Chapter 100: ~Chapter 34~ Part 2

The dining hall of the Dracis mansion was, to my sincerest shock and disbelief, actually pretty cozy. After the flagrant displays of wealth so far, I expected to be lead into a gigantic, lavishly decorated hall with a huge crystal chandelier and one of those stereotypical, long-ass medieval dining tables under it, with maybe a throne-sized chair at the upper end where the head of the household would preside for good measure.

What I got instead was a comparatively plain chamber, about the size of my own living room, with a medium-sized oval table in the middle. Maybe it was due to the contrast with the rest of the mansion's unifying theme, but the lack of decorations made the place feel surprisingly comfortable and, dare I say, homely.

However, what the surroundings lacked in lavishness, the menu made up for in droves. Most of the dishes were placed in the middle, within everyone's reach, and we had everything ranging from 'simple' caviar to an honest-to-goodness turducken, and based on some of my host's stray comments, we still had a whole roasted suckling pig on the way.

Speaking of my hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Dracis were sitting together along one long side of the oval table, while our little wholesome-threesome was occupying the other side, with Judy mechanically eating her meal on my left (it was probably her way of dealing with the tense atmosphere), while the princess on my other side was blissfully munching on her own.

I was also trying to enjoy the gastronomic wonders in front of me, but my efforts were considerably dampened by a certain noble lady in a wheelchair giving me the stinkeye. I tried to ignore her to the best of my ability, though I would be lying if I said the awkward silence wasn't getting to me. On the other hand, I didn't seem to be the only one that thought so, as the uncomfortably fidgeting patriarch soon raised his voice in what I figured was his best attempt at small talk.

"So, Leonard! Have you tried the red sauce yet?"

I was taken a little aback by the sudden question, so I replied with a tentative, "You mean that one?" while pointing at the small jar between the fried goods and the cold cuts.

"Yes, that one!" he exclaimed with a grin.

"I second it!" the princess, well, seconded at my side. "It goes great with everything!"

"Really?" I muttered as I reached out and picked up the jar. I casually lifted the lid, and my nose was immediately tickled by a strong, spicy aroma that made me involuntarily salivate after a single whiff. "Well, it definitely smells great," I spoke with a small smile, only to get so startled a moment later that I almost dropped the whole jar.

"That's it!" Elly's mother exclaimed while simultaneously pointing at me.

"That's what?" I asked back reflexively, at which point she gave me a triumphant smile.

"You smell weird," she told me matter-of-factly, earning her an odd look from her husband.

"Honey, you are being rude to our guest," Abram chided her, after which he took a few overt sniffs towards my directions and added, "Not to mention, he smells perfectly fine!"

"No offense darling, but we both know that your nose is about as blunt as a wet sack of mice," Elly's mother retorted with a huff.

"That's a fun analogy," I stated absent-mindedly.

"Why, thank you," the lady suddenly gave me a demure smile, but then a moment later she realized who she was responding to, and so she quickly forced her expression into an eerily familiar glare and told me, "I meant to say, please be quiet, this doesn't concern you."

"Excuse me? Weren't you just talking about what I smell like? I think that concerns me plenty."

"He got you there, honey!" Papa Dracis exclaimed with a mirthful laugh before he reached out, gingerly picked up a tall wine glass, elegantly raised it up to his mouth, and then he proceeded to throw his head back and empty its contents in one go like it was a shot glass.

"You are supposed to take my side!" the lady of the household retorted with an equally familiar pout, completely disregarding her husband's weird drinking habit, but just a moment later she glanced at the giggling blonde at my side and snapped, "And you! Stop laughing and help explain things to your father!"

"Mooom!" Elly whined while sidling half a step towards me, with her chair in tow. "Stop bullying Leo!"

"But he smells weird!" Lady Emese doubled down while staring her daughter in the eye, at which she flippantly shrugged her shoulders.

"It doesn't matter! It gives him character, and complaining about it to his face is really rude!"

"I remember you doing that a lot in the past," I grumbled. "In fact, you are kind of confirming what she says even now."

"Hush, Leo. I am defending you right now," the princess told me with a smug grin, then she proceeded to continue arguing with her mother.

I let out a small sigh, then I turned to my other girlfriend and quietly asked her, "Hey, Judy? Do I actually smell?"

"I don't know, I don't care," she answered me quite bluntly. "I just want to finish my meal, go home, and steer clear of these weird people."

"They are not that weird…" I attempted to protect them, but then I noticed that Elly's father kept downing one glass of wine after the other like they were spirits, while the women of the household were still arguing about my odor, so after a moment I sheepishly added, "Well, okay, maybe a little weird."

