Eos, Topmost Level.

Where only the thirteen Blondies were allowed to maintain residence—the Imperial floor.

That day, having finished breakfast much later than usual, Riki was dabbing his lips with a napkin; as if on cue, the furniture Cal spoke:

"Master Riki, there is a message from our master." "What?"

After two months of facing one another in the same residence, Cal was used to the brusqueness.

"You are to arrive at the medical center by 15:00."

There was no hesitation in his tone. Still, sometimes, Riki felt suddenly uncomfortable—a sense of isolation in the room unlike with his predecessor, Daryl. Maybe it was because every so-called "ordinary" day felt the same.

"Karuga?"

"No, the main block."

Riki furrowed his brow. The monthly medical check required of pets—just a routine physical examination, not as thorough as the semi-annual health screening—was held at the Karuga-84 facility. This was different.

"Why?" Riki couldn't help but utter. "I have not heard," Cal responded.

Hearing that proper, impeccable answer, Riki bit down a sigh at the edge of his lips.

As lord and master of the household, Iason's commands were nothing short of clear and concise. No matter what the instructions, Riki and Cal—pet and furniture—had no right to deny or refuse. Riki had paid the price of resistance and the fear of punishment permeated to his core. No doubt Cal had the same fear instilled in him.

Was it because of that reason that when Riki looked at him, there was a hint of fear deep inside Cal's eyes? Cal couldn't seem to hide that; it was completely different from the sense of distance Daryl had maintained. It throbbed like a thorn that couldn't be removed.

Unlike last time, the returning Riki keenly felt his status as Iason's pet. "—Alright."

"I will escort you to the center," Cal said.

In other words, on a leash. The norm for a medical visit.

When Riki nodded, Cal breathed a small sigh of relief. In such trivial gestures like this, Riki saw the Blondy furniture's lack of experience. If he believed Katze's words—no, it was obvious that all Eos furniture were forcefully picked out from graduating teenagers in the care of Guardian; it was nothing but the truth. This meant Cal had been furniture for scarcely two years—a rookie.

When Riki first met Daryl in Iason's residence he had said, "I'm Daryl," as he bowed perfectly, his youthful appearance contrary to his mature composure. Unaware of the standards for being Blondy's furniture, Cal seemed to fall short in every way. Or maybe Riki just got older. However, even after all these years, Riki remained the sole heresy in Eos. Hard to say he ever got used to it.

With his black leather collar and leash, Riki cut a figure walking through the salon hall as passing pets eyed him with both curiosity and hate. Since the medical center and salon were adjacent, the sight of a collared pet going for a check-up was normal—except that everything about the twenty-year-old Riki was not normal.

Even with a year and a half of absence, Riki knew the route to the medical center better than Cal, so he led the way. Cal's hand on the leash was visibly shaking.

When sentenced to this "walk of shame" as punishment for his return, for a pet to walk in such a confident and know-its-way-around manner, furniture in tow—they had made a rather scandalous pair. For a furniture's first pet to be the notorious troublemaker of Eos was too much for Cal.

It was the first time Riki came to the main block of the medical center for an examination rather than Karuga-84. In the main lobby, Riki's collar and lead were removed. Then a medical android guided him to the elevator.

What is this about?

Even if questioning the motives of Iason was pointless, knowing he couldn't be summoned here for show or on a whim unnerved Riki.

Room number RS-35.

The door slid open and he stepped inside. And then— Riki gasped.

In the center of the room, his long legs extending from the sofa although deeply reclined in it, was Iason. Seated next to him, dressed in casual Blondy attire, yet stylish and distinctive, was Raoul. That alone filled the room with a different kind of authority.

But what rendered Riki's face stiff in mute amazement and made his eyes open wide wasn't their presence—it was what could only be considered extremely out of place—no, beyond common sense.

This can't be. To find that figure seated between the two Blondies.

How—Kirie?

In front of his eyes, wide open in astonishment, was Kirie. The reason for Riki's bitter fight and separation from Guy, in the flesh. But this was not Ceres or Midas. This was Eos.

And yet—Why?

The cause of the hit and run air car crash involving tourists in Midas.

The object of a bounty on his head. Bearing secrets from Guardian.

The reason the Midas Security Police had crossed the border and marched into the slums.

It was Katze who had tricked him into spilling Kirie's whereabouts.

What was real and which one of these was fake—Riki didn't know. There was no way to even confirm these facts.

However, the one truth was that Katze had seized Kirie. That's why, since then, Riki had forgotten about Kirie entirely. For he had zero concern for or interest in what would become of Kirie.

But why this? For an instant, Riki was baffled.

Are you kidding me? Really? Why? What for?

