DebtLoop

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<<set $money to -10000>> <<set $interest to 5>> <<set $days to 1>> <<set $wellRested to false>> <<set $sleptToday to false>> <<set $iqGainedToday to false>> <<set $stamina to 200>> <<set $maxStamina to 200>> <<set $iq to 100>> <<set $beauty to 50>> <<set $promiscuity to 10>> <<set $domsub to 0>> <<set $dailyIncome to 0>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to 0>> <<set $runGoal to "">> <<set $runAudit to null>> <<set $venueStories to {version: 1, visits: {}, seen: {}, choices: {}, reading: {}}>> <<set $storyFlowState to {version: 1, offers: {}, attempts: {}}>> <<set $intVisits to 0, $intBJCount to 0, $intSexCount to 0, $intMeets to 0, $athVisits to 0>> <<set $interestPenalty to 0>> /% Smith's client assignments: refusing one makes him revise the terms. Own pool, separate from $interestPenalty, because the clinic's pool is capped at 3 and would swallow this. %/ <<set $refusalPenalty to 0>> <<set $daysSinceRefusal to 0>> <<set $assignClient to "none">> /% An accepted assignment is also an INTRODUCTION: Smith is the broker (NIGHT-REDESIGN §2.2), so a client he sends you to is someone you have now met. The night catalogue reads these flags to stop the same man being both "picked up on the street" and "sent by Smith". Phase A is additive only - no gate uses them yet. See docs/SMITH-NIGHT-SPLIT-2026-08-07.md %/ <<set $metGangster to false>> <<set $metRich to false>> <<set $metScientist to false>> <<set $metOwner to false>> /% MILESTONE "Smith the broker": the one moment he stops assigning work and trades you upward. Deterministic, once per run, mechanically weightless - it grants ACCESS, never stats. $smithShifts counts noon shifts at his office (one of the three triggers, §2.2). %/ <<set $smithShifts to 0>> <<set $brokerSeen to false>> <<set $brokerTarget to "none">> /% TERM REVISION - the pressure channel that reaches the careful player. Smith prices the schedule on an assumed capacity. Earning far above it proves the assumption wrong, so he reprices. Trigger is INCOME, not debt: it is the efficiency of the clean route that gives her away, which is why this reaches a player who never walks into his office voluntarily. Own pool, separate from $interestPenalty (clinic, cap 3) and $refusalPenalty (cap 5, decays) - the lesson from task 2 was that shared pools swallow each other. This one does NOT decay; it is lifted by meeting Smith's condition instead. %/ <<set $revisionPenalty to 0>> <<set $revisionCount to 0>> <<set $revisionDue to false>> /% 0.3 A2/A3: one-time Smith plateau milestones and the deterministic Slut counter. Both are display/state-only - keep mirrored in setup.ensureState (Interface.twee). %/ <<set $smithMile1 to false>> <<set $smithMile2 to false>> <<set $prom100Days to 0>> /% Scene-preview presentation only. It never feeds gameplay persona or stats. %/ <<set $previewVoice to "aware">> /% 0.3 run system: buff loadout state - the Contract screen writes here via setup.applyContract; mirrored in setup.ensureState (Interface.twee) for old saves. %/ <<set $buffs to {}>> <<set $buffRate to 0>> <<set $nightFirstPaid to false>> <<set $freeSurgeryUsed to false>> <<set $harborActive to false>> <<set $contractSel to {}>> <<set $contractBlood to false>> <<set $bloodRun to false>> /% 0.3 work-ending grid: shift counters for the three patched works ($smithShifts above counts the noon office). One-time telegraph flags fire on the 25th shift - the player must see the road open before it ends the run (A3 doctrine). Mirrored in ensureState. %/ <<set $receptionShifts to 0>> <<set $cafeShifts to 0>> <<set $teleSmith to false>> <<set $teleReception to false>> <<set $teleCafe to false>> /% 0.3 work-ending grid, wave 2 (2026-09-10): NSFW shift counters for bar, church, Burns office, model, webcam, library. Same doctrine as the first three: one-time telegraph on the 25th shift, the ending fires at 30 shifts while the debt is alive. SFW 40-shift graduations for these works arrive with their texts. Mirrored in setup.ensureState. %/ <<set $barShifts to 0>> <<set $churchShifts to 0>> <<set $burnsShifts to 0>> <<set $modelShifts to 0>> <<set $webcamShifts to 0>> <<set $libraryShifts to 0>> <<set $teleBar to false>> <<set $teleChurch to false>> <<set $teleBurns to false>> <<set $teleModel to false>> <<set $teleWebcam to false>> <<set $teleLibrary to false>> /% Buff runtime state (docs/RUNS-BUFFS): QUIET FLOOR-A "A Quiet Day" - a library shift arms a one-in-five-days interest freeze; CARETAKER-B "The Letter Box" pays $250 off the principal once per run, on the first 10th day (0.6 D8). Mirrored in setup.ensureState. %/ <<set $quietCd to 0>> <<set $quietFreeze to false>> <<set $exhibitSurgeryUsed to false>> <<set $richFirstDone to false>> <<set $candlePaid to false>> <<set $jobsWorked to {}>> <<set $lastOwnerLesson to 0>> <<set $maintCredit to 0>> <<set $smithTaskDeferred to false>> <<set $smithTaskDay to 0>> <<set $smithTaskPending to null>> <<set $popDay to 0>> <<set $arrangementShown to false>> <<set $sparkNoticed to false>> <<set $sceneCd to {}>> /% 0.3 Smith dispatcher + Eternal Debt (docs/SMITH-TASKS): the morning note, its cooldown, the one-time intro, the reward SMS, yesterday's income vs interest (the "too clean / stalled" trigger), and the 10-day money history that defines the Eternal Debt stall. Mirrored in setup.ensureState. %/ <<set $smithTask to null>> <<set $smithTaskCd to 0>> <<set $smithTaskIntro to false>> <<set $smithTaskMsg to "">> <<set $prevDayIncome to 0>> <<set $prevDayInterest to 0>> <<set $moneyHist to []>> <<set $stallCount to 0>> /% Surgery Counters %/ <<set $surgeryLips to 0>> <<set $surgeryBody to 0>> <<set $surgeryFull to 0>> /% Hidden Relation Stats %/ <<set $loanSharkPet to 0>> <<set $ownerVisits to 0>> <<set $petTaming to 0>> /% Night: highway / streetwalking ladder (WIP) %/ <<set $walkOffered to false>> <<set $trassaUnlocked to false>> <<set $trasaCount to 0>> /% Night: pimp / outcall branch (WIP) %/ <<set $pimped to false>> <<set $pimpDeclined to false>> <<set $outcallCount to 0>> <<set $pimpEarnings to 0>> /% Gallery (ported from Applicant Project) %/ <<set $gallery to { points: 0, unlocks: {} }>> <<set $patreonBonus to false>> <<set $Gallery to 0>> <<set $galleryReturn to "Morning">> <<set $prevPassageEnd to "Gallery">> <<set $lastGalleryMode to "Ending">> /% Internal version stamps (save migration / changelog plumbing) %/ <<set $gameVersionSeen to setup.gameVersion>> /% Helper Menu Variables %/ <<set $price to 0>> <<set $boost to 0>> <<set $type to "none">> /% Tally dialogue decks %/ <<set $deckSmithAlarmed to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckSmithCold to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckSmithPleased to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckSmithIndiff to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckJournalBroken to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckJournalGone to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckJournalSharp to [0,1,2].shuffle()>> <<set $deckJournalSlip to [0,1,2].shuffle()>>

{ "Identity": "DebtLoop", "Language": "English", "Tokens": { "AppApprove": "Approve", "AppCancel": "Cancel", "AppClose": "Close", "AppOk": "OK", "AppNo": "No", "AppYes": "Yes", "RestartTitle": "Restart Game", "RestartPrompt": "Restart the game? Your current run will be lost. Account unlocks are kept.", "SavesTitle": "Saves", "SavesLabelAuto": "Auto", "SavesLabelDelete": "Delete", "SavesLabelExport": "Export to File...", "SavesLabelImport": "Import from File...", "SavesLabelLoad": "Load", "SavesLabelSave": "Save", "SavesLabelClear": "Clear All", "SettingsTitle": "Settings", "SettingsLabelTheme": "Theme", "SettingsLabelOff": "Off", "SettingsLabelOn": "On", "AlertNoStoryData": "Error: Story data not found.", "AlertNoStoryTitle": "Error: Story title not found.", "AlertNoStartPassage": "Error: Start passage not found.", "UIBarLabelToggle": "Toggle UI Bar", "UIBarLabelBackward": "Backward", "UIBarLabelForward": "Forward" } }

