She had a hard time getting that girl from the bubble tea shop out of her head. She was cute, and Mélodie liked her big hips and big boobs and pretty hair and friendly upbeatness. She also thought about her old Nintendo. She had played it for hours on end when she was a kid. Maybe it would be fun to get back into the world of video games? It'd be something to do, anyway.
Her mind was made up by the time that she stepped out of the shower and dried off. She'd had to leave Stockholm in a rush and wasn't able to pack all of her clothes, but she managed to toss together a decently good-looking outfit from what she had: a crop top that showed off a bit of her tummy, jeans, and a pair of sneakers that weren't encrusted with mud. Before her hair had even dried, she was out the door.
What had taken more than half an hour on foot turned out to be just a five minute drive. She found the bubble tea place again right as the sun was just starting to set (it wasn't hard, seeing as it was right next to that giant tree) and parked on the street nearby. True to Iris's word, things seemed to be calming down. There were only a handful of people in the shop, and there was Iris, wiping down surfaces and cleaning stuff behind the counter.
Her face lit up when Mélodie entered. "Yooo, Mélodie! You came back! Couldn't get enough of me, huh?"
"You remembered my name," said Mélodie, a little surprised.
"'Course I did!" she said with a giggle. "Do you remember mine?"
"I do. You are Iris."
"That's right!" She turned towards a door that seemed to separate a back room from the dining area. "Hey, Cat! I'm clocking out."
"Fine," came a surly voice from the back.
She punched something into the register computer and hustled out from behind the counter, where she joined Mélodie at one of the many small tables in the shop. "Okay! Wow, I hope this isn't weird, but I've actually been thinking about this all day. So! I guess my first question is, do you own any consoles at all right now, and if not, what's your budget?"
Mélodie laughed. "We're getting right to it, huh? No, I don't. I just moved here and couldn't bring anything. And my budget is... Not large."
"Okay!" Iris clasped a fist in her hand. "Then you'll probably want to start out with one of the older systems. The current gen consoles all still retail for like three- to four-hundred dollars, so you could start out with, like, a Gamecube or a PS2. You can get those on Ebay for like fifty bucks. They also have them at Idle Hands, but they don't sell any game consoles for less than a hundred bucks there, even the original NES! Although those are going on forty years old at this point, so they're practically antiques, I guess, plus they were like, one of the original home videogame consoles. I mean, they weren't the first, obviously. Like the Atari and Intellivision and stuff preceded the NES, but the NES was the the first one that got really big, and it's the first one that people in our age range will actually have memories of playing as a kid. Although, my first console was a SNES. Anyway, yeah, Gamecube. That's the system that came out after the N64, which is what you had. Wait, hold on, you just moved here?"
It all came out of her so fast that Mélodie actually had a little bit of trouble keeping up. Iris spoke quickly and enthusiastically, so much so that Mélodie almost missed that she had asked her a question. "Euh, yes, just yesterday, actually."
"Oh, wow!" Iris's eyes widened behind her blue-tinted glasses, which she adjusted excitedly. "So, like, you're probably still getting your bearings, huh? Hey, where are you from, anyway? France? You sound French."
"Got it in one," said Mélodie.
"Wow! Are you gonna be here for a while or is this a short-term thing?"
"For the foreseeable future."
"Foreseeable. Your English is really good! Why here? How do you like it so far?"
"Uh... Thank you, work brought me here, and I think that I'm starting to learn to like it." Mélodie glanced under the table and saw that Iris was shaking her leg restlessly. She noticed this in the first place because it was making her boobs jiggle ever-so-slightly. "You, uh... Drink a lot of sugar on the job, don't you?"
Iris giggled at that. "God, so much. Employees aren't supposed to get free drinks here, but sometimes we get online orders that never get picked up, and what are we supposed to do then, just throw them out? Also Cat lets us just make drinks for ourselves sometimes. I know it's bad for me, but they're so good, and all the weight just goes to my boobs and my butt anyway, so it's like, hey," she wiggled her eyebrows, "I'm not complaining."
"I can tell," said Mélodie, then she quickly added, "Euh, I mean that I can tell you drink a lot of sugar, because you're very exuberant. Not, uh, the other thing."
"Pfft." Iris giggled and stuck her tongue out. "You can tell the other thing, too. I don't know why I only gain weight in good places. I'm just very lucky, I guess. Look at you, though! Giiirl, if I had abs like that, you'd never see me in a shirt that covers my tummy ever again. You weren't showing them off the first time you came in here, they took me by surprise!"