Questions circled in his mind. As if to sync with his quickening pulse.

As if seeing through the unrest and confusion within Riki, a voice called out: "Why are you just standing there? Why not come sit with us?" Raoul spoke with the faintest of smiles.

With the Mimea incident... no, even before that, Riki was fully aware Raoul despised him. Even more than Iason's silence, Raoul's overt kindness unnerved him.

Reflexively staring back at Raoul, Riki slumped against a wall.

You have to be fucking kidding me.

Just because he had come back to Eos didn't mean Riki's grudge and fury towards Kirie had vanished. Riki didn't understand what this farce was about, but he had no intention of playing along.

As if having predicted such an attitude from him, Raoul smirked.

Riki felt sick at his absolute perceptiveness. He no longer bothered hiding his true annoyance. Only the uncomfortable silence remained.

Eventually, Riki noticed something strange about— Kirie.

The arrogant, conceited—no, the Kirie one might call the incarnation of attention-seeking, was obediently seated upright in front of Riki, his expression unchanged. Absolutely unlike himself.

What the hell? Another question adding to his earlier discomfort, Riki's eyes narrowed.

And suddenly, Kirie sweetly smiled at him.

At that, Riki felt like the back of his head was struck without warning. His eyes opened wide.

Caring for nobody but himself. Not afraid to say he'll use anything to rise in the world. That Kirie, who acted haughty and arrogant, slowly stood up with a smile on his face that would put flowers to shame.

All of a sudden, it felt like Riki didn't know this Kirie, as if it was him, but not really him.

The broad smile, somehow, reminded him of something sweet yet poisonous. Even the mismatched eyes prone to stir up arousal were now wet with desire.

The hell? He—

With a carnal and bone-chilling beauty, Kirie sauntered over to Riki.

Disgusting. And still, Riki couldn't move. Not because of the wall against his back—but because he was transfixed, agitated by the unspeakable shock and disgust bordering on aversion.

Kirie's eyes, hands, legs, and breath... viscously coiling around him, Riki's self-control and reason were engulfed as if bewitched. With a gasp, Riki stiffened.

As if Kirie's skin exuded some kind of sweet poison—for an instant, he felt faint and dizzy. And then— Almost impulsively, Riki's crotch throbbed.

No way.

Dismay led to a flush to his cheeks; his heart leaped to his throat.

Their chest, abdomen, and waist stuck to each other, Riki slid his back up against the wall, unable to escape.

In that moment, a sharp, wrenching pain assaulted Riki's crotch as if to tear off the heatwave overwhelming his senses.

"Ah!"

The intense and darting pain felt like a burning needle had been plunged into his urethra.

In a flash, gasping for air, Riki shoved Kirie aside, twisted away from him, hands on his crotch, and fell to the ground.

"Gah—ah—"

Kirie stared blankly down at Riki, a somewhat empty and distant look in his eyes, as if the switch of his thought process had been turned off by Riki's rough rejection.

Riki broke out in cold sweat that plastered his black hair on his forehead and soaked the scruff of his neck.

"Why don't you let him be?" Raoul said calmly, not caring in the least about Riki's predicament. "They haven't even kissed."

"All I did was demonstrate what would happen in case he behaved improperly," Iason replied flatly, slightly twisting the ring on his left middle finger. The control ring was capable of producing various kinds of pulses. It was directly connected to the D-type pet ring, custom-made for discipline purposes, that was mounted at the root of Riki's penis. With a flick of the finger, Iason could tease Riki endlessly or make him black out on the spot.

Riki breathed out raggedly, shoulders heaving. The ringing in his ears, about to pierce his eardrums, had not ceased. It had been a long time since the pet ring had been used for the sole purpose of causing pure pain.

"Well, there is room for improvement—but it will do. It even excited your pet a little," Raoul crudely remarked, speaking unlike his usual self; to which Iason responded with a cold silence.

"Don't look at me like that—it won't happen again, I assure you."

Iason seemed to have understood Raoul's unapologetic words in retort.

"Kirie!"

Raoul's voice cracked like a whip. As if some switch had been triggered, Kirie's eyes twitched in a blink and he jerked around.

Transfixed, Riki watched Raoul exit the room with his hand on Kirie's shoulder. When their backs were completely out of sight he snapped with all the irony he could muster.

"Why turn Kirie into an Alita? To give to some old bastard for a fucktoy?"

He didn't care if that was the case. He had no sympathy for Kirie, his disgust and fury towards him unchanged.

Riki was bitter at being made an example of by Raoul, who no doubt still harbored a grudge over Mimea. Iason knew this, but had still called him as a means for Raoul to vent. That made Riki angry for the first time in a while.