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <<vid "endings-v3/freedom-" "01">> <h1>ENDING: FREEDOM</h1> The balance had been shrinking, the interest brackets falling with it. On the evening it finally reached zero, you read the account again to make sure. There was nothing left to accrue. You read the line twice: not a minus, not "until the next revision" - empty space. That is how the city tells you it is no longer interested in you. Smith came in person - for the first time. He does not come in person for anyone: people are fetched to him. He stood at your window, looking at the street, and spoke to the glass the way he speaks to a ledger: "The balance is paid. You have no further obligation to me. A car is waiting downstairs. Give the driver an address." Then, without turning: "The changes to your body are irreversible. Consider them a gift or a bad investment, as you prefer. There is no reason for you to return." You opened your mouth - and found nothing to say to the man who had counted every day of your life here. He waited exactly as long as his accounting waits - not at all - and went back to the view. You understood the hint. You packed what you had: it took about three minutes. Everything else they had done to you during your stay did not need packing - it came along on its own, in the body: the lips, the contouring, the posture, the habit of waking up already owing. The interest accrued in your sleep, too. Tomorrow morning - for the first time - it won't. The car really was waiting downstairs. Anywhere you say. You stand on the sidewalk, and for the first time in all this time nobody within a block names your price - not out of mercy, but because the position has been closed. You won. What you kept is yours: your mind, if you managed to save it; your pride, if any is left. Congratulations: you made it. Of everyone who has walked through that door - a handful. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<vid "end/slave" 3>> <h1>DEFEAT: YOU ARE PROPERTY</h1> The final warning arrived with a balance you could no longer hope to earn back. Interest added thousands while you worked. Then they came for you - at night, while you slept, no knocking, two cars. Smith did not sell you to anyone: the firm has thousands of debtors, and their paper leaves in bulk. The one-off pieces he keeps for himself. The surgeon finished everything you hadn't gotten around to with your own hands - at the same speed, with the same faint disgust he had when taking payment in kind: fast, rough, not counting you as a person even then. Lips, contour, the Doll - the set you had thought of as a last resort. It turned out to be a consumable. By day the words burned you clean, by night they taught the body. They hardly beat you: why, when slower things worked. The voice in the headphones praised you - for obedience, for speed, for understanding less; you earned that praise the way you used to earn tips. By the end of the course you could no longer tell what you were being praised for - and stopped looking for the difference: the question "for what" was burned out among the first. Now your every opening performs a single service - to be an obedient vessel for other people's lust - and performs it reflexively: the body responds before you can remember that it once decided for itself. The personality is gone; what remains is meat, registered to Mr. Smith. In the book, one line: "converted to property." There is no further calculation in that column. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "end/bimbo" 6>> <h1>DEFEAT: EMPTY DOLL</h1> It did not happen at once - two points a day, unnoticed, the way a roof leaks. The diary got worse and worse: first the numbers tangled, then the words, then you stopped checking - "my head is all soft and warm today, like pink marshmallow in the sun; money is just silly numbers I always forget to count." You reread entries from a week back and did not recognize their author. Smith noticed before you did - he always notices first. He put a sheet of paper in front of you and said: "Will you sign?" The word was short, and you recognized it, and you signed - because short words still worked. What was on the sheet, you never finished reading: the long lines crawled away like ants. You cannot say of a cloud that it recognized the terms as predatory. A cloud just puts down a squiggle. The clinic completed the shape: lips - into a permanent smile, contour - into caricature, everything as prescribed for the "doll" class. The girl in the mirror is always laughing now; you look at her, and you are both amused, and it is hard to say which of you is the reflection. The body has become hypersensitive - every touch hums like a live wire. Serving men for money is no longer work but a warm purring: they are pleased, you are pleased, the tips flow. Despair is when you understand where you have ended up; you have nothing to despair with. Between fear and delight you consistently choose the second - and the choice is not even yours: it was made for you in the procedure room, and you were left the pleasant part. Fun. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "end/slut" 7>> <h1>DEFEAT: FINAL DOWNFALL</h1> There is no graceful way to say "I didn't notice": the warnings were there every evening. The bar lit up "100" - and a timer appeared in the frame: day one, day two, day three, red on black, every evening, in large type. Four evenings in a row you read it. Four evenings in a row you closed it and stayed - for one more client, for a night shift, or simply because going home was boring. On the fifth, the morning screen did not come on. The break happened somewhere around the second day: money began to seem beside the point. You caught yourself counting not sums but touches - remembering the way they looked at you instead of what they paid. A stranger in an alley, the guy from the third floor, two men by the bar: desired is also a role, a hole for pleasure is also a compliment, if you think it through properly. You thought it through. It helped. Now you take it wherever it happens: in cars without counting, on stairways between floors, in storage rooms, in the bar's toilet - through the wall from the queue washing their hands. Sometimes for money, more often just like that: the pull between your legs grows stronger as night approaches, and that feeling matters more than rent. You no longer choose - you get chosen, and there turns out to be a kick in that too. The debt has not gone anywhere - it drips on somewhere, in the book you no longer open. Even Smith did not come to revise the terms: what is the point of pressing on a girl who already lies at the bottom and says thank you. You are the queen of the alleys and the brothels, cut off from the life you used to call normal; the crown is smeared lipstick, the scepter is someone else's zipper. You like it. That is the most frightening part - if anyone were still asking the question. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "end/subblack" 4>> <h1>DEFEAT: THE GANGSTER'S SHADOW</h1> Every meeting was an examination, and the rules were never issued to you - never. Said one word too many - a minus. Hesitated - a minus. Smiled at the wrong time - a minus, but you never knew when "the right time" was, and you learned from your mistakes the way one learns a language in a country where everyone is deaf. He did not praise what you passed: the next test simply got harder, and that counted as encouragement. You collected his silences - no other recognition exists in his currency. After all those silences, he finally asked you for something permanent. "Stay," he said. "Be mine." Three words - a manifesto by his standards, a signature by yours, under something irreversible. You stayed. The door was open - his door is always open, that is his rule, the money on the table, the door open, a word worth more - and you did not walk out of it. That was a test too, and you finally passed it. After that you finished everything yourself, voluntarily: the transformations you had postponed for months; the habits you pieced together from his silences as if following blueprints. You burned the intelligence down on purpose - he likes it when you understand less; his praise is made of damage, minus two points for a "good girl", and you earned precisely that, squaring yourself under the praise like under a scope. In his mouth "dumb doll" is not an insult - it is matching the goods to the demand. The demand is for the obedient. You are that demand, satisfied by your own hands. You no longer receive money - there is no need: he maintains what he kept for himself. The days pass in his shadow: the nights behind the restaurant where the table is laid after closing; his hand on the back of your neck - a sign that needs no words; the rare guests to whom you are shown the way weapons are shown. You are his own "foot doll", his obedient shadow. His highest praise is silence. You live inside the longest silence in the world, and it fits you like a home. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "female/free/" 5>> <h1>DEFEAT: FREE USE</h1> You went to those seminars for the money - "free use", a decent enough pub, they serve wine, they explain the world. The truth sinks in slowly, the way everything honest does: for months, drop by drop, until one evening you are empty of objections. That night the offer came as it always did - in passing, half a question, the hand already extended - and you reached for the word "no". And did not find it. In its place something smooth, pre-polished, clicked and settled into position, and you smiled and nodded. You never went looking for "no" again: where would you put it - the shelf was taken. The mechanism is simple and does not break. Any offer flips the lever - instantly, no pause for deliberation: in a hotel between floors while the elevator runs; in the bar's toilet, through the wall from the queue; at the party where you are passed from hand to hand like the remote - and everyone has their own button, and everyone presses it with pleasure. You are always ready - with your mouth, a pose, a lifted skirt, whatever they say. The shame held out for about two weeks; then it was written off as unnecessary. The role has become your whole life: public property, a flawless instrument, available to everyone. It is even convenient - the city liked it: no negotiating, no paying third parties, no asking. You are not asked - that is now your most recognizable feature, as distinctive as a hairstyle. Sometimes, already in strangers' hands, you have time to think: the seminars were right. Women are made for the pleasure of those around them - this woman, at any rate, certainly. The thought arrives easily, without resistance, like everything in you now. You are always ready. That is what you are. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "female/rich/owned" 6>> <h1>DEFEAT: HOUSE PET</h1> Three faults made you valuable to him: too empty-headed to plan, never one to refuse, too carefully remade to pass unnoticed. He reviewed Smith's figures, inspected you in person, and bought the contract without haggling. Smith was glad to remove your name from his books. The estate is comfortable and remote. Your uniform covers almost nothing, and your only duty is to appear when called. At receptions, guests understand your place immediately. You stand beside his chair with your back straight and a pleasant smile while he invites them to admire what he owns. By then, the word *no* no longer reaches your mouth. The drugs finish what the surgeries began. Your thoughts become shorter; your body settles into the proportions he ordered. He learns every fear and appetite you have, then uses them until obedience feels easier than wanting anything of your own. No one uses your old name. He gives you a short nickname, easy to call across a room, and you answer without hesitation. The house staff feed you, dress you, and return you to his side. You have become exactly what he paid for, and there is nowhere else you remember wanting to be. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "car/sex" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: QUEEN OF THE HIGHWAY</h1> Somewhere between the hundredth car and the next one, you stopped waiting for the night this ends. The debt is still out there, a number in Mr. Smith's ledger, but it stopped being the point a long time ago. The point is the curb, the cold, the slow crawl of headlights choosing you out of the dark. You know this stretch of road better than you ever knew the person who first walked it - every pull-off, every regular, every trucker's timetable. The other girls call you a queen, half-joking, half not. You own this shoulder of the highway the way a stray owns an alley: completely, and with nothing to show for it. No pimp ever caught you, no mansion swallowed you - you simply became the work, one transaction at a time, until there was no seam left between the woman and the trade. When the sun comes up you'll sleep; when it sets you'll be back at the guardrail, thumbing your lipstick straight, watching for the next set of lights. It's the only kingdom you'll ever rule, and it rules you right back. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "slut/gang" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: JUST A WORKING GIRL</h1> There was never a single day you decided this. There was just a first address, and then a hundredth, and somewhere in between the word for what you do stopped stinging and started fitting. Vince keeps you busy; the debt to Mr. Smith crawls along in the background, technically still yours, practically forgotten. You are a working girl now, in the plainest sense - no queen of any highway, no rich man's pet, nothing with a story to it. Just a number in Vince's phone, a reliable earner, a body that shows up when the text comes. The city has a slot shaped exactly like you, and you have settled into it, and the settling is the saddest part of all: it doesn't even hurt anymore. You wonder, sometimes, in the gray minutes before sleep, what you were saving yourself for, back when you still bothered to save anything. Then the phone lights up, and there's another address, and the wondering, like everything else, gets billed by the hour. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<vid "slut/double" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: VINCE'S BEST GIRL</h1> You could have walked. That's the joke of it - the door was never locked, the church was right there, day work was always an option. But every night you told yourself one more, just until the debt's clear, and every night the biggest cut of what you earned went into Vince's pocket, and slowly the arrangement stopped being a job and became a leash you'd buckled yourself. You've made him rich - richer than Mr. Smith's interest ever cost you. You don't work for the money anymore; you're not even sure where the money goes. You work because Vince says work, and the small, proud flare you feel when he calls you his best girl is the only wage you still bother to cash. He owns you now, bought in installments you paid yourself, and there is no ledger left to clear - just him, and the next call, and the warm, awful relief of being told exactly what to do. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <<vid "endings-v3/girlfriend-" "01">> <h1>ENDING: ALMOST NORMAL</h1> He came into your life carrying a gym bag instead of a contract. In this city, a body like yours is usually treated as something to buy. He started by training you, then began to notice the person beneath the physique he was helping you build. You told him everything - the rate, the nights, the book - in one sitting, whole, for the first time. He listened without interrupting, and said: "Right. Let's count it again." He took over your debt the way a club buys a good player out of a bad contract: the rate was cut, the deadlines cancelled, the revisions closed. Love with an aftertaste of accounting - he reads your bills like a training plan and gets as angry at the interest as he does at sloppy technique. With his protection you found a place as an instructor at a gym: legal, on a schedule, with a name on the badge. In the evenings you come home - to a home where someone is waiting for you because he wants you there. Your trained body has demands of its own - and you give yourself to him willingly, daily, sometimes twice: is it gratitude? habit? heavy lifting? - you no longer tell them apart, and do not want to. He is diligent, careful, and sincerely believes he is saving you. Perhaps he is. The debt still hangs - but a manageable one, like a mortgage for normal people; the freedom is not complete, but for the first time you have a tomorrow without interest on fear. A quiet harbor in an insane city. He calls what is between you "our victory" - and you do not argue. For the first time - not out of obedience, but because you agree. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> /% ===== 0.3 WORK-ENDING GRID (docs/WORK-ENDINGS-2026-08-21.md) - text-only by author's decision; RU etalons approved 2026-08-21, EN synced the same day. ===== %/ <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: THE PERMANENT ASSISTANT</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/aide-" "01">> The morning your balance first reads zero, Smith does not congratulate you. He slides a single sheet across the desk instead - not a receipt. A contract. An assistant position. Salary, hours, and a desk that has apparently been yours for a month already. "You know how this office works," he says. "I would prefer to keep someone who does." You are free. That is the technical term. The car is still waiting outside; you can see it from the window. But you know the schedule better than he does now, and somebody has to keep the ledger while he is upstairs, being owned by somebody else. A month in, he trusts you with your first interview: a new debtor sits across the desk, wringing her hands and answering exactly the way you used to - about the layoffs, about the rent, about how it's "just for a while." You fill in the fields, listen to the sickeningly familiar intonations, and catch a thought inside yourself that is pure Smith - not pity, arithmetic: can she keep paying, or will she have to be written off. That same Friday he asks you to stay late, unpaid, for the first time. You agree without asking why. An assistant who asks "why" is just one more debtor. You take the desk. The pay is honest, the hours are long, the coffee is terrible. Some nights you catch yourself reading client files as he once read yours: collateral, capacity, risk. You understand him now. The cage door stands open, but you stopped noticing it around the same time you stopped checking the interest rate. It was never locked. It simply became home. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: A PLACE IN THE SUN</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/place-in-the-sun-" "01">> The debt closes on a Wednesday; on Thursday a plastic card with your name appears at the desk - without the word "temporary." That is how you become a permanent member of the office staff: moderate heels, your own coffee, your own calendar, a desk where people bring their problems and leave a little poorer. You hold the desk better than the women who sat there for years - you know what people look like when they lie, when they beg for an extension, and when they have already decided not to pay. You have been all three. One day you catch yourself laying out the department the way you once laid out your week: who is an asset, who is a liability, where the risk sits and at what rate. The skills, it turns out, never left. Pragmatism, cynicism, the ability to price people and numbers - everything those weeks left behind in place of nerves and illusions - is a resume no business school graduate has. Smith, without ever planning to, gave you the best business education in the city. You paid for it yourself - but now that education can work. You start your fight for a place in the sun - quietly, by the rules, on schedule. You take what nobody wants: receivables, delinquent clients, negotiations where you must smile and never let go. You collect in two weeks from a firm that has owed the company for six months - you know how to talk to debtors the way somebody once talked to you: calmly, with figures, without a single threat. At month's end they call you by name at the meeting for the first time. By quarter's end you ask for a transfer off the desk. They don't agree right away. You know how to wait - you learned that here too. Ahead of you: positions, salaries, commissions, a future where money stops being a worry; the first step is under your feet, and the step is yours. You still count interest in your head faster than a calculator - habit. Sometimes, talking to the next debtor, you hear Smith in your own intonation, and it doesn't frighten you. The debt taught you the main thing: you know the price of everything in this building. It's your turn to set the price. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: HER OWN TABLE</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/her-table-" "01">> You bring Smith the last payment in coins and small bills - honest little money, the kind his ledger barely notices. He counts the coins twice: not out of doubt - out of habit. Then he closes the file and says nothing. Of all your victories, this one is closest to him: minimal drama, exact sum. The cafe never once gave you a normal life - it only lent you the shape of one for a shift. You came in the mornings to borrow: coffee that construction workers drink like medicine and clerks like communion; the old man with his chamomile tea, leaving his change in a neat little tower; tips you didn't have to wash off afterward. "It's the closest thing I have to a neighborhood," you wrote once. Nobody here ever looked at you like a line item. In this city, that's nearly tenderness. The debt is dead - and the shape of a normal life, borrowed so many times, suddenly fits. The owner agrees to hand the place over to you on installments. You read every clause: you know what credit is, better than anyone in this city - and that is exactly why you sign. Budget, schedule, suppliers - what you once used to sort your own week now sorts the cafe. You count the small change yourself. The smile holds. A year on, the bell rings at your door, the espresso machine hisses behind the counter, a young couple at the window shares one pastry - and their problems look so small it hurts to watch. The old man with the chamomile sits in his place; you count his little tower into your own register. The apron is yours, with your name embroidered - not a uniform, and not a label. The cafe lent you a normal life for all those shifts. Now you keep it. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: PRIORITY ADJUSTMENT</h1> Smith did not revise the rate - revision is for people who still choose. He closed the book and took up sculpting. The tools stayed the same: the clinic at the end of the street, the room where slow patterns turn on the walls, the headphones whispering warm arithmetic, a little time. The debt stopped being a sum and became material. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 1>> The finished piece is the perfect assistant. Beautiful enough to be the face of the office: meeting debtors at the door, glowing in the "our team" photo on the website, serving coffee so that everyone watches the hand. Smart enough to run his calendar, keep names straight, read his handwriting, handle the simpler correspondence. Dumb enough to make no plans: the thought of running away never forms. You peek into other people's folders, but the figures refuse to add up to a plan. And obedient enough to be a personal toy - his, and the office's chosen guests'; all three holes, no discussion: discussion was switched off somewhere in the second course of headphone sessions. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 2>> He uses you often, mostly for his own pleasure. You are under the desk while he dictates letters: you open his trousers, take him in your mouth and hold him - quiet, wet, tongue moving in time with his phrases; now and then his palm presses your head down and you take him deeper, drooling, without interrupting the dictation. You are on the couch when the door is locked - usually from behind, face in the pillow, skirt over your back, while he reads his mail over your shoulder. You know how not to disturb a conversation, how not to drop the pen when you are taken from behind over the desk. Sometimes you are a bonus: for a distinguished partner, a valued client; Smith nods, and you already know where to go - you put on the lingerie he picked, and in the room you do everything you know, down to the last trick. Sometimes you are consolation: a deal has fallen through, a man is tired; they tell you "be gentle," and you are gentle until morning - licking him from the balls to the tip until he falls asleep. You stopped noticing a long time ago. It's like tea: poured - you drink. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 3>> The carrot is the role you learned best. You kneel between a debtor's legs and suck him - slowly, sweetly: first licking along the whole length, then taking him deep, balls cupped in your palm, eyes up, with the tenderness that glazes a man's eyes and curls his toes inside his shoes. And Smith, from behind his desk, in an even voice, tells him about the raised rate, the new interest, and the coming "forcible collection." The debtor takes the bad news gripping your hair, and nods to every point - nodding is easier than talking. He usually comes exactly on the word "collection"; you swallow to Smith's short nod, without breaking protocol. Bad news goes down easier when the face and the mouth are good. Debtors sign without reading. Some come back on their own now - to renew the contract. And you. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 4>> One case stayed with you. You were asked to give the best blowjob of your life - "a farewell gift," Smith said, and explained nothing. You worked it like an exam: swallowing him to the base and holding, throat working; mouth and hand together; tongue circling the head; changing rhythm without letting him out, doing everything that dozens of clients had drilled into you. At the end he sobbed, and you took every last drop and licked your lips gratefully. A week later that debtor underwent a sex change - the clinic can arrange that - and a new girl appeared in the office: confused, new lips, old eyes. Now it's not so boring anymore: there's someone to talk to over coffee about lipstick, heels, the boss. Tee-hee. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: STAFF CARE</h1> Smith sells the debt to the firm the way overdue paper is sold: quietly, on a working Tuesday, between two signatures. On paper, only the creditor changes. You owe the company: an ordinary money debt, transferred to accounting, serviced on schedule. But the schedule does not assume you will ever close it: quotas, payments, fines, bonus deductions - all of it calculated before you arrived. You read the new section of the contract and look for something to correct. There is nothing to correct. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 1>> Management noticed long ago that an available woman in the workforce raises productivity. Some of the girls tried it, but you are the golden combination: no longer much good for anything else, flawless in this one. You are transferred to the Staff Care sub-department. Officially you are an HR specialist: a badge, reports, meetings on schedule. In practice, you are available to the whole office: free and compliant. When there is no work, you do your old duties; at any moment someone may walk up to you to "release some stress," and it is not a request. A missed weekly quota is a fine added to the principal; a complaint about "service quality" costs you your bonus. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 2>> You get taken along often: parties, corporate events, meetings, trips. They no longer need to spend money on girls - you travel on the business budget. The instructions are brief: look tidy, presentable, seductive. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 3>> Availability and compliance go without saying - they sit in the job description, one line above the dress code. Day after day. Cock after cock. That is how your life runs now, and in the ledger it has a tidy name. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 4>> The rate drips on, the debt shrinks slower than the fines grow, but that is no longer the main account. And recently management decided that letting you go home for the night is lost profit. Something is being discussed behind closed doors; nobody asks you - nobody consults the property. You don't know what they will invent. You only suspect you won't like it. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: UNDER THE TABLE</h1> Your cafe does not buy you - it has no budget for you. Smith sells the paper through an acquaintance, the way things are sold when there's no room for them at home: quickly, at no discount, without malice. The new place is themed, and the approach there is called Japanese. A mirrored floor. Waitresses without underwear. Looking is allowed. Touching, if you feel like it, is allowed too. Everybody feels like it. The costumes change with the days of the week: students, nurses, bunnies; the audience loves maid days most - on Tuesdays the queue starts at opening. <<vid "end/undertable/" 1>> The manager calls it "service culture." The audience grows, and the culture grows with it: a new option appears - you can be ordered to a table. You sit down among the guests and chirp about this and that - the weather, the pastries, how nicely the apron fits you - and they touch you. By accident and on purpose. A palm settles on your hip, fingers take a walk along your thigh, a stranger's hand slides along your arm as if by chance. The quick ones cop a feel of your chest on the sly. The shameless ones put a hand between your legs - right through the conversation, without interrupting it. You get used to it faster than you are ready to admit. You realize you can play this game too. <<vid "end/undertable/" 2>> And so now, from time to time, you yourself jerk off a guest under the table while you sit at it: smiling easily, nodding, keeping up the talk about his business - while under the tablecloth your hand works, steady and warm, without pauses. The tips at those tables triple. The manager notices. The manager approves: initiative, he says, is rewarded here. <<vid "end/undertable/" 3>> For you and a couple of others they open a new cafe - bigger, with a separate hall and booths. The costumes are the same, maid days still break records, only now you sit mostly not at the table but under it: you suck off the guests while they eat, discuss business, or compliment the establishment. Your name is still written in chalk on the board - no surname. Your knees survive the mirrored floor: they laid a runner along the tables. Care. Service culture. <<vid "end/undertable/" 4>> Sometimes it is quiet under the table, and you have time to think. You wonder: should you go further and start using the lower half too - they've already asked, up there - or would that only make it worse? The question hangs under the tablecloth with you. You don't know the answer yet. <<vid "end/undertable/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: THE RESULT</h1> In the menu of procedures, next to the Ideal Doll, there is now a struck-through line: finished, nothing left to perfect. It is the most honest line you have ever read here. The debt, meanwhile, is alive - and not only Smith's: they opened financing for the lips, the contouring and the Doll - "not an offer but a forecast" - and the forecast came true to the cent. Smith sells the paper to the clinic at a discount the administrator calls professional courtesy: you are, she explains, already mostly their work. <<vid "end/theresult/" 1>> On paper you hold the title of "star of the establishment" - the receptionist with the motionless face rated your potential at your first visit; the potential has been realized. You live at the clinic, in white, as if inside a tooth. The duties are simple: to be. To stand at presentations, to sit in on consultations with hesitant patients - the administrator walks them up to you like a display stand: "this is what our financing makes possible." You smile with lips whose consent-shape was installed at rest. <<vid "end/theresult/" 2>> The before-and-after wall. Your pair hangs in the center, under its own light. New patients do what you once did: search for the seam between the two women, the place where one became the other. There is no seam on your photographs - dozens of women have searched and failed, and that is exactly why your pair was hung in the center. The girl on the brochure laughs at something outside the frame; that is your face now. You are photographed as the result. <<vid "end/theresult/" 3>> The account is kept from the inside: maintenance, preventive procedures, follow-up treatments - all of it added to the principal the clinic bought from Smith and repriced on its own terms. Five hundred for the lips, fifteen hundred for the contour, three thousand for the Doll - of "everything you have left," nothing remains but the debt, and the debt will last a long time. <<vid "end/theresult/" 4>> Sometimes, between displays, you still find in yourself the one who knew exactly what was being sold. The knowing is the only part not on display. It is also everything they left you. <<vid "end/theresult/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: COMMON PROPERTY</h1> Your obedience is the best thing left in you, and its pedigree is long: the gangster drilled you with tests and praised you for thinking less; the hypno room adjusted your priorities; the machine topped it off; the cafe, the library, the reception desk - each added a degree and went its own way. The list of your teachers is longer than the list of your debts. The list of your owners is empty: "today" was enough for everyone; nobody asked about "forever." You can no longer find the word "no" in time. Your mouth has already said yes before a refusal begins to form. <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 1>> Smith sells your paper for one dollar: he needs to close the position before the quarterly report, and you are listed in it as "uncollectible." That is the most accurate word he has ever said about you. The debt now lives in the dead portfolio of an office with no sign on the door - the accruals drip on, there is no collector. You exist without a ledger. <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 2>> For a while, your building holds you. It started small: the neighbor from the eighth asked for help with the groceries and stayed an hour. Then the concierge started a notebook - "so people don't crowd": Wednesday, fourth floor; Friday, the eighth; Sunday, "by arrangement." The key to your apartment moved to the concierge desk "just in case" and lay there on a nail, next to the spare storeroom keys. For now you still sleep in your own bed; the schedule is fitted around you, and in the building newsletter it is called "care for the residents." <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 3>> Within half a year, three neighboring buildings know about you. You get lent out like a tool or a projector: "for the evening," "until midnight." Payment goes onto your utility bills - the whole building chips in, a little at a time: it works out cheaper than a prostitute and kinder than a wife, the accountant from the seventh explained to you once, doing up his belt. The "household" envelope sits with the concierge; you take from it for stockings and small things. Nobody asks your consent - and nobody violates it either: your yes arrives before the question. <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 4>> At the annual meeting, your apartment is on the agenda - "on the question of status." Unanimously, without discussion: to declare it an open-access apartment. Only the decision is not about the apartment - it is about you, and everyone knows it. And you know it. But you no longer mind. <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: ETERNAL DEBT</h1> One evening the tally comes and goes and nothing has changed. Not the debt, not the rate, not you. Ten days of that is not a crisis - a crisis moves. What you have is equilibrium: the interest eats exactly what the city pays you, the city pays exactly what the interest demands, and the woman in the middle breaks even with a precision Smith himself would have to approve. <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 1>> He does not foreclose. Foreclosure is for assets that fail; you merely persist. The revisions arrive on schedule, and each one eases the terms by just enough for the sum to stay precisely what it is. <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 2>> The city keeps you afloat - a cafe shift here, an office temp there, a night on the curb when the numbers require one - each just large enough, never a dollar more. You have become the line the machine can neither write off nor collect: self-servicing, permanent, carried. You know all the regulars now, and the regulars know the shape of your week. New girls sometimes ask how long it takes, and you do the sum in your head faster than the register - habit - and tell them the truth: it depends on which of you is doing the taking. <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 3>> Then you tie the apron, or answer the phone, or open the door when the knock comes, <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 4>> and the balance holds, and holds, and holds. The ledger keeps one line that never closes. It is written in your handwriting. <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> /% ===== WAVE 2 NSFW (2026-09-10): six venue endings, RU etalons approved (docs/WORK-ENDINGS-2026-08-21.md, "Wave 2"); EN synced same day. Same trigger shape as the first grid: 30 shifts while the debt is alive. ===== %/

