Finally, the chapter has been finished; it's been sent to everyone for their viewing; more than three hours have passed, and yet I haven't seen the view counter move in over three days. Did no one receive the notification for the new chapter? Or have even the bots abandoned me now?
I've worked on this chapter for over two weeks; it's the new arc of my novel, the Halloween war. After listening to Luna wanting to create a werewolf story but having to tell her it was a generic idea, I don't know why I thought of taking that idea and challenging myself to do something really cool with them, so here's my attempt. My little version of hunters of evil against Dracula's vampire, where the protagonist and Tamamo get caught up in having to help the other hunters fight the Count of Darkness's wickedness.
In this case, they're being assisted by an army of werewolves fiercely devoted to the sacred cause. Tiberius Blackthorn is the captain of what could be described as Spartans, furious against the evil that created them—an army of 300 who consider only dying in battle for a greater good as victory. Carrying swords, incense, and crosses as their weapons, they have learned from the worst of centuries of human warfare to use it in battle against what is not human. Volleys of magical muskets, medieval siege with diesel-powered siege engines, modern howitzer artillery barrages, magic shields in Maxim gun nests. Without a doubt, an arc full of action and important revelations for the civilization of Atlantis that has been pulling the strings throughout the entire novel.
But where are the readers?
"Alright, time for melancholy is over!" I heard a voice say beside me.
I looked away from the monitor and turned my head; Tamamo was there, watching, looking a little worried to see me in front of the computer like that.
"Three hours have already passed; it's your day off, please rest."
"You've done everything you could; the other half isn't up to you."
"Now you can only turn the page and do better on the next chapter."
"But that won't be today, will you promise me?"
"Tamamo?"
It wasn't the first time Tamamo had asked me for something—she'd already asked me to eat, to rest, to stop lying to her that I was fine—but this time it was different. This time she wasn't asking me to take care of myself. She was asking me to take care of her.
"I want time," she said, with that soft but firm voice I'd learned to recognize as her "serious mode."
"Time with you. Alone."
"Ohhh, someone's in trouble."
"Look at that expression. That's the expression of a goddess who's going to demand things."
"And yes, Tamamo's right, I hog all the time because I'm a selfish goddess, you know that. Take your turn, vixen."
"Rory." Tamamo's voice had that patient tone that somehow conveyed infinite exasperation.
"You said you wouldn't interrupt."
"I'm not interrupting. I'm commenting. There's a difference." She threw another popcorn into the air and caught it with her mouth.
"Besides, I already know what this is about. You've been watching César and me have all the fun and now you want your turn. It's adorable, really."
Tamamo's cheeks turned slightly pink.
"That's not— I mean, yes, but not like—"
"She wants quality time," Rory announced to no one in particular, gesturing with a popcorn kernel as if it were a pointer.
"Tamamo-no-Mae, the evil moon goddess, the nine-tailed fox who deceived emperors, wants to have a conversation with her husband. How scandalous. How domestic. I love it."
"Rory, you're supposed to be watching the movie," I scolded.
"The movie's great. But my husband is being an idiot with my co-wife, so I have to intervene."
"Co-wife?"
"It's a technical term. I just made it up."
Tamamo was sitting on the edge of the desk, her hands folded in her lap, her orange kimono glowing under the galaxy lamp's light. Behind her, on the bed, Rory was lying face down in front of my phone, watching another action movie. This time it was Hard To Die, and from the sounds she made—little gasps of excitement, some "THAT'S IT!" shouted at the screen—she was fascinated.
"Alone?" I asked, feeling immediately awkward.
"Rory is always by your side," Tamamo said as an observation.
"She goes to work with you. She whispers in your ear on the bus. She sleeps on your chest. And I..." She paused, her fox ears flattening slightly.
"I want that too."
"Good luck with that, vixen. He's gone ten years without knowing what to do with one girl. Now he has two. His brain is going to collapse."
"Rory..."
"Look at that! He throws a body out the window onto the patrol car so the fat cop realizes what's happening."
"Tonight I'm a partner to this cop trying to stop a whole group of terrorists!"
Tamamo sighed with the patience of someone who has lived millions of years and is no longer surprised by anything. She turned her Deep Blue eyes toward me.
"See? She's always by your side. At work. On the bus. In the kitchen. Last night, on your shoulder. I..." She paused, and for a moment her voice lost its usual serenity.
"I want that too. Time. With you."
I sat on the bed, rubbing my eyes. My mind, still hazy with sleep, tried to process the situation. Tamamo, the goddess who was always patient, who always waited, who always put others' needs before her own, was asking me for something. Directly. Without hesitation.
"Okay," I said, and my voice came out clumsier than I intended.
"What... what do you want to talk about?"
