Artistic Understudy III

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Also, advance notice, there will be no chapter on the 15h of October, as that is fall break week in my country and I'll be too focused on spending time with the family to guarantee writing output.))

Post-coital cuddling was awesome. The warm, soft feeling of June’s skin against his. The light pressure of her plush padding in all the right places, squished against him. Especially her butt against his lap as they spooned, it was wondrous how it could feel so incredibly enticing in a completely different way than the one that had been the theme of the day.

Well, it was still enticing in the sexy way too. While he did feel sexually sated, if the day where he didn’t find a butt like June’s pressed against his lap at least a little arousing ever happened, he hoped someone would put him out of his misery then.

Owing, most likely, to post nut clarity, John realized that for all his focus on June there was one aspect of her he had completely forgotten from basically step one: her nameplate. Most of the information on it was largely irrelevant at the moment, and probably in general, but he should at least pay attention to her RS.

In fact, since Observe was just a gamified readout of a sense and using it was socially equivalent to looking closely at someone, using the Skill on June was basically just an extension of paying attention to her. And she certainly hadn’t minded him looking closely at her so far today. He was also a bit curious about what would be written in the Buff effect from Pheromone Aura, and this should let him see that.

There were several things that felt significant there, notably including determining what the stat ratings meant and her RS having gone up by about 30 since he last looked at it.

The first thing that drew his attention, however, wasn’t actually on the Observe sheet. It was in the buff tray that appeared on her nameplate. Despite having a green border indicating a positive effect, the buff icon being a red pentagram felt ominous and worrying.

Blessing of ????
Gradually causes the target to grow into the most attractive version of themselves possible. Goes as far as overriding epigenetics and dominant gene expression if necessary.
Active for: 9 years, 0 months, 0 weeks, 5 days and 17 hours.

That… didn’t sound malicious, not even in a roundabout way. The icon still felt worrying though, as did an unexpected, presumably magical effect on her. Could it be from another artwork with a natural enchantment? A blessing could reasonably come from a religiously themed artwork, but it felt weird that it would be a blessing of question marks and not, say, a blessing of beauty or blessing of Aphrodite or something.

“John, is anything wrong?” June sounded more confused or surprised than outright concerned, but clearly she had noticed that he had gotten tense.

“No, no, uh, just an intrusive thought…” He **** himself to relax as he responded, hoping that vagueness would carry the day.

“Well, I think I have just the thing for that~” Her tone was a mix of sly and sensual, as she grabbed the arm he had wrapped around her midsection and moved his hand so it was cupping her breast.

That was a very persuasive argument to just leave his worries for later. Enough that he would probably have put any other worries aside except for ones about the wellbeing of the same woman he was fondling.

Unfortunately, the only clue he had besides the effect itself was how long it had been in place. He didn’t really know anything about what had happened in June’s life at that time though, and he couldn’t think of any way to ask that wouldn’t sound weird as hell. So that didn’t help him much.

But then it occurred to him that she had mentioned “coming into her figure”, essentially turning into a more attractive version of herself, during freshman year of college. And if he subtracted the 9 years that she had had the blessing from her age on the Observe sheet, that did fit with a typical college freshman. If not for getting a scholarship to Ashcroft Academy, a prestigious prep school, he would’ve been a newly minted college freshman himself.

And in addition to looking like she could’ve been a beneficiary of the blessing herself, June’s college roommate dressed in a style where a pentagram on a positive thing was thematically fitting. That was, admittedly, a pretty thin thread on its own. But now that he was thinking about it more seriously, it felt a bit odd that June hadn’t mentioned the roommate’s name. And it felt a bit more odd that her not doing so hadn’t seemed the slightest bit odd when it happened.

But if the roommate was Abyssal, and had put the blessing on June but wanted to keep people from making that connection too easily, there may be a subtler effect in place that was designed to go unnoticed by assensing and nudge people away from paying attention to the roommate’s identity.

And he could ask about the roommate without pulling out a weirdly specific amount of time ago. “What was your old roommate like?”

June giggled. “You know, most women would be rather unhappy to be asked about another woman while you’re in their bed, fondling their breast.”

“Fuck! Sorry! I didn’t mean it like that. I- I want to get to know you better, and you sounded like she is important to you…” In his worry about finding a way to ask that wouldn’t seem weird in general, he had forgotten to consider if it would seem situationally weird right now. Marvelous. Hopefully she wouldn’t catch that what he said wasn’t the full truth of his interest in the roommate, nor the reason he asked right now.