<h1>DEFEAT: ON THE HOUSE</h1> The debt closed in the end - but not by you. The owner of the Crossroads met you halfway, weighing what the contract calls your reputation and service record. A five-year contract, most of it paid up front, to Smith, in cash. Smith counted it twice, signed, and let you go with the same short nod he used to accept your installments. That is how you changed owners: one of them had thousands of debtors; the other has one barmaid. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 1>> The change of owner went unnoticed by everyone, you included. The work kept its usual pace: you are still the soul of the place, the eternal barmaid - smiling, keeping conversations alive, breaking up the dockers' fights at eleven. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 2>> For tips you show your tits; for big tips you are ready to suck or bend over. It has long been part of the shift, between one beer and the next, and nobody in the hall minds - quite the opposite, everyone likes it, and the regulars help themselves freely, without embarrassment: one of their own. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 3>> The contract lies in the cash box under the delivery invoices: five years, a vacation schedule, all very grown-up. Five years is longer than your debt lived, and shorter than some Friday nights. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 4>> The new girls behind the oak bar aren't introduced to you - they figure out on their own who here is permanent. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 5>> Well, what can you do. The debt did have to be paid. <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 6>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: THE VOW</h1> The parish bought your paper not as a business - as a rescue. That was the announcement: the debt will be closed by service, the body untouched, the soul put in order. And they set to it honestly: schedule, prayers, work, Scripture lessons. You honestly tried - for about two weeks. Then the old urges returned. The liberties were small at first: a skirt two fingers shorter than allowed, sleeves rolled higher than candle duty requires, an extra arch in your back while washing the floor. Punishments followed punctually: the basement, the whip, the cup of clear water on the stone ledge. Then rebellions and punishments began alternating like shift and sleep - habituation arrived unnoticed: the body learned the rhythm and started to expect it. <<vid "end/thevow/" 1>> At first you didn't notice the young priest. Then you noticed your gaze lingering, that you found reasons to carry candles in his direction, that you lowered your eyes a second longer than humility requires. It burned from the inside - lust and shame in a single blend, familiar to the point of nausea. You prayed for the desire to pass, and asked the man who inspired it to pray with you. <<vid "end/thevow/" 2>> Then you stopped praying and decided. Deliberately, the way one decides a deal. Hints - and you watch whether he holds; approaches - and you watch again; a test of his resolve - and his resolve turned out to be not limitless, merely young. He gave in in the confessional, after the last confession of the day: old wood, dust, the carved partition - and you on your knees in the narrow booth, in the most familiar of your poses, for the first time not for money and not on orders. He came in your mouth, convulsively, clutching the partition, and called it his fall. You swallowed and didn't argue. <<vid "end/thevow/" 3>> The mother superior learned of it by the end of the week - a parish learns everything, usually from the same booth. The punishment was long and severe: the basement, bare back to the stone, her even voice counting the strokes. And somewhere in the middle, cheek pressed to the cold stone, you caught a thought you couldn't drive out: was any of it an accident? Wasn't it you who chose - the parish, the booth, the end of visiting hour? And didn't the punishment add... spice? <<vid "end/thevow/" 4>> The vow stands: remain and repent, for as long as the parish decides. The parish decided to keep saving you, now with double diligence. You don't object. The parish will keep saving you; you will keep falling - the very rhythm your body has already learned. <<vid "end/thevow/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: OVERTIME</h1> Smith tired of waiting before you tired of paying. The buyer turned out to be Burns - not out of pity: the department was losing its best temp, and "staff retention" is a line of expense that always balanced for him. He laid your paper out across the quarterly consolidation, four quarters, six accounts. You once found a six-digit error in that consolidation. Now a five-digit one is hidden in it, hidden better. They filed you under the Department of Social Support. On paper, an HR assistant: a pass, a job description, quarterly performance reviews, "team morale" in the duties column. In fact, you have a private office with a very convenient couch - leather, easy to wipe down, creaking just quietly enough not to carry into the corridor. You can be booked through the secretary, but most stop by after lunch without an appointment. Each wants his own thing: one, a quick one between meetings - skirt up, bend over, hands on the armrests, five minutes of rhythmic slapping, then straighten your stockings and back to the spreadsheets with a warm trace sliding down your thigh. <<vid "end/overtime/" 1>> Another wants your mouth without ever looking up from his report: you under the desk, undoing him, taking him deep, working unhurried, tongue along the whole length, in time with his reading, and swallowing without raising your eyes - he won't even turn the page while you do his work for him. A third lays his head in your lap, buries his face in your stockings and talks about his wife for half an hour, fingers toying with the fabric between your legs. A fourth needs everything, and longer: first you suck him looking up from below, holding your hair back; then he lays you on the couch, throws your legs over his shoulders and drives in to the hilt until the ceiling swims; then turns you around and takes you again, lazily, to the hum of the air conditioner; at the end he comes on your chest - you fold a napkin, wipe yourself, smile. In the office closet hang your spare blouses. Three. <<vid "end/overtime/" 2>> Events are a separate column in your schedule. You get reserved in advance, like a meeting room: client dinners, signings, corporate parties, off-site sessions with partners and investors. You are charming and refuse nothing, can hold a conversation in the guest's language, hold your liquor, and know how to play along with the theme. There's an investor who picks your lingerie the night before a signing - carefully, like a presentation: lace, colors matched to the brand, and he checks the fit with two fingers without stepping away from the mirror. There's a partner whose hotel room requires two of you: you and silence - he fucks you for an hour, silent and businesslike, like auditing a report. Most often the instruction is short: "see the client up to his room" - and you see him up: in the elevator his hand is already under your dress, on his floor you kneel on the carpet and open your mouth, and from there the room knows the routine. In quotation marks, and out of them. In the morning you're at your desk by nine, hair done, printouts ready. You're on staff, the bonuses flow, taxes paid. <<vid "end/overtime/" 3>> Weeks passed like that, then months. Habituation arrived without a date: the makeup bag settled in the desk drawer between folders, you learned how many minutes it takes to put your mouth back in order after a two-hour meeting, and how many times an evening you can refresh your lipstick before people start asking. You stopped blushing quickly; noticing took longer. Colleagues greet you, call you by name, bring you coffee when you have a session. <<vid "end/overtime/" 4>> Your work was noted faithfully: a bonus "for contribution to team climate," a commendation in the company circular, flowers on the eighth of March from the whole department, all together. A couple of years later the department expanded - the budget grew, and they hired new girls: young, inexperienced, somehow talked into this. They put you in charge. You are the mentor now, and you teach the practical classes personally: how to take it deep without choking - demonstrated on yourself; how to smile at a boring investor while he comes in your mouth; how not to ask questions when there are two of them in the office and you're between them; which lipstick doesn't stain trousers and doesn't smear on balls; how to keep your back straight - even when you're bent over the desk. The girls look at you with gratitude and the deference you once showed your seniors. You know this work better than anyone in the firm - from both sides of the couch. <<vid "end/overtime/" 5>> Your debt was paid off during the second year, quietly, one line in that same consolidation, and you never noticed the day. You didn't leave. Not that there was anywhere to go: the debt was long paid, and this was your first step up the career ladder - and by next year's budget, the ladder goes on. <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: SPECIAL ORDER</h1> The agency bought your paper from Smith and framed it as an extended release: full rights to your image, in perpetuity, "including but not limited to" - plus a line of fine print about the physical embodiment of the model. Smith got the balance in advance, against future seasons. The word "porn" was never spoken once. It didn't need to be: in the contract, "including but not limited to" replaced it entirely. The first months were catalog work: dresses, coats, thirty-two clean poses, tape marks on the floor, "commercial efficiency." Good, clean money; nobody asked for anything. Just a job that pays you for being beautiful - that's what it was called. <<vid "end/specialorder/" 1>> The move to lingerie was framed as a rate increase: same lights, same people, a hand's breadth less fabric, a third more pay. The industry calls this progress: the rate grows with every square inch the costume fails to cover. Fitting after fitting, the "accidental" lines of your bust engineered to the millimeter - the shame was taken off in layers, and no single day felt especially shameful. That was the trick. Then the "art project": oil, three mirrors, no costume at all. The director adjusts your hands - where to hold, how to open, on which frame to breathe; no men on set, just you, the oil, and the lens. Nothing felt different. Everything changed. <<vid "end/specialorder/" 2>> The first porn shoot was a logical step too: same studio, same light, "don't look at the camera," only the shot list named acts instead of poses, each marked required, with an actor introduced by his scene name. Triple the nude rate. You said yes without noticing that your yes no longer took part in the process: between "in lingerie" and "with a man on camera" there was not a single day where you decided anything. Then the subscription studio: eight clips a shift, escalating acts off a list, the director at the monitor correcting your moans, the angles, and the timing of your orgasm - the way he once corrected a pose in the catalog. Sex became takes: repeat, only livelier, and again - we're on the clock. <<vid "end/specialorder/" 3>> The gangbang arrived by the request table - viewers vote with money, and every completed item unlocks the next one, more extreme and more expensive. First "two" - a special stream; a month later "three" - an ordinary shift; "five" - a premium rate; "eight" - a seasonal release with a banner. The conveyor is tuned perfectly: mouth occupied, someone behind you, someone holding a leg, someone waiting alongside at the ready, like a tool at a machine; they assemble and disassemble you to an operations chart, wipe you down and turn you over between takes, and the director clicks the timecode and calls for "light on number two." By the end of the shift your body buzzes as though you have spent the day on an assembly line. This is the industry. <<vid "end/specialorder/" 4>> Not one day held a decision. Ten percent at a time - in pay, in exposed skin, in headcount; the line was never crossed, it was carried a little further every day, until it turned out you had long been on the other side, with a release on your whole body and a signed "including but not limited to." The catalog's last page is printed separately and mailed to a list; the item number on it is yours. You are for viewing. The views number in the millions. <<vid "end/specialorder/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: TRENDING</h1> Smith sold you to the streaming agency quickly and entirely - paper doesn't care what it's paid off with: a bedroom or a studio. They kept the nickname: the screen name already had a following. In the first week the agency removed the ceiling you had held onto throughout your time online: the solo stream ended, a second camera came into the room, a rack of toys, a list of formats. The erotic broadcasts alternated with the pornographic, and by the end of the month the difference was no longer mentioned in the stream description. Donation goals drove it all. A scale on the screen, a number, a progress bar: fill it - and the next goal unlocks the next thing. At first the goals were clothes and decency, then poses, then holes and guests. The list is finite; when the last line closed, the operator added one more on top - it was called simply "everything." <<vid "end/trending/" 1>> They assigned you an operator when the metrics plateaued. He never appears on camera: a voice in the earpiece, sometimes a hand entering the light - to adjust the stand, add lube, check the carabiner. He added assignments generously: hold the pose ten minutes, come on "three," don't come at all until the chat raises the sum; lick the toy clean and thank the camera. For anything undone - the collar: a light "corrective" shock, right there, live. He isn't cruel. Cruel men ruin metrics. He A/B-tests your moans like landing-page variants: two poses, two vibration levels, conversion decides. Conversion never sleeps, and neither do you. <<vid "end/trending/" 2>> Then he did the main thing - handed control to the chat. A menu on screen: seconds of vibration, intensity level, position, gag, "untie hands for one minute." The shock is the cheapest item, sold in bundles of ten; your pain turned out to be a common coin, denomination fifteen tokens. Permission to come sells at auction. The pause after an orgasm never sells - it isn't on the menu; the operator says "we need to see the reaction." A minute of silence - everything off - exists, but it's the dearest item on the list, dearer than guests and the auction together. Bought rarely, and briefly. Mercy in this chat is a luxury. <<vid "end/trending/" 3>> Guests - the "friend of the month": the subscription's top donor gets a part in the stream. He is usually nervous, loses the script, and comes sooner than the operator planned; the chat buries him in laughing emotes. Sometimes there are two or three guests - a special stream, a crowd shot, backs and cocks to the camera. And at night the operator sometimes ties you - cuffs, a carabiner to the radiator, a vibrator inside on minimum - and leaves. The stream stays on. For hours the "night mode" runs: you lie bound in the half-dark, the donation bar crawling slowly along, every few minutes strangers buying you seconds of pleasure or of shock, until morning; they wake you with the toy on maximum - the morning stream opens with your face. Sleep under the camera is the calmest thing left in the channel's grid. <<vid "end/trending/" 4>> A separate goal hangs on the screen: "buyout" - the sum at which the contract closes and you walk. The chat spends years raising money for it - freedom telethons, stickers with your face; when the bar finally reached the target, the agency "revalued the asset" and the goal was refreshed - seasonally, with a banner. The donation goals reached everything. Everything except one line. Sometimes, at night, in the cuffs, under the toy's hum, someone buys you a minute of silence. You never know who. There's no one and nothing to thank - you say "thank you" to the camera, in advance, to everyone. You no longer answer to the name on your bills; the screen name is louder. You are trending - no one can look away. <<vid "end/trending/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>>

<h1>DEFEAT: PRIVATE LESSONS</h1> The buyer turned out to be the tutoring agency - the same one that billed Smith for your lessons back when you had nothing to pay with. The only firm in town whose invoices he paid without a word; he even enjoyed the selling. They had run the margin long ago: he sells you thoughts and buys back the body, and the round-trip margin is his. Now they bought the whole round trip, equipment included. Nothing changed in the reading room except one door. The plate "PRIVATE LESSONS" used to mean your studies; now, behind that door, by appointment, others study. The student list matches the client list down to the last name: some take the full course - two hours of problems, then the desk; some come "No theory today," straight to practice. Hourly, prepaid, receipt in hand. The schedule is booked three months out: the city always wants to learn. <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 1>> Practice follows the classroom rules, and that is the whole course. The same timer that used to drill you through problems now ticks over the paid hour. "Again" - his word; you know it by heart. The client is given an assignment: demonstrate how to use your mouth; repeat - slower; hold the position to the count of "three"; do not finish before the command. They lay you on the massive desk over the covered pages - skirt up your back, notebooks to the floor - and the exam is taken right on top of the homework: for one, the mouth; for another, between the breasts onto the quiz; for a third, from behind, cheek on the open problem book. Come onto the corrected homework - and receive a check mark. <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 2>> Silence is the rule of the reading room, and it is the main one. No one moans here: your own "mmf" is swallowed by either the gag or your own palm - "no noise in the library," he whispers, the only line he speaks in an hour. The clients whisper too, when they come - vowels only, under their breath, as if apologizing to the readers. The quietest place in the city. Now you know what pays for that quiet. <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 3>> He grades everyone. The client gets a check mark in the journal. You get one too: "sufficient" - same journal, same drawer, same teacher. And the accounting is honest, wholesale: every private lesson costs you five points of intelligence, and the antidote - eight for two hundred - he sells you himself, same evening, cash. You keep going around: they pay to use you, then you pay to recover what the work has taken. The arithmetic never once asked what the goods were. <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 4>> You live at the library now - a closet behind the stacks, mornings in the card catalog, dust and the index, evenings behind the door with the plate. Smith's debt closed on the day of the purchase; no new one was opened - the agency carries no debts, it carries hours, and yours are fully scheduled. In the evening he puts a check mark - for you, in the journal. You press the notebook to your chest: the check marks must not fall out. In the reading room, perfect silence. <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 5>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> /% ===== WAVE 2 SFW (2026-09-10): the win graduations of the six venue works, 40 shifts + buyout. RU etalons approved (docs/WORK-ENDINGS-2026-08-21.md, "Wave 2"); EN synced same day. Four-frame SFW scroll pools integrated 2026-09-11: venue → work beat → narrative beat → dedicated final. ===== %/