Tamamo sat on the edge of the small table, her legs dangling over the wooden edge. She wore her overdesigned royal Indigo kimono, the same one from the game, the same one from the figure. Her fingers played with the edge of the fabric.
"I already know what you think of me," she said.
"I know you love my personality. My story. What I mean to you. Rory told me. Everything."
"So..."
"But I want to know something else." Her eyes lifted to meet mine.
"I want to know what you like about me. About my design. About how you see me."
"It's clear you like visual things and not just the story, so you must have something you like about me for how I look."
"I'd like to know that."
"Why you chose me among all the figures you could have bought."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Rory, from her post in front of the TV, let out another little laugh without looking away from the carnage on screen.
"I told you his brain was going to collapse."
"Rory, please..."
"Okay, okay. I won't say anything else." She made a zipping motion over her mouth.
Tamamo stared at me. Her expression was serene, but there was something in her eyes—a glint, an expectation—that gave her away.
"Well... your kimono," I began, feeling stupidly self-conscious.
"The bluish purple color. It's not a color you see much. And i love how much of a goddess you look like that, but then you are su human anc close and warm. And your magic flames. And..." I paused.
"And it matches your jewel blue eyes."
Tamamo blinked. "My eyes?"
"Sapphire. I like to call them that. Like..." I shrugged, not knowing how to explain it.
"Like something you shouldn't look at because of how beautiful and majestic it is, but it's so beautiful you can't look away."
"Wow." Rory's voice came from the bed, tinged with amusement.
"The idiot has poetry inside after all."
"He forgot to mention big boobs, though."
"Just look around at what all the other figures have in common; it's easy to figure out."
"He loves giant melons like Ahg!......"
Unfortunately for Tamamo, Rory was no longer available after receiving a pillow to the head so fast it knocked her off the bed, leaving only her shoes where she had been standing.
Tamamo leaned forward, her eyes shining with something that wasn't exactly pride but came close—mostly enthusiasm, her fox tail behind her wagging nonstop.
"And what else?"
"And my tail? My ears?"
"Do you like me being a fox?"
"They're... expressive." I gestured vaguely toward her ears, which at that moment perked up with attention.
"When you're happy, they move. When you're sad, they flatten. When you're curious, they tilt forward. It's like having a second face that can't lie."
"Your tails—when the nine tails were visible in the game, I mean. The way they moved independently, like each one had its own personality."
"I also love your blonde hair, that bright like the sun even if is dark because you are still a goddes"
"Your massive Fox form is also so majesticn an dprisive, like a agresive Big warrior wolf instead of a fox, yet i am not afraid of it, because I know that is still my wife Tamamo"
The ears in question moved slightly. Tamamo raised a hand to touch them, as if she'd never noticed them before.
"Go on," she said, with hunger—not the predatory kind, but the hunger of someone who had waited a long time to hear something and was finally getting it.
"Your eyes," I continued, the words coming a little easier now.
"In the game, when the light hit them at certain angles, they looked like liquid magic blue. The artists spent a lot of time on that effect. I remember reading an interview where they said your eye shaders were some of the most complex in the entire game."
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
"You read interviews about my eye shaders?"
"I read everything about you," I admitted.
"Datamining. Developer diaries. Concept art. There's a piece of early concept art where you had nine tails visible all the time, and they were on fire. Literally on fire. They decided it was too visually noisy during combat scenes, so they made the tails only appear during special attacks."
"You know about my tails being on fire?"
"Blue fire," I corrected. "It was supposed to be spiritual flame. They cut it because the particle effects tanked the frame rate on older consoles."
"In story is supposed capable of only burning what you want, while protecting what you love; that is why you roast to ash that massive sneke with the blue fire while my character only felt like a big warm hug, becausa was you still, on flame form"
From the bed, Rory let out a theatrical groan. "He's doing the thing. The research thing. We're going to be here all day."
"Hush," Tamamo said, without looking away from me.
"This is fascinating," she murmured with a smile.
"You're very observant,"
"It's my job. Well, it was. Or is. I don't know."
Before I could respond, Tamamo pulled something out from behind her. My phone. Not the one Rory was using to watch the movie—that one was still on the bed—but mine, my personal one, which I'd left charging on the small table.
"I've been exploring," she said, in a tone that tried to be casual but wasn't quite.
"Your gallery. Your folders. You have a lot of images."
"I saw something on your computer. When you were reviewing files for your novel."
I felt the blood rush to my face. "Tamamo, that's—"
"Don't worry. I haven't seen anything inappropriate." She paused.
"Well, yes, I did. But that's not what I want to talk about."
"I wanted to ask you about this image here that I found." She swiped her finger across the screen—she'd learned to use the phone with alarming speed—and showed me an image.
