Chapter 9: 9: Wet Clay

It was about two when I got back to the house. I felt exhausted despite not having done much besides walking back and forth a little.

Compared to the memory of running a mile without breaking a sweat back when I was doing track in high school, this just seemed like too much of a let down. 

I sighed as I flopped onto the couch. 

"Guess I'll add getting into shape to my list of things to improve."

"It couldn't hurt!" Fig said as she flew above me.

"Ugh… we don't have any equipment here, and going to the gym might actually kill me."

"You mostly did cardio anyway, right? Why not just jog around the block?"

"I don't want to exercise in public…"

"Hmm… well once you get your family under control you can work out by having tons of sex!"

As expected, she just went right ahead and said it. I decided to just ignore her for a bit as I rolled over and got comfortable. This time I would be taking that nap.

"Aww! Conor, you're going to sleep again? Hey!"

Despite the noisy fairy behind me, I closed my eyes and quickly managed to doze off.

---

I woke up to the sound of the garage door loudly closing as eveeryone came back home.

I'd somehow managed to sleep through my alarm, but fortunately I hadn't been doing anything that would require me to hide it before they came home.

I sat up and greeted them as I rubbed the last of the sleep from my eyes.

"Hey, sweetie! Good news!"

Mile walked up to me, smiling widely as she leaned against the back of the couch. 

"Uh, yeah, what's up?"

"Well, I found your application as soon as I got to work and managed to get it approved all at once! You can start Monday!"

"... oh, that's…"

I definitely felt glad that I had taken a step forward, both in the chance to use my skill and in actually doing something, but I also couldn't help but suddenly feel a painful sense of nervousness.

I could manage things like going to an empty mall or a convenience store, but the reality of dealing with so many people in a day was just… a lot. I'd thought about it while trying to convince Mile yesterday, but having it set in stone suddenly made it seem a lot more… terrifying.

Seeing my change in expression, Mile leaned in and gave me a tight hug. I tensed up slightly at the unexpected physical contact.  Even ignoring the general nervousness of being hugged by a woman I thought was attractive, physical contact was just not something I generally dealt with. Mile, for her part, didn't seem to notice my discomfort as she started speaking. 

"It's okay, honey. I know you can do this! I'll be there for you too, so I promise it won't ever get to a point that you can't handle!"

"Y-yeah…"

The sweet smell of her floral body wash combined with the slight smell of her sweat filled my nostrils as she continued to hold me for a bit before standing back up. After a brief moment, she seemed to realize that she had completely overstepped my usual boundaries and her face dropped slightly.

"Oh! I'm so sorry, Conor! I was just trying to… I mean… well, just… tell me if you ever need anything, sweetie."

With that, she quickly walked away and made her way upstairs. 

"Hehehe! She's got such huge tits!"

Fig floated in front of me while snickering to herself. 

"Hey Fig… was that because of-"

"Nope! I think she was just really worried about you and forgot."

"..."

"Well anyway. When are you going to start on your stepsisters?"

"I guess… I may as well start now, right?"

"Yep! Totally agree!"

Fig flew in a circle, clearly excited that I was going to use her.

"I guess the only question is which one I should start with?"

"Hmm… I'd say you should go for Noitte first."

"Okay, why so?"

"She feels like she'd be a lot easier to corrupt than Season."

"That's as good a reason as any, I guess."

With my target somewhat casually selected, I made my way up the stairs and stopped in front of Noitte's room. I took a deep breathe and tried to calm myself down for a second as the reality of finally having a way to make her mine caused my heartbeat to skyrocket.

After a minute or so, I felt calm enough, so I gently knocked on the door.

"Hello?"

Noitte's soft voice called back from inside, causing me to get nervous once again.

"H-Hey, Noitte, it's me, can I come in?"

"Yeah, go for it."

At her approval, I turned the doorknob and walked into her room. 

It looked the same as always, a small room covered wall to wall with pictures of actors and anime characters, various medals she was especially proud of, and shelfs put up to hold various combinations of books and stuffed animals. It was a room that hadn't been adjusted or redecorated since she moved in, with each year's worth of stuff added next to the last until it was finally full to bursting. 

Noitte herself was sitting on her bed, occupying the sole human shaped space in the pile of stuffed animals covering it. 

The whole room was neatly organized and clean, in no small part thanks to Luce cleaning for her, but it felt crowded and chaotic just based on the sheer volume of crap sitting around.

I still couldn't decide whether she was a slob or not.

"Everything okay, Conor?"

Noitte interrupted my thought process as she looked at me with slight concern. Not exactly surprising given that I never go to her room, and definitely never ask to come in.

"Uh, yeah, everything's fine, I just wanted to talk to you about something for a bit."

"Oh. No problem. "

"Can I close the door?"