"Weren't we talking about video games?" asked Mélodie with a grin. "We seem to have gotten off-topic very quickly. Not that I mind, mind you. If you want to spend all night praising my muscles, feel free." She flexed, just as emphasis, and Iris let out a low whistle. Mélodie wasn't a bodybuilder or anything, and her biceps weren't big, but they were there, and defined, and they didn't hesitate to make themselves known when she wanted to show them off.
The reaction she got was better than she could have expected. Iris looked at her and her eyes got wide, her pupils dilated a bit, she bit her lip, and her leg started shaking even more. "Okay," she said, "like, I hope this isn't too forward of me, but you're, like, really hot. Like, damn, girl, I'm all about that."
Mélodie laughed. "I don't mind. You're not the first person to tell me that. I should tell you something about me, though."
"Uh oh," said Iris. "Uh, if you're straight, I didn't mean anything by it. Sorry! I get flirty sometimes when I meet new people, and-"
"I'm very much not straight," said Mélodie with a laugh. "It's not that. It's my Gift. That nice scent that you smell when you're around me? It also makes you calm and relaxed, which tends to make people open up more to me. It isn't mind control or anything, but it can... Color people's perception of me in a positive way, when things might have been different without it. I try to tell people about it when it matters, just so there are no... Ah. Misunderstandings."
"Oooh. Yes, I can see how that could, um. Change things. Do you tell everyone who you meet about it?"
"Eh, not everyone. I never, ever have sex with someone without telling them about it first, though."
"Good." Iris smiled. "Well, maybe you'll be happy to know that it doesn't work on me anyway."
"Hmm? What do you mean?" And then she added, "Actually, it is a little strange that you're still doing that," she gestured towards Iris's bouncing leg, "after being around me for a few minutes. Normally it has taken effect by now."
"My Gift," said Iris with a flourish, "is that other people's Gifts don't work near me."
"Huh? You can smell my scent, though."
Iris shrugged. "Probably because, no offense, you were really sweaty when you came in. It was already on you. I haven't smelled it at all since you came in this second time."
Mélodie surreptitiously sniffed at her shirt and frowned. It was at times like this that she wished she could smell it herself. "Huh. Are you sure? Not that I doubt you, it's just-"
Iris held up a hand. "Hey, Cat!" she yelled towards the back. "Come out here for a sec."
"You're still here?" came the surly voice from behind the door. "Go home, Iris."
"I need a demonstration. Got another nonbeliever."
There was a grumble, and the door opened. An older, heavyset woman entered. Notably, instead of hair, there were blue flames erupting from her head, which flickered as she walked briskly over to the table where the two of them sat. "Make it quick," she said.
"I can't control how fast it works, you know that. Just stand there for a sec. No, a little closer. It only works if you're within, like, five feet. Trust me, I've tested it."
Cat grunted and shuffled over until she was standing right next to where Iris was sitting. Nothing happened at first, but sure enough, after a few moments, the flames on her head started to die down, and then they started to darken and become more solid until they resembled hair, and then they were hair, standing on-end and waving in the air as if she was underwater, and then even that ceased. It had taken a minute or so, but Cat now had perfectly ordinary brown hair, shot through with a bit of gray.
"It feels so weird when it happens," said Cat, running her hand through it. "My head feels heavy."
"Iiinteresting," said Mélodie, leaning back in her seat. "You're a Null."
"Null?" Iris frowned. "I don't really like that. It makes me sound like... A nobody or something."
"Uh, sorry, just a word that I heard somewhere to describe your Gift. It's a really rare one! There are tens of thousands of people who have the same Gift as me, but there are only a couple of hundred with the same one as you in the entire world."
The Null Gift was so rare, in fact, and so useful, that Mélodie was a bit surprised that she hadn't been made aware ahead of time that there was someone with it here. That meant that either one of her associates knew but nobody had told her, which was possible, or that her mother wasn't quite as good at finding people as Mélodie had believed. "Hey, weird question," she said, "but have you ever met a fairy?"
"Uh. No?" Iris looked at her funnily. "Fairies are real? What does that have to do with anything?"
"Um, nothing. People get their Gifts back when they move away from you, right?"
Cat demonstrated by disinterestedly walking back behind the counter and to the back room. The moment that she was a handful of feet away from Iris her hair flared back up into flames again, which brushed the doorframe as she passed through it, but didn't seem to char or burn it.
"Fascinating," said Mélodie. "I've heard that it blocks all magic, not just Gifts."
"I dunno," said Iris, frowning. "I've never met anyone who could do magic."
Sure you have, Mélodie had to keep herself from saying.
"It's honestly kind of annoying," Iris continued. "Everyone's got their cool magic thing, but my cool magic thing is just, whoa, hey, your cool magic thing doesn't work now. Super awesome and fun. I'd almost rather..." She gasped, loudly, mid-sentence. "Wait! Wait! If it blocks all magic, that must be why I've never been able to self-realize!"