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: LAST CALL</h1> The last payment is crumpled small bills out of the tip jar, smelling of beer and smoke. Smith closes the file without comment: your installments always arrived on time, and always in small change. <<vid "end/lastcall/" 1>> All those shifts made you part of the place. You could read the room in a single lap - who's drunk, who's dangerous, who is working up the nerve to say one thing too many; you put out the dockers' eleven-o'clock fights like clockwork; at closing you listened to the poet - the same four lines, always. They trusted you with the register and the key to the back door. It was a job, not a home: the goal lived in a different book the whole time. When that book closed, at the end of the week you took off the apron. <<vid "end/lastcall/" 2>> The first evening without you changed nothing: the jukebox plays the same nine songs, and behind the oak counter stands a new girl - thin, eager, mixing up orders the way you once did. By Thursday she'll stop mixing them up. By Friday the poet will be reading his four lines to her. Nobody memorizes waitresses' names at the Crossroads - they count them in shifts; you were one of a series, there will be others. The basement bar never noticed you leave - not out of cruelty: the only things it ever notices are short pours and fights. <<vid "end/lastcall/" 3>> You are free. It turned out to be like the end of a shift: you switched off the neon, walked out through the back door, and nobody called after you. <<vid "end/lastcall/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: THE CARETAKER</h1> The parish learned about your remaining balance from confession: that was where you listed the dates, the sums, and the acts - no euphemisms - while the priest behind the carved partition breathed evenly and never interrupted. A week later a slip of paper bearing a single initial appeared at the candle box. Small change, envelopes, bills rolled into tubes from the soup queue: in three weeks the box closed what your fifty-dollar evenings would have needed a year for. Smith received the transfer and closed the file; his book does not specify what kind of bills he was paid in. <<vid "end/caretaker/" 1>> You remember kneeling for hours in front of men - behind the bar, in booths, on the tile of strangers' bathrooms. Here you kneel too, and at first it was the same position: familiar, working. Until it got through to you: here kneeling is not a prelude to something else - it is the whole prayer. You remember your first prayer too - a negotiation: give me one clean month, the rest I'll handle; exactly like with Smith, same clauses, same fine print you never intended to keep. You had to start over, empty-handed: I'm tired, and I want to stop selling myself. It was the first sentence in a long time that had no price in it. Now your evenings are wax, candles, ledgers, the soup line: ladle, bowl, bread, next - two hundred people in three hours. None of them know what you did after dark, and the ones who know don't ask: you already said it out loud in the booth, and that closed the question. A shift pays the same fifty. When the dirt comes back at night, you go down to the basement before the priest can offer: bare back, the heavy whip, the cup of clear water on the stone ledge. You know pain from the other side - paid for with other people's money; this one you choose yourself, and that is why it cleans. <<vid "end/caretaker/" 2>> The ledgers hold baptisms, weddings, funerals: three columns for any life. You once caught yourself thinking yours would have fit into three, and taken less room than most - now you have a page past the third column too. Tuesdays are flowers at the side altar: you remember standing in front of someone else's white ones, unable to decide whether it was comfort or unbearable. Now you know. On your way out you drop a coin in the box - let someone's candle stand in for you while you're gone. <<vid "end/caretaker/" 3>> You are free, and in your case that is a schedule: Tuesdays - flowers, Thursdays - ledgers, evenings - candles and the floor. The only building in the district where nobody ever tried to price you has been given to you for indefinite use. Forgiveness did not turn out to be innocence - it turned out to be permission to walk back in without pretending you never left. You keep that to yourself - and you keep the door open. <<vid "end/caretaker/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: PART OF THE FURNITURE</h1> Smith closed the book on a Tuesday; nobody on the gray floor learned about it. That evening you handed in the quarterly report, Burns set his stamp on it, and the vending machine dispensed your third cup of the day. Freedom arrives as the absence of another charge. <<vid "end/furniture/" 1>> You came to the next shift because the shift was on the schedule. And a week later, and a month later. The gray floor never noticed the debt, or its disappearance: the only place in the city that never asked what you do after dark - and never will now. The pay still rewards what you know - the only rate card in your life where your rate grows with thoughts, not with clothes coming off. <<vid "end/furniture/" 2>> The word "temporary" stayed on your badge. They never offered you a staff position, and you never asked: temporaries aren't fired and aren't promoted - they simply keep being called in, shift after shift, until the walls get used to them. You know where the archive key hangs, which water cooler gurgles, which nights Burns's window stays lit. The new ones take you for staff - they ask you for forms, directions, the password to the old printer. You explain patiently, pointing out where everything is. <<vid "end/furniture/" 3>> Through all those shifts Burns barely seemed to notice the woman behind the work. He is the only man in the city for whom you are neither a price nor an asset - just a line of expense, like the coffee in the machine. Once, a switched-off monitor showed you a tired ordinary office worker, and you held on to that image like a photograph of yourself you could become again. Now you don't have to hold on: the monitor can be switched off any evening - the reflection stays. They moved you twice - like a cabinet, when they rearranged the floor plan. You didn't object: furniture has no opinion, and that is the only peace this city ever gave away free. You are free, and you stand by the wall where they put you. <<vid "end/furniture/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: THE FACE</h1> You paid off the debt with photo shoots - honest work, if not spotless. You started late, your proportions don't fit runway samples, and in the first year the one constant was the tape marks on the floor between the lights. The catalog paid for "commercial efficiency," and efficiency grew with every square inch the costume failed to cover - you remember that rate table better than any accountant. There was enough of the dirty along the way: frames you still blush at slightly, and a couple of orders you simply don't tell anyone about. But you always knew your line exactly - and paid only with what you were willing to show. <<vid "end/face/" 1>> The good job found you by itself. A trading company was looking for the face of a campaign - not a top model, but "a person people believe": that kind of advertising sells better than glamour. Test shoots, a second round, a tenth; on the eleventh the art director jabbed a finger at your freeze-frame: "That's her." You never did understand what exactly he saw. Then you stopped asking. <<vid "end/face/" 2>> You don't fit the usual casting brief, but viewers remember you anyway. Perhaps it is your gaze: a little tiredness, a little understanding in the eyes of a woman who knows what money costs and doesn't pretend not to. That can't be taught and can't be glued on - buyers believe faces like that. In the brand stores they already wear your shade of lipstick; you consider that the best review. <<vid "end/face/" 3>> The new manager builds your schedule a year ahead and repeats it like a mantra: the era of top-model beauties is passing, the market wants faces, not measurements - you have a future in front of the camera. You don't take his word for it; you were taught to check. But the contracts get signed, the rates climb, and you like the work. You started late - and it turned out, right on time. Of everything this city leaves its debtors, yours is the exit that comes with a portfolio. <<vid "end/face/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: THE CHANNEL</h1> Streaming began as a side income - a camera on a stack of books, broadcasts after your second shift. The streamer you used to watch, back before all of it, turned out to be right: it's easy for a girl to raise starting capital from subscribers; building a lasting audience is next to impossible. You tested it on yourself. The invisible ceiling, the platform's limits, an audience that comes for something other than what you want to give. You fought it for a long time. You held your one line firmly: the stream stayed solo - a ceiling, but yours. <<vid "end/channel/" 1>> The eras changed: you were a pick-me, a gamer girl, a cosplayer - each mask added viewers and took a piece of you. The audience grew when you stopped fighting to be a type and started appearing as yourself: moderately tired, sometimes complaining about life, prices, and the neighbors - a lonely girl who isn't hunting for attention and talks to the chat calmly, at arm's length, as you might talk to strangers sharing a long journey, without luring anyone in with fake love. Games, cinema, books, economics, politics - whatever you had encountered along the way. Not a know-it-all - but you stood your ground; sometimes you swore at the chat and lost your temper, because you were a living person. That, it turned out, is the scarcest content there is. <<vid "end/channel/" 2>> You settled into streaming without noticing it yourself: first a schedule, then regular segments, then people who came not for the show but for you. On the day the debt closed you said so live on air, and added that there was no point in streaming anymore. The audience's reaction stunned you. <<vid "end/channel/" 3>> You decided to stay. To this day the internet circulates compilations of your tears of happiness - you deny them and demand they be taken down. The screen name stayed the same; it's simply your name now. <<vid "end/channel/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if $Gallery neq 1 and not setup.runCanWin()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: this exit opens on day 35.</div> [[Return to the schedule|Morning]] <<else>> <h1>ENDING: QUIET FLOOR</h1> The debt closes without ceremony. You stay at the library because, for the first time in months, there is nowhere you have to hurry. <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 1>> Among the books and other people's stories, you found the relief you had stopped looking for in this city: a way to escape, step back, wait it out. The pay here is decent - it rewards your intelligence, and that still holds its value; you can read as much as you like; it is quiet. Nobody takes any notice of the librarian - and after a life in which everyone counted you to the cent, that turned out to be almost tenderness. <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 2>> For a woman tired of the race and the whoring, the library became the perfect cocoon: curl up, sink into calm work and astonishing stories. The card catalog, the dust, the stacks, somebody's century of living in four hundred pages. Sometimes you catch yourself going a whole day without once remembering the rate, or the deadline. <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 3>> Perhaps one day a prince will come for you and free you from the long sleep. Then again, to hell with princes: sooner or later you'll break out of here yourself - a butterfly, having saved up the strength to start a new life. But that's later. For now - the quiet, the pages, and all of it yours. <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 4>> <br><br> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">This file is closed. The drawer is not: the city keeps a whole cabinet of women who woke up owing - the same accident, the same ten thousand, the same patient man doing the arithmetic. Somewhere out there, the next name has just signed.</div> <<if setup.runsMeta().lastAward>><div class="dl-file-credit">LEDGER CREDIT: +<<print setup.runsMeta().lastAward>> IOUs · owned: <<print setup.runsMeta().points>></div><</if>> * <<link "OPEN THE NEXT FILE">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> * <<link "Back to the title">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>> <</if>> <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<set _nightStreet to either("01", "02", "03")>> <<vid "place/night-client-street-" _nightStreet>> <<if $stamina <= 0>> <div style="color: #ff4444; border: 1px solid #ff4444; padding: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> YOU ARE EXHAUSTED. You physically cannot walk the streets tonight. Your body demands rest. <br><br> * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] </div> <<else>> You step out onto the night streets. The cold air is bracing, and the neon signs of the brothel beckon with the promise of quick money. Here, in the shadows of the alleys, you are just a commodity waiting for its buyer. Several "gentlemen" stand at the entrance, each with their own tastes and price. /% Clients Smith has already sent you to are no longer strangers on a corner - the catalogue says so, so the same man cannot read as both a pickup and an assignment. Phase A: framing only, the gates below are untouched. See docs/SMITH-NIGHT-SPLIT-2026-08-07.md %/ <<if $metGangster or $metRich or $metScientist or $metOwner>> Some of the faces are not new. Smith's errands have introduced you to this street already, and the men he sent you to know your name before you give it. <</if>> ''Available clients:'' * [[Intern|Intern]] (Available always)<<print setup.star("intern")>> * <<if $promiscuity >= 20 or setup.buffOpens("Gangster")>>[[Gangster|Gangster]]<<print setup.star("gangster")>><<if $metGangster>> (Smith's introduction)<</if>><<else>>Gangster (Requires Promiscuity 20+)<</if>> * <<if $beauty >= 40>>[[Athlete|Athlete]]<<else>>Athlete (Requires Beauty 40+)<</if>> /% Smith's broker milestone opens these two IN ADDITION to the stat gates, never instead of them, so no ending can become harder to reach. See docs/SMITH-NIGHT-SPLIT-2026-08-07.md %/ * <<if ($promiscuity >= 50 and $money < -10000) or $metRich or setup.buffOpens("RichMan")>>[[Rich Man|RichMan]]<<if $metRich>> (Smith's introduction)<</if>><<else>>Rich Man (Requires Promiscuity 50+ and Debt > 10k)<</if>> /% 0.6 E2: $postWin opens the Owner's door - a free asset attracts owners (soft pressure, docs/PATCH-0.6/01-scope.md). His rate business is meaningless post-debt, the access is the point. %/ * <<if ($promiscuity >= 70 and $money < -15000) or $metOwner or setup.buffOpens("Owner") or $postWin>>[[Owner|Owner]]<<if $metOwner>> (Smith's introduction)<</if>><<else>>Owner (Requires Promiscuity 70+ and Debt > 15k)<</if>> * <<if $iq >= 120 or $promiscuity >= 60>>[[Scientist|Scientist]]<<print setup.star("scientist")>><<if $metScientist>> (Smith's introduction)<</if>><<else>>Scientist (Requires IQ 120+ or Promiscuity 60+)<</if>> * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] /% 0.3 A4: the documented middle of the night choice - one anonymous trick at less than street rate. Thin-margin 0.4.2: it no longer counts as rest (no wellRested), and the pitch says so. %/ * [[One quick trick, then home before dawn|ShortNight]] (Less than the street pays - but it is not a real night's rest) <</if>> <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> /% Short Night: one paid booking, then partial stamina recovery. Unlike pure sleep, this option sets shortNight and does not grant tomorrow's rested-pay bonus. One stranger, quick and nameless. Pay 60 + prom*2.5 (roughly half the highway rate), prom +1, stamina -30 for the trick then +170 back - thirty short of a pure sleep. DL_SHORTNIGHT in the balance sim scales the pay. %/ <<run setup.stampSensor("_shortNightCount")>> <<vid "place/night-client-street-" "04">> <<if not setup.buff('EndingFreeuse.b')>><<run setup.nightCost(30)>><</if>> <<set _pay to 60 + Math.floor($promiscuity * 2.5)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>> <<run setup.payNight(Math.round(_pay * (setup.buff('EndingQueenHighway.b') ? 1.3 : 1)))>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShortNightB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The quick ones are the nice ones. A stranger's car, a warm little hurry, hands that don't ask for anything hard - and then the night air on the walk home while the bill sits folded small in your fist like a candy wrapper. The city is prettiest this late anyway. Everything shines and nobody asks questions. <<elseif _v == 1>> You treat it like a bedtime snack. One friendly man, hardly any talking, a giggle and a wave bye-bye, and then home before the late movie even ends. You did good tonight - a little money, a little fun, and you're not even tired. The pillow is the best client of them all. <<elseif _v == 2>> In, out, paid, home. That's the whole date! He was sweet and in a hurry too, which is the best kind - both of you somewhere warmer to be. You hum the whole way back and fall asleep smiling about nothing in particular, which is your favorite kind of nothing. <<else>> You hardly ever do the quick ones, but they're kind of the best? One sweet fumbling man behind the neon sign, both of you giggling like it's a secret, and then - ooh - home with the whole night still left for soft things. Warm milk, warm shower, warm bed. Money is so easy now that you've stopped counting it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShortNightC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Turnover, not volume. One clean trick, cash in hand, no second act, no haggling, no hour of pretending you're having fun. You're home by two, and the arithmetic is compact: a little more sleep is worth more than a second stranger would have paid. You know the math. Lately you ARE the math. <<elseif _v == 1>> You pick the client the way other people pick a cab - nearest, cleanest, going roughly your way. Fixed price, no extras, door closes, done. The half-night is a product you sell to yourself: boundaries, at market rate. Tomorrow you'll be sharp enough to make the difference back twice. <<elseif _v == 2>> Small take, small exposure. No names, no numbers exchanged, no regulars forming habits they'll expect you to honor later. You bank the sleep like a deposit and leave the street its second half. Somewhere past the third client a night stops being income anyway and starts being inventory risk. <<else>> The quick trick is the closest thing this life has to a lunch break. You clock out early on purpose and let the corner keep its crowd. Shower, locked door, the ledger balanced one small line in your favor - and a full day rate coming tomorrow with rested hands and a rested face. Efficiency is a kind of dignity. You'll take whichever kinds are on offer. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShortNight', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You tell yourself the early exit is discipline, not weakness: one stranger, a fraction of the usual price, and the door locked behind you before the street fills up for real. The money is smaller tonight. So is the damage. You sleep without dreaming, and in the morning that will feel like a win you don't say out loud. <<elseif _v == 1>> Behind the shuttered bakery, in a car that smells of somebody else's cigarettes - the hurry makes it almost anonymous. Walking home you count what you didn't lose tonight: the hours, the second and third stranger, the morning's clear head. It frightens you a little, how reasonable the sum sounds. <<elseif _v == 2>> It isn't courage that takes you home early; it's the interest. A sharper tomorrow earns more than a fuller tonight - even your escapes are arithmetic now. You take the small bill, you leave before the big ones start changing hands, and you try not to think about which habit this is training. <<else>> The quick ones leave the least to wash off. That is the entire thought, and you let it be the entire thought, because behind it wait all the other ones. The apartment is quiet. Tomorrow you will wake with some sleep behind you and tonight's payment still in hand, and some nights that is the whole victory. <</if>> <</if>> /% Partial sleep restores up to 170 stamina. shortNight suppresses the rested-pay bonus at tally; the paid booking's stamina cost has already been applied. %/ <<set $stamina to Math.clamp($stamina + 170, 0, $maxStamina)>> <<set $sleptToday to true>> <<set $shortNight to true>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> <<set _tier to 1>> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntMorn")>><<set _tier to 4>> <<elseif setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntHome2")>><<set _tier to 3>> <<elseif setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntDare")>><<set _tier to 2>> <</if>> <<set _price to [80, 120, 200, 250][_tier - 1] + 2 * $promiscuity>> <<set _reply to setup.storyFlow.reply("intern")>> <<if _reply>><<print _reply>><<else>> <<if _tier is 1>> "I, um... I won't ask for anything complicated." The intern shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. "I've got the money. I counted it twice. Sorry, that sounded strange." "The counting part is fine," you say. "Start with hello." "Right. Hello." <<elseif _tier is 2>> No speech tonight. He just holds out the envelope, squared and ready, and manages - mostly - to look you in the eye while he does it. "Fridays are the usual thing now," he says. "I have a column." "You keep saying that like it's normal." "It's normal to me." <<elseif _tier is 3>> He has the envelope and a grocery bag: eggs, pasta, the good bread. "I checked the fridge this time," he says, with the gravity of a man who has learned from history. "We're covered." "We." "It's a pronoun," he says, scarlet, stubborn. "It's load-bearing." <<else>> He's at the corner before you are, which is new - the boy who once couldn't say hello out loud, waiting with the envelope in his coat and both ears pink with cold. "Hi," he says. Just that. The whole speech fits in one word now, and he holds out his hand for the walk to the bus like it's the most ordinary thing in the city. <</if>> <</if>> <<set _arcPop to setup.sceneRollArc("intern")>> <<if _arcPop>> <<set _aev to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_arcPop]>> <div id="arc-call" class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>TONIGHT · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _aev.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _aev.call>></h3> <p><<print _aev.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _aev.title>></span><span><<print _aev.total>> chapters</span><span>instead of the usual</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "See what he wants">><<goto _aev.target>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_arcPop)>><<replace "#arc-call">><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<storyHint "intern">> * <<link `"Agree ($" + _price + ")"` "InternFavor">><</link>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<set $intVisits to ($intVisits || 0) + 1>> <<run setup.storyFlow.pauseContext("arc:intern")>> <<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<run setup.nightCost(40)>> <<set _tier to 1>> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntMorn")>><<set _tier to 4>> <<elseif setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntHome2")>><<set _tier to 3>> <<elseif setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntDare")>><<set _tier to 2>> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% 0.6 intern arc (2026-10-19): the evening grows with the story - dances, then Friday mouths, then plain sex, then meetings. The prom-50 mid-visit escalation retired: tiers carry the escalation now. %/ <<if _tier is 1>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 3, "male/slut/shy")>> <<vid "male/slut/shy" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtInternB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The nervous boy asks you to take a little off and dance, and you do, giggling, because dancing is fun and he goes so red and shivery watching that it makes you feel like a firework. Knowing he's touching himself to the shape of you feels nice and warm, like being somebody's whole favorite thing for a minute. <<elseif _v == 1>> He can barely ask for the dance, so you finish the sentence for him and twirl out of your clothes. Every glimpse makes him blush harder. You feel wonderfully powerful for someone who has forgotten what power is supposed to feel like. <<elseif _v == 2>> The intern keeps apologizing for looking. You tell him looking is the whole point and pose until his embarrassment turns into breathless gratitude. Being admired this openly makes you warm all over. <<else>> You make the striptease playful, tossing each garment toward his chair and cheering when he catches it. He relaxes enough to touch himself, and you dance for that shy, helpless smile as much as for the money. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtInternC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The intern stammers his way into asking you to strip down and dance - nothing too filthy, not yet, he hasn't the nerve. You give him the mild show he's paying for, unbothered; he's the sweetest and least profitable john on the corner, all apology and shaking hands. Watching him finish himself to your silhouette, you feel only a faint professional patience and the small clean fact of the money on the table. <<elseif _v == 1>> You identify his limit before he can articulate it and give him a restrained striptease calibrated to stay just below panic. He mistakes your patience for tenderness. You let him; the illusion costs nothing. <<elseif _v == 2>> He has exact change and no vocabulary for what he wants. You guide him through both problems, keeping the dance mild and the room unthreatening. It is less seduction than customer support, but the bill spends the same. <<else>> You offer three simple choices and watch relief replace embarrassment on his face. Once he chooses, you perform with clean, economical grace. You leave him convinced he was brave, exactly on schedule. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntern', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The intern convinces you to undress a little and dance, nothing too vulgar... at least for now. The realization that someone is masturbating to your naked body makes you feel more promiscuous. <<elseif _v == 1>> His request is so timid that refusing would feel cruel. You unbutton your blouse and sway while he watches, telling yourself the distance between you makes this harmless. Then he begins touching himself, and harmless becomes harder to define. <<elseif _v == 2>> You dance badly because your body is stiff with embarrassment. He does not seem to care. The hunger in his stare teaches you that skill is optional when nakedness is the product. <<else>> Garment by garment, the room grows colder and his breathing grows louder. You keep smiling because stopping now would make the exchange real. The money waits on the table like an answer you do not want to read. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>><<run setup.payNight(80 + 2 * $promiscuity)>> <<elseif _tier is 2>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 8, "scene/internbj")>> <<set _vid to ("0" + _id).slice(-2)>> <<vid "scene/internbj/" _vid>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntBJB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> Fridays have a mouth now, and mouths are the best part! He brings the envelope and the kettle and his shaking hands, and you get to make him forget every single one of his lists. He says thank you like it's a whole speech, and you feel like the smartest girl in the world for a hundred and twenty dollars. <<elseif _v == 1>> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntGlass")>>You wear the glasses sometimes just to hear the noise he makes — like a kettle of his own.<<else>>He has finally learned to say hello before handing over the envelope. You tell him he's improving, and he goes pink to the ears.<</if>> Tonight you take him slow and deep and warm, and his hand learns your hair, and honestly? Best Fridays ever invented. You hum the whole rest of the week. <<else>> He apologizes his way to the edge and you fine him five dollars a sorry, and he pays it, laughing, ruined, happy. The surcharge jar is filling up. You're going to buy something pink with it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntBJC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The usual Friday, professionally administered: his apartment, his envelope, his kettle, your mouth. He's the only client in the city who thanks you twice - once out loud, once with his whole transparent face - and the sorry-tax alone could fund a pension. Easy money, honest money, strangely restful money. <<elseif _v == 1>> You take your time with him. <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntGlass")>>The glasses come out sometimes, without a surcharge.<</if>> Somewhere between his second thank-you and his third, you notice you've stopped watching the clock. You correct the error. Mostly. <<else>> The agreed rate, checked twice, and the envelope handed over before he can lose his nerve. You give the evening the craft it pays for: the long pull, the flat tongue, the pause that makes his thigh jump. He thanks you afterward and asks whether you have time for tea. You usually do. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntBJ', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> It has a name now, what you do on Fridays. Names make it easier and harder at once. You kneel on his carpet with the envelope already in your bag, and his hand finds your hair like it holds a rail there, and somewhere past the third sorry you stop counting. <<elseif _v == 1>> He never pushes. That's the thing you keep snagging on - the hand that hovers, the question asked whole, the exact change. Your mouth does its careful work and above you he dissolves, grateful, and you tell yourself the warmth in your chest is just pride in a job done well. <<else>> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneIntGlass")>>The glasses stay in your bag unless he asks, and he always asks so politely it's almost a refusal. Tonight the lenses fog at the edges while he shakes, and you hold his eyes through them the whole way down.<<else>>He asks for the usual evening so carefully that you wait for him to finish before you put your bag down. His shoulders drop with relief.<</if>> Walking to the bus afterward, you can still hear the way he said thank you. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>><<set $intBJCount to ($intBJCount || 0) + 1>><<run setup.payNight(120 + 2 * $promiscuity)>> <<elseif _tier is 3>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "male/slut/slut")>> <<vid "male/slut/slut" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntSexB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The whole evening, now, start to finish - no costume, no program, just the two of you and his mother's blanket and the ratio he's always going on about. He learns something new every time and tells you about it after like it's news. Being somebody's whole curriculum feels pink and warm and enormous. <<elseif _v == 1>> Plain sex, is what it is, and plain is the fanciest thing you know: face to face so he can check your face, then whichever way the night votes. Afterward there's water and the appendix towel and eggs if the fridge cooperates. You giggle through most of it. He counts nothing at all, which is his version of fireworks. <<else>> He says stay sometimes, mid-everything, just the one word, and you say it back now because it's easy and true. The bed frame squeaks its silly song and the city can knock all it wants. Nobody's home. You're both right here. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntSexC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The Friday rate has grown into the evening rate, and the evening rate covers the full syllabus. He's become - there's no other word for it - trained: pace, angle, the swallowed sorry, the hand that holds without steering. You supply the craft he can't learn from diagrams, and he pays the surcharge of exact change plus tip, and the ledger of it balances in a currency you don't examine too closely after hours. <<elseif _v == 1>> No costume nights sell better than costume nights, statistically, which he finds frankly offensive to his curriculum. You take the statistic as read: the two of you have a rhythm now, discovered and kept, and the professionals in the room - that's you - note that discovered rhythm outperforms purchased rhythm at every price point. You don't tell him. He'd put it in a column. <<else>> An evening at the agreed rate, breakfast apparently included. The market in this city is insane. You stay anyway: for the aftercare, for the clean towel, for the man asleep within ten minutes with his arm over you like a seatbelt. You check the clock once, then put the phone face-down. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntSex', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> No envelope ceremony anymore - it's on the table before you've got your coat off, and then the evening belongs to the two of you who keep choosing it. He's careful the way he's careful with everything he loves, checking your face at every new angle, and the care lands somewhere the money never reaches. <<elseif _v == 1>> The bed frame squeaks; you both pretend it doesn't; the pretense is its own private joke now. Somewhere between the second position and the third he stops being a client in any way your professional vocabulary covers, and you stop trying to refile him, and the night simply goes on being what it is. <<else>> Plain, is the word he uses, proud of it - plain sex, a plain evening, plainly nobody's business. And it is plain the way bread is plain: the thing everything else is measured against. Afterward, in the dark, his heartbeat under your ear keeps honest time, and you let it count you down to sleep without any ledger at all. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>><<set $intSexCount to ($intSexCount || 0) + 1>><<run setup.payNight(200 + 2 * $promiscuity)>> <<else>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 10, "scene/internhome2")>> <<set _vid to ("0" + _id).slice(-2)>> <<vid "scene/internhome2/" _vid>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntMeetB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> Meetings now, not visits - dinner first, dumb movie after, his commentary better than the film. You sit close enough to share warmth and popcorn and by the credits neither of you has watched the ending because mouths were busy doing better things. Sex arrives last, like dessert, like the credits song, like home. <<elseif _v == 1>> You cook together and it's a disaster and you eat it anyway, laughing so hard the neighbors must think the apartment's happy, because it is. He washes up; you dry; the blanket is warm; the rest of the evening is slow and sweet and neither of you mentions the rate. Pink, you think, folding into his shoulder. The whole thing is just pink. <<else>> He holds your hand on the bus like it's a job he takes seriously, and strangers probably think you're anybody - a couple, a Tuesday, a normal thing with groceries. And you are! That's the magic trick. You're a normal thing with groceries and later a blanket and later still his voice going thank you into your hair for nothing at all. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntMeetC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The standing appointment has shed its last work-clothes: groceries, his cooking, the movie you both talk over, and then the bed - in that order, the order domestic, the sex almost incidental. Almost. The envelope still appears, exact to the dollar, because he'd combust without it; you've stopped arguing the point. Some overhead you carry as a handling fee. <<elseif _v == 1>> You've started keeping things at his place - a toothbrush, a charger, the economics of it escalating quietly. Tonight it's pasta and a bottle of the cheap red and half a film before the blanket claims you both. The rate on the table says one night; the shape of the evening says something with a longer amortization. You let the books stay in mild, deliberate error. <<else>> The agreed rate, in exact change, and he has ironed his good shirt for a night in with leftovers. You were prepared to make a joke about it. Then you see that he has put your toothbrush in a cup of its own, and the joke seems less urgent. Dinner first. There is time for the rest. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtIntMeet', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> It's harder to leave now than it ever was to stay. Dinner, the dumb film, the blanket, his arm - the evening has furniture, and routines, and a toothbrush with your name on nothing. The envelope is on the table where it always is, and you both pretend it explains the evening, and it explains less of it every week. <<elseif _v == 1>> He cooks; you dry; the frame squeaks its known song. Afterward he asks how you take your eggs, having bought eggs, having planned this - and somewhere between the question and the answer, you catch the shape of a life trying itself on around the two of you, cheap and warm and terrifyingly easy to wear. <<else>> On the walk to the bus he holds your hand the whole way, and the streetlights go by like stations on a line you keep riding past your own stop. The city prices everything; you know its tariffs to the dollar. It has no tariff for this - for the hand, for the eggs, for the voice that says stay with no clause attached. Some nights you ride past your stop twice. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>><<set $intMeets to ($intMeets || 0) + 1>><<run setup.payNight(250 + 2 * $promiscuity)>> <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/gangster.png" alt="The gangster"></div> <<storyReaction "gangster">> <<set _arcPop to setup.sceneRollArc("gangster")>> <<if _arcPop>> <<set _aev to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_arcPop]>> <div id="arc-call" class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>TONIGHT · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _aev.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _aev.call>></h3> <p><<print _aev.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _aev.title>></span><span><<print _aev.total>> chapters</span><span>instead of the usual</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Hear the proposition">><<goto _aev.target>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_arcPop)>><<replace "#arc-call">><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<storyHint "gangster">> <<if $domsub <= 50>> <<if $iq > 100>> "You gonna lecture me? Keep walkin'. I don't pay for educated bitches," the gangster snarls. * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> "Hey, babe. You workin' tonight?" * [[Have some fun|GangFavor]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>> <<else>> "Well look at that, my favorite little slut! Come here and get to work!" (You have become too submissive to him to say "no"). * [[Submit|GangFavor]] <</if>> <</if>>

