"I’m not an idiot. This is the Porneapolis. This is the where the Makai’s richest get their whores, their dominators, their no-strings-attached assassins with the platinum armbands. And you are Sigma, the bastard who started this all."

I have to check my makeup one last time. Are there red smudges anywhere beyond my lips? None, okay. I finally mastered applying this fucking liner on my eyelids! The pencil’s too sharp and it drags the skin. I hate this product. You want it? It’s yours. It’s Rev- Revlon, right? Yeah, Satsujin bought it from the Makai. Wonder how he gets there, with the portal and all…

It feels weird to be performing for the first time. I will have a hard time squinting into the effects screen and the audience in the dark. And I’m not comfortable with these heels, they’re so high! I still find it strange of me to have stayed here for six months of training…

It’s still a strange idea to me to pay for entertainment, for pleasure… no, I’m not that ignorant! It’s just that I don’t really go to taverns that often --- a few drinks and I’m out the door, because I hate getting plastered. I don’t listen to music either because I like silence better, just me up a tree and a breeze whispering little promises to me while I stared at my tear gem. You didn’t know? I’m a Koorime. Half. I lost the fucking tear gem years ago. It looks like the one Maryam has, yeah.

Speaking of her, I’m surprised that she’s not afraid of me. She’s even sympathetic to my goals in life --- master this jagan to find the gem, my twin sister, and my homeland. And yeah, kill the bitches who live there, and finish the job I fucked up before I got here. She even offered to help. She started teaching me her fighting techniques --- Koorime techniques, mind you. She’s been watching me practice what I was doing with Satsujin on the side --- trying to summon a kokuryu or two. Intently. Odd Koorime, she was nodding knowingly as Satsujin keeps telling me that he summoned a dragon once but it wouldn’t pledge loyalty to him. The fire dragon told him that his Youko side is treacherous, but since I don’t have Youko blood a dragon might become loyal to me. As if it would matter to her, having not a drop of lava in her veins…

Hn. Satsujin. He’s the whole package. He actually tucks me into bed and kisses me on the jagan before I go to sleep, never mind that I’m on the deck above him and that he had fallen from the ladder a couple of times. He never stops giving me chocolate cake on the sly, cake that he baked himself, and he took me on shopping sprees several times already. He always saw to it that I was included in every game the kids would play. He would just hug me out of the blue, give me butterfly kisses, ruffle my hair as if it weren’t unruly enough.

But he’s also the bastard who would crack a whip at you as you dance and strip in front of him. He will fuck you with his battering log of a cock while you’re upside down and propped on your hands, all in the name of learning. He’ll make you do thirty laps around his territory and fifty sword katas for warm-up before training, make you do the brothel’s books without a calculator nor abacus, and force you to finish Marquis de Sade in French in four hours or less. He even made me balance two trays --- twenty full cocktail glasses on each --- while I walked up a hill.

You’re either lucky or not in life, right? You already know I’m not.

But I think Eros, whoever he was, whatever kind of son he was to him as whispered about by the others, was both.

Another thing I still don’t understand is… why I like my job now.

You would probably bring up the earnings I get every night. Let’s calculate. I get an average of, um, ten customers a night, and I usually spend a quarter hour with each on average. So that would be around… seven and a half hours, so multiply it with my rate of a hundred gold pieces per hour… so seven hundred fifty gold pieces for a trainee. A night. I earned about fifty gold pieces per task as a mercenary.

But high earnings are not enough to make you satisfied with your work. Whatever you do for a living must be something you enjoy. I was a hired killer because I enjoyed bloodshed. I didn’t like getting fucked. I told Satsujin first thing that I’m in it for the training.

The part of training that I really hate was when the kids here gave me… tests that would, purportedly, increase your awareness of the things around you as you screw. No matter how close you are to cumming, you must be able to answer any question --- or block any attack --- they would throw at you. I got blown several times after getting out of the shower, and all the while they were asking me questions about the war of the elves and centaurs! What was I supposed to answer? ‘ "Hmmn… one lowly centaur… fucked and killed a female Elven noble… shit, keep sucking!" ’?

I never understood what it was for until I met my first customer. The kids went on about the ugly monsters who took their virginities in the brothels they grew up in, and how gorgeous she is, and how lucky I am to be laying her. She looked fine, she looked normal to me. It seemed like the normal routine with women: compliment her body and looks as you lick her skin, suck her juices, let her scratch your back, grunt while you work like a piston inside her. That I did.

I didn’t hear her whisper that she likes rubbing her cunt on… um… handsome young males’ still-beating hearts.

What I saw was the dagger aimed at my chest.

I aimed it at hers.

I guess that’s why I like my job.

To make a long story short, I’ve almost completed my training. All that’s left for me to do is perform before this place’s patrons. You see these chains around me? This is my costume --- no, this is part of my costume. I will have to shift forms to complete it… ugh, damn.

There you go. I’m almost ready…

I don’t guarantee you that it would be good, okay? Watch me later. Tell me if I suck. Tell me if I should be booted out of here. Tell me what I have to do to be a whore worthy of the Porneapolis.

I’m starting to turn into a fountain of sweat. It’s washing off the oil from my skin. I hope it doesn’t drip into my eyes…

I don’t want to go out there.

But I must! Why the fuck am I turning back now? There are too many things to do after this. I have to train some more with Satsujin, with Maryam. I feel they haven’t taught me everything yet. The customers here… their ki are so powerful that they drip with energy when they’re drunk and they wouldn’t mind it a bit. I could get them to brag about their skills while we fuck. The bastards love doing that with us. I could filter through the rest of the bullshit they say in bed and practice whatever technique they describe later. The money won’t hurt either. Gold is as good a lubricant for tongues as Satsujin’s jelly is for assholes.

Imagine what I could do with all that power, that gold…

But I’m counting the chicks from the eggs too early. I still must go out there.

I will think of everything I want as I dance. I will think of my tear gem on a gold chain around my neck. I will think of a floating glacier in smoke and flames. I will think of a lovely vestal Koorime, oblivious to everything in her own territory of ice. I will think of a silver-haired youko’s bloody body atop a pile of other rotting ogres. I will think of a gilded, velvet throne…

"Hiei! You’re not Narcissus. Get your lovely butt out there. You’re next."

"I’m coming, Hajime!"

One last sentence before I get out there, my mirror image. You suck at conversation.