"Oh," said Mélodie. "Yes, self-realization is a type of magic, so I suppose that it would be blocked, even if you're the one doing it. You want to change something about yourself?"
"Yeah, I..." Iris looked uncertain all of a sudden. "Just a kind of a silly little thing."
"Mm. Feeling uncomfortable in your own body isn't silly or little, and you shouldn't feel bad for wanting to change yourself. I should know. I transitioned back when I was still in France, so I don't know what resources are out here, but if you want I could-"
"Oh!" Iris held up her hands. "Oh, no no no! It's nothing like that. I'm very sure that I'm cis. It's just kind of a stupid, uh... It's like a..."
"You don't have to tell me," said Mélodie. "It can be hard to talk about these things, especially with someone you don't know."
"I've always found it easier to talk about personal stuff with people I don't know. It's like, there's no consequences, you know? So what if you reveal all of your most intimate feelings to some person you'll never see again? The reason I'm hesitant to tell you is because," she blushed a bit, and brushed a bit of her hair out of her face in a coy sort of way, "you seem cool and I was sort of hoping that you'd join me at Hubert's tonight?"
"Sure!" said Mélodie with a smile. "What's Hubert's? Is it a bar? It sounds like a bar."
"Picture a bar mixed with an arcade mixed with a karaoke lounge and you'll have something like Hubert's. It's a really unique place, and it's right down the street! We could actually head over there right now, if you want."
"Sounds like a plan. Will I have to sing? I should warn you now, I'm very bad at singing."
"Just do it in French and I'm sure you'll charm the pants off me anyway." Iris didn't seem to notice the innuendo. She stood, and Mélodie followed her out to the sidewalk, where she was temporarily dazzled by the sight of the last sunlight of the evening filtering through the canopy of the giant tree.
"I see you're admiring our tree," said Iris cheekily as she began to walk, and Mélodie began to follow. "Ever seen anything like it?"
"Not exactly. I was surprised to find it here. Does it have a name?"
"Everyone just calls it The Tree. Which you'd think would be confusing, but it's like, it's The Tree. If you say, 'Hey, I'm gonna go hang out by The Tree,', everyone here knows what you mean."
"'The Tree'? Not the most creative name."
Iris's face lit up. "I know, right? It's so awesome, it should have a name to match! Like... Fangorn. Or Yggdrasil. Or, hell, I'd take something like 'Big Steve' over... The Tree. It's such a boring name!"
Mélodie snort-laughed. "Big Steve? I like it. Let's try to make it stick."
"Yeah," said Iris, giggling, "I work at the bubble tea place right next to Big Steve."
"Meet me at ten o'clock under Big Steve," added Mélodie.
"My first kiss was so romantic! We were in the park, bathed in moonlight filtered down through Big Steve's leaves."
"I remember when I learned how to ride a bike. It was there, under the comforting boughs of Big Steve."
"Back, foul beasts!" Iris held out her hands, as if brandishing a weapon. "This staff was carved from Big Steve's mighty wood! So... Hehe, so..." She collapsed into a fit of giggles, unable to continue.
"Watch it, chuds!"
Mélodie's reflexes kicked in. They were in the middle of a crosswalk, and a girl on a moped was zooming towards them. She grabbed Iris by the shoulders and pulled her backwards just in time for Moped Girl to fly by fast enough to ruffle their hair in her wake.
"Wh- wha?" Iris was disoriented for a moment, and then she was angry. "What an asshole! Doesn't she know how traffic signals work?"
Mélodie just barely caught a glimpse of red and black hair before the moped turned a corner down the street and she was out of sight. "I think that she may have been the correct one, actually."
Iris looked up at the traffic signal... Which was set to the Do Not Walk symbol. The light that the girl had just flown through was green. "...Oh. Oops. Well, still, she could have slowed down."
"Agreed. Let's, uh..."
"Yeah." They both rushed to the other side of the crosswalk, where Iris shyly fiddled with her hair. "Um. Thanks for saving me."
"I don't think that she was going to hit you anyway. She passed by a few feet from where we were."
"Still. It was sweet of you." The scuffle had made Iris's shirt ride up, and Mélodie caught a glimpse of a tummy that was soft, but mostly flat, despite all of the weight that she carried in her hips and chest, before she pulled it back down. "Um. What were we doing?"
"Hubert's?"
"Right. It's this way!"
---
It turned out that Hubert's was one of the many shops that Mélodie had passed by earlier, but it was so nondescript that she'd hardly noticed it. The storefront consisted of just the front door and a single window, which had a picture of an arcade machine as well as the store's logo painted on it. The door was made of old, heavy, dark wood, and creaked when Iris opened it. Inside, the place looked like...