"Isn't it a waste to liquidate a specimen with natural heterochromia?" Iason said very matter-of-factly, but Riki knew Iason would likely never speak of what happened with Kirie to him. Not that Riki cared, even now.

In a way, Kirie was responsible for what he saw, heard, and knew. Riki had no objections if being reduced to that was the price Kirie paid for his blunder.

Regardless of the offset, Kirie only reaped what he had sown. If not knowing meant living every day in peace, then the truth could remain hidden. For better or worse, that was the reality for Riki.

"Power breeds lust for pleasure. That specimen will serve someone as a splendid plaything in their collection," Iason said smoothly, his expression and tone unmoved.

In his daily life in Eos, Iason rarely displayed anything other than his terrifying high pride as a pet owner that Katze once described as chilling down to the bone. Riki couldn't help but be aware again of Iason's quintessence making him say so.

"Never mind that—Riki, I have something to show you," saying so, Iason turned a holoscreen on. "Something of significant interest was found in the process of rewinding Kirie's memories."

Iason, whose immortal body was artificial and only remaining concession to humanity was his augmented brain, talked like humans—no, like slum mongrels were nothing but fit for experimentation.

Not that Riki would turn pale or angry at this late hour. But the thought that perhaps he was the cause of Kirie's nightmare made his throat gurgle in reflex. Alas.

Riki, holding his breath, stared at the screen. On it was a totally unexpected, intense sex scene between men.

At first, he gasped, flabbergasted. Then, his stomach hurled in disgust and his gaze grew displeased.

I don't care who Kirie fucked!

What was projected was probably what Katze said back then, that Kirie had seduced Guardian's heir, something along "tricking him with sweet-talking." Or maybe stoking his desires.

Riki, who had not an ounce of interest in other people's affairs, tried to turn away his eyes in exasperation but suddenly froze, startled.

On the holoscreen, two men indulged in graphic sex together. Discovering his own face on one of them, Riki, now shocked, opened his eyes wide, speechless.

N-no way—

A single heartbeat hammered through his chest.

N-no! His throat rumbled in a twitch.

The dark-haired male having his testes fondled, his lower limbs spasming, writhing in agony. It was indeed Riki.

The sweat beading on his disheveled black hair. The taut nipples ripened to a deep red. The obscenely slippery member arched onto his belly. The honey-dewed orifice spilling precum, drenching his pubic hair.

The illusion that his pounding and irregular heart would jump out of his mouth was making him spin with dizziness. If this was Guy and not Kirie clawing at his back, limbs entwined, Riki would ask how the footage could exist, and would probably be outraged. But it was exceedingly graphic and realistic; he could've been deceived by his own foolishness for sure.

But—no. That wasn't him. His stiffened cheeks twitched, his pale lips couldn't stop trembling. The thought of unremembered shameful behavior made Riki's blood drain from his face.

"N-no, this is—not me. It's not me!" Riki yelled, the end of his sentence trembling as he stared at the Riki on the holoscreen, his rear impaled even deeper by Kirie's glistening penis, his legs twisting and hips shaking madly in pleasure.

"Kirie ejaculated multiple times when this memory was replayed, without any physical stimulation on his genitalia," Iason stated.

Riki knew it wasn't him, but couldn't help but feel he was being shown a warped, lecherous version of himself. Thus, he couldn't help but scream with bloodshot eyes:

"No! Never! That is not me!" That last word was closer to a shriek.

At that very moment—

The image on the screen was cut off with a sudden snap.

"I didn't fuck Kirie, dammit!"

Riki did not want it to look like he had done it with Kirie, because he hadn't. Not just Kirie. In the end, even with Guy—it wasn't the same as before.

There had been nothing to keep Riki from doing it; that was to be expected. He was going to make up for those three years lost—or so he'd thought.

However, when Riki returned to the slums, he couldn't bring himself to have sex, or anything like that, with anyone. He was afraid he would lose himself. Afraid to reveal that side of his—the perverted pet he had been trained to be during those three years—so he hardly ever masturbated.

And yet. That night. Hearing Iason's voice, being pierced by that gaze, Riki's sense and restraint had crumbled into pieces.

"That wasn't me!" Riki desperately spat out.

He wouldn't admit doing something he didn't do. That was his last remaining pride. The memory of his and Mimea's affair flashed across his mind. He didn't want to tread the same path again, regardless of the truth of it—

Iason laughed in derision as if he had seen through him.

"This must be familiar, for you to be frantic, Riki. Or did last time's punishment leave such a big impression on you?"

Riki bit his lip, lost for words. Still, he did not avert his gaze. If he lowered his eyes now, he felt like he would lose his credibility.

"I didn't do it!"

Even if he'd be called stupid for saying the same thing, he could only repeat these words over and over again.