"Of course!"

With the door shut, I moved into her room and, after relocating a stack of books, sat at the chair in front of her desk, facing her from about three feet away.

"So what did you want to talk about?"

Without answering, I activated my skill.

Corruption

I felt my mana drain by about half as the surroundings filled with energy and Noitte's expression became increasingly blank. 

"Pfft! Hahahahaha!"

Fig flew out of my chest as usual and immediately started laughing for some reason.

"What? What's so funny?"

"Hey Conor! This girl is probably the easiest target you're ever going to see!"

"... What?"

"She already loves you from the bottom of her heart! She's probably willing to listen to almost anything you say even without using me, and it even feels like she had a crush on you as a kid, so even turning everything into romantic feelings is probably no hassle."

Fig floated in a circle around Noitte as she continued to examine her.

"Seriously Conor, you hit the jackpot with this girl. She's basically putty in your hands."

Saying that, she floated back and landed on my shoulder before leaning into the side of my head.

"I would guess that if you could attach a decent reason to it, you could probably get her to suck you off here and now."

As I looked back at Noitte, I couldn't help but look at her plump, full lips and imagine them wrapping around me. All I had to do was say the word, and I might get my first blowjob immediately.

Even so… I had to restrain myself. Until I was sure that I would be able to get away with it here, I needed to avoid doing anything reckless, however hot it might sound.

Noitte's door didn't lock, and even if I could have locked it, what would I do if Season or Mile knocked on her door or noticed I was in here and got suspicious or… I just didn't feel safe risking it yet.

That said, with Noitte being so easy to corrupt, I wasn't in too much of a hurry, sex drive aside, so I calmed myself down for a moment before deciding on what I wanted to change.

Okay!

"Noitte, we've always gotten along, but you want to get along even better now that you're getting ready to finish your English degree and go off on your own. You feel like, at least when nobody is around, we should be more intimate with each other while we can."

The skill activated with no issue as the surrounding energy slowly flowed into her and she began to snap out of her trance.

"Ooh! You got a new skill, Conor!"

Fig flew in front of me happily as she did as close of an approximation of jumping for joy as she could while floating.

A new skill already? Wasn't that a little too easy?

I wanted to immediately check what it was… before that though…

"Er… Hey Noitte, you okay?"

"Oh!"

Noitte jumped up a little as my words snapped her the rest of the way back to reality. 

"Sorry Conor! I'm just a little worn out from practice today. What were you saying?"

Well actually, I hadn't said anything at all.

"Don't worry about it. If you're tired, it can just wait till tomorrow."

"Er, you sure?"

"No worries, it can wait until tomorrow."

"Well…Sorry about that, Conor!"

As I nodded and stood up from the chair as I prepared to leave, I was stopped by Noitte, who rushed up and grabbed my hand with both of hers. I tensed up slightly as her soft hands wrapped around mine, still half thinking about the possibility of having her do more for me.

"Hey Conor, before you go…"

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She trailed off a bit and started to redden slightly.

"Do you think we could maybe try being a little… um… closer to each other before I go?"

Easy win is easy.

I did my best to keep a straight face as I feigned confusion. 

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Um. I'm graduating in a couple of months, you know?"

"Right?"

"And after that I'll probably start looking for jobs and all, but after that I'll probably have no reason not to move out, so I just… kind of want to enjoy being together until then."

"But we've been living together for years?"

Noitte rolled her eyes at my reply.

"Sure, but I'm usually lucky to get two words from you in a day, never mind actually spending time together."

She paused for a moment as she thought about something, her hands tightening around mine. 

"Remember when we were kids? How much time we spent together? You'd give me piggyback rides, we'd sit together and watch movies, we always went running together…"

She smiled a little sadly as she thought back to our childhoods.

Since our parents were friends for so long, we'd also known each other since we were tiny. The first time I remember seeing her she hadn't even started kindergarten. 

Thinking back, we'd play together every time we saw each other. Even after the incident with Season, Noitte and I would still hang out, play video games, jog together, and so on.

It wasn't until after my dad died that we stopped spending time together. As time went on we spoke and did things together less and less until…

"Anyway, I just… I mean I was just hoping that maybe…"

Noitte continued talking in circles as she grew even redder.

Honestly, I was nervous about the whole situation, but seeing her adorable embarrassed face somehow wiped that away.

I carefully put my other hand around hers as I interrupted her fumbling.

"So basically you want to be closer until you leave."

"R-Right!"

"Alright. I think I get it. Just, er… tell me what you want to do and I'll at least try to go along with you."

"In that case… um."

Noitte seemed confused for a moment before her face lit up as she seemed to have an idea, then turned pink as she became embarrassed again.

Before I could ask what she was thinking about she quickly shook her head from side to side as she seemed to settle on something.