A bar. It was literally just a bar. Dark wood seemed to be a running theme - basically everything in the place, from the barstools to the bar itself - were made of it. The only thing that really made it stand out from any other bar was the decor. Along the walls there were tasteful, framed pictures of Pac-Man, Mario, and dozens of other characters that Mélodie didn't recognize.
"This place seems nice enough, but, uh... It's just a bar."
"You haven't seen the upstairs yet," said Mélodie with a wink. "That's where all of the fun stuff is. Hey, Joel!"
"'Sup, Rainbow," said the only person behind the bar - a tall, rugged man with a neatly trimmed beard and horn-rimmed glasses. He was, in fact, the only person in the entire place. "You're here early."
"Cat is closing tonight, so I was able to sneak away. Mélodie, this is Joel. He's cool. Joel, this is Mélodie. She's French."
"Hello," said Mélodie with a wave and a smile.
"Ah, bonjour!" said Joel. "Je m'appelle Joel. J'ai quinze ans, j'habite en Missouri, et that's all the French that I remember from High School."
"You're fifteen but you work in a bar?" said Mélodie with a raised eyebrow. His pronunciation was so off that she could hardly understand what he had tried to say, but she thought that was it. "And you have a beard?"
"I was fifteen when I learned how to say that. Forgot all of the numbers past that one! I'm thirty-two now, so it's been a while."
"Trente-deux," said Mélodie, amused. "Vous avez trente-deux ans."
"Yeah, that. Can I get you two anything?"
"Ah, no thanks," said Mélodie. "I have to drive back home after this."
"I," said Iris, "will have a margarita for now, and probably a whole bunch more later tonight."
"Ah. Will you need help getting home?" asked Mélodie.
"Nah, I'll just have my girlfriend pick me up."
Oh. Huh. Mélodie had thought that... Hmm. Oh, well, it didn't matter too much. She had still made a friend.
"I'll also need one of the rooms upstairs," Iris continued. "For, like... Let's say two hours? Are you up to stick around until then, Mélodie?"
"Works for me. What's the room for?"
"You'll see," said Iris with a mysterious smile. "How much will that be, Joel?"
"With your store credit and all the freebies you've saved up?" He typed something into the register. "Nothing. I am gonna be training a new guy on room service tonight, though. You mind if put him on yours? He's pretty green, and I know that you won't be an asshole to him if he fucks up."
"Sure, that's fine! We probably won't need much, anyway. Thanks!"
Joel mixed up Iris's drink and handed her a key, and she led Mélodie through a door in the back of the bar, which had behind it a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was...
Huh. It looked sort of like a cigar lounge. The aesthetic was all dark wood and refinement, like the bar downstairs, but instead of cigars and tables and chairs to smoke them on, this large room was filled almost to the brim with arcade and pinball machines. Their bright colors and lights clashed horribly, in Mélodie's eyes, with the rest of the room, but it seemed to be a popular place, because there were plenty of people up here.
"It's cool, right?" said Iris. "I love this place. I come here practically after every shift. Do you want to play anything before we check out the... Oh, shit..."
Mélodie followed her eyes over to one of the arcade machines, where a tall, thin guy was intently playing some sort of shooting game. "What?" she said. "Do you know him?"
"You could say that. Quick, in here!" Iris used the key that Joel had given her to unlock one of the three doors that were along the wall of the room and quickly slipped inside. Mélodie followed, and as Iris closed the door behind her, she saw that the two of them were in a small room that was, apparently, set up for the sole purpose of playing video games. There was an absolutely enormous television that dominated one of the walls, and underneath it, on the stand, were more than a dozen video game consoles, many of which she had never seen before. Along the other wall there was a comfortable-looking couch, and between them, a large coffee table. Finally, the far wall was covered from floor to ceiling with shelving, and on those shelves were what had to be more than a thousand video games in boxes.
"Huh," she said. "This is a neat setup, but what was that all about?"
"That guy," said Iris, "is my ex."
"Aaah," said Mélodie. "The breakup didn't go well?"
"I kind of broke his heart... I didn't mean to, though! We dated in high school, but like, I was a kid. I didn't know myself back then. A bit after we graduated I kinda realized that I'm, like, pretty gay. Like, really super gay. And that was kind of why I could never make sex work with him even though we tried a couple of times. I still wanted to be friends with him, but he, uh... He took it pretty bad. It's been like five years, but we've never really patched things up."
"I see." Mélodie looked back at the door. There was a little window in it, and through it she could just barely see the guy. "Do you want to patch things up?"