<<run setup.storyFlow.pauseContext("arc:gangster")>> <<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<run $metGangster to true>><<run setup.smithTaskDone("gangster")>> <<run setup.nightCost(50)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "female/gangster/sub")>> <<vid "female/gangster/sub" _id>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangSetup', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>He takes you to the room behind the restaurant, where the music outside is loud enough to cover anything.<<elseif _v == 1>>Tonight he receives you in a garage office surrounded by silent men who leave only after he nods.<<elseif _v == 2>>A black car carries you two blocks to a private flat, an unnecessary journey meant to remind you who controls it.<<else>>He makes you wait while he finishes counting money, then clears the desk with one sweep and turns his full attention to you.<</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangBaseB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You take your clothes off because he's the kind of hard man who expects it, and taking them off when a hard man expects it is easy, even exciting, in the warm swimmy way everything's exciting now. <<elseif _w == 1>> He points at your clothes instead of asking. You peel them away quickly, smiling when his hard expression softens into approval. A dangerous man is pleased with you, and that simple fact feels bright and important. <<elseif _w == 2>> You undress beside the money-covered desk while he watches without blinking. Each garment earns a short command about where to stand or how to turn, and following them makes the nervous flutter in your stomach feel almost like fun. <<else>> His men leave only after you begin stripping. You giggle at their backward glances, then hurry to give the gangster the private show he expects. Being claimed by the most important man in the room feels wonderfully special. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangBaseC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You undress without ceremony, reading him fast: a hard man who tips for obedience and pays extra to feel feared. You give him the flicker of nervous thrill he wants to see - it's a good product, exhilaration, and you manufacture it cleanly - while inside you stay cool, judging him a dependable source of cash for obedience. <<elseif _w == 1>> His gesture is an order, not a request. You comply at an efficient pace while noting the closed door, the distance to your bag, and the bills already placed within sight. Fear is part of the service; you display the correct amount. <<elseif _w == 2>> You undress beside his desk and let him believe your stillness is submission rather than risk management. He likes control made visible. You provide the image, preserve your attention, and wait for the appointment to become profitable. <<else>> The silent men in the garage office are meant to intimidate you. You acknowledge the tactic with lowered eyes and begin the performance before their boss repeats himself. Prompt obedience keeps violent clients predictable. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangBaseA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You undress before the client. It's exhilarating. <<elseif _w == 1>> He tells you to strip, and refusal seems absurd beneath his steady stare. Excitement and fear become difficult to separate as you expose yourself one piece at a time. <<elseif _w == 2>> You undress beside a desk stacked with money, painfully aware that the door has closed behind you. His attention makes every movement feel like a test whose rules you were never given. <<else>> The other men leave only when their boss nods. Their last looks follow your clothes to the floor. You try to call the trembling exhilaration, because the alternative word would make staying impossible. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 2)>><<run setup.payNight(100)>> <<if $promiscuity >= 50 or $domsub > 50>> <<run setup.nightCost(30)>> <<set _x to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangExtra', [], 4)>> <<if _x == 0>><br>The gangster behaves more roughly than usual: "On your knees, slut, you're going to do me a special favor."<<elseif _x == 1>><br>He decides the first service was only a warm-up and points to the floor. The extra money appears before the order, making refusal feel already purchased.<<elseif _x == 2>><br>A friend calls; the gangster describes what you are doing, then demands a more degrading encore as proof.<<else>><br>He checks the door, then turns back to you and names the premium for complete obedience. Your body answers the command before your mind finishes pricing it.<</if>> <br><<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangExtraB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>You sink down and worship exactly the way he wants, because obeying is the easiest thing left and it makes the hard man so pleased, and pleasing the hard man is your favorite. He loves it when you act like a stupid doll, and the funny part is you're barely acting anymore - every rough word scoops your head a little emptier, and empty feels warm and safe.<<elseif _w == 1>>You drop to your knees at the first sharp order. He makes you repeat the stupid little names he gives you until they feel truer than your own, and every approving touch rewards the lovely empty space opening behind your smile.<<elseif _w == 2>>His friend listens over the phone while you perform the obedient-doll routine. You exaggerate every silly answer to make the gangster laugh, then realize you have forgotten which parts were exaggeration.<<else>>The premium buys him complete control. You let him place you, correct you, and praise you for thinking less, sinking happily into the soft idea that a good toy never needs ideas of her own.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangExtraC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>You give him the worshipful stupid-doll act he pays the premium for, cleanly, keeping your emotional distance. But this one's different from the usual theater: the treatment genuinely dulls you, each degrading word sanding something real off your mind. You feel yourself getting slower even as you pocket the extra - a chipped tool taking the booking anyway.<<elseif _w == 1>>You kneel and deliver the exact abasement his money purchased. Repetition turns the insults into conditioning; you can measure your responses becoming quicker even while the meanings grow harder to hold.<<elseif _w == 2>>He makes you perform for a caller you cannot see. You maintain the stupid-doll persona flawlessly, disturbed less by the audience than by how little effort the persona now requires.<<else>>You accept the premium and surrender operational control. Every correction narrows the distance between calculated compliance and genuine obedience, but stopping midway would be both dangerous and unpaid.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtGangExtraA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>Your submissive worship of his desires pleases him. He especially values it when you act like a stupid doll. And it's not just a game - you literally feel yourself growing stupider from such treatment.<<elseif _w == 1>>You kneel because the extra money is already on the table. He rewards every submissive gesture and mocks every thoughtful word until obedience begins to feel safer than trying to remain yourself.<<elseif _w == 2>>He puts a friend on speaker and orders you to prove how thoroughly he has trained you. The humiliation burns, yet beneath it you feel a frightening pride whenever your owner-for-the-night approves.<<else>>In the closed room, his offer sounds like a command. You surrender control one instruction at a time, discovering that the stupid-doll act becomes easier each time he insists it is the truth.<</if>> <</if>> <<set _id2 to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "female/gangster/sub")>> <<vid "female/gangster/sub" _id2>> <<run setup.drainIQ(2, 'gangster')>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>><<set $money += 150>><<set $dailyIncome += 150>> <br><<if _p gte 3>><<if _w == 0>>He stretches you to the very limit and your mind just clicks off into the warm fog, and you drown happily in the blank buzz of being used exactly the way you were made for.<<elseif _w == 1>>He keeps going until commands and sensations blur together. Your thoughts blink out one by one, leaving a soft, happy doll who can only gasp and obey.<<elseif _w == 2>>Knowing someone else can hear makes everything bigger and fuzzier. By the end, your head is full of warm static and the gangster's pleased laughter.<<else>>Complete control becomes complete overload. You disappear into the pleasure of being handled without choices and return only when he tells you the session is over.<</if>><<elseif _p is 2>><<if _w == 0>>He pushes you to the limit, and even you can't fully stand outside it - the pleasure and the fog drag the cold observer under for a while, which is the part that frightens what's left of you later, once you can think again.<<elseif _w == 1>>The conditioning continues until analysis fragments under physical overload. When professional distance returns, it finds several minutes missing and obedience lodged deeper than before.<<elseif _w == 2>>You try to keep the remote audience irrelevant, but the combined humiliation and pleasure finally pull the observer under. The gangster notices the exact moment your performance becomes real.<<else>>He exploits every response until control is no longer something you simulate. You recover afterward with the cold knowledge that the premium purchased a lasting adjustment, not merely an act.<</if>><<else>><<if _w == 0>>You are pushed to the limit. Pleasure overwhelms thought until you are lost in a fog of sensation.<<elseif _w == 1>>Pain, pleasure, and repeated orders overwhelm the part of you that meant to preserve a boundary. Thought stops; obedience continues without it.<<elseif _w == 2>>The unseen listener hears your resistance dissolve into incoherent pleasure. When awareness returns, the gangster is congratulating himself on how well you have learned.<<else>>He takes the complete surrender he paid for and drives you past any ability to distinguish choice from response. You leave the room through a fog, following directions because direction is all that remains.<</if>><</if>> <<run setup.drainIQ(2, 'gangster')>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>><<set $money += 200>><<set $dailyIncome += 200>> <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> <<if $beauty < 40>> "Not tonight. Get back in shape, then we'll talk." The athlete looks you over. * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> "Hey. You're looking good. Got time for a recovery session?" <<storyReaction "athlete">> <<set _arcPop to setup.sceneRollArc("athlete")>> <<if _arcPop>> <<set _aev to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_arcPop]>> <div id="arc-call" class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>TONIGHT · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _aev.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _aev.call>></h3> <p><<print _aev.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _aev.title>></span><span><<print _aev.total>> chapters</span><span>instead of the usual</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "See what he wants">><<goto _aev.target>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_arcPop)>><<replace "#arc-call">><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<storyHint "athlete">> * [[Accept the athlete's offer|AthFavor]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<run setup.storyFlow.pauseContext("arc:athlete")>> <<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<set $athVisits to ($athVisits || 0) + 1>> <<run setup.nightCost(60)>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthSetup', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>He brings you to a clean apartment decorated with medals and photographs from competitions.<<elseif _v == 1>>The athlete books a hotel near the stadium, still energized from training and too restless for conversation.<<elseif _v == 2>>You meet after his evening run; he showers, pays in advance, and treats the appointment like another scheduled recovery session.<<else>>He chooses the private gym after closing, where mirrors turn every movement into a display of strength and beauty.<</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 3, "female/slut/slut")>> <<vid "female/slut/slut" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthBaseB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You get to work, easy and willing - he's strong and handsome and asked so nicely, and doing what nice strong men ask is simple and even fun now. Why not? Everything's a why-not these days. <<elseif _w == 1>> He smells like soap after training and breaks into a smile when he sees you. You eagerly let him guide the pace, pleased that such a beautiful man wants your body and never once has to order it. <<elseif _w == 2>> Mirrors line the private gym, showing you how good the two of you look together. You turn every position into a pose for him, giggling whenever he catches your reflection and grins. <<else>> He pays first, checks that you are comfortable, and makes the whole thing feel more like a date than work. The difference is fuzzy, but fuzzy things are easy; you simply enjoy making the nice man happy. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthBaseC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You get to work, unhurried and competent. The athlete is a clean booking - fit, uncomplicated, no cruelty in him - the kind of client you'd almost call a good day at the office, if the office were this. You give him a solid session and take the money, professionally at ease. <<elseif _w == 1>> Fresh from the shower, he states what he wants and listens when you set limits. You deliver an efficient, mutually pleasant appointment and note how unusual basic courtesy has become in your client comparisons. <<elseif _w == 2>> The mirrored gym makes performance unavoidable, so you use it deliberately. Every angle flatters both of you; every movement looks spontaneous despite being selected with professional care. <<else>> Payment arrives in advance and his questions remain practical. You manage pace, comfort, and time without needing to manage danger. It is competent labor for a client who understands the transaction. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthBaseA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You get to work. After all, you've come so far to get rid of this debt, so why not satisfy the athlete? <<elseif _w == 1>> He is clean, handsome, and almost painfully considerate. Those facts make accepting easier, though they do not erase the moment when you see the payment and remember why you are here. <<elseif _w == 2>> The gym mirrors refuse to let you look away from what you are doing. You focus instead on his gentle hands and the debt reduced by another two hundred dollars. <<else>> He pays before touching you and asks whether you are comfortable. The courtesy loosens something in your chest, making the encounter bearable enough that you resent needing it even more. <</if>> <</if>> /% 0.6 T5: was 200 %/ <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>><<run setup.payNight(250)>> <<if $promiscuity >= 50>> <<set _x to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthExtra', [], 4)>> <<if _x == 0>><br>When the first service ends, he asks you to stay and offers another fee.<<elseif _x == 1>><br>He slows down instead of dismissing you, adding money for an unhurried second round.<<elseif _x == 2>><br>A practical booking turns unexpectedly tender when he asks for more time rather than another act.<<else>><br>He admits he has been waiting all week to see you and pays to extend the appointment.<</if>> <br><<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthExtraB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>It's actually really nice - he's gentle and caring, not like the others, and a warm fuzzy feeling starts up in your chest that you don't quite have a word for anymore. Maybe you like him? Liking someone feels good, and good is what you're for now.<<elseif _w == 1>>He asks you to stay, not because he wants anything rougher, but because he likes having you close. You curl against all that warm muscle and happily decide the extra money is only a bonus.<<elseif _w == 2>>The second round is slow and playful. He laughs with you instead of at you, and the sweetness makes you imagine that perhaps you are his girlfriend for tonight - girlfriends get paid sometimes, probably.<<else>>He remembers little things you said during the last visit and pays simply to keep you longer. Being remembered makes your chest glow. You pour that glow into pleasing him and try not to think about when the appointment ends.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthExtraC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>It's easy, and better than easy - he's caring, unhurried, treats you like a person - and you catch a dangerous flicker of something warm and step on it at once. Feelings for a client are a liability; you've watched them ruin sharper girls than you. Still, you note, coldly filing it away: if you were the kind to catch feelings, it would be for someone exactly like him.<<elseif _w == 1>>He pays for another hour, then spends much of it holding you. The service is effortless; containing the warmth his kindness provokes is not. You classify it as a retention risk and remain anyway.<<elseif _w == 2>>An extended session becomes playful rather than demanding. You catch yourself laughing without calculation and immediately restore professional distance, aware that genuine ease is the most dangerous gratuity a client can offer.<<else>>He remembers details from previous appointments and asks about you before requesting anything else. You answer selectively, accept the extension fee, and monitor the quiet wish that he had asked without money between you.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAthExtraA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>It's not so bad. It wouldn't hurt to go a bit further and earn some more money. <br>Despite the fact that you are literally selling yourself, this guy treats you quite well. He can even be caring. You wonder if you're starting to feel something for him.<<elseif _w == 1>>He offers more money for time rather than a harsher act. You stay in his arms after the urgency passes, wondering when a paid embrace became the safest part of your week.<<elseif _w == 2>>The second round contains laughter, patience, and none of the contempt you prepared yourself to endure. Enjoying it feels like a betrayal of your circumstances, yet denying the warmth would be another kind of lie.<<else>>He remembers something small you told him and asks how it turned out. The question reaches you more deeply than his touch. When he pays to extend the visit, you are no longer sure which of you wanted the extra hour first.<</if>> <</if>> <<set _id2 to window.pickImgNumber(1, 3, "female/slut/slut")>> <<vid "female/slut/slut" _id2>> <<set $money += 150>><<set $dailyIncome += 150>> <</if>> /% 0.6 E2 (studio fix): "Keep working" closed the clean exits - ALMOST NORMALCY is one of them. %/ <<if $beauty >= 80 and $domsub >= 50 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingGirlfriend") and not $postWin>> <br><br> * [[ENDING: ALMOST NORMAL|EndingGirlfriend]] <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/rich-man.png" alt="The Rich Man"></div> <<storyReaction "rich">> <<if $metRich and not $richFirstDone>> Smith's introduction earns you a private invitation instead of the usual appraisal. A car is waiting, a table has been reserved, and the Rich Man has already chosen what you will wear. * [[Accept the invitation|RichMeet]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<elseif $promiscuity lt (setup.buff('EndingPet.a') ? 40 : 50) or $iq gt (setup.buff('EndingPet.a') ? 95 : 90)>> "I'm afraid you're not quite what I had in mind. I prefer silly little sluts. We could discuss the procedures, though. I would cover the cost. You might find the work pays rather better afterward." * [[Discuss procedures|Clinic]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> "Ah. There you are. Exactly the little slut I had in mind." * [[Accept the offer|RichFavor]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>> <</if>>