"It doesn't matter whether you like it or not!" Elly's mother burst out, drawing my attention back to her just as she pointed at me, "He is still two-timing!"

"We are not!" Elly argued back. "It's a one-turn threesome!"

"One true threesome," Judy corrected her wearily without even looking up from her food.

"Right, what she said!" the princess nodded so hard it sent her hair cascading around her face, but then it returned into its previous, well-maintained shape in a second. I had to wonder whether that was a draconian thing or a simulation thing, but I wasn't given much time to do so, as the lady of the house raised her voice again.

"What does that even mean?"

"It's a little complicated, but in short, it means that technically we are all in a single relationship," I tried to explain. "Technically calling it an OTT is not entirely accurate, but for the sake of simplicity, you can think of it as each one of us being in some kind of relationship with the other two at the same time."

"Really?" Mama Dracis looked at me skeptically, and then glanced at Judy. "Does that mean that you are also in a relationship with my daughter?"

My assistant gave the lady a blank look, but then after I poked her in the thigh under the table, she briefly shuddered, following which she told her, "If we follow the definition we were just given, then… yes?"

For a while Elly's mother kept giving us weird glances, then she looked over at her husband, probably for support. Unfortunately for her, Papa Dracis seemed to enjoy himself way too much, so he only grinned at her while a somewhat generic placeholder maid filled his wineglass once again. At last, the matriarch let out a disgruntled groan and then faced me again.

"So let me see if I get this straight." She pointed at me, then at the princess. "You and you are dating." I nodded in the affirmative, so this time she pointed at me again and then Judy. "You and you are also dating." I nodded once again, so for the last round, she pointed at the two girls in turn. "And you two are also dating."

After a moment of hesitation, Elly adopted a determined expression and gave another big nod.

Her mother fell silent for a long moment, after which she asked, "How far have you gone?"

"Where?" I asked back while tilting my head to the side.

"Physically," she replied with a serious expression.

"Only kissing!" Elly hastily declared while going from determined to beet red in a split second.

"Same here," Judy said between two bites, and while she still tried to appear aloof, I could tell from the way she averted her eyes that she was more than a little uncomfortable as well.

"With him?" Mama Dracis asked for clarity, and my girlfriends nodded in unison. "What about each other?"

"What about us?" Elly blurted out, and her mother immediately touched her own forehead with a defeated expression.

"You said you are in a relationship as well, so how far have you two gone?"

"Aaaaah…" After letting out a drawn-out noise of recognition, the princess's face once again adopted a shade of crimson and she hastily declared, "We are not in that kind of relationship, mom! It's more… erm…"

"I think the world you are looking for is 'platonic'," I told her on the side, and she immediately nodded in agreement.

"This is getting complicated," Judy noted without looking up from her food, but it seemed like only I took notice of her words.

"Yes, platonic!" Elly nodded with a bafflingly confident expression. "We are still building skinship but we are not doing those kinds of things!"

"Hah! I knew it was skinship and not kinship! I told you, son!" Papa Dracis exclaimed with a ginormous grin on his face.

I wanted to point out that it was just proof that he also told it wrong to Elly in the past, but then it was his wife's turn to raise her voice, saying, "I knew it was you who planted all of these ideas in our daughter's head! And don't call him son!"

"Why? It's practically a done deal at this point!" the patriarch answered jovially, followed by yet another hearty laugh that made even the dishes on the table clatter.

Lady Emese opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but in the end she let out an exhausted groan and faced her daughter again, asking, "Are you sure you're fine with this?"

"Yes, mom. This is for the best," Elly replied to her with a determined look. They silently gazed at each other, no doubt engaging in some kind of esoteric eye-contact-based form of arm-wrestling until, to my sincerest surprise, the woman in the wheelchair let out a defeated sigh.

"Very well, I understand," she spoke, and Elly was just about to happily glomp me for some reason when she raised her voice again and said, "However, I want to ask the young man a few questions first!"

That stopped the princess in her tracks and she embarrassedly sat back down onto her chair. In the meantime, her mother directed her piercing gaze at me again and asked, in a very straightforward manner, "Do you love my daughter?"

I didn't expect such a direct question, but after just a split-second I managed to squeeze out an adequately definite "Sure, I do." Now to be perfectly honest, those words didn't exactly come from the bottom of my heart, but I figured that saying 'Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel extremely deep affection towards your daughter, but I cannot truly ascertain whether my feelings would qualify under the traditional definition of love' would've been pretty counter-intuitive after all that had already been said.

