentionally vague on what the details of that were.

And so Nick found himself with **** but to descend the elevator for his date with Holly, and try to make the best of it.

When the doors opened and their eyes met, he was surprised by the lack of coldness in her stare. She stepped onto the elevator radiating a calm aura, and though she wasn’t smiling, she didn’t look upset, either.

“G-Good morning,” he mumbled out.

“Good morning.” Her words were crisp and polite. The lack of hostility in her tone helped him relax a hair, but the atmosphere in the elevator was still thick with tension.

“Dream Alley,” she said aloud as she pushed the button, which surprised him.

“Dream Alley? What’s that?” Nick asked in spite of himself.

Holly glanced up at him. “Something Sylvia told me about.”

Her expression tightened into a pained wince. “I was having trouble coming up with a date idea for today, as I’m sure you can imagine. I couldn’t think of anything we could do together that would be fun.”

Nick winced, but he understood where she was coming from. The elevator shook to a stop.

Holly continued, “Then I thought… if I can’t think of something we can do to have fun together, at least I can make it fun for you.”

The elevator opened on the last thing Nick expected to see.

They were standing in the street. Not just any street, though, she hadn’t brought him to the shopping center or anywhere else like that. No, this was a specific street, a street Nick recognized, and for a second he thought that Holly had brought him home.

There were people. For the first time since Nick had been transported to this island, he saw people again and not faeries. Countless pedestrians were walking down the road and talking to one another or on their phones, enjoying the warm summer sun. “But how?” He asked, turning to Holly in disbelief. “You brought us to the marina?”

Marina Pier was a popular tourist destination just ten miles from Northridge University. After classes students would often go down to the pier to have fun on the boardwalk, get a bite to eat at one of the restaurants, or just hang out with their friends.

Nick and Holly had walked up and down the pier so many times together they knew it by heart.

“Dream Alley is a special room in the hotel,” Holly said quietly. “It can take your memories and turn them real. I had to get permission to use it, but Sylvia said that since I was doing it for the sake of our date, she’d let me bring you here.”

Holly sighed. “I think she was just happy I’m finally playing along with this sick game.”

“…But why here?” Nick asked. He still didn’t understand. “You didn’t have to bring me here, you know. I’d have thought you-"

“I wanted you to have fun,” Holly said, staring out over the ocean with glassy eyes. It was so different from the blue waters around the island, so clean and pure it looked like it came from a photograph. This was their ocean, dark and choppy and real. “Of all the places we went to together, you always had the most fun when we came here.”

Nick realized then where they were. It wasn’t just the marina, they were at a very specific spot on the pier. He turned his head and looked up at the large building they stood in front of.

Deep Blue Aquarium

“You brought me to Deep Blue?” Nick whispered in disbelief.

Holly didn’t answer. She had no words to say. She walked ahead, knowing, hoping he’d come after her. It took him a second to process, but he did.

Stepping into Deep Blue was like entering another world. It wasn’t like most traditional aquariums with things like penguins or dolphins, many of the creatures in Deep Blue were those found near the bottom of the ocean. Because of their wide selection of undersea life, the rooms weren't very well-lit, with the dim glow of the tanks being one of the only sources of light for the customers to guide themselves.

To Nick it was magical. Seeing so many different species of fish swimming together in such blue sea was a relaxing sight. He’d come here so many times when he was a student to be soothed by their presence before a difficult test, or to decompress after one.

“You always said that when you got a girlfriend, you wanted to take her here on your first date,” Holly murmured. He didn’t even realize she was standing next to him. “Because you wanted to see how she felt about this place. If she was an ‘Aquarium Person’ right?”

“…Yeah, I guess,” Nick muttered. “Not everyone can find enjoyment from watching fish, after all.”

He didn’t mind being in such a small minority. The aquarium was tranquil for him. Watching the fish soothed his anxiety and pain, and that was enough.