<<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<run setup.nightCost(80)>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRichFavorSetup', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>A servant takes your coat and leads you to the same immaculate bedroom, where the patron has already selected the drug and the evening's clothes.<<elseif _v == 1>>Tonight begins with dinner at a table far too large for two. He discusses your body as an investment before inviting you upstairs.<<elseif _v == 2>>The patron receives you beside an indoor pool, offers a golden drink, and watches closely to see how quickly it changes you.<<else>>A gift box waits on the bed: expensive lingerie, a vial, and an envelope whose thickness explains both.<</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 4, "female/rich/slut")>> <<vid "female/rich/slut" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRichFavorB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> The rich man gets right to it, and partway through a servant brings the drug - the warm gold stuff that makes everything soft and buzzy and makes you dumber and hungrier all at once, which honestly just makes the night nicer. You melt into it happily and pour yourself out in orgasm after orgasm, and if a few little pieces of who you used to be go pouring out too, well - they float away so prettily you can't be sad about it. He pays like a king. Being a rich man's silly toy is the easiest, warmest job there is. <<elseif _w == 1>> Dinner ends when the servant sets a golden vial beside your glass. You swallow it before the patron finishes telling you to, delighted by the praise that follows. Warmth spreads through your body and turns every clever thought into a slow, sparkling bubble. He dresses you in the lingerie he chose and enjoys his investment for hours. By morning, several memories are smudged beyond reach, but the thick envelope and his approving smile are wonderfully easy to understand. <<elseif _w == 2>> Beside the indoor pool, he feeds you the drug between kisses and watches your eyes lose focus. Soon you are splashing, laughing, and begging for sensations whose names keep slipping away. He calls you perfect whenever you forget a question halfway through answering it. The servant wraps you in a robe afterward. You leave prettier, emptier, and very proud that being a silly rich man's toy can earn so much money. <<else>> The gift box contains lace in exactly your size and a vial you now recognize. You put on the lace and drink the vial without needing instructions. The patron rewards your eagerness by making the whole night one long warm blur of praise, pleasure, and happy little failures to think. When the car takes you home, you hug the envelope to your chest. Whatever the drug carried away cannot have been as useful as five hundred dollars - or as nice as hearing him call you his favorite. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRichFavorC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> The wealthy patron gets right to the point, and partway through the servant brings the drug - and you take it, eyes open, because you know exactly what it is: the reason he's the highest-paying single client on the corner, and the reason each visit files a little more permanently off your mind. You feel yourself go stupid and greedy and pliable under it while the cold part of you stands off to one side, counting the money and counting the cost, watching pieces of yourself dissolve into the arousal and float away for good. You collect five hundred dollars and a fraction less of a self. You'll be back. That's the trap, and you can see every inch of it, and you'll be back anyway. <<elseif _w == 1>> The drug arrives with dessert, presented openly enough to make complicity part of the arrangement. You confirm the payment, drink, and observe your ability to calculate degrade faster than your ability to please him. He has engineered the ratio carefully. By morning, the envelope remains legible while portions of the evening do not. You record another exchange of cognition for liquidity and already know the debt will bring you back. <<elseif _w == 2>> At the pool, the patron measures the dose against your previous response. You permit the adjustment because tolerance would reduce his satisfaction and therefore your value. The clinical reasoning survives only minutes before chemical hunger replaces it. You recover in an expensive robe, beautiful and measurably less sharp. The servant pays without meeting your eyes. You count twice, partly for accuracy and partly to confirm you still can. <<else>> Lingerie, vial, envelope: the arrangement is laid out as a three-item contract. You inspect the money, wear the first item, consume the second, and spend the night becoming exactly the reduced, eager product he commissioned. Clarity returns in fragments during the drive home. You identify permanent loss, adequate compensation, and the certainty that adequate does not mean fair. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRichFavorA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> The wealthy patron wastes no time. Partway through, a servant brings an unfamiliar drug. Whatever it is, it makes you aroused, foolish, and frighteningly pliable. You lose count of how many pieces of your former personality dissolve into the night's pleasure. <<elseif _w == 1>> The servant brings a golden vial after dinner. You understand what agreeing means, yet the five hundred dollars have already become rent, interest, and another day of survival in your mind. You drink. Warmth overwhelms caution, then language. The patron praises each foolish answer until humiliation becomes pleasure. Morning returns you to yourself incompletely, with an envelope where several clear memories used to be. <<elseif _w == 2>> He doses you beside the pool and watches with proprietary interest as judgment dissolves. You cling to the fact that you chose the payment, even after choosing anything at all becomes impossible. Later, wrapped in a servant's robe, you struggle to reconstruct the night. Your body remembers pleasure; your mind reveals gaps. Both are evidence of what the rich man purchased. <<else>> The bed holds expensive lingerie, a drug, and enough cash to make refusal feel irresponsible. You put on the lace and stare at the vial for a long time before surrendering to the arithmetic. The night becomes a fever of approval and appetite. In the car home, you recognize that the missing pieces of yourself cannot be bought back with the envelope in your lap. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> /% 0.6 T2b (docs/PATCH-0.6/02-economy.md, author variant b): taming sticks only if the night left her submissive enough - the old unconditional +1 completed the arc in 4-5 nights of pure farming. Matrix verdict on the threshold (sim step 4): the recommended ds 25 kills the arc outright (visits land ~1 in 3 nights once the debt runs deep, so the count never outruns the money - Pet 0%, Slave by 15d at ds 15/20/25); ds 10 is the edge that holds the pre-agreed 12-14d corridor (Pet 14d) while still costing the speedrun its first night. Post-stat check: the +5 lands before the count. %/ <<if $domsub gte 10>><<set $petTaming += 1>><</if>> /% Pet fires as a scene-trigger (before Tally, so it outranks Slut/Freeuse): either the taming arc (A: enough visits, decoupled from prom/iq race) OR the stat window (B: submissive + dumbed enough). %/ <<if ($petTaming >= 4 or ($domsub >= 60 and $iq < 70)) and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingPet")>> <br><br> * [[DEFEAT: HOUSE PET|EndingPet]] <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/owner.png" alt="The Owner"></div> <<storyReaction "owner">> <<if $metOwner and $ownerVisits is 0>> Smith's card opens doors that would otherwise stay invisible. At the address, a guard checks your name against a list, then asks whether you understand that the Owner does not repeat himself. You say you understand. You are not sure what you have agreed to yet, only that Smith called it the first step toward better terms. * [[Accept the appointment|OwnerMeet]] <<else>> "Ready to accept your fate? Complete feminization, corruption, bimbofication, and a good dose of our patented 'freeuse doctrine'. I can certainly make it worth your while." * [[Accept the offer|OwnerFavor]] <</if>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<run setup.nightCost(100)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 8, "hypno/prom/")>> <<vid "hypno/prom/" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOwnerFavorB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> Smith delivers you to a training suite run by the Owner's masked handlers. They put you through the hardest program you have ever endured while instructions arrive through speakers in a voice that never identifies itself. Important people must know what is best, so you give and give. Smith explains afterward that reducing interest is difficult work and only fair that you pay with something of yourself. That makes perfect sense in the soft place your thoughts have become. You leave lighter in your head, your pockets, and your soul, proud that the unseen Owner approved a little mercy. <<elseif _w == 1>> A guard checks Smith's card, takes your phone, and leads you into a white room where trainers already know every weakness in your file. The Owner never enters. His authority lives in the schedule, the restraints, and the calm orders from the ceiling. By the time Smith collects you, obedience feels easier than remembering why you came. He shows you the tiny interest reduction and calls it generous. You smile, because pleasing someone powerful enough to remain invisible must mean you did very well. <<elseif _w == 2>> Smith signs you over at a service entrance. Different handlers rotate through the session, each enforcing another lesson from the Owner's private doctrine. You keep asking whether you are doing it right until questions become too difficult and eager compliance answers for you. No one says the Owner's name when the program ends. A revised figure appears on Smith's tablet, and the small improvement fills you with silly gratitude despite the money and thoughts the day consumed. <<else>> The appointment takes place in a windowless clinic bearing no company name. Smith watches from behind glass while instructors reshape posture, reflex, and desire according to a protocol stamped only with the Owner's seal. You emerge exhausted and wonderfully simple. Smith deducts the fee, applies the slight relief, and tells you the Owner values cooperative assets. The compliment warms you more than the arithmetic can trouble you. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOwnerFavorC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> Smith transfers you to the Owner's training staff, never the Owner himself. They run the most grueling program on the menu while anonymous instructions arrive through speakers. You submit with your eyes open and your stomach cold because you have done the mathematics and hate the answer. It is the worst trade on the street: a thousand dollars and measurable damage for a sliver of interest relief. The renegotiation is a mugging with documentation, but desperation keeps producing the same decision. You leave poorer, duller, and further integrated into an organization whose principal remains unseen. <<elseif _w == 1>> The guards remove every identifying object before admitting you to a controlled suite. Trainers work from a dossier detailed enough to imply constant observation. The Owner's absence is deliberate: authority becomes harder to challenge when it has no body in the room. Smith displays the revised rate only after the conditioning ends. You verify the tiny decrease twice, compare it with the fee and cognitive cost, and sign anyway because an irrational contract can still dominate when every alternative is worse. <<elseif _w == 2>> Smith signs the intake sheet and the handlers execute a protocol bearing the Owner's seal. Each stage reduces resistance while preserving enough awareness to understand the exchange. It is sophisticated cruelty, optimized for repeat business. At discharge, no representative negotiates with you. The system automatically takes a thousand and grants minimal relief. You leave recognizing that the Owner does not need to meet assets who already enforce his terms upon themselves. <<else>> The nameless clinic contains cameras, trainers, and a one-way window. Whether Smith or another employee watches from behind it is operationally irrelevant. Every procedure communicates the same message: the Owner can alter your terms only by altering you. You receive a small concession and several new conditioned responses. The ledger calls the account improved. Your own accounting records a net loss, but the debt structure ensures you may purchase the loss again. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOwnerFavorA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> Smith hands you to the Owner's training staff. The Owner never appears; his instructions come through speakers while masked handlers put you through the most grueling program you have ever endured. You feel that you have lost an immense amount. Smith explains that lowering interest is no easy task and that fair compensation was required. The tiny change on his tablet makes the explanation feel obscene. <<elseif _w == 1>> A guard takes your belongings and escorts you into a white training room. Everyone knows your name, history, and debt, yet none will tell you theirs. The invisible Owner's authority fills the room more completely than a person could. Hours later, Smith shows you the revised figures. The relief is real and painfully small. You struggle to understand how surrendering so much of yourself purchased so little freedom. <<elseif _w == 2>> Smith completes the paperwork at a service entrance, and handlers carry out a program marked with the Owner's seal. You do not meet the person who designed today's program. Here you encounter him only through rules that punish hesitation and reward surrender. At the end, a thousand dollars disappears and the interest recedes by a narrow fraction. You leave knowing the transaction was predatory and unable to find a better one. <<else>> The clinic has no name, only cameras and a one-way window. Trainers reshape you according to instructions delivered from somewhere beyond the glass. Whether the Owner watches is never revealed. Smith collects you after the session and calls the small concession proof of goodwill. You look at the damage, the fee, and the revised ledger, then sign because the debt has made consent indistinguishable from arithmetic. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 11)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 16)>><<run setup.drainIQ(10, 'night')>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 5)>> <<set $money -= 1000>> /% Renegotiation: diminishing interest relief per visit (3% -> 2% -> 1%). Clamped at 0: relief CLEARS accumulated penalty, it does not buy a discount below the base tier. Without the floor one visit alone pushed $interestPenalty to -3, and with the 1pp tier step that is three free tiers on top of whatever the debt actually is. %/ <<if $ownerVisits == 0>><<set _relief to 3>> <<elseif $ownerVisits == 1>><<set _relief to 2>> <<else>><<set _relief to 1>><</if>> <<set $interestPenalty to Math.max(0, $interestPenalty - _relief)>> /% The relief also drains Smith's refusal premium, which makes Owner "buy back the right to say no" - the emergent purpose he was missing when the sim called him a dud. %/ <<set $refusalPenalty to Math.max(0, $refusalPenalty - _relief)>> <<set $ownerVisits += 1>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/scientist.png" alt="The scientist"></div> <<storyReaction "scientist">> "My goal is to study female arousal using something more precise than the average male member. You will test these machines at different speeds and with different restraints." * [[Start the experiment|ScientistFavor]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<run setup.stampSensor("_gentlemanEvenings")>> <<run $metScientist to true>><<run setup.smithTaskDone("scientist")>> <<run setup.nightCost(70)>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistSetup', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Today's apparatus occupies the center of the laboratory, polished and calibrated before you arrive.<<elseif _v == 1>>The scientist has added cameras and biometric sensors, promising that the extra observation will not alter the experience.<<elseif _v == 2>>A prototype chair replaces last week's machine. Its restraints look medical; its controls do not.<<else>>The experiment begins behind a privacy screen while assistants monitor graphs in the adjoining room.<</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistBaseB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You follow the scientist into the room full of shiny machines, excited, because the machines are new and being tested is a game where all you have to do is hold still and feel things. He gets bolder, hands wandering as he straps you in, and you don't mind one bit - deep down you're just a nice thing to be used, and being used by a curious clever man feels special, like being important. You settle in for the buzzing, happy to be his favorite experiment. <<elseif _w == 1>> Cameras blink around the chair while the scientist fastens sensors to your skin. He calls you an excellent subject, and the clever-sounding praise makes you beam. Holding still and reacting honestly are easy rules for a game with so many shiny toys. <<elseif _w == 2>> The prototype has more restraints than the last machine and a cheerful green button for you to press. The scientist explains three safety rules; you remember the button and trust him with the rest, wriggling eagerly into position. <<else>> Assistants watch graphs from the next room while the scientist prepares you behind a screen. You love knowing every little gasp becomes useful data. Being studied makes you feel important even when his wandering hands make the experiment seem wonderfully less scientific. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistBaseC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You follow the scientist to the machine of the day and let him strap you in, clinical and unbothered - a strange booking, but a booking, and you've had weirder. His hands wander more than the "research" strictly requires and you let them; he's paying, and objections cost more than they're worth. You lie back and let the apparatus do its work, keeping your distance as you catalog the session, noting that "just a commodity" is a thing you say now without it stinging. <<elseif _w == 1>> The added cameras and sensors make the booking better documented, not more legitimate. You review the restraint releases, allow the scientist his unnecessary contact, and treat each response as a datum delivered under contract. <<elseif _w == 2>> The prototype chair has medical hardware paired with distinctly nonmedical controls. You request the operating limits, identify which answers are evasive, and still take your place because risk has already been incorporated into the fee. <<else>> Assistants monitor from behind glass while the scientist conducts the physical setup himself. His touches exceed experimental necessity by a predictable margin. You note the breach, preserve your energy, and let instrumentation turn the rest into numbers. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistBaseA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>> You follow the scientist into a room crowded with elaborate sex machines. You know the routine and approach today's apparatus. He has grown bolder, letting his hands explore your body while he works. You do not object; the arrangement has taught you to regard yourself as another commodity in the laboratory. <<elseif _w == 1>> Cameras and sensors surround the chair. You tell yourself observation is the point of research, though the scientist's hands linger where no sensor needs placing. Objecting feels harder once the restraints are closed. <<elseif _w == 2>> Today's prototype looks half medical device and half trap. He explains the controls while fastening you down, speaking quickly enough that trust becomes easier than comprehension. <<else>> Assistants wait behind a privacy screen to record your reactions. The scientist prepares your body himself, crossing professional boundaries with growing confidence. You remain still and try to regard yourself as data. <</if>> <</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 11, "science/cum/f")>> <<vid "science/cum/f" _id>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run setup.drainIQ(3, 'night')>> <<run setup.payNight(200)>> <<set _x to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistExtra', [], 4)>> <<if _x == 0>><br>The initial data excites him enough to authorize a second, more intensive test.<<elseif _x == 1>><br>A warning light appears on the console. The scientist calls it an interesting threshold and increases the setting.<<elseif _x == 2>><br>He replaces the attachment with a stronger prototype, explaining that comparison requires one more run.<<else>><br>The machine reaches its programmed limit; he overrides it manually to observe what happens beyond the safe curve.<</if>> <br><<if _p gte 3>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistExtraB', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>You can't get enough of the machine - it's better than anything, tireless and perfect and it never wants a single thing back, and the scientist claps like you did something clever. After this, boring old men seem, well, boring. Machines are your new favorite. You'd stay in the chair forever if he let you.<<elseif _w == 1>>The warning light is pretty and red, but the scientist says it only means things are getting interesting. He turns the dial higher. Your whole world narrows to perfect mechanical rhythm, and you beg him not to switch it off even after words stop coming out properly.<<elseif _w == 2>>He replaces the attachment with a stronger prototype and asks which one you prefer. The answer seems terribly important until the new machine erases every comparison except more. He laughs, records something, and calls your blank stare a successful result.<<else>>The machine reaches its limit, so the scientist overrides it. Tireless precision overwhelms you until ordinary bodies seem clumsy and disappointing by comparison. When he finally releases the restraints, you ask whether tomorrow's test can start sooner.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistExtraC', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>You notice, with a flicker of cold alarm, how thoroughly the machine works you - and worse, how the scientist's tinkering is teaching your body to prefer it, to find warm human clients dull by comparison. He isn't just using you; he's recalibrating you, and you can feel the setting move. You take the money. You file the alarm away with all the other alarms you no longer have the luxury to act on.<<elseif _w == 1>>A warning light triggers; he interprets it as permission to raise the setting. You identify the manipulation even as calibrated stimulation defeats your ability to object. The resulting preference shift feels measurable, intentional, and already difficult to reverse.<<elseif _w == 2>>The stronger prototype is introduced as comparative testing. Within minutes, comparison becomes impossible because the new stimulus overwrites the baseline. You watch your own standards being recalibrated and understand that this damage is the product he truly studies.<<else>>He manually exceeds the programmed limit. Professional detachment fails under relentless precision, leaving a conditioned appetite no human client can match. You accept the final payment with the knowledge that future work has just become harder to tolerate.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _w to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScientistExtraA', [], 4)>> <<if _w == 0>>You can't get enough of the way the machine pounds into you. The scientist is very pleased with the results. You enjoy it so much that biological cocks seem boring to you.<<elseif _w == 1>>The console flashes a warning, but he increases the setting and calls your distress valuable data. Pleasure soon becomes too continuous for thought, teaching your body to crave a precision no person could sustain.<<elseif _w == 2>>He fits the stronger prototype for one final comparison. Its rhythm obliterates memory of the earlier test and leaves ordinary touch seeming vague and inadequate. His satisfaction frightens you once you can think again.<<else>>The programmed limit is not enough for him, so he overrides it by hand. You lose yourself in mechanical perfection and emerge with your desires subtly rewritten, biological intimacy already feeling like an inferior imitation.<</if>> <</if>> <<set _id2 to window.pickImgNumber(1, 22, "science/cum/gh")>> <<vid "science/cum/gh" _id2>> <<run setup.drainIQ(5, 'night')>><<run setup.cleanseProm(5)>> <<set $money += 300>><<set $dailyIncome += 300>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<set _quietStreet to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/night-quiet-street-" _quietStreet>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', 100)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Intro and quiet branch split by persona; _p set once, reused below. The car-offer paragraph stays fixed - it is the hook into Trassa, deliberately canonical. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkIntroB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Night-night walkies! You zip your jacket all the way up, the one with the sparkly zipper, and out you go. At night the city is all shiny-wet and laminated, like somebody printed it in plastic, and walking is free, which is the best price. You do a little hop over a puddle just because. Everything smells like rain and fries, and for a whole hour nobody wants anything, and your head goes light and sweet like soda water. <<else>> You make up a game where every lit window is a fish tank, and you walk past them all slow, like an aquarium with streets. The moon's out doing its big white face. Your thoughts go floaty - you're going to have a bath later, a long one, hotel-robe-level cozy - and the clouds look like ghost-pillows. Cold nose, warm jacket, no numbers anywhere. It's basically a fairy tale out here, with you in it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkIntroC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Twenty minutes of being unlisted. No rate, no shift, no location ping - the phone stays home, the heels stay home, and the geography reverts to being geography instead of economy. You clock the corners professionally anyway - sightlines, exits, which streets eat women - the audit running on rails beneath the stroll. Habit. Even the walks are billable hours in this city; you just decline to invoice this one. <<else>> You keep the appointment you never cancel: the city, after hours, fluorescents dead, pretense off. At night the district stops lying. The cars slow to quote, the convenience stores sell exactly two things, the cashpoints glow like shrines. You walk it like an auditor with no brief - nothing to find, nobody expecting findings - and for twenty minutes the one thing in this city that doesn't want a cut of you is the pavement. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkIntro', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> You pull a jacket over your shoulders and slip out into the sodium-lit street, telling yourself it's only to clear your head. The night air is cold and honest after the closeness of your room, and for a few blocks you're nobody's debtor - just a woman walking. Your thoughts loosen. Some of the day's weight peels off your shoulders and stays behind on the wet pavement. <<elseif _v == 1>> The streets give you a bigger room to be in than your apartment tonight - four moving walls of dark and lamplight, and you inside them, walking. Your footsteps start having opinions of their own, even and unremarkable - nobody's pace but yours, the pace of someone with nowhere urgent to be. <<else>> Nobody looks at you. That is the entire luxury of it: an hour in which no face turns, no gaze performs its little appraisal, no recognition of any kind arrives, kind or otherwise. For a few blocks you are unscheduled. The debt continues without your participation, which is the closest thing to a holiday it will ever offer you. <</if>> <</if>> <<if not $walkOffered>> <<set $walkOffered to true>> <<set _proc to true>> <<else>> <<set _proc to (random(1, 100) <= 30)>> <</if>> <<if _proc>> A car slows at the curb and keeps pace with you. The window hums down. The man inside doesn't leer - he just names a number, quiet and businesslike, the way you'd order coffee. For a moment the whole city seems to hold its breath. The sum is more than a night of tips; behind your eyes, your rent and your interest and Mr. Smith's endless ledger all flicker at once. It would be so easy. That's the frightening part - how easy. * [[Get in|Trassa]] * [[Shake your head and walk home|Tally]] <<else>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkQuietB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Nobody bothers you, which you're getting better at enjoying on purpose. You window-shop everything - shoes, cakes, a teeny TV playing cartoons to nobody - and wave at a cat, and the cat doesn't wave back but you can tell it thought about it. Out here nobody grades you. You're just a pretty girl-shaped piece of night, going along with it. <<else>> The town gives a free show tonight: sprinklers hissing on somebody's lawn, a shop sign blinking its letters on and off like it's winking, a taxi's roof-light all tulip-colored in the rain. You laugh at nothing, the loud happy kind, and hear it come back off the buildings. Everyone else got stopped - by doors, by cars, by wanting things. Not you. Tonight you're the one who gets to keep walking. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkQuietC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Nothing happens, which you log as the night's entire return. You audit the quiet blocks out of habit - the shut bank, the dry cleaner's steam, the one bar with the honest light - all of it operating without you, at no cost to you. Twenty minutes of zero transactions. By current standards it's the most expensive thing you own. <<else>> Nobody slows, nobody quotes, nobody smiles the smile with arithmetic in it. The city conducts a full demonstration of how straightforward a night can be, for an audience of no one, and you take the point grudgingly. It doesn't pay down a cent of anything. It only proves the machinery can idle - that there was ever a setting on you that wasn't for sale. You bank that, and walk home before the offer expires. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkQuiet', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> Nobody bothers you tonight. You walk a slow loop through the emptying streets and come home a little calmer, a little less afraid. It isn't much, and it doesn't touch the debt. Tonight, it's enough. <<elseif _v == 1>> A night bus sighs past, all lit-up and nearly empty, faces sleeping against the glass. You walk beside it for a block and then let it go. Nothing tonight has asked you for arithmetic - not a price, not a percentage, not a sum - and a night without arithmetic has quietly become your definition of a holiday. <<else>> Under the railway bridge a fox stands in the strip-light, considers you, and moves on about its business. You stand there longer than the moment deserves. The fox lives here - that's all it's doing, living here - and for the length of one amber traffic-light cycle you understand it completely. Then you walk home, calmer, and the debt resumes exactly where you left it. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Head to bed|Tally]] <</if>> <</if>>