Thankfully she didn't seem to pick up on my somewhat turbulent emotions, as she just gave me a nod and glanced over at the other girl by my side. "Do you also happen to love the young lady over there?"

"Yes," I answered, this time a little quicker due to no longer feeling like I was on the back foot.

"I see…" she nodded again, then she linked her fingers in her lap and asked me, "Which one of them do you love more?"

Aaaaand with that, I was back on the back foot again…

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After a moment of entirely justified brain-freeze, I found myself involuntarily scowling at her, then, at last, I told her, "With all due respect, that is a pretty stupid question."

Mama Dracis' expression slackened for a moment, only to turn into one of annoyance a moment later when her husband let out another plate-ratting laugh.

"Fine, then let me ask you a hypothetical," she said after her pointed looks finally had an effect and Papa Dracis quieted down. She gave me a chilling look, then she began to speak with a voice that was dripping with forced gravitas. "Let's say both of your girlfriends are in mortal danger, and you can only save one of them. Who do you choose?"

"Both," I answered within the millisecond.

Lady Emese still had her mouth hanging open on the last syllable at this point, so she forcefully closed it with an audible click of teeth, and her brows slowly knit together. "I think you misunderstood me. I said you can only save one of them."

"No, I heard you," I answered her without the slightest bit of pretense. "I just ignored that part because the question was silly."

"But… that was the point!" Mama Dracis exclaimed. "The whole point of this dilemma is that you can only save one of them!"

"Yes, and I'm telling you that it's stupid. If I can save one of them, I can save both. If I can save both, I will save both. End of moral dilemma."

"No, you still don't get it! The point is that, in this hypothetical scenario, you are not able to save both of them," Elly's mother explained with a voice bordering on desperation.

"No, you don't get it," I put my foot down and glared at the woman. "I know for a fact that if we ever encountered a life-or-death situation where both Judy and Elly were in danger, I can and will save them. You cannot dictate what I can and cannot do."

"Maybe, but the 'you' in this scenario cannot save both."

"If the person in your hypothetical scenario cannot save both, then it means I am not that person, therefore your hypothetical scenario is rubbish. End of discussion," I told her in no uncertain terms

The woman kept gaping at me for a moment, then she threw her arms into the air in frustration and told me, "Fine! We are getting nowhere at this rate, so how about this: both of your girlfriends are in mortal danger. Who do you save first?"

"Oh, that's an easy question," I answered with a smile. "It would be Judy."

"You would save her first?" Elly blurted out while giving me an odd look.

"Of course," I replied. "You are tough, so even if you were both in the same kind of mortal danger, it makes sense to get Judy out first, as you could probably hold out for a few seconds until I get you out too."

"Oh, right. That makes sense," the princess nodded with an enlightened look on her face, then suddenly she asked, "You think I'm tough?"

"Of course you are," I told her honestly. "I mean, you have all those scales, and your horns, plus your draconian physiology… you are the toughest person and/or thing I know this side of a Chimera."

"Boo! Don't compare me to a Chimera! Compare me to something cool!" Elly grumbled as she entered into pouting mode at a moment's notice.

"But I don't know any other tough things except for dragons, and comparing you to them would be redundant. Judy, do you have any ideas?"

"None, Chief," my assistant, who was incidentally also the only person at the table with a nearly empty place, answered me in the negative after wiping her mouth with a napkin.

"You see, even Judy doesn't know anything better."

"Boo!" Elly repeated while pointedly turning her face away from me, steadily entering into full-blown sulking mode.

"Okay, how about this?" I raised my voice after wracking my brains for a few seconds. "How about I say you are tougher than an 80s action star?"

"The ones that use machineguns with one hand and are too cool to look at explosions," the Draconic girl asked with a strange sparkle in her eyes as she finally looked at me again.

"Yup, them."

"I can live with that!" she finally smiled one of her smug little grins at me, and I couldn't help but reflexively rub the crown of her head, which quickly turned awkward when I remembered that we were still in front of her parents. She didn't seem to mind, but I still decided to cut the head pat short, earning me another 'Boo!'

In the meantime I faced the slack-jawed lady of the house and, after lightly clearing my throat, I cautiously asked her, "So… what were we talking about?"

She gave me a critical look in return, but in the end she let out an enormous, resigned sigh, and told me, with just the slightest edge, "Never mind. Let's say that, for the time being, I tentatively approve of your… what did you call it again?"

"Oh, I know now! It was one true threesome!" Elly responded with a cheerful voice.