“And yet you’re still afraid of water.” Holly glanced up at him. “That always seemed strange to me. You loved going to the aquarium so much, but you don’t even know how to swim.”

She looked down.

“I understand why, now…”

Neither of them needed to say anything else. Nick stood in solemn silence, watching the fish swim by. Holly leaned forward, practically resting her forehead against the glass. She turned to him.

“If I’m being honest, I never liked this place,” she admitted, catching Nick by surprise. She’d always seemed so happy to go to the aquarium when he brought it up before. It was one of the things they’d first bonded over.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice,” Holly clarified. “But I’m not one of those ‘Aquarium People’. It’s beautiful, yes, but I’ve always enjoyed animals in a more physical sense. Just looking at something and not being able to hold it in my hands, it feels like something’s missing.”

“Then why did you seem so excited to come?” Nick asked.

She stared at him pointedly.

“Because you loved it so much.”

“…Me?” It was the last thing he could have imagined her saying.

“I’m not a very passionate person,” Holly admitted, staring down at the floor. “I don't have a lot of hobbies. For me, a fun day is staying cooped up inside and reading a book. I’m boring, I admit that. And I suppose that’s why I’m drawn to people like you and Mary who are passionate about things. The way you would light up whenever you came here and looked at the fish swimming by in the tanks, that was amazing to be around. It was as if I was caught up in your love of this place. That passion is intoxicating. But if I just came here by myself… it wouldn’t do much for me.”

She was being honest with him for maybe the first time in a very long while.

“But still,” she continued, raising her head, “I’ve been here so many times I practically know it by heart, thanks to you. Shall we go?”

Nick trailed behind her, thoroughly confused. Holly was inscrutable. What did she want out of this date? Why did she bring him here? Why had she told him that?

He couldn’t comprehend it. But for now the only thing he could do was follow her and hope to see what she wanted.

Holly led him down a familiar path, one they’d walked countless times. They stepped under a rounded arch, and immediately Nick’s eyes shot up.

One of the most phenomenal exhibits of Deep Blue was the undersea tunnel. It was a long pathway that stretched through one of the tanks. Fish swam around and above the tunnel unimpeded by any human obstacles, just going about and living their lives.

“Another world under the ocean, that’s what you always said about this place, right?” Holly asked. “It’s as if we’re staring up at an entire world different from our own, separated by only a wall of glass.”

She reached up towards the ceiling and stretched, as if she was trying to touch the water, but of course that was impossible. The tunnel had a radius of twelve feet, there was no way a human could reach it. But it looked like you could. There was so much blue everywhere that it gave the optical illusion that the water was right at your fingertips, even though you would never reach it no matter how hard you tried.

“If you’d like to tell me all the fish facts you used to, I won’t mind,” Holly told him, lowering her arm. “Go ahead, talk as long as you like. We have all day together, after all. I want you to enjoy yourself as much as you can.”

Nick didn’t understand.

Why would she do this? Why did she take him here? Did she really just want to have fun? How could she pretend like all the bad blood between the two of them hadn’t happened?

“Holly… you brought me to this dream world, this… replica of Deep Blue, why?” Nick asked. “I don’t get it. What, just because we came here together again, we’re just supposed to pretend like we can go back? Like everything that happened between us is all in the past?”

“Of course not,” Holly said, shaking her head. “We can’t change the past. But we need to talk about it. We didn’t get the chance to do that. Not… not really. But before we talk… I wanted to see that underwater world again. To try and see things through your eyes this time.”

A flash of color swam by and Nick turned his head suddenly, seeing a school of rainbow-scaled fish swimming past.

“Those are Fairy Wrasses, right?” Holly had come up beside him before he noticed.

“I’m surprised you remember,” Nick murmured.

“Well… they were your favorites, after all,” she said quietly, staring at the rainbow beneath the water. “Of course I remember. And I remember what you said about them, too.”