“It’s fine, I know. I’m not really the jealous type anyway. Plus, if I was actually angry, I would have started with moving your hand…” She giggled again. “But yes, she was. In the beginning, I developed a bit of a case of hero worship for her. She was everything I had wished I could be since I started my teens. It would have been easy for her just to boss me around and use me for a yes-woman, but instead she helped me find my own worth and taught me to… Well, at the time I thought of it as being like her. Eventually I realized that she was actually teaching me how to be the best version of myself.”

“Sounds like she is a pretty amazing person.” And she didn’t sound like someone who would leave a bunch of dangerous strings attached to a decade old blessing. “I couldn’t help but notice that you said ‘was’ though. Is… is it okay to ask why?”

“Why? Are you angling for an introduction?”

His brain only caught up to the joking tone she had asked that question in when his sputtered, half-formulated protests made her laugh. He took **** by pinching her nipple, causing the laugh to be cut off by a moan.

“I suppose I deserved that,” she remarked with feigned dryness before giggling melodiously. “But yes, it is okay. She got headhunted by a publishing company in Cali during our senior year and dropped out to take the job. We tried to stay in touch, but talking or texting every day turned into once a week, then once a month, then every other month and eventually I realized we hadn’t spoken in over a year. Her leaving was the last push I needed to try submitting some of my work to a gallery. That took off, and I could hardly blame her for being busy with her career when I was just as busy with my own.”

“Makes sense.” He nodded. It didn’t really though. Well, the part about not blaming her for being busy did, but dropping out during senior year due to being headhunted seemed fishy. Why would the company not wait a couple of months for her to finish getting her degree?

But if John’s suspicions about the roommate being an Abyssal was correct, there was another explanation that did. Maybe the roommate had made Abyssal enemies that wouldn’t care about a mundane getting caught in the crossfire, or maybe even ones that were likely to try to attack her through a mundane close to her. Then, abruptly leaving with an excuse that was good enough to avoid a missing person’s report and gave her an excuse to minimize contact fairly quickly seemed like a decent way to keep June safe. Now that the scenario had come up, John could potentially see himself do the same to keep June or his family safe if it became necessary.

They just lay and cuddled for a while, but after some time John worked his courage up to ask something else of a more personal nature. “I feel like I have to ask. What does this make us? Will you- Are we dating? Are you my girlfriend?”

“So that’s what was bothering you?”

It was not the only thing that had been, but he wasn’t going to correct her. She hummed thoughtfully for a moment before giving her answer. “The reality of the situation is that I’m your teacher. Becoming a couple would have significant consequences. I can live without my teaching job, and public opinion is only as much of a problem as we make it. But tainting your family’s opinions of me and our relationship is not something to take lightly, and a bit of plausible deniability goes a long way…

“So what I think we should do is stay as student and teacher for now and keep this no strings attached bonus as our little secret at least until you leave Ashcroft. Then we can revisit things when you’re a few months into your college degree, if you’re still in the mood for Christmas cake by then.” Other than the Christmas cake bit at the end, the seriousness of her tone gave John the feeling that she had put a lot of thought into this.

The pseudo-rejection stung. But it wasn’t even close to the world-shattering gut punch he had felt when Qhila had turned him down. He wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe it was because what June had said boiled down to “not yet” instead of “not ever”. Or maybe it was because he could see the sense in why. Or maybe he had been thinking of getting with June an impossible pipe dream for long enough that he deep down hadn’t believed it was really happening.

There was also a small voice saying that it was because he didn’t feel the same way about June as he did about Qhila and had been a fraud for bringing it up. That part, he did his best to push away. Even if the first part was right, and he wasn’t sure it was, he still needed to know where he stood with June.

Coming somewhat out of his own head again, he noticed that June’s body felt tense against him and realized that he must have allowed the time to stretch on between them and that this mattered as much to her as it did him. Sighing, he nodded. “I think you’re right. That’s how it has to be for the time being.”

They just snuggled quietly for a bit, then June directed his attention towards the artwork placed around her spacious bedroom. Here, the eroticism was pervasive and more overt. Undeniable depictions of ongoing sex or masturbation was the main fare.

Yet something about the pieces, that was partially but not wholly to do with the attention to detail and artistic brilliance, gave them an impression that elevated them above the vulgarity that such decor could easily amount to. Instead, there was a feel of almost spiritual character to it, as though the bedroom was a shrine dedicated to a faith in which eroticism was sacrosanct.

They proceeded to talk about several of the pieces, and the various art-technical considerations and methods that had gone into their creation. That conversation could reasonably have been considered a theoretical art lesson if they hadn’t been having it while naked in bed together. After that, they had a shower. Then they went for another round in the bathroom, which led to a second shower.