"If you really want to stick to that term, at least abbreviate it to OTT," I told my girlfriend, but she didn't really pay me any heed. Honestly, I really wanted to come up with a better term for our relationship, but considering how attached Elly seemed to this one, it might stick.

"Yes, that," Mama Dracis followed up with a considerably less cheerful one.

I was about to agree, but then we were once again interrupted by the hearty chuckles of the patriarch.

"Great job, son!" The only grown man at the table suddenly exclaimed with undisguised mirth. "You can go ahead and call her mom now!"

"Most definitely not!" Elly's mother burst out once again, sending a scathing glare at her husband. "He may at most refer to me as mother-in-law!" She huffed, but since Abram only laughed in return, she suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of the man's ear. "Don't just try to laugh this off, mister! This whole predicament is because of you and the stupid traditions of your side of the family!"

"Ow! Honey, not in front of the kids!" The patriarch of the family exclaimed in… well, probably not in pain, but more in embarrassment. I glanced over at Elly, but by this point she was happily munching on her food again, so I figured this must've been a fairly mundane occurrence to her. Eventually I decided to follow her example, but as I did so, my eyes skimmed over a particular jar and it made an old question pop right up in the back of my head, so I turned back to her again.

"Elly?"

"Hm?" she grunted, then quickly swallowed the food in her mouth and then responded with a more intelligible, "Yes? What is it?"

"Since your parents seem to be busy, I decided to use the opportunity to ask this before I forget it again. Can you tell me about the whole 'smelling weird' business again?"

"Oh, that?" Elly muttered as her cheeks visibly reddened. "I told you, it's not bad, just strange."

"Yes, and that's what I want to be clarified," I repeated.

"I see," she whispered and raised a finger to her lips as she thought about it, then she finally explained, "Mom and I can kind of, how should I put it, smell mana, except not really. It's hard to explain. Not all draconians can do it, but most of my relatives on my mother's side can."

"So it's an extrasensory ability that is inherited in the maternal bloodline," Judy casually cut in between two bites, earning her a frown from the princess.

"I can use big words too, you know! There is no reason to flex your vocabulary just because you can," she grumbled.

My assistant, unfazed as usual, shrugged and told her, "I'm not flexing, I'm just being precise."

"It doesn't matter either way," I came between them this time and told Elly, "So, when you sniff me using that ability, I have a weird smell?"

"It's not the smell that's weird," Elly hastily denied. "How should I put it…? It's like, every person has their own scent? But, when it comes to you, you just don't. Imagine that you pick up a flower and you sniff it. The first time it smells like chamomile, then pine, the roses, then freshly cut grass. None of those are bad, but when the same thing keeps smelling differently, it feels really… creepy. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

"I think I do," I told her with a purposefully over-exaggerated downcast expression. "You are telling me I smell creepy. That makes me sad."

"That's not what I said!" the princess hastily denied on the brink of panic. "I told you I don't dislike it! In fact, I think I kind of like how you smell!"

That wasn't exactly the reaction I was expecting, but before I could say anything, Judy decided to throw some oil onto the fire by innocently asking, "Smell fetish?"

"No!" I exclaimed in mock despair. "Where do you even learn about things like that!?"

"The internet," she answered without any reservation.

"Oh no! My girlfriend is being corrupted!"

"What's a 'smell fetish'?" Elly inquired curiously over my shoulder.

"Oh no! My other girlfriend is also being corrupted!"

"Hush chief, you are being a nuisance," Judy chided me while reaching for a drink.

"I don't think we are bothering anyone. Those two are completely lost in their own little world," I told her as I pointed at the bickering couple at the other end of the table, knee-deep in an obvious lovers' quarrel.

"All the more reason we should quickly eat our dinner, thank them for their hospitality, and then leave before their weirdness rubs off on us."

"I think you are plenty weird already," Elly delivered a perfectly timed jab at my assistant, and before she could retort she poked me in the side and asked, "Hey, Leo? You still didn't tell me what a 'smell fetish' is? Is it some kind of magical catalyst?"

I gave my surprisingly innocent draconic girlfriend a flat look, then I told her, "I will tell you when you're older."

"Boo!" Came the expected answer from her, but after a few headpats I managed to placate her and we all returned to our neglected dishes.

I decided to sample everything, and while that might have been a little heavy on my stomach, I already had plans with Brang for the night, and I had a feeling that if I wanted to get everything done and sorted out by the time our weekend date would roll around, I needed all the energy I could stockpile. Also, for the record, it definitely had nothing to do with the red sauce being really, really good with everything. Overeating just because of that would've been silly, and we all know I never do silly things, right?

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