"I mean, sort of? I still like him, like as a person, but every time that I try to talk to him, even now, he's just... Still angry."
"I can see why you'd want to avoid him, then. Ah, well, the door is locked and that window is tiny, so I'm sure that he won't notice us in here." Mélodie took a seat on the couch. "If you want more drinks I can go downstairs and get them for you, so that he doesn't see you."
"Oh, they bring them to you. That's what Joel meant when he said room service. Thank you, though, that's nice of you." Iris joined her on the couch. "Anyway! Let's play something! Do you see anything in here that you recognize?"
"That's a Nintendo 64." Mélodie pointed to it. "I don't know any of these other ones."
"Well," said Iris, "do you want to play something that you remember, or something new?"
"Show me your favorite. Take me on an adventure!"
Iris's eyes were practically sparkling.
---
Her drink disappeared with alarming alacrity, but Iris seemed mostly unaffected by it, except for a slight reddening of her cheeks and a little lilt in her voice. "So you can play as this guy, that's Dwarf, and here's Fighter. They're both big, buff guys. Here's Wizard. Nobody plays as him, because he's basically the same as Sorceress, and, well, look at her.
Mélodie whistled. "They did not hold back with her breasts, huh? Wow, look at them bounce! Such attention to detail."
"I love her," said Iris, as she selected the Sorceress as her character. "She looks like me! Except, you know, taller, and thinner, and her boobs are bigger than mine."
"Mm, I think that you're just as thin. You have bigger hips, but that doesn't make you fat." Mélodie selected the Fighter, more or less at random. The game started, and the two of them were playing together. The controller felt weird in her hands. It have been a long time since she had held one of these, and it was a completely different shape than the one she had used all those years ago.
"Her boobs are way bigger than mine, though." Iris was, of course, good at the game right out of the gate. She had clearly played this before.
"I guess. Yours are far from small, though."
"Honestly? Since the Quake happened they feel kind of small." Iris looked down at herself. "I mean, yes, I know, they're really big. But have you seen some of the girls on the internet and stuff who got really huge boobs with self-realization? It's like the average size of breasts in the world has gone up by like, a lot of cup sizes."
"I don't think so. Sure, a lot of people are really big now, but there are just as many people who used to be very busty before the Quake and self-realized themselves smaller. I bet it balances out."
"Someone should do a study. 'The Effects of Self-Realization on the Average Cup-Size of the World.' I bet there's one already out there. Hell, I'd do it if I knew anything about how to do a study." She paused for a moment, then added with a giggle, "Tits Georgina, who has breasts the size of two Honda Civics, is an outlier and should not have been counted."
Mélodie had a feeling that there was a joke there that she wasn't getting, but she laughed anyway. "I've never seen a person with breasts the size of cars, but you should see my new neighbor. They're like..." She put the controller down and held her hands out in a rough approximation of the size of Yuriko's chest. "Like this. No kidding."
"Whoa, really? That's super hot." She said it, and then immediately blushed. "Um, I mean..."
Mélodie laughed. "You like them big, huh?"
"I'm just... Gonna get another drink. Forget I said that." Iris picked up the remote for the television and clicked a button. A menu came up on the screen that had a list of drinks, from which she selected another margarita. After clicking Confirm, it showed a message: 'Thank you, an employee will be up with your order in a few moments.'
"Whoa, That's a neat feature. But hey, there's no need to feel ashamed! Everyone has their thing. I kind of like them too, to be honest."
"Yeah?" said Iris shyly.
"Yes. Although the reason I like it is because I like it when breasts get bigger. You can read stories online from people who are like, 'Oh, my breasts have been growing since the Quake and it's so hot, and it turns me on when I wake up bigger than I was the night before, and I want them to be huge and never stop growing.' It's sexy."
"Oh. Um. I guess I can tell you why it bothers me that I can't self-realize, then."
"You want your breasts to grow?"
Iris's blush grew even deeper. "Heh. It was probably pretty obvious in context, huh? Like you said, I'm already really big, so whenever I tell people that their reaction is always, like, 'What!? You're already huge!' But I wanna be gigantic. Like, as big as your neighbor. I wanna have the biggest boobs in the world."
"Doesn't the record-holder have breasts that are actually as big as cars?"
"Yeah," said Iris. "I'm just gonna not ask why you know that off the top of your head, and we'll just slide past why I also know it off the top of my head. Okay, yeah, I don't want them to be that big. But really, really huge."
"It seems like it would be inconvenient," said Mélodie, amusedly. "You wouldn't be able to get through doors and things."
"Boobs squish," she said defiantly. "I could squeeze them through. And if I get tired of being ginormous I could always just magic them smaller again. Self-realization works both ways."
