In fact, idols work way too hard.

Luckily, Sora had no problem with a casual approach to fellatio or its aftermath.

Though it wasn’t part of his public contract as Assistant Something or Other, there were secret provisions. Miss Lindgrove was happy to get this rogue pink particle under contract, though he could back out. They’d splash the whole thing and leave his life forever, but he’d maintain confidentiality, at the risk of angering corporations who weren’t shy about issuing other kinds of contracts.

All the legalisms were unnecessary, as they tended to be. Sora wasn’t going to back out on two old friends, no matter how much they sucked his dick.

Another nice thing about being under contract with 357 Productions was that their security drones and turrets wouldn’t fire at him. Which was probably Ya Liao’s idea of a joke, but these offices were high-tech and high-security. Apparently, people got really fucking weird about idols.

Massive, too. Not wasting any of the skyscraper’s ten floors they had rented out. Administrative and financial center built into a faraday cage for absolute privacy? Dance studios and recording stages contrariwise coated in cameras? Full-time housing and catering for a hundred employees?

That pool complex big enough to pass for the ocean was just the start.

Kind of wild. Atlantis was founded on the coast, but built outwards onto massive floating steel platforms. When the ice caps finally gave up and the sea rose to swallow them all, this revolutionary city lost her tenuous connection to land. They’d become a free-standing, shallow-water vessel with a draft of like five hundred million tons. Beachfront was not scarce.

So why was the indoor pool a staple of every glittering glass skyscraper? Well, there was a charm to your own pool, and part of the charm was not having to deal with mobs of people. For certain lines of work, that went from ‘nice’ to ‘essential’.

They didn’t bother with a grand tour the day he came aboard, just the highlights, so that Hyun-ji and Ya Liao could show him around personally. A tour hosted by two world-famous idols, and all Sora could do was gawk at how spacious and well-stocked the cafeteria was.

Well, he was something of a food service professional himself~

As he proved, when the company bartender was on her smoke break, and Sora hopped the well-stocked, neon-coated bar, taking up residence in this place like it was his perfectly legitimate business down at the docks. “What’ll it be, ladies?”

Hyun-ji smiled. “Nothing too strong, please. We’ve got dance lessons in seven minutes. For, uh… seven hours.”

Sora looked up from a flatscreen display that has giving him sass in astonishment. “You’re kidding. You’re not?”

“Idol’s good work, but very demanding.”

Ya Liao settled her muscular frame onto one of the stools, still paying no heed to the fact that she was dressed in a piece of floss. That excuse for a swimsuit worked on tension mechanics more than any straps securing anything, and by sitting down, well. A banquet of hard and soft was all available, but Sora was, when behind the bar, a consummate professional.

He could gawk at the clients and mix up the processed mess that passed for drink mixtures nowadays. Besides, the kitsune was still dressed like a girl, so he was hardly in any position to judge.

“That’s what made me fall in love with it. That, and this girl right here. You come here often, baby?”

Rolling her eyes at encountering a pickup line older than Sora himself, Hyun-ji delicately took a seat next to her wife. Her swimsuit was allegedly rational. It was just that her body itself was obscene in the best way, and those massive breasts rested on the counter and offered a positive wealth of cleavage. They also threatened to knock over any drinks slid across the counter, but they were dealing with a professional, here.

It wasn’t like most Autumnal girls didn’t have trouble with tables and keyboards.

Sora was the kind of bartender who could sense a client’s inner desires, like a form of magic. He could tell when somebody needed to avoid drinking before a big day, and when somebody was, in fact, working way too hard. So the pair of glowing light-blue martinis he produced, one with a tiny halo of foam on the rim and another with a devilish set of ice-horns, both contained enough optional karmotrine to smash these girls senseless.

So it was unsettling to see both Hyun-ji and Ya Liao knock back their drinks, and then ask for more. Then, more still, while they shot the breeze, and all the time, showing no evidence of intoxication. No trembling hands, no weird speeches about politics, no slurring or blurry vision.

Annoyed at this challenge to his godhood, Sora gave them the works; a concoction he brewed up specifically with the processed chemicals at the bar for cyborgs. He called it the Dinger, because it would knock you out of the park.

Nope.

Well, ballsmash had always been the most unreliable of sports. Slumps and streaks happened literally for no reason-

“Am I shooting blanks over here? What the hell are they serving at this company bar?” Finally, Sora had his answer before either of the giggling, swimsuit-clad idols could let him in on the bad news. He cracked through the bar’s pesky defenses, and the computer finally told him what all this stuff was made from.

One big red word stuck out from the ingredient list.

Non-Alcoholic.

Sora stared at that word for a while, absently twirling a rag into a mug.

Then, he set it down, and sighed. “Let’s go get changed.”

Hyun-ji nodded. “Quite so. I think you’d enjoy dance practice, given how often you troll those nightclubs-”

“I didn’t mean for dance lessons,” Sora said. “You two need a break, badly. You’re working too hard. Everyone’s working too hard, in fact, but you two can definitely afford not to. My illusion and conjuration aren’t what they used to be with all this metal everywhere, but I think I can work up enough of a glamour to take you out. You’ve brought me into your world, now let me repay the favor.”

Miss Lindgrove would be upset, but it was important to show her that this was one errant bit of fluff that would never be tamed.

“Fuck yeah!” Ya Liao had the biggest grin of her life, and she slammed down her empty glass onto the bar hard enough to nearly break it. “I wasn’t always a pampered princess like this girl here. Come on, baby, we’ll both show you around.”

Hyun-ji pouted. “We’re going to get in so much trouble.”

“That’s as may be,” Ya Liao shrugged. “But it's a problem for the future. For now, the only real question is where we’re going. Got something in mind, hotshot?”

Disguised or not, there were still plenty of places downtown it would have been truly suicidal to bring these girls. Luckily, Sora swam in gang-infested waters as comfortably as he did in corporate high-rises, loving both for their similar composition and levels of danger.

A few fun places leapt immediately to mind as they slipped out onto the streets.