“Oh, you mean the fact that most groups of Fairy Wrasses are formed by one male flocked around by several females? Because I’d say that’s a rather ironic parallel of our own situation, wouldn’t you think?”

Holly shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”

“What about the fact that, due to the lack of any small males discovered, common consensus is that the Fairy Wrasse are all born female but certain individuals develop male-"

Another head shake. “Not that either.”

Nick scowled. “Then do you mean how their colors change depending on the environment, with males adopting more vibrant patterns in the presence of females or rival males?”

Holly turned to look at him, her eyes filled with sadness.

“You told me that you loved them because they reminded you of faeries,” she whispered. Nick flinched. “You said that you believed if someone died in the water and their body was never found, it was because they were taken to the land of the fae and were turned into a faerie themselves to swim forever in the sea.”

Nick couldn’t stand the compassion in her eyes. He looked back towards the water and clenched the railing of the tunnel.

“I thought you were just being poetic… but you were talking about her.”

“Why do you care?” Nick spat. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked. “We were so close, but you never mentioned her.”

Nick let out a long sigh and turned back to Holly. He didn’t want to let his anger get the better of him, but she was absolutely the last person he wanted to have this conversation with.

“Because it was none of your business,” he replied. “You were never my girlfriend, Holly, we were friends. That doesn’t entitle you to know all my secrets.”

Holly winced. His words stung. But she held on.

“I cared about you, Nick. I wanted to help you. It’s painful to keep things bottled up inside. If something’s bothering you, if you’re hurting, then you should talk about it, find someone you can open up to! Maybe I could've-”

Nick glared at her. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you’re saying that if you’re feeling hurt, you should talk about it with someone you care about, is that it?”

“Of course!” Holly cried. “Pain increases when you have to keep it to yourself. Confiding your issues in a friend is a good thing! They can take part of that burden from you and you can heal together.”

“Really?” Nick narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t.”

---

The rest of their time at Deep Blue passed in awkward silence. Nick was obligated to remain with Holly through the date, but he certainly wasn’t enjoying himself. No matter how much he loved the aquarium, being here with Holly only made things painful.

Finally it was lunch. The halfway mark. Holly took him to a familiar restaurant on the pier that they’d eaten at countless times together. They served the most delicious clam chowder in large bread bowls, and in spite of Nick trying to keep his grudge, the food was too good to hate. As delicious as he remembered, because of course it would be in a dream.

“We need to talk.”

It was the first thing Holly had said in hours. She looked deflated, her date plan having blown up in her face.

“…Yeah. I guess we do,” Nick agreed. He could keep resenting Holly for the rest of their lives, and probably condemn her to a miserable fate when she inevitably lost, or they could clear the air and try to understand where they were coming from.

“I just want to set this on the table first,” Holly began. “I don’t know what you believe, but I didn’t mean to turn all of your friends against you, Nick. That was never my goal. I know that must come as a cold comfort-"

“No fucking shit,” he spat. “Whatever you ‘intended’ that doesn’t change what happened.”

Holly winced. “…Yeah. I know. That’s why I need to say I’m sorry.”

“Why’d you do it?” He asked. “Tell everybody. Jesus, I don’t even know what you said to them, because nobody would tell me anything!”

Holly raised her eyebrow. “Mary didn’t tell you?”

He shook his head. “We danced around it, but she never said exactly what you told her.”

“…I see,” Holly sighed. “She was probably being considerate of me, that girl. But tell her I said it’s fine. If you want to confirm, I mean.”

Nick was surprised. Was Holly actually going to come clean? He’d wanted to hear the truth from her for so long. The way everyone just stopped returning his calls, telling him they were no longer friends because of what he’d done to her, when he didn't even know, it had kept him up for years wondering what had happened.

“It started when you confessed to me,” Holly murmured, staring down at her half-eaten bowl of chowder. She raised her head to look him in the eye. “After I rejected you.”

Nick winced.