It was right about that point that Mélodie was wishing that she could tell her that it was perfectly possible to suppress one's Gift and turn it off. She didn't know how to do it herself - her magical scent was pretty much exclusively beneficial and never really caused her any problems, so she'd never had to learn how - but she knew that it was possible, and had met people that could do it. She was pretty sure, though, that it wasn't well-known among regular people, like the ones who inhabited this town, and after her conversation with Yuriko and Rose earlier, she was trying to be careful about how much arcane knowledge she dropped among relative strangers. She didn't want to be known as 'that girl who weirdly knows a lot about magic'. That could become dangerous.
It was also at that moment that Iris's drink arrived. The door opened and the person (waiter?) said, "I have a margarita for Room 1?" He was carrying it on little platter.
Unfortunately, the waiter happened to be precisely the same person that Iris had pointed out to her earlier. Her ex. He had long, curly hair and a wispy moustache that really wasn't doing his face any favors. He looked at her. She looked at him. The room was silent for a moment.
"Oh," he said, finally. "I didn't know it was for you."
Iris sighed mightily. "Hello, Danny. I didn't know that you worked here now."
"Got a new fuck-buddy, I see," he said with a glance at Mélodie. "You'll want to keep an eye on her. Don't get too used to being her plaything, it won't last long."
Iris turned bright red. It might have been a blush, or it might have been a flush of anger. Probably it was both. "Okay, first of all," she said loudly, "she's not a fuck-buddy. I just met her and we're just hanging out. Second of all, my relationships are none of your fucking business anyway."
He set the margarita down on the table angrily, spilling a bit of it in the process. "Yeah, apparently, considering you wouldn't tell me about the other ones that you were having while you were dating me."
"Wow, uh, okay," said Mélodie, but her voice was drowned out by Iris's.
"God, I have tried to explain to you a thousand times, I was in over my head and I didn't know what was happening! Why won't you ever listen to me?"
"You're talking about something that happened years ago?" asked Mélodie. Once again, neither seemed to even notice her.
"Yeah, yeah, you didn't know what was happening as you let her fucking eat you out, huh? More than you ever let me do."
"Because I'm a lesbian! I just didn't know it yet when we started dating! God, I'm fucking sorry that I'm literally incapable of being attracted to you."
"Hey!" said Mélodie. "Everyone calm down. I'm sure that we can-"
"Fucking... I'm not going to be able to come here anymore," said Iris. "One of my favorite places in town, and-"
"Oh, boo hoo, at least you didn't have your heart ripped out of your chest. I still-"
"HEY!" Mélodie shouted, and they both jumped and looked at her, as if they had forgotten that she was there. "Alright, nom de dieu, you two get along like fire and gasoline. Obviously there are issues that you still need to work out."
"We don't need to work out anything," said Iris huffily. "We're not dating anymore."
"Yes, but this is your favorite place to visit. This is also where you," she turned to Daniel, "work now. It would not be fair to Iris if she can never come back here without worrying about getting into a huge fight. It would not be fair to Daniel if he can't do his job without worrying about huge fights. You two don't have to be friends, but if you both want to have this place in your lives, you will need to learn to be around each other without seething. Now, we can sort this out now, or we can leave it alone and it will become an even bigger problem than it already is."
"I should just fucking quit..." said Daniel.
"I should just fucking leave," said Iris.
But neither of them moved. "But?" Mélodie offered.
"But I really need the money," said Daniel reluctantly.
"But this place is really important to me. I don't want to have to stop coming here," said Iris.
"So we have an impasse," said Mélodie. "The only way that things will change is if compromises are made. Now, I would like to know exactly what happened between you two when you broke up, if you are willing to tell me."
Both of them started to speak at once, and Mélodie held up both of her hands. "Ah ah ah! One at a time. I am going to let both of you tell me what happened. While one person is talking, the other stays quiet. I will let both of you tell me everything that you want, so if you think the other person is misrepresenting you or the story, hold it and address everything when it's your turn to talk. Okay?"
Iris and Daniel both glared at each other, but after a moment they both nodded.
"Good. Daniel, you go first. Tell me what happened from your perspective."
He crossed his arms defensively. "I met Iris when we were both sophomores in high school. We dated for three years. At first it was just, like, the way kids date. Not serious. But then it kind of was. Over the years we got closer, until the end of our Senior year. We tried having sex for the first time when we both turned eighteen, because we were both good little nerdy rule-followers, I guess, and it was..." A pained expression crossed his face. "It was pretty bad. Not bad in that giggly, oh, haha, it's our first time and we don't know what we're doing but we're laughing about it sort of way. I couldn't make anything happen and I felt really emasculated, and I think that she just felt gross and bad about it. Our relationship got worse from there. We tried having sex again, like, two more times, and it turned out basically the same way. I thought that it was me. That I was doing something wrong. I kept trying to talk to her, to do anything I could to fix the relationship, until one day she called me up crying and told me she had sex with one of her friends, and that she couldn't be with me anymore, and that she was sorry. And that was basically it. The whole thing's just been festering since then."
