Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 987: Exhausted Man

Dinner wound down at last, and Yunohana rose with it, inviting the family to finish their evening in the estate’s bathhouse. She led everyone there herself, down a covered walk of cedar and lantern light with the pond glittering alongside.

The bathhouse waited at the end of the walk as its own building, steam curling from vents beneath the eaves. Two entrance curtains hung side by side over its doorway, one indigo and one white.

”I must apologize for one thing in advance, Lord Grey.” Yunohana stopped between the curtains and turned to Kaiden. ”Our baths are divided. Gentlemen to the right, ladies to the left. If you wish, I can have the great bath opened for your family alone tonight, so that nobody has to be separa-”

”Lady Yunohana.” Kaiden raised a hand and stopped the offer as gently as an offer could be stopped. ”You’ve rewritten enough rules for us today. Leave this one alone.”

He looked over his family with a lazy grin. ”Ladies, enjoy your bath. I’ll be on my side, soaking in glorious silence.”

The girls traded a look, and nobody argued. Their man had spent the whole week buried under federal suits, flights, ceremonies, and a household that loved him at full volume around the clock. If he wanted one hour of hot water with nobody in his lap, he had more than earned it.

”Enjoy your peace, Kai,” Nyx smiled, patting his chest on her way past.

”We’ll be loud enough for both sides!” Calypso promised.

”That I don’t doubt.”

He laughed and vanished behind the right curtain, out of the story for a while.

Yunohana turned to the ladies, folded her hands, and got as far as ”I wish you all a most pleasant-”

The girls were already looking at each other.

”And you, Lady Yunohana?” Nyx asked, sweet as syrup.

”I could hardly intrude on-”

”You said that at dinner,” Aria reminded her warmly, arriving at her right side.

Nyx took her left. ”And look how that turned out.”

The High Shrine Maiden of Japan looked from one flank to the other and let herself be walked through the left curtain.

”You desire to bathe with me?” she asked, perplexed.

”Yes! Alexandra’s eyes were full of pleading. ”There’s no one better to learn gracefulness from.”

”...” Yunohana remained quite confused, though her perfect expression betrayed nothing. ”I see,” she smiled softly. ”It’d be my honor.”

”!!” Alexandra’s expression turned to one of quiet joy as she, under her breath, gasped, ”Yes!”

The family had claimed the shrine maiden twice in one evening now, and she seemed to mind it less each time.

The mod trio, meanwhile, had tried to slip away at the garden fork, mumbling about dashboards that needed checking before bed.

”You’re guests tonight, not staff,” Luna said, hooking one arm through Emily’s and the other through Sarah’s, and turning both of them around bodily. ”Bath time.”

”But the community-”

”Will survive one wet hour without you.”

Leia required no dragging at all; she was already ahead of the whole group, carrying her towel like a flag.

At the garden’s edge, Kira and Rika made their break.

”We have footage to log!” one of them called back, already at a jog.

”What are you, dogs? A little bathing will never hurt anybody,” Nyx’s ominous purr sounded from behind them.

Both twins rose gently off the gravel, tablets and all, and drifted toward the bathhouse feet first.

”This is awakened violence against civilians!!”

”We are protected persons!!”

”Association Code, article nine,” Alexandra confirmed, falling into step beneath them. ”It is illegal.”

”Thank you!!”

”We’re in Japan,” Nyx purred, using her powers to slowly reel the twins back. ”Don’t mention the Association to me.”

”It is just as illegal in Japan!!” Rika cried, swimming away in the air. It was utterly futile.

Nyx set the twins down on the changing-room step, patted them both on the head, and herded them in. ”Think of it as a team building exercise.”

The changing room smelled of cedar and clean cotton. Fresh yukata hung in a long indigo row, one to a name, and two of them had been tailored: a finished vent in the back seam, reinforced, sized for a tail.

Calypso found hers first. ”It has a tail door!”

Bastet turned her own inside out and studied the seam in silence. ”Hand-finished,” she ruled.

”Sonoda?” Sarah asked.

”Sonoda,” Emily confirmed.

Undressing sorted the room by confidence. The five lovers stripped the way people do at home, completely and mid-conversation.

Leia matched them without a blink. The community’s loudest mouth turned out to have a runway body under her clothes, slender, long-legged, and feminine, the trio’s own private Aria. She strolled off toward the washing row like she owned the venue.

Sarah undressed facing her locker, looked down at herself, and pinched a soft inch of her own belly between two fingers.

”Every jar of Nutella,” she muttered at it. ”I remember every single one of you. This is your fault.”

Emily made the mistake of looking up right as Nyx shook her hair loose. Watching that figure on stream every day for months had not prepared her for the reality of it three steps away, and her knees genuinely wavered.

”I’ve seen them on video,” she whispered into her towel. ”I’ve seen them literally every day. In real life they’re... massive.”

”Thank you, bestie,” Nyx said warmly, without turning around.

”!!!”

”One custom before we go in,” Yunohana said, gathering her hair as she went and holding up one of the folded hand towels. ”This little towel comes into the bath with you, but it never touches the bathwater. While you soak, fold it and rest it on top of your head. That is how the water stays clean for everyone.”

”On our heads,” Emily repeated, already memorizing. ”That’s real? I thought that was just an anime thing.”

”You will see everyone doing it,” Yunohana promised.

Beyond the inner doors waited a hall of steam: a washing row of low stools and wooden buckets under brass spouts along one wall, and the great pool glittering past it. Calypso took one look at all that open water and headed straight for it, towel already forgotten.

”Lady Calypso,” Yunohana’s soft voice caught up with her halfway there. ”In Japan, we wash ourselves at the stools first, so that we enter the bath already clean. The pool is only for soaking. May I show you how it’s done?”

”But the lake is right there-”

”And it will wait for you, I promise.” Yunohana settled herself onto one of the low stools and touched the empty stool beside her in invitation. ”Please, sit with me. I think you will enjoy this part too.”

Calypso weighed the steaming lake against the tiny wooden stool, found the invitation completely sincere, and sat.

Yunohana knelt behind the demoness, filled a bucket, tested the water against her own wrist, and poured it across the red shoulders in a patient, even sheet. Then she worked oil through the wild hair from the ends upward, one handful at a time, never dragging, chatting idly about nothing while she did it.

Calypso, who met most of the world at full volume, went still under her hands and stayed still.

”Your hands are warm,” she said.

”The water is good here.”

Calypso sat with that for a moment. Then she twisted toward the bamboo wall and cupped her hands.

”Darling!! The shrine lady’s hands are magic!!”