"Of a character. A girl, she appears quite a bit, but I've never seen her as a figure."
My heart stopped.
"She's quite pretty," Tamamo said, studying the image carefully.
"Why don't you buy her figure too?"
"Who knows, maybe she'd also come to life and we could all live together!"
"There's no figure of that...", I replied timidly.
"Oh no, she found the blue girl folder!"
"I was wondering when you'd find that."
"Our dear César, our sweet, timid, can't-say-boobs-without-blushing César, has a very specific folder. In it, there are images. Many images. Of his beautiful female OC."
"Rory...." I started.
"What? I've known about it for years! You think I didn't see you looking at that stuff at three in the morning? I was on the shelf, remember? I saw everything! All of your private... stuff," her red eyes gleaming with mischief.
"It's..." The words were stones in my throat.
"It's private."
"I know," Tamamo said.
"But I'm your wife. And I want to know you. All of you. Even the parts you hide."
"That's... that's nothing. That's just a design. A character I created for my novel. She's not important."
"It's nothing. It's just a drawing. A commission I paid for years ago. It doesn't mean anything."
"It's stupid."
"It's not real. She's never going to be real anyway."
I couldn't look at her. My hands were shaking.
"César." Tamamo's voice was gentle but insistent.
"It's not stupid."
"Who is she?"
The silence stretched between us. From the other room, even the explosions seemed to quiet.
"César." Her tiny hand touched my finger.
"I'm not judging you. I'm asking because I want to understand."
"She's just the protagonist of my novel..."
"Your novel? The same one you were writing this morning?"
"But aren't you supposed to be the protagonist of your own novel?"
"......."
"......."
"Oh, I see..."
"She's very beautiful."
"She is exactly the same beautiful you are; she is just you"
"Sorry?"
"Your design, it's quite beautiful, I like it."
"You can see how much effort you put into your design; I'm sure you spent months looking for the right colors."
"With the dedication you put into your stories, I'm sure you researched designers or even watched fashion classes just to decide how the uniform and its colors would look."
"The proportions of her body are also quite carefully done, but they also reflect what you love; even in this you couldn't hide who you are and what you love."
"I really like what you did with the hair, very original without a doubt!" Tamamo said with the kindest and most loving smile a mother could show her child.
Seeing her, next to my secret drawing, the one I'd put so much work into, so much effort, so much secrecy.
I couldn't help it, but my mind recalled a similar scene when I showed my mother a similar drawing when I was just a small child—the look of terror, the disappointment, the pain that followed. Him, when I once showed him a short novel I wrote, he feigned interest for a total of 3 minutes before going back to his phone and never speaking of it again, because the topic is a curse.
And in its place, there was Tamamo, proud to have been blessed to have seen my character...
My chest hurts, but I don't know if it's a bad thing this time...
"It's just a fantasy, like my whole novel..."
"And it's the fantasy that kept you alive, isn't it?"
"Maybe thinking about this drawing kept you alive a few more months. I'm glad for that, because maybe it gave us the chance to be together today."
I felt something crack inside my chest. Not a break. More like ice melting.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"Do you think you can describe it a little more? For me?"
"Is this how your character was in my game? Was she the one by my side in all those moments in my game?"
"Oh... well... yes..."
"In the game, there was no distinction between male or female; the dialogue lines were always the same in every scene to save on costs and development."
"They weren't even good; they just referred to the protagonist as a handsome man regardless of their form."
"That's why you always called me Goshujin-sama, although I liked that more, even with its limitations."
"....."
"And the design, well. It's just an amalgamation of things I like, that's all."
"Despite how it looks, she's actually a Slime, because a slime can change shape when it wants. When it doesn't like a form or gets tired, it just changes to a new one without difficulty."
"I thought it could be used as an excuse for why I sometimes change designs from time to time, how it went from the generic protagonist to that while everyone else kept acting normally with him."
"And in turn she looks like a kitsune because I also like those designs, because I really liked your story, Tamamo, within the game."
"Her military uniform, well, because I like those things, and in the game there was always a villain to defeat, always an army to support, it would be natural for that character to be part of the military, right?"
"Also, with a uniform like that, people would surely see it and think something like: Oh, she's a warrior, she has a cause behind her, a motive, a mission, a place to go, surely she knows so much about life and is certain in all of it."
"I wanted her to be strong, because I wanted to protect you."
"She has a cheerful but determined face, confident... she looks like Melona because I always thought her design was beautiful. Her curves. Her confidence. The way she just... exists in her body without apologizing for it, happy for herself."
"......"
"Because I thought that someday that day would come..." My voice couldn't help but crack on that last sentence.
From the other room, Rory's voice cut through: "It could be sluttier!"