"Leaving out an awful lot of details there, bud," said Iris, annoyed.
"Is that the whole story?" asked Mélodie. "Anything else you'd like to add?"
Daniel scoffed and shook his head. "Okay then," said Mélodie. "Iris, tell me what happened from your perspective."
"He got the facts all right, but he left out all the things that I was feeling, and told him I was feeling at the time. By the time we hit our Senior year, I really thought that he was going to be the one. If you had asked me to marry you, Daniel, I probably would have said yes, at the time. I was that committed. So we tried having sex for the first time, and I was really excited, because obviously all of my friends had already done it and they told me how great it was, but I just... I couldn't. I couldn't make myself get into it, and it just felt... Weird and wrong, like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Pun not intended. Obviously now I know that it was because I'm gay and he's a dude, but at the time I literally thought that there was something wrong with me. Like was incapable of enjoying sex or something. We tried two more times and the feeling just got way worse, to the point that I was really, really depressed and anxious about it." She sighed. "And I know that Danny was really depressed an anxious about it, too. I've said this before, but it wasn't your fault."
"It wasn't your fault either," said Mélodie. "Sometimes it can take time to figure these things out about ourselves."
"Yeah, I know that now. But I didn't even realize that I liked girls at the time. I ended up talking about it with a friend of mine at her house, who was openly bisexual, and she was like, well, what if you're gay? After all, I had never dated anyone before Danny, so how would I know? And I was like, I'm pretty sure I'd know if I were, and she was like, you sure?" Iris began to blush again. "And then she kissed me and said, 'That make you feel anything?' And... It... Sort of did. A lot."
Daniel scoffed. "Yeah, I'm sure you enjoyed that."
"I didn't!" Iris cried. "I was confused! She was making me feel things that I had convinced myself I was literally incapable of feeling, and I didn't know what to do! Things escalated and before I knew what was happening she was eating me out. I know that I should have told her to stop. I know. Believe me, for every time that you've berated me for cheating on you, Danny, I berated myself a thousand times. Every time you told me that I broke your heart I called myself a worthless slut a thousand times."
She was actually crying now. Tears were running down her cheeks. "I know that I cheated on you and I know that was wrong, but you can't possibly call me any name that I haven't already called myself. I fucked up, I know, and if I could take it back I would. I'm sorry that I dated you for years before I realized that we're not compatible, and I'm sorry that I hurt you."
There was a long, deep silence. Finally, Daniel broke it by saying, "I... I guess that I didn't realize how much you were hurting too, at the time."
"And I'm still sorry that I cheated on you."
Mélodie clapped her hands together happily. "Okay, see, now we're getting somewhere. Now, this place is important to both of you, though for different reasons. You're probably going to see each other while you are here, and unless you want to be miserable every time it happens, you will need to learn to get along with each other. You don't have to be friends, or even like each other, but you will need to be in the same room together without starting an argument. Do you think that you can do that?"
"I'll be downstairs at the bar most of the time," said Daniel. "And the times that I do run into you, I won't start any shit, like I did just now."
"I almost never come down from the top floor when I'm here," said Iris. "And... Same. Despite everything, I still would like to be friends with you, Danny. If that's possible."
He looked at her for a long time. "I would like that too... But I don't think that it is. Sorry."
Iris looked hurt, but she nodded and said, "I understand."
"Sorry you had to deal with all of this," said Daniel to Mélodie. "I'll get out of your hair, and if you order any more drinks I'll ask Joel to bring them to you." And with that, he left, and closed the door behind him.
Iris slumped back in the couch and let out a long, low breath. "Jeez... Didn't know you were going to do that."
"It's better to face these sorts of things head-on and confront them. Now you won't have to-"
"Worry about running into him and having another fight. Yeah. It'll be hella awkward, but I guess that's better than a screaming argument. I can handle walking by him at the bar when I come in, I guess." She rubbed her temples. "Thanks for that. I'm also sorry that you had to deal with our ancient relationship problems."
"It's what I do," said Mélodie nonchalantly.
She looked at her. "Hey, I know that we just met and that this is super weird, but could I have a hug? I sort of need one right now."
"Of course." Mélodie gave her a few reassuring pats on the back as they wrapped their arms around each other, and tried to ignore how wonderful Iris's breasts felt pressed up against her own. This was not the time for being horny.