"That's all bullshit!"

If that was all from Kirie's replayed memories, then Kirie was delusional. Kirie couldn't tell reality from fantasy; he lived in a world of constant nightmares. That much was certain. Because, unless Katze's information was false, Kirie's partner must have been the Guardian administrator's son.

"Kirie wanted you. Very badly, I might add, to have constructed such a fantasy." 

"—Fantasy?"

"Yes." Shutting down the holoscreen, Iason leisurely rearranged his legs on the sofa. "When Kirie was captured he was half-crazed. So a large number of sedatives were introduced into his system."

—Wrong. By the time he crashed at Riki's, he had already broken down. Still, he'd had no choice but to run, for no other purpose than his safety. Even on the verge of insanity, his instinct for self-preservation still prevailed.

To the very end, Kirie had been a complete egoist.

"The human brain is strange. When forced to recall memories it wishes to forget, it creates a fantasy world as a defense."

"Is this—the result of that?"

"Yes, taking refuge in fantasizing about sex with you was comfortable for him, and to break him out of that was quite the struggle."

Did that cause great displeasure to Iason too? Or did it make him feel disgusted to remember that? An unusual wrinkle appeared between Iason's eyebrows.

Even more, Riki was highly infuriated.

On that day—fated night—which could only be seen the result of causality, unfolded a different destiny from the inescapable past.

His legs and lower back staggering, thoroughly beaten by Midas' Darkmen and drenched from the torrential rain, Riki had dragged his aching body back to his room—and found, for some reason, Kirie hidden in his closet, eyes wide with fright.

"Help me," he had said, clinging to Riki. "I love you!" That sudden confession of love, like a bad joke, after Kirie knocked him to his side so brazenly. And to top it all, "Being hated from the heart is a thousand times better than being ignored," Kirie had fought back with unparalleled selfishness.

To think Kirie maintained such a fantasy in the depths of his twisted mind did nothing but make Riki shudder in disgust.

Even if free sex with no moral compass whatsoever was standard in the slums, it was undeniable that the unspoken rule of the survival of the fittest was openly accepted. Whether rape, gang bangs, or orgies, sex-related incidents were commonplace and happened daily.

If Kirie had said those words with a straight face and snuggled up to him, Riki wouldn't have turned a deaf ear and would have put him down on the spot instead.

It was a matter of preference. To be challenged to a game of Gigolo by Luke didn't raise issues at all with Riki, but Kirie was something else. Because Kirie was driven by reason more than passion. And yet, he hadn't been able to stop fantasizing.

When confronted with him in such a way, Riki's back teeth gnashed with physiological disgust more than outrage. Because, for Kirie, even sex was a means for personal advancement, at the expense of someone else.

"Did you know—from the start? That it was Kirie's fantasy?" Riki involuntarily asked, goosebumps erupting on his skin.

At least when he did it with Mimea, no one had walked in on Riki. But the punishment for that had been merciless to the point of extreme physical and mental exhaustion.

That being the case, even if it was only a delusion, it was real enough to the eyes of Iason fixed on the screen— how had he reacted? At the thought of it, Riki felt an involuntary chill run down his spine.

"I did feel the urge to strangle someone to death when I first saw it." For Iason to speak so plainly of that disturbing matter startled Riki.

Strangle someone to death? Who? Kirie? Or—Riki?

"But I immediately knew it wasn't you."

—How? He asked with his eyes, not aloud.

Iason's lips curved slightly.

"The way you moan, the way you twist, your face when you come: they are completely different," Iason said.

Riki's heartbeat accelerated in a different way.

Bastard. Riki felt something he couldn't grasp, neither shame nor fury, gradually rise in his throat.

"Then—why did you show me that disgusting shit on purpose?"

"To remind you." "Remind me?"

"There are no second chances."

Riki trembled. More than by his words, Riki felt pierced by Iason's gaze.

"Do you remember what I said before?" "—What?"

"The rules for the salon."

In most cases, anything went in the salon—but Iason was talking about a different set of rules. Riki hadn't forgotten them.

"You mean—don't overdo it?" He asked.

"Yes."

"Any scandal leaking out of there, no matter what or who started it, no excuses. Immediate ban from the salon— right?"

Not that anyone would pick a fight with Riki now. But even so, it seemed that as long as Riki was Eos' "exception," his nickname of "walking troublemaker"— would not disappear.

"So? What should I do now? You don't need me anymore, right? Should I have Cal pick me up?"

"Do not concern yourself. I will take you back myself."

"Leashed?" "Of course."

He guessed Iason would pay no mind to the fact it would make him look strange and out of place. Heavily sighing inwardly, Riki faintly lowered his gaze.