"RO—"
"I'm just saying! The chest is big, but it could be BIGGER! The hips are wide, but they could be WIDER! You're designing a fantasy body, César, go all out! More curves! More everything! Make it so lewd the artist has to blur it!"
Tamamo closed her eyes. Counted to three. Opened them again.
"Rory," she said, with the calm of a saint, "please focus on your explosions."
"THEY'RE DOCUMENTARIES!" She wiped an imaginary tear.
"Sorry, but this...it's just... It's so... YOU. Everything in this image screams 'César designed this at three in the morning.'"
"You paid for this! You invested real money in your big-titty female self! That's even better! I love it!"
"Was that the time you had to skip eating for three days? Money well spent without a doubt."
"I'm sure she could end world hunger with her breast!"
"I could definitely love this without any problem if it were you."
"Although maybe you should have given her MORE tails. And weapons. Lots of weapons. And a tank. Why doesn't she have a tank? She's military! The military has tanks!"
"I wasn't going to give her a tank, Rory."
"Well, you should. It's never too late to add a tank."
"If you don't shut up, I'm going to punish you by taking your phone away!"
"Never! I'm going to protect Johnny McClane with my life!"
"I'm only on the second movie, and I won't rest until I watch them all tonight!"
"You'll only be able to take this phone from my lifeless hands from my cold corpse!" said Rory, raising her halberd in a desperate defensive posture.
Tamamo ignored the exchange and looked back at me.
"See, that's exactly what I mean."
"With her you're so close, so playful."
"It's like you two are lovers and siblings at the same time."
"With me you're more shy," she said, more to herself than to me. "Even now. Even after everything that's happened. You're embarrassed to talk about what you like."
"With me you speak serenely, as if it were a serious discussion from a tragic and poetic novel with a distant priestess entrusting you to save the world."
"Tamamo, I..."
"Wait." She raised a hand.
"I'm not scolding you. I'm observing." She stood up on the desk, smoothing her kimono with an unconscious gesture. "Rory is loud. She provokes you. She forces you to react. And that works with her. But with me... with me you're different. You treat me more carefully, you keep more distance."
"You're shy. Painfully shy. If I wait for you to take the initiative, I'll be waiting for another million years." She leaned forward slightly.
"That's why I'm going to try a different approach. Because you need that. Someone to push you out of your own head."
"That's not— I mean, Rory and I, we've had years to—"
"Exactly," Tamamo cut me off.
"Rory had years. I don't want to wait years. I want to start now." She extended a tiny hand toward me.
"So. Take care of me."
"Take care of you?"
"Yes. Like you take care of Rory. I want to see how you treat her when it's just the two of you. I want to be treated like a wife, not a guest. Not a goddess. A wife."
I hesitated. "But you ARE a goddess, Tamamo. A real one. The moon goddess. Millions of years old. I can't just..."
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?"
The shriek came from the bed. Rory had paused her movie and was now standing on the table, hands on her hips, expression outraged.
"You don't think of me as a goddess?!"
"That's not what I—"
"You just said Tamamo is a 'real goddess' and you can't treat her like a normal person because of it! Which means you DON'T think of me as a real goddess!"
"Rory, I—"
"After everything I've done for you! The divine protection! The sacred pizza! The holy remote control exploration! And you don't think I'm a real goddess?!"
"Rory, you literally just before that you don't want to be treated like a goddess! You want to be treated normally! You said it yourself!"
Rory paused mid-rant.
"...Oh. Right. I did say that." She sat back down.
"Carry on, then. But I'm still offended on principle."
I turned back to Tamamo, who was watching this exchange with an expression of absolute serenity.
"My point," Tamamo said, as if nothing had happened,
"is that I am a goddess, yes. But that's not what I am to you." She placed her tiny hand on my finger.
"So,"
"I am first your wife. Then your lover. Then a person—well, a fox—trying to live in this strange world. And only then, last of all, if there's time, a goddess." She paused.
"In that order. Not the other way around. I don't care about being millions of years old. I don't care about having seen stars born. Right now, at this moment, in this room, I am your wife. And I want you to take care of me as such."
Rory, from her corner, let out a little laugh.
"I told you. The vixen is getting demanding." She paused.
"She's right, by the way. About the order. Wife first. Everything else is just extras."
"Now you're on her side?"
"I'm always on the side of whoever's right. Which conveniently is usually mine."
Tamamo didn't take her eyes off me.
"Well?"
"Okay."
"Okay. Wife first. Everything else... we'll figure it out as we go."
"It's how MY divinity works," she said firmly.
"I decided. Just now. It's official."
"Just as Rory says, I am a goddess, I am Greedy one by nature!"
Rory burst out laughing. "She's got you there!"
"I hate it when you two agree."
"No you don't!" they said in unison.