“After I rejected you," she continued, "I spent the weekend debating what to do. I felt miserable about it. But I knew that we would be better off friends. So come Monday, I wanted to just go back to how things were. Which was why when you started avoiding me, I was crushed.”

“That was…” Nick winced, feeling the sadness in her stare. Even after everything, seeing her in pain made him hurt as well. “I just… I thought it was for the best. I thought that if I kept hanging around, it would make you feel uncomfortable. So I avoided you. It was for your sake!”

“…That’s part of it, yeah, I believe you,” Holly nodded. “But still. You were helping me study, Nick! I was relying on your tutoring to help me get through Physics! And you just what, decide ‘oh I’m not going to help her anymore because she rejected me’ how do you think that made me feel?! Do you have any idea how much I panicked over that?! I thought I was going to fail the class because of you! It was only a miracle I managed to pass!”

She calmed herself down. “No, sorry, no. I shouldn’t get mad.”

“I-I know, that was shitty of me,” Nick admitted. “But at the time, I thought… well, you were doing so good on all your practice tests, I just…”

“You thought I didn’t need you anymore?” She asked. “You thought I’d be fine on my own? Well, I was, somehow. But that doesn’t mean I should have had to go through that. You promised you'd help me. And then you broke your promise.”

“…I’m sorry.” Nick knew he screwed up bad. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have just cut off contact with her. But at the time, he really thought that was for the best.

“If it was just about sparing my feelings, then why did you start badmouthing me to your friends?” Holly asked quietly.

“Badmouthing-?!” Nick sputtered. “I didn’t! I just said, well, I told them how depressed I was. I was just venting my depression about getting rejected, isn’t that what people do?”

“To me it came off like badmouthing,” Holly said. “And maybe I’m overreacting thinking that. But let me ask you something, Nick, why did you ask me out in the first place? Right before finals?”

Nick didn’t expect that question from her. It took a moment for his thoughts to settle.

“I wanted a deeper relationship with you,” he admitted. “Is that so wrong? We got along so great and we had so much chemistry, I couldn’t help falling in love with you!”

Holly blushed in spite of herself. But she quickly pushed past that. “You were the first boy I’ve ever been close to,” she admitted. “And when you asked me out, it shocked me. But I couldn’t go out with you. I just couldn’t. But I didn’t think you’d react the way you did. Did you?”

Nick winced. “…No,” he admitted. “I had no idea getting rejected would sting that hard. If I knew what would happen, I never would have asked you out.”

“You thought there was no way I’d say no, didn’t you?” Holly asked, narrowing her eyes. “A shy girl with no experience with boys, who spent as much time as she could around you, you thought I was head over heels in love. That’s why you asked me out, isn’t it? Because you thought there was no chance I could reject you.”

The truth in her words peeled away the walls of denial over Nick’s heart. He couldn’t rebut her claims. “Yeah, I did,” he admitted. “I thought our feelings were mutual, and I wanted to date you as soon as possible. So, I asked you out. But when you rejected me… I guess it all came rushing back. The way Dani ghosted me due to my feelings, everything that happened with Dawn, the way she thought I was a stalker… I was terrified that you’d come to think of me that way.”

Was this really his fault? He’d thought that Holly was the unreasonable one all this time, but had it really been him who’d screwed everything up?

“I’m not them. I wouldn't have thought that. But you never gave me a chance!” Holly cried. Then her expression softened and she sighed. “Look. I get it. You had bad experiences with girls in the past. Then you thought that you finally found someone who would be good for you. And when it didn’t go the way you hoped, well… it scared you. Believe me, I understand why you did what you did. I even understand why you had to vent to your friends. But… can you please try to understand my side of this? How I felt?”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“Well, here’s this guy, a great guy I loved spending time with, who I thought really liked me. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he asks me out. But I didn’t want to go out with him! So I told him that, hoping we could put this behind us and just be friends. And then that guy, he… well… he disappears completely. He stops talking to me, he totally abandons me, and next thing I know he’s telling all his friends about how miserable things have been since he got dumped!? I felt like the total bad guy, when I was hurting just as bad! I lost you, Nick! I lost one of my closest friends! You did that to me!”