"For now, can I just have a hug?"

She released my hands and held out her arms as she asked me. Despite her request she seemed to be trying to look anywhere but my face.

I hadn't really done much hugging over the last seven or eight years, but here I was getting two in the span of less than an hour. 

Unwilling and unable to reject her request, I opened my arms and wrapped them around her gently. 

Seemingly dissatisfied with the weakness of my hug, Noitte pulled her own arms tightly around me as she seemed to try to squeeze my body completely into hers.

The feeling on my chest was, of course, excellent. 

After some time of hugging me tightly, Noitte finally loosened her grip and stepped back with a slight smile and blush on her face.

After a moment of silence she seemed to figure out what she wanted to say.

"Thanks Conor… I missed that."

"I… yeah. No problem... Anyway, I really have to go now, so I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, goodnight Conor!"

With that she made her way back to her bed and sat down, still smiling.

Turning around, I left the room and closed the door behind me before letting out a sigh of relief at having actually finished.

"Seriously, Conor, you totally could have done more than that, you know?"

Fig flew forward with her hands on her hips, looking slightly annoyed. 

"Sure Fig, and then if anyone walked in I'd just have to do what? Hope I could use Corruption on them to fix the problem? That's too risky!"

I whispered at her as I walked the few feet from Noitte's door to Season's.

Fig looked like she was going to continue arguing,  but stopped suddenly as she seemed to remember something. 

"Oh right! Check your status!" 

Oh yeah, she said I got a new skill a minute ago.

Status

『Conor Pitur

Age: 25

Sex: Male

Inherent skill: Corruption.

Sub Skills: Active Corruption』

This time it's "Active Corruption" huh?

Focusing on the name allowed me to see its details.

『Active Corruption: a skill which uses a small amount of MP to trigger a less intense version of Corruption. Though it does not put the target completely into a trance state, it does allow for more subtle adjustments at a fraction of the MP cost. Shares a usage limit with Corruption.』

Huh.

So this should be a sort of "Corruption lite" kind of skill, I guess?

"Hey Fig, what do you think?"

"Hmm… Well, I can feel it since it's a sub skill of me, but the difference is kind of small."

"Okay, what is it?"

"So like it says, there's no full blank-stare kind of trance, but they do go most of the way there."

"Alright."

"As for the actual Corruption part… hmm… Okay! So you know how companies will put, like, subliminal messages in ads and stuff?"

"O…kay?"

"Yeah, the effect is something like that! It's probably good for minor adjustments to a specific idea."

"So it's just a downgrade of Corruption?"

"Hehehe anything is a downgrade compared to me,  you know!"

Fig stuck her chest out proudly as she rubbed the bottom of her nose like an obnoxious anime character.

"…"

"Yeah yeah, I know…"

She dropped her stupid pose and tapped her finger against her chin as she thought for a moment.

"I mean, it's weaker than just using Corruption outright, but it's got its own uses. It takes way less mana than Corruption. Like, a tenth or something."

"So how many times can I use it in a day?"

"Hmm… Maybe about twenty five?"

"... huh?"

"Yeah! Corruption takes a lot out of you, you know?"

"But that much of a difference… wouldn't it just be better to use Active Corruption all the time?"

"Hmm… Well, do you know twenty five people?"

"..."

"You can use it a bunch of times, but it's still a Sub Skill of Corruption, you can only use it as many times as you can use Corruption on each person, and that's one!"

"Well, that's disappointing."

"Besides! It's a weakened version! It may work well on someone like Noitte, but if you want to make a major change to a normal person, it would take ages to use it enough times!"

"How long is ages?"

"Hmm… let's see. It's just a guess for now, but to use the same command you used on Luce in one Corruption would probably take about… maybe twenty uses of Active Corruption? So twenty days?"

"That much!?"

"Yep! Corruption barely pushed her into taking off her shirt, you know?"

I remembered the feeling of the energy in the air rushing towards her compared to the barely detectable shift that happened when I used it on Mile and Noitte. The intensity of the energy when it had to break through Luce's inhibition was just way too different.

Fig continued.

"So for something at the very edge of capability of a skill that just uses brute force to break past her defense, something that doesn't completely pacify her and can't hit as hard is bound to take forever, right?"

That… makes sense.

"Besides! You'd have to guide the conversation there each time if you wanted it to work! Corruption lets you shift values based on their desires, it just has to make sense and be a bridge you can lead them to cross. Active Corruption requires getting their agreement while they're in a half trance!"

Okay… that's a lot to digest at once.

I decided to put ironing out the details and comparisons in my head on hold for now. I'd been standing in front of Season's door without moving for a while now, and wanted to make sure I got around to actually corrupting her before the night ended.

After a breath or three, I knocked on her door.

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