She didn't pull away for a while, but when she did she sniffed and said, "Thanks." She looked briefly over at the television screen where the game was still running, unpaused, and said, "Hey, what do you do? Are you a relationship counselor or something?"
"At my last job I often had to help people get along. Sometimes people who hate each other. Now, though, I, uh... I am unemployed."
Iris blinked at that. "You moved all the way out here from France without having a job locked down?"
"From Sweden, actually. But yes."
"You're from Sweden? You speak French, though."
"I am from France. I lived in Sweden. For schooling." It wasn't a lie. Technically. In the loosest sense. "I wanted to try living someplace small compared to Stockholm or Paris or London, so I moved out here. As an adventure. My mother helped to pay for it." She was stretching the truth to its absolute limits, but none of that was, strictly speaking, a lie.
"Wow..." said Iris. "All the way across the world on a whim, huh? I wish I was that brave. And had that kind of money."
"Euh..." Mélodie chuckled nervously. Bravery wasn't really a factor. It was either move or die, she hadn't really have much of a choice in the matter. "It's my mother who has all the money, really. And she's not going to give me any more than what she already has. I actually need to find a job very soon or I'm in trouble." That one was definitely the truth.
"Oh. Well, if you apply for a job at the tea shop, I can put in a good word for you. Cat's the one who makes the final decision, but I can talk you up to her."
"Would you? That could actually help me a lot. I sort of need a full-time job. Or more than one part-time job."
Iris snorted. "Cat definitely won't hire you full-time. If she did that she'd have to give you health insurance and benefits. That's pretty much the standard around here, if you didn't already know that. You don't get full-time hours while you're working at a restaurant or retail unless you're a manager. Only office jobs and the like will offer you that. Professional stuff."
Mélodie frowned. "That's... Troubling."
"Tell me about it." She looked over at the television again. "Hey, uh... I know that I invited you out here and everything, but I'm sort of feeling exhausted all of a sudden and I sort of just want to go home."
"Don't worry about it. I understand."
Iris stood, stumbling a little. "Sorry. It's been a long day. It's nothing that you did, though, and I'd like to hang out again sometime, if you're up for it?"
"I definitely am!"
Iris smiled. "Hold out your hand." There was a pen on the coffee table. She took it, and wrote down her phone number on Mélodie's palm.
"Oooh. I feel like I'm back in the 90s."
"One last hug for the road?"
Mélodie stood and embraced her. Don't think about how soft and wonderful her boobs are, she's not in a great mood, that's inappropriate. When they pulled apart, to Mélodie's great surprise, Iris kissed her. It was just a quick peck on her cheek, and it certainly wasn't unwelcome, but it was... Confusing.
But before she could ask, Iris was out the door. "Feel free to keep using the room for the rest of the time, just bring the key back to Joel when you're done. See you later!"
Huh. That was... Hmm.
---
Two hours later, Mélodie was opening the door to her apartment. She could see lights coming from the window next door. Yuriko must still have been awake, but she was too tired to go over and say hello.
It had been an eventful first day. She'd made a friend, maybe three, gotten a bunch of job applications, and explored the city a bit. This place was more interesting than she'd thought it would be. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to live here...
She didn't even bother to turn on the lights. Once she was inside she pulled off all of her clothes and lazily tossed them aside before snuggling into the air mattress. It wasn't the most comfortable bed she'd ever slept on, but it was better than the floor, and within moments, she was asleep.
-~o~-
Update
The results are in! First, what's she gonna do?
Go to the gym and use that free workout, and maybe talk to Vince.
30.99% (22 votes)
Throw caution to the wind and try to get some walk-in job interviews.
21.13% (15 votes)
Buckle down and really try to get some settling-in stuff done: setting up internet, obtaining transportation, etcetera.
16.90% (12 votes)
Go chat with the neighbors.
12.68% (9 votes)
Text Iris and ask her some very pointed questions.
8.45% (6 votes)
Find the University Library and try to find evidence of pre-Quake magical phenomena.
7.04% (5 votes)
Try to contact Quick and let him know what’s going on.
2.82% (2 votes)
Looks like she's hitting the gym! And probably doing some other stuff too, we'll see.
Aaand, how's she gonna change?
Her hips will get wider and her butt will get bigger.
51.28% (20 votes)
She will begin to lactate.
25.64% (10 votes +5 kink bonus)
Her breasts will get bigger.
15.38% (6 votes)
Her hair will get longer.
7.69% (3 votes)
Wow, uh. A whole lot of you want Mélodie to have a huge ass, huh? Looks like she has a little bit of milk in her future, too.
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