“Yeah, that was shitty of me,” Nick admitted, biting his lip. “I’ll admit, I screwed up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you, Holly, but what you did… talking shit about me to the others, that was…”

“That was wrong too,” Holly agreed. “You made a stupid choice because you were hurting, and that makes two of us. But believe me, I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Nick, just like you weren’t trying to hurt me!”

“Then why?” Nick asked. He still didn’t understand. “If you felt so hurt and betrayed by me venting to my friends, why would you do the same thing?”

“…Because of Mary,” Holly mumbled, averting her eyes. “Because after you tossed me aside ‘for my own good’ you immediately moved to Mary. And there the two of you were, all happy together, like I didn’t even exist in your world anymore.”

“So… you were jealous?” Nick couldn’t believe his ears.

Holly flinched, turning red. “That’s… it wasn’t…” She took a deep breath and calmed herself down. “Part of me was jealous, yes,” she admitted. “I felt like I’d been replaced. And I was afraid. I thought I’d completely misjudged you. Here you were, this great guy who I thought was a really close friend, and the second I turned you down, you abandoned me, started venting to your friends about me, and then moved on to find some other girl. I felt dirty and used, and so I told Mary what happened.”

“You badmouthed me to her,” Nick clarified. Holly winced.

“…Yeah. You can call it that,” she admitted. “I didn’t lie, though. I just told her what I told you. I felt used and abandoned, like you were just trying to get into a relationship with me, and the second I rejected you, you tossed me aside. I did what you did, I vented.”

She turned red with shame.

“But I didn’t think it would turn out so badly. I just thought… I thought that if Mary was more careful, then she wouldn’t end up getting hurt the way I did. She was so pure and guileless, I knew she could get really hurt if she went through what I had. I didn’t expect everyone to turn against you and treat you like that. It caught me by surprise.”

“You didn’t come to my defense though, either,” Nick pointed out with more than a little bitterness.

“…No, I didn’t,” Holly shook her head. “And that was wrong of me. I was young and stupid and didn't know better. But back then, I really did think that it had all been an act from you. That you’d just been trying to get together with me, and you didn’t really care about me at all.”

Nick frowned and studied Holly’s pained expression. She wasn’t lying. At least he didn’t think she was. The pain she was expressing was genuine.

But there was something else. Something she wasn’t telling him. In spite of her honesty, it felt like she was still holding something back.

“Is there anything else?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Nick pressed. “Because I know there’s something. I’m not denying what happened or saying your feelings are a lie, but I think there’s something else you’re holding back. Something to do with the two of us.”

Holly frowned. “There is… something,” she admitted, playing with the key around her neck. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with what I did. It’s about how I felt. Why I turned you down. But that… I don’t owe you that. Even if you want to know why I rejected you, that's past us now. It wouldn't change anything. Please don't make me tell.”

Maybe it was hypocritical of her to try and make an honest reconciliation when she wasn’t telling him everything. But some things were better left unsaid.

“…I suppose that’s fair,” Nick admitted. As much as he wanted to know why she’d turned him down, he couldn’t begrudge her for not telling him. “…So where do we go from here?”

They sat in silence for a while.

“…My feelings towards you haven’t changed,” Holly admitted. “But I don’t hate you. I never did. Can you believe that, at least?”

“Yeah,” Nick nodded. “I believe you.”

“…Do you hate me?” Her face was strained with desperation as she asked that. Nick was honestly shocked she even cared.

I suppose she’s worried about her placement in the show.

“I don’t hate you, Holly. What you did hurt me a lot, I won’t deny that. But now that you’ve told me the truth, I don’t know. It just feels like such a waste.” He’d spent so long resenting Holly for what she’d done that he hadn’t stopped to consider his own less-than-stellar behavior. Nick might have ended up getting screwed, but Holly hadn’t been totally at fault.