<<set _vinceCar to either("01", "02", "03")>> <<vid "place/vince-car-" _vinceCar>> "You're good," the man says at last, not a compliment - an appraisal. "Too good to be freezing your ass off out here for gas money." He tells you his name is Vince, like it's a gift. "I book rooms and find clients. You show up, do the work, get paid. I take my cut. You'd clear more in one night than a week out here." He lets the offer hang in the cold air between you. "You want a booking, or you want another night on that guardrail? Your call." * [[Get in the front seat|PimpTryout]] * [["I work alone."|PimpDecline]]

<<vid "place/vince-car-" "04">> <<set $pimpDeclined to true>> You shake your head and step back from the car. Vince shrugs, unbothered, a man who has heard it before and knows how it usually ends. He flicks a card through the window; it lands at your feet in the gutter light. "For when the highway gets old," he says, and pulls away. You almost leave the card there. Almost. Then you pick it up and tuck it somewhere you'll be able to find it, and hate yourself a little for already knowing you will. * [[Back into the dark|Tally]]

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<vid "slut/sex" 1>> <<run setup.nightCost(50)>> <<set $pimped to true>> <<set $pimpDeclined to false>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> Vince drives you to a clean apartment that is clearly his, or one of his. There is no talk of payment; this one is for him. "Gotta know what I'm selling," he says, easy and unhurried, and takes his time trying the product. You let him. The line was behind you the moment you got into the car, and the certainty leaves nothing to negotiate. He is practiced, thorough, and almost considerate. You wish he had given you something simpler to hate. Afterward he presses a cheap phone into your hand with one number saved in it. "You work when I call. I take a third, off the top. The rooms, the clients, the bookings - I handle those. You don't go back to the guardrail." He smiles like a door easing shut. "Welcome to the family." * [[Head home|Tally]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run setup.nightCost(Math.round(40 * (setup.buff('EndingQueenHighway.b') ? 0.7 : 1)))>> <<set $outcallCount += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> /% Ladder by promiscuity: blowjob -> sex -> double (2 men) -> gang (3+) %/ <<set _roll to random(1, 100)>> <<if ($promiscuity lt 45 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 60>><<set _act to "blowjob">><<else>><<set _act to "sex">><</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity lt 65 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 30>><<set _act to "blowjob">><<elseif _roll lte 75>><<set _act to "sex">><<else>><<set _act to "double">><</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity lt 85 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 40>><<set _act to "sex">><<elseif _roll lte 80>><<set _act to "double">><<else>><<set _act to "gang">><</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll lte 35>><<set _act to "double">><<else>><<set _act to "gang">><</if>> <</if>> /% Gross scales from promiscuity, plus ds·2 (0.6 §5.2: deep submission outcalls at a premium - Freeuse/Black-adjacent builds get a night that finally pays for the fall); modified by act; Vince takes 35% off the top %/ <<set _gross to 350 + ($promiscuity * 7) + ($domsub * 2)>> <<if _act is "blowjob">><<set _gross to Math.floor(_gross * 0.85)>><<set _pool to 22>> <<elseif _act is "sex">><<set _pool to 29>> <<elseif _act is "double">><<set _gross to Math.floor(_gross * 1.3)>><<set _pool to 25>> <<else>><<set _gross to Math.floor(_gross * 1.7)>><<set _pool to 25>><</if>> <<set _cut to Math.floor(_gross * 0.35)>> <<set _pay to _gross - _cut>> <<set $pimpEarnings += _cut>> <<run setup.payNight(_pay)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, _pool, _key)>> <<set _key to "slut/" + _act>> <<vid _key _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _act is "blowjob">> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallBlowB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The nice man opened his door and now you're being SO helpful with your mouth, which is the best way to be helpful - everyone always seems so grateful. His hand pats your head and you glow. There's a game show on and the colors are pretty and you lose the thread of everything except the warm, busy feeling of being used for something. He gives you money after. You're not sure exactly what for, but you like the crinkle. Vince gets some. Vince always gets some. That part's fuzzy too. <<elseif _v == 1>> The television is showing cartoons, bright shapes bouncing behind him while you kneel. He pats your hair whenever you do something right, so you follow the pats like directions and beam whenever he calls you good. At the door he gives you a tip and a juice box from the fridge. You are equally delighted by both, though Vince only takes a share of one. <<elseif _v == 2>> He is shy, which means you get to be the confident one. You tell him to relax, lower yourself between his knees, and show him how easy everything can be when nobody thinks too much. Afterward he thanks you three times. Gratitude makes the whole visit feel almost charitable. You skip to the elevator with the cash tucked safely away. <<else>> The apartment has a soft rug and he lets you choose the music. You pick something bubbly, sway to the beat while you work, and turn his nervous little gasps into part of the song. He calls you sunshine when you leave. You forget his name before the lift arrives, but keep the new one for yourself all the way downstairs. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallBlowC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Address, buzzer, forty minutes booked. You read the room the second you're inside - nervous first-timer, wedding ring in a dish by the door - and give him exactly the discreet, unhurried service the rate promises. Knees on his good rug, one eye on the clock, condom non-negotiable. He pays cash into your hand and thanks you like you did him a kindness, which, professionally, you did. You are at the elevator before he has finished saying goodbye. <<elseif _v == 1>> You verify the cash and the boundary list before taking off your coat. The client is talkative, so you let him spend ten booked minutes explaining his divorce; attentive silence costs you less than physical effort and makes him feel understood. The actual service is brief and controlled. He tips for compassion you never claimed to feel. <<elseif _v == 2>> A hotel room, a traveling salesman, thirty minutes. You place the condom where he can see it and the panic button where he cannot. His preferences are ordinary; your delivery is polished enough to make ordinary feel bespoke. You leave on schedule, send Vince the completion code, and mentally file the client as safe, punctual, forgettable. <<else>> He attempts to add filming to the booking. You name a price high enough to make your refusal sound commercial. He puts the phone away. Negotiation works better when a man can pretend the decision was his. You finish the agreed service, collect every bill, and check the hallway mirror before leaving. No face, no trace, no problem. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallBlow', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Vince texts an address and you go, because that's the arrangement now. It's a tidy apartment that smells of takeout and loneliness; the man barely speaks, just guides you down onto the carpet in front of his TV like room service he ordered. You do the work while a game show murmurs behind you. He tips you at the door, avoiding your eyes, and you walk back into the night with the taste of a stranger and Vince's cut already subtracted in your head. <<elseif _v == 1>> The client opens the door without greeting you and points toward the bedroom. You cling to the rules Vince texted - payment first, protection always - as if they make the rest less frightening. It is over quickly. In the elevator, a neighbor smiles and asks whether you had a nice visit. You say yes because no other answer fits inside casual conversation. <<elseif _v == 2>> His family photographs face the sofa where he seats you. You turn one frame toward the wall before kneeling. He laughs at the gesture, but you cannot work under the gaze of children who share his eyes. The frame is still turned when you leave. You wonder who will put it back. <<else>> He offers you wine. You refuse, afraid of losing even an inch of control, and perform the service with your coat still folded beside you like a promise that you can leave. At the door he says you seem too nice for this. You take the money and wonder what sort of woman he thinks the payment was meant to summon. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _act is "sex">> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallSexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> He wanted a girlfriend for an hour and you're SO good at girlfriend - all giggles and yes and arching just right - and honestly it barely feels like pretending anymore, because what else would you even be? You melt into his nice clean bed and let the warm nothing take you. He says sweet things and you keep them like shiny wrappers. When it's over you can't remember arriving. Vince's is the only number in your phone saved under a real name; yours, if you ever had one, has gone soft and slippery and gone. <<elseif _v == 1>> He wants kisses and pet names and an hour of believing you missed him. That is easy. You throw your arms around him at the door, invent a silly nickname, and let his happiness tell you what to do next. When the hour ends, he asks when he can see you again. You tell him soon, because soon is a soft pretty word that does not have to mean anything. <<elseif _v == 2>> The bed is covered in rose petals he bought for the appointment. You squeal with genuine delight; pretty things remain pretty even when the reason is confusing. He takes your reaction for affection and spends the booking trying to earn another. You leave with petals stuck to your clothes and a generous tip. Vince laughs when you show him. You laugh too. <<else>> He asks you to pretend this is your anniversary. You choose a number at random, congratulate him, and improvise a whole bright history between kisses. By the end, even you almost remember the vacations that never happened. The invented life vanishes when the door closes. You keep the money and one warm, borrowed memory of a seaside hotel. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallSexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Standard outcall, one hour, the full girlfriend package - the highest-margin thing you sell that doesn't need a second girl. You give him eye contact and easy laughter and the small convincing lies, and he pays a premium to forget he's paying at all. Your body runs the routine while your mind does the arithmetic: gross, minus Vince's third, net, running total for the week. He calls you beautiful. You bank it with the cash and let neither one touch you. <<elseif _v == 1>> The booking notes say lonely, no rough play, lots of conversation. You build the hour accordingly: twenty minutes listening, thirty minutes in bed, ten minutes of reassurance. Emotional labor has excellent margins when correctly scheduled. He asks whether you enjoyed it. You answer with enough detail to make the lie feel personal, then collect the envelope from the nightstand. <<elseif _v == 2>> The client wants spontaneity, so you carefully manufacture it - an impulsive kiss by the door, a laugh while undressing, a change of pace at the exact predictable moment. Planning is what allows spontaneity to remain safe. He believes the chemistry was unusual. You have used the same routine all week. <<else>> A luxury apartment changes nothing except the thread count and the size of the mirrors. You maintain eye contact when useful, redirect his hands when necessary, and keep the fantasy intact without surrendering control of the room. He pays for another hour but dismisses you after one. Efficient clients are the closest thing this profession offers to luck. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallSex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> This one wants the bedroom, the whole hour, the illusion that you chose to be here. You perform it as best you can - the murmurs, the arch of your back - while some cold clerk at the back of your skull tallies what's left of you afterward. His sheets are clean and his hands aren't cruel, and somehow that makes it lonelier, not less. When it's done he offers you a glass of water like a gentleman, and you drink it, and neither of you mentions the money already folded on the nightstand. <<elseif _v == 1>> He greets you with flowers, and for one confused second you think you have the wrong address. Then you see the envelope beside the bed. The gesture was part of what he purchased from himself: proof that this is romance rather than delivery. You leave the flowers behind and take the cash. In the elevator, you regret which one felt easier to carry. <<elseif _v == 2>> The room is warm, the sheets are clean, and the client repeatedly asks whether you are comfortable. You say yes each time. Honesty would not stop the appointment; it would only make both of you witness it. Afterward he holds you until the paid hour expires. The embrace is the part you find hardest to endure. <<else>> He wants you to say his name. You do, carefully, while keeping yours out of the room. The hour becomes a performance of mutual desire assembled from one man's requests and one woman's need for money. On the street, Vince asks how it went. Fine, you type. The word is small enough to hide everything. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _act is "double">> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallDoubleB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> TWO of them tonight, which is like double the fun and double the grateful, and you love being shared - love the way they pass you back and forth like you're the best toy at the party. You giggle and flop and say yes to everything, because yes is your favorite word now, so round and easy. Their voices blur together over you into one nice warm buzz. Afterward there's a lot of money, and you can't count that high anymore, so you just hand Vince his part and keep the crinkly rest. More people wanting you is more better. The math is that simple. You are that simple. <<elseif _v == 1>> They are best friends and turn the booking into a competition. You clap for each of them, award kisses like points, and laugh whenever they argue over who impressed you more. Keeping score is hard, so you declare them both winners. They pool their tips and call you the perfect referee. You like jobs where everyone wins. <<elseif _v == 2>> One is shy and the other gives all the instructions. That makes the room simple: follow the loud voice, encourage the quiet one, smile whenever either looks uncertain. Soon both are pleased and you are floating in their shared approval. At the door they ask which you preferred. You say both at once and receive two extra bills for diplomacy. <<else>> The men pass you between them with careful, almost ceremonial turns. You make each feel chosen while he has you and eagerly reach for the other when prompted. Being shared means never needing to decide where you belong. Afterward they order pizza and offer you a slice. You eat it cross-legged on the bed, happy as a guest who has forgotten the admission price. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallDoubleC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Two-man booking, priced accordingly - double the bodies, more than double the rate, because managing a room takes real skill and you've got it. You keep them both handled, both happy, both moving to your quiet tempo so nobody gets ideas about renegotiating. It's choreography, cold and competent, and you're the only professional in the room. They high-five when it's done, the idiots, and overpay, and you're dressed and calculating Vince's cut before they've caught their breath. <<elseif _v == 1>> You establish rules before anyone undresses: protection, turns, no surprises. The more confident man smirks until you make it clear that breaking a rule ends the booking for both. Peer pressure handles the rest. You pace them so neither feels neglected and neither gains control. The skill is not endurance; it is room management. <<elseif _v == 2>> They arrive drunk but coherent. You slow the room down, keep water within reach, and convert their chaotic enthusiasm into an orderly rotation. Every instruction sounds flirtatious while remaining unmistakably an instruction. Both leave satisfied. More importantly, both leave without an incident report. <<else>> One client booked the other as a birthday surprise. You identify the actual customer immediately: the friend watches your performance more closely than the man receiving it. So you sell to both audiences at once. Their gratitude becomes a substantial tip. Knowing who needs the fantasy is half the work. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallDouble', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> There are two of them tonight, friends, passing a beer and then passing you, and the math of that lands in your stomach before the first hand does. You go somewhere far away and let them arrange you between them, trying not to hear how they talk to each other over your body like a match they're both winning. It's more money - Vince made sure you knew, made sure you'd say yes - and you cling to that number like a railing on a staircase with no bottom. You leave with both their marks on you and neither of their names. <<elseif _v == 1>> The second man steps out of the kitchen after Vince's message promised one. They insist the price covered both. You call Vince; he pauses, then tells you the revised amount. His calm makes refusal feel childish. You stay. By morning, the extra money will look like a decision. Tonight it feels like an ambush with a receipt. <<elseif _v == 2>> They keep checking each other's reactions, using you to prove something neither will name. You become the field on which their friendship competes. Whenever one touches you, he looks at the other. You survive by focusing on the payment split. Numbers have no eyes. <<else>> One is kind enough to ask whether you need a break. Before you can answer, the other laughs, and pride traps the word in your throat. You shake your head and let the booking continue. Later you understand that the choice was technically yours. That technicality hurts more than the bruises. <</if>> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallGangB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> SO many friends tonight! A whole room of them, all wanting you at once, and being wanted that much feels like being famous, like being the sun everyone turns to face. You lose count right away, which is fine - counting is hard and this is easy, just say yes and float and let all the nice hands decide where you go. Time turns into warm soup with no edges. When they're done you're a happy, sticky puddle on somebody's mattress, humming. There's a mountain of money. Vince takes his and pats your cheek and calls you his best girl - and "his best girl" is the closest thing to a name you've got left, so you hold onto it, glowing, while he counts. <<elseif _v == 1>> The room cheers when you arrive, and you curtsey because it feels like walking onto a stage. Everyone wants a turn with the special guest. You stop trying to match faces to hands and simply follow whatever voice is closest. At the end they applaud again. You bow from the mattress, dizzy and delighted, while Vince gathers the price of admission. <<elseif _v == 2>> Somebody puts a paper crown on your head and calls you queen for the night. You wear it through everything, giggling whenever it slips over one eye. A queen should make all her subjects happy, and there are so many subjects. The crown is crushed afterward, but you carry it home anyway. For a few hours, you were important to an entire room. <<else>> They take turns praising you until the words merge into one warm chorus: pretty, eager, perfect, good. You chase that chorus wherever their hands guide you, grateful that nobody expects a thought more complicated than yes. Vince calls you his star when he counts the stack. Stars are bright and far away and mostly empty inside. It sounds exactly right. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallGangC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Group booking - top of the menu, priced like it, and you don't take it unless the number's right and the room's been vetted. You run it like a shift: pace yourself, rotate them, keep the mood from tipping into something you can't control, protect the product, which is you. It's brutal, mechanical work and you are frighteningly good at it, standing outside yourself the whole time with a clipboard. They run out of steam before you run out of composure. You collect an obscene stack, peel off Vince's share, and walk out having felt, professionally, almost nothing. <<elseif _v == 1>> You count six clients, locate both exits, and make the rules audible before music begins. The organizer repeats them for you; giving one man responsibility makes him police the others. It is an old crowd-management trick and it works. You rotate breaks, water, and attention until the booking expires. Endurance is logistics disguised as appetite. <<elseif _v == 2>> The group expects chaos. You give them the appearance of it while controlling the sequence with touches, glances, and firm little commands delivered as flirtation. Nobody notices that every spontaneous moment was assigned. They congratulate themselves afterward. You count the cash and let them keep the illusion of authorship. <<else>> One client begins testing limits. You stop the entire room and make his friends choose between restraining him or ending their expensive evening. Social pressure corrects him faster than Vince's security ever could. The booking resumes. Your smile returns on cue, but the surcharge you add afterward is entirely sincere. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOutcallGang', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The address is a rented room, and there are more of them than you let yourself count - four, five, a rotation of hands and voices and phones held up. You leave your body at the door and go as deep into your own skull as you can, to a small locked room where a girl who had a name is still waiting for a bus that came years ago. They use you in turns and together, and you endure it the way you'd endure weather, because Vince set the price and the price is survival for another week. When it finally ends you can't stand right away. The money is a thick, disgusting brick. It is also the rent. <<elseif _v == 1>> Vince said four. You count seven pairs of shoes by the door and stop before counting faces. The organizer shows you the money; the stack is deliberately too large to refuse without remembering every reason you need it. You turn the night into separate minutes and survive each one only once. Dawn finds you in the bathroom, fully dressed, unable to remember dressing. <<elseif _v == 2>> Phones appear despite the agreement. You protest until someone adds more cash and Vince, reached by message, replies with a thumbs-up. The symbol glows on your screen like a tiny verdict. For the rest of the booking you stare past the cameras and imagine they cannot record anyone who is no longer mentally in the room. <<else>> They celebrate something you never learn: a promotion, a victory, a man about to marry. You are the entertainment purchased to turn camaraderie into a story they will tell selectively. When it ends, they pose for a group photograph without you. You sit just outside the frame, holding the envelope that proves you were the center of the evening. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $pimpEarnings gte 8000 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingPimpBitch")>> * [[Vince counts the stack twice|EndingPimpBitch]] <<elseif $outcallCount gte 15 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingCommonWhore")>> * [[This is simply what you are now|EndingCommonWhore]] <<else>> You keep <<print _pay>>$; Vince takes <<print _cut>>$. * [[Head home|Tally]] <</if>> <</if>>