He, at least, shared some of the blame there.

“I guess it feels like all my anger’s drained away,” he finally answered.

The two stared at each other for a while before Holly broke the stalemate with a sigh, sinking into her seat.

“So as far as where we go from here… I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Even now that we’ve cleared the air, I don’t think we can just shake hands and say ‘let bygones be bygones’ you know?”

“Fair enough,” Nick agreed. “So what, then? What do you think?”

“Well, at the end of this… I’m still trapped in your harem,” she noted bitterly. “And you’re still the master. So since I have no intention of getting warped by one of those game-ending transformations, I’m going to have to do the best I can to stay in the game, even if the audience hates me.”

It made her stomach churn to think of what she’d have to do. But she didn’t really have a choice. “So I guess… that’s my position. My fate’s in your hands.”

She stared at Nick with a numb expression on her face. It would all be up to him.

Nick sighed. He wasn’t really any better equipped to deal with this either, in his opinion. This whole thing was a mess of Sylvia’s making, and even if she’d given him the avenue for some closure due to her twisted machinations forcing him onto this date, he couldn’t bring himself to thank her for it.

Then he looked across the table at Holly and realized that the answer was in front of him all along.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Nick said. “It’s important.”

Holly was looking pretty wary right now, but she wasn’t getting upset yet. He could take that as a good sign.

“What is it?” She asked in resignation.

“I want you to keep me in check.”

She stared at him.

“…What does that mean?” She asked. “'Keep you in check’ what is that?”

“A few nights ago, when I was with Carly… I lost control,” Nick said. “She just sort of… came at me, so hot and aggressive I couldn’t even think. And we almost ended up…”

He couldn’t even say it he was so embarrassed. Holly was getting pretty flustered too.

“But my point is that if she does it again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist,” Nick admitted. “And the further into this game the transformations get, the more likely it is that I’ll end up doing things with the other girls, too. Things I’ll regret, things we’ll both regret. And that’s not me. I mean… it’s not the kind of me that I want to be, anyway.”

“I think I understand what you’re saying,” Holly nodded.

“Right now, the transformations are mostly physical stuff, like Dani’s, or just changing people’s clothes,” Nick said. “But think about it. Sylvia wants me to have sex. She’s trying to sculpt me into a harem master, and she’s trying to turn you girls into my sex slaves. It’s sick! She’s turned people’s feelings and their freedom into a game! If they want to win, then they have to do stuff with me? And I’m just supposed to be okay that everyone’s getting **** like that!? I’m supposed to say ‘well gee, I guess I’ll take this free sex, let’s just pretend that you want to do this and not that you’re being manipulated by a twisted system!’ you know what I mean?”

“…I get the picture, yeah,” Holly winced a little at his graphic description. “But it’s not like I can do anything about it. What do you want from me, to lock your penis up in a chastity cage or something?”

“What!? No, no, it’s just… I don’t know. I need someone to help, someone with an ‘in’ with the girls, who can try to work with them, keep them focused. Instead of trying to have sex with me, we should be thinking about how to resist and get home.”

Sylvia made it clear multiple times that resistance wouldn’t be tolerated. But Nick couldn’t accept that. He would go through the motions, he would keep interacting with the girls, but he wouldn’t lose himself to the corruption. He wouldn’t let her twist him into abusing innocent people.

“I need your help, Holly. You said it yourself, you don’t want to have sex with me,” Nick explained. “You’re the perfect person to help keep me balanced, remind me ‘hey, asshole, these girls are just being manipulated, back off’.”

“You can’t do that yourself?” Holly asked, raising her eyebrow.

“I can, but… they’re changing me, Holly. I can feel it. They’re trying to turn me into something I’m not. They have these chemicals, during the massage with Dani and later in the sauna, I could barely think straight. Who knows what else they can do? I need someone like you who can keep a level head, someone who has no interest in doing stuff like that with me. Please, you’re the only one I can count on.”

Holly bit her lip. “You know I’m at the bottom of the popularity poll, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, as long as you’re aware. Because the thing you’re suggesting right now? It’s NOT going to go over well with the audience. The kind of show this is? Nobody’s gonna be a fan of the cockblocker, I can tell you that right now,” she scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. “…What you’re asking me to do is risk my safety just because you don’t trust yourself.”

“…I know,” Nick admitted. “I know this is a lot to ask, but-"

“I’ll do it, though.”

“You will?!” Nick stared in amazement at Holly. His face was filled with so much awe that Holly actually felt a little uncomfortable. She averted her eyes and played with her ponytail.

“Well, I mean… I owe you. A lot. It would be kind of scummy of me to say no after the shit I did,” she mumbled sheepishly. “And plus… this will help Mary, right? And the others?”

“Absolutely,” Nick said. He feared what might happen if he’d been around Mary while in the same heightened state of lust he’d been in the sauna with Dani. “And the others, too.”

“Then I’ll do it. And not just for them, for you, too,” she said.

“Me?” Nick wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

“If the others are victims, then so are you,” Holly explained, staring at him like it was obvious. “They’re getting ****, but you are, too. Like, aphrodisiacs in the sauna? Tell me, if you and Dani had actually had sex, would you have blamed yourself for it?”

“Of course,” Nick said, not seeing how he couldn’t blame himself. “Dani wouldn’t have wanted to-"

“You didn't want to, either. You just said it, they **** you. If you’re both incapable of giving consent due to Sylvia, you were both assaulted,” Holly sniffed. “Sylvia used your bodies to **** one another, and I’m not okay with that. It’s sick, and you shouldn’t be blaming yourself for being manipulated and controlled by her.”

She shrugged. “That’s how I see it, anyway.”

Nick nodded, seeing a whole side to this he hadn’t seen before. He’d figured that, as the harem master, he was to blame because the show was about making him have sex.

But with how Holly described it, he could really understand for the first time that he was a victim himself.

And realizing that, he started to get REALLY pissed off.

“So what now?” Holly asked. “Our lunch hour is almost over. We have a whole second half of a date to get to.”

Nick had completely forgotten that their date wasn’t over yet. He and Holly still weren’t friends, or anything close to lovers, but they’d reached an understanding. There was calm between them now, a disarmament, a ceasefire of hostilities.

“Does your offer of a lecture about all the species at the aquarium still hold?” Nick asked hopefully.

Holly burst out laughing.

---

That night, Nick and Holly had an amicable meal together and passed the night reading in silence. They were two people sharing the same space together, tenuous partners in crime. And when they finally went to bed, they did so on opposite sides, facing away from each other. It was like they didn’t even acknowledge the other’s presence, and both parties were fine with it.

Meanwhile, Sylvia watched from her perch, studying the two of them with a smirk on her face.

“Oh, Nick, how little you realize,” she clicked her tongue, shaking her head. “Trusting little Holly again, after all the pain she caused you last time…”

Nick’s little plan to subvert Sylvia’s control was just adorable. She’d been watching the date intently as another member of the audience, and while they hadn’t blown up at each other the way she’d hoped, they were still very clearly on shaky terms.

“You need to think more strategically, my boy,” she tutted, clicking her tongue and leaning back in her seat. “Asking Holly to be the one to keep you from going wild on your harem? Have you already forgotten her transformation?”

It was such a mistake she wondered if it was intentional. The wolf was now in charge of shepherding the sheep.

Sylvia watched Holly’s sleeping figure with malicious eyes. “You don't understand the first thing about her. Of all the girls you could have chosen for the job, you picked the absolute worst.”

That night, Sylvia selected a special dream for a slumbering Holly, a dream where Carly and Mary joined Nick in a three-way, with her watching enviously from the side while chained to the wall.