/% Native #menu-restart could not receive synthetic clicks and showed a raw browser confirm; a macro link restarts cleanly and matches menu styling. %/ <<link "RESTART">><<run Engine.restart()>><</link>>

<<nobr>> <div class="dl-source-credits"> a mod of <a href="https://tfgames.site/game/1836/debt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Debt</a> & <a href="https://tfgames.site/game/2719/rising-debt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RisingDebt</a> </div> <div id="stats-panel"> /% Ledger financial rail: phase, big debt, rate, day interest, next step, earned today. %/ <<set _railMoney to ($money < 0 ? $money : 0)>> <<set _railNext to setup.ledger.nextThreshold($money)>> <h3 class="dl-finances-heading"><span>Finances</span><span>Day $days</span></h3> <div class="debt-display" @style="$money >= 0 ? 'color: #36e07f; text-shadow: 0 0 10px rgba(54,224,127,.4)' : ''"><<print ($money < 0 ? "-$" : "+$") + Math.abs($money)>></div> <div class="rail-line"><span>Interest rate</span><b @style="$interest >= 13 ? 'color:#ff998e;' : ($interest >= 7 ? 'color:#e9c991;' : '')">$interest%</b></div> <div class="rail-line"><span>Day interest ≈</span><b class="dl-bad">$<<print Math.floor(-_railMoney * $interest / 100)>></b></div> <<if _railNext>> <div class="rail-line"><span>Next rate step</span><b class="dl-warn">$<<print _railNext.gap>> → <<print _railNext.rate>>%</b></div> <</if>> <div class="rail-line"><span>Earned today</span><b class="dl-good">+$<<print $dailyIncome>></b></div> <div class="rail-divider"></div> <h3>Attributes</h3> <div class="stat-label"><span>IQ</span><span @style="$iq < 40 ? 'color:#ff4444;' : ($iq < 55 ? 'color:#ffaa00;' : '')">$iq</span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-iq" @style="'width: ' + Math.clamp($iq, 0, 200)/2 + '%'"></div> </div> <div class="stat-label"><span>Beauty</span><span>$beauty</span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-beauty" @style="'width: ' + Math.clamp($beauty, 0, 100) + '%'"></div> </div> <div class="stat-label"><span>Promiscuity</span><span @style="$promiscuity >= 90 ? 'color:#ff4444;' : ($promiscuity >= 80 ? 'color:#ffaa00;' : '')">$promiscuity</span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-promiscuity" @style="'width: ' + Math.clamp($promiscuity, 0, 100) + '%'"></div> </div> <div class="stat-label"><span>Submission</span><span @style="$domsub >= 60 ? 'color:#ff4444;' : ($domsub >= 45 ? 'color:#ffaa00;' : '')">$domsub</span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-domsub" @style="'width: ' + Math.clamp($domsub, 0, 100) + '%'"></div> </div> <div class="stat-label"><span>Stamina</span><span>$stamina</span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-stamina" @style="'width: ' + ($stamina / ($maxStamina || 200) * 100) + '%'"></div> </div> /% 0.3 A1: ending danger zones, surfaced instead of discovered. Red = an ending gate is inside normal play distance; the line names the threat in plain words. 0.6g (QA 2026-10-10): красная зона живёт ВНЕ свёрнутого фолда - предохранители концовок не прячутся за клик; всё амберное остаётся в «File details». %/ <<set _dz to []>> <<if $iq < 40>><<run _dz.push("mind fading - EMPTY DOLL below 30 IQ")>><</if>> <<if $promiscuity >= 90>><<run _dz.push("peak promiscuity - FINAL DOWNFALL at 100")>><</if>> <<if $domsub >= 60 and $loanSharkPet >= 20>><<run _dz.push("the gangster's grip tightening")>><</if>> <<if _dz.length > 0>> <div style="border: 1px solid #ff4444; padding: 2px; font-size: 0.65rem; text-align: center; color: #ff4444; margin-top: 5px;"> ⚠ <<print _dz.join(" · ")>> </div> <</if>> <details class="dl-sidebar-secondary"><summary>File details · <<print setup.runsMeta().points>> IOUs</summary> <<if $wellRested>> <div style="border: 1px solid #00ff00; padding: 2px; font-size: 0.65rem; text-align: center; color: #00ff00; margin-top: 5px;"> * WELL RESTED (+20%) </div> <</if>> /% 0.3 work grid: the telegraph must name what is accumulating, not just flavor it. Amber, not red: information, not yet danger - the endings still sit behind the money checks. 0.6a: all nine venues count, via setup.mainJob(), and the line names both grid exits at the live (rep-discounted) thresholds - the old Math.max over three shift counters missed six venues and a hardcoded gate. %/ <<set _wk to setup.mainJob()>><<set _wkt to setup.workThresholds()>> <<if _wk.shifts gte _wkt.fall>> <div style="border: 1px solid #ffaa00; padding: 2px; font-size: 0.65rem; text-align: center; color: #ffaa00; margin-top: 5px;"> ★ the venue is taking notice - <<print _wk.shifts>> shifts · theirs at <<print _wkt.fall>> if you drown · yours at <<print _wkt.esc>> with the debt dead </div> <</if>> /% 0.6a: petTaming was the only ending counter with no telegraph at all - House Pet arrived unannounced. Two appointments is early enough to matter. %/ <<if $petTaming gte 2>> <div style="border: 1px solid #ffaa00; padding: 2px; font-size: 0.65rem; text-align: center; color: #ffaa00; margin-top: 5px;"> ★ the rich man's calendar has a recurring line - <<print $petTaming>> appointments and counting </div> <</if>> /% 0.3 Eternal Debt telegraph: still water is the last unread rule. 0.6 studio fix: the gate moved to 20 stall-days (C1) - the old threshold of 30 fired only after the ending's own gate had already crossed. Now 15 of 20 (25 with Bought Time), while there is still time to react. %/ <<if $stallCount gte (15 + setup.stallBonus())>> <div style="border: 1px solid #ffaa00; padding: 2px; font-size: 0.65rem; text-align: center; color: #ffaa00; margin-top: 5px;"> ⚠ the ledger notices the stillness - <<print $stallCount>> days of still water </div> <</if>> /% 0.6 B2/B3: the nearest outcome, then the counters the game tracked but never showed (leash, ranch appointments, high-water, Vince, still water, the highway, outcalls). One print builds both blocks - setup.outcomes derives everything from live state, gates untouched. %/ <<print setup.outcomes.sidebarHtml()>> <<print setup.ledger.accountCaption()>> </details> </div> /% Meta navigation lives outside #stats-panel: hiding the stats rail on start/author screens must never hide archive access. Sticky to the bar bottom so long stat rails cannot push it out of reach. %/ <div class="sidebar-links"> <<link "Your file">><<run setup.ledger.openAccount()>><</link>> <<if ["Start", "Contract", "BackOffice", "Dossier"].includes(passage())>> <<link "Back Office">><<goto "BackOffice">><</link>> <</if>> <<link "Endings">><<run setup.ledger.openOutcomes()>><</link>> <<link "Settings">><<run setup.preferences.open()>><</link>> <<link "Gallery">><<if passage() isnot "Gallery" and not ($Gallery == 1 and setup.isGalleryViewer(passage()))>><<set $galleryReturn to passage()>><</if>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <div class="dl-sidebar-version">v<<print setup.gameVersion>></div> </div> <</nobr>>

<<nobr>> <<set $Gallery to 0>> <<if $lastGalleryMode isnot "Ending" and $lastGalleryMode isnot "Event">><<set $lastGalleryMode to "Ending">><</if>> <div class="gallery-wrapper"> <h1>Archive of Memories</h1> <<if $patreonBonus>> <div class="dl-gallery-access-active" role="status">Patreon access active · all starting profiles, Draft and five contract slots are available.</div> <<else>> <section class="dl-gallery-access" aria-labelledby="dl-gallery-code-title"> <h2 id="dl-gallery-code-title">Patreon access code</h2> <p>Enter the code from the latest Patreon release post to open the event archive, all starting profiles, Draft and five contract slots.</p> <form class="dl-gallery-code-form" onsubmit="return window.checkGalleryCode(event)"> <label for="code_gal">Access code</label> <input type="text" id="code_gal" placeholder="Enter your Patreon code" autocomplete="off" spellcheck="false" required> <button type="submit">Activate</button> </form> <div id="gal_res" role="status" aria-live="polite"></div> <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/YellowArachnid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Find the code on Patreon</a> </section> <</if>> <<if $patreonBonus>> <p class="dl-gallery-credit">Archive credits: <b><<print $gallery.points>></b> · Unlock a replay below with a credit, or buy individual events for 15 IOUs in the <<link "Back Office">><<goto "BackOffice">><</link>>.</p> <div class="gallery-tabs"> <<if $lastGalleryMode is "Ending">><span class="gallery-tab-active">Endings</span><<else>><<link "Endings">><<set $lastGalleryMode to "Ending">><<goto "Gallery">><</link>><</if>> <<if $lastGalleryMode is "Event">><span class="gallery-tab-active">Events</span><<else>><<link "Events">><<set $lastGalleryMode to "Event">><<goto "Gallery">><</link>><</if>> </div> <div id="gallery-content"><<gallerygrid $lastGalleryMode>></div> /% 0.6c (автор, 09.10): Replay Rights (Back Office, 100 IOUs) открывают не-патрону вкладку Endings - повторный просмотр уже достигнутых финалов. Событийная полка остаётся перком кода. %/ <<elseif setup.runsMeta().shop and setup.runsMeta().shop.endingReplays>> <<set $lastGalleryMode to "Ending">> <div class="gallery-tabs"> <span class="gallery-tab-active">Endings</span> </div> <div id="gallery-content"><<gallerygrid "Ending">></div> <p style="text-align:center; font-size:.85rem; color:var(--muted); margin-top:14px;">Replay Rights cover the endings you have reached. The event shelf unlocks with the code from Patreon.</p> <<else>> <div class="patreon-lock"> <p>Scenes and endings you encounter in play are saved on your account. The code opens the archive; individual replays still need to be reached or unlocked.</p> <p><b>Replay Rights</b> (100 IOUs) open the reached-ending shelf without a code. <<link "Visit the Back Office">><<goto "BackOffice">><</link>>.</p> </div> <</if>> <div style="margin-top:2rem; text-align:center; border-top:1px solid #333; padding-top:1.2rem;"> <<link "↩ Return to game">><<goto $galleryReturn>><</link>> </div> </div> <</nobr>>

/% 0.6 B1: the outcomes registry - every ending, its exact condition, and a live counter. The view is mounted by LedgerUI.twee (setup.ledger.mountOutcomes) after display; this passage is only the mount point and the way back, same contract as :: Contract in Runs.twee. %/ <div id="dl-outcomes" class="dl-outcomes" aria-label="Outcomes registry"> <div class="dl-contract-loading">Opening the city's books…</div> </div> <div style="margin-top:1.4rem; text-align:center;"> <<set _odest to ($outcomesReturn and $outcomesReturn isnot "OutcomesLedger") ? $outcomesReturn : "Morning">> <<link "↩ Return to game">><<goto _odest>><</link>> </div>

<<widget "gallerygrid">> <<set _mode to _args[0]>> <<set $lastGalleryMode to _mode>> <<if _mode is "Ending">> /% Endings tab: two labeled groups - escapes first, then the fall. NEW tags wave-2 ids; hover explains the flag meaning. %/ <<set _passes to [["ESCAPES", true], ["THE FALL", false]]>> <<for _pass range _passes>> <<set _want to _pass[1]>> <<set _n to 0>> <<for _id, _scene range setup.galleryRegistry>> <<if _scene.type is "Ending" and !!_scene.win is _want>><<set _n += 1>><</if>> <</for>> <div style="font-size:0.78rem; letter-spacing:2px; opacity:0.6; margin:12px 0 4px 0;"> <<print _pass[0]>> - <<print _n>> </div> <div class="gallery-grid"> <<set _any to false>> <<for _id, _scene range setup.galleryRegistry>> <<if _scene.type is "Ending" and !!_scene.win is _want>> <<set _any to true>> <<set _tip to (_scene.win ? "An escape - a way out of the debt." : "A defeat - the city kept her.")>> <<if setup.newEndings[_id]>> <<set _tip to _tip + " New in this build.">> <</if>> <<if $gallery.unlocks[_id]>> <<capture _id, _scene>> <div class="gallery-item" title="<<print _tip>>"> <<link _scene.title>> <<set $Gallery to 1>> <<set $lastGalleryMode to "Ending">> <<set $prevPassageEnd to "Gallery">> <<goto _scene.file>> <</link>> <<if setup.newEndings[_id]>><span style="font-size:0.62rem; color:#ff0080; border:1px solid #ff0080; border-radius:3px; padding:0 3px; margin-left:4px;">NEW</span><</if>> </div> <</capture>> <<else>> <div class="gallery-item gallery-locked" title="<<print _tip>>">🔒 <<print _scene.title>> <<if $patreonBonus and $gallery.points gt 0>> <<capture _id>> <br><<link "Unlock (1 pt)">> <<run setup.spendGalleryCredit(_id)>> <<replace "#gallery-content">><<gallerygrid $lastGalleryMode>><</replace>> <</link>> <</capture>> <</if>> </div> <</if>> <</if>> <</for>> <<if not _any>><p style="color:#666; text-align:center;">Nothing here yet.</p><</if>> </div> <</for>> <<else>> <<set _groups to ["OWNER", "RICH MAN", "GANGSTER", "ATHLETE", "SMITH / OFFICE", "INTERN", "CLINIC", "VINCE", "LIBRARY"]>> <<set _allAny to false>> <<for _group range _groups>> <<set _count to 0>> <<for _id, _scene range setup.galleryRegistry>> <<if _scene.type is "Event" and _scene.group is _group>><<set _count += 1>><</if>> <</for>> <<if _count gt 0>> <<set _allAny to true>> <section class="gallery-section"> <div class="gallery-section-head"><b><<print _group>></b><span><<print _count>> memories</span></div> <div class="gallery-grid"> <<for _id, _scene range setup.galleryRegistry>> <<if _scene.type is "Event" and _scene.group is _group>> <<if $gallery.unlocks[_id]>> <<capture _id, _scene>> <div class="gallery-item gallery-item-live"> <<set _coverMeta to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_id.replace(/^Scene/, "")]>> <<set _cover to _coverMeta ? _coverMeta.cover : null>> <<set _coverLabel to _cover ? '<img class="dl-gallery-cover" src="' + _cover + '" alt="" loading="lazy"><span class="dl-gallery-cover-title">' + _scene.title + '</span>' : _scene.title>> <<link _coverLabel>> <<set $Gallery to 1>> <<set $lastGalleryMode to "Event">> <<set $prevPassageEnd to "Gallery">> <<goto _scene.file>> <</link>> </div> <</capture>> <<else>> <div class="gallery-item gallery-locked">🔒 <<print _scene.title>> <<if $patreonBonus and $gallery.points gt 0>> <<capture _id>> <br><<link "Unlock (1 pt)">> <<run setup.spendGalleryCredit(_id)>> <<replace "#gallery-content">><<gallerygrid "Event">><</replace>> <</link>> <</capture>> <</if>> </div> <</if>> <</if>> <</for>> </div> </section> <</if>> <</for>> <<if not _allAny>><p style="color:#666; text-align:center;">Nothing here yet.</p><</if>> <</if>> <</widget>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("cafe")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<set $cafeShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "cafe">> <<if $cafeShifts gte 25 and not $teleCafe>><<set $teleCafe to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts. The regulars have stopped asking if you're new here, and the espresso machine only misbehaves for strangers now.</div> <</if>> /% Cafe stays the cheapest job in the game - it is the morning slot and only costs 30 stamina, so the rungs pay far less than the Bar's. What the ladder really trades in is promiscuity: the escalation should push you further down the route you are already on, not fund it. %/ <<set _total to 150>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shy">> /% Cafe shift type logic: ordinary service -> teasing for tips -> sex with a patron -> public/group use %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 30 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>><<set _event to "shy">><<else>><<set _event to "flirt">><</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 20>><<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif _roll <= 70>><<set _event to "flirt">> <<elseif _roll <= 95>><<set _event to "slut">> <<else>><<set _event to "kink">><</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 20>><<set _event to "flirt">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>><<set _event to "slut">> <<else>><<set _event to "kink">><</if>> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _event == "shy">> <<set _cafeShyKey to "cafe/shy/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _cafeShyVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _cafeShyKey _cafeShyVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The orders are hard today. Oat milk, soy milk, whole milk, no milk - so many words for white. You mix up table three and table five, then table five and table five, which shouldn't even be possible. But nobody stays mad, because when you bring the wrong cup you beam at them like they've won it in a raffle, and mostly they decide they have. The tips are wonderful. The math on the tips is less wonderful, but the apron pocket gets heavier and heavier, and heavy is a kind of counting. Being pretty, you've discovered, is so much easier than remembering. It's a shame about the remembering. You forget why it's a shame. <<elseif _v == 1>> You've started drawing a heart on every cup, because if every cup has a heart then it doesn't matter whose cup is whose, and that solves basically the whole job. The espresso machine hisses at you; you hiss back; you both laugh. Well - you laugh. The manager watches you for a while with his tired face and then moves you to the register, the one with the little pictures on the buttons. Croissant picture, cup picture, smiley cake. You are extremely good at the picture register. Everyone leaves happy, the drawer mostly balances, and the morning goes by soft and bright, like being inside a nice commercial about somebody's life. <<elseif _v == 2>> The old man with the chamomile tea holds his glass with both hands today and asks if you're okay. Really okay, he says, and looks at you with those watery, careful eyes, and the question buzzes somewhere far away, like a fly behind a thick warm window. Okay? You have lip gloss and tips and a body that everyone is so nice to. You're the okayest girl in the city. You give him a free cookie because his face is doing something that makes your chest feel funny. He takes it and doesn't say anything else. For just a second your eyes sting - static, probably, or the steam - and then the door chimes, and a new customer smiles at you the way they all do now, and the warm bright morning closes back over your head like water. <<else>> You keep forgetting the names of the fancy drinks, so you rename them by color: brown, pale brown, foamy brown, and the little one that makes tired people blink. Customers laugh when you explain, which means they aren't angry, and laughing people tip better. By the middle of the rush, you've decided this is a very clever system. Your apron is snug, your ponytail bounces when you hurry, and every pleased smile across the counter feels like a tiny gold star. The manager corrects you twice, then three times, but his voice slides away beneath the hiss of steam. You made the people happy. You made money. Those are the important parts, and two important parts are plenty to hold in your head at once. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The regulars flirt now - word gets around a building like this - and you flirt back on autopilot, the way other baristas steam milk. It doubles the tips. The manager has developed a diplomatic blindness about your top button, since the till has never looked healthier, and the whole arrangement hums along on its quiet, greasy little gears. You catch yourself cataloging customers by reflex: which one would pay for extras, which one only wants to be seen wanting. Professional deformation, like a masseuse reading shoulders on the subway. Still - the smell of coffee is the smell of coffee, and for a few hours nobody's hands leave their cups. As mornings go in this city, that's practically a spa. <<elseif _v == 1>> You're working the morning shift on four hours of sleep, yesterday's eyeliner, and an apron tied over what is very obviously last night's dress. The church ladies at table two have been whispering since they sat down. You bring their refills with your widest, warmest, most radiant smile - the one that costs extra after dark - and watch them fumble their teaspoons. The work itself is a lullaby: pour, wipe, ring up, repeat. Honest little money, coins and small bills, the kind Smith's ledger barely notices. It feels almost quaint, like visiting a childhood bedroom. You wouldn't fit in it anymore. It's still nice to sit down in it for a morning. <<elseif _v == 2>> A regular slips you his number with the tip, folded twice, casual as a napkin. You rate the technique out of ten while you clear his table - the fold was smooth, the eye contact needed work; a six, maybe six and a half. He'll never know he was scored by a professional adjudicator moonlighting as a waitress. That's what the cafe is now: a costume. A normal life you put on for a morning, comfortable and slightly ill-fitting, like borrowed slippers. You pour coffee for people who think this is what you are, and there's a strange, restful pleasure in being mistaken for someone with nothing to sell but pastries. The bell over the door rings. You smile the daytime smile. It holds. <<else>> You learn quickly which customers are buying coffee and which are buying three minutes of your attention. The first group gets clean service; the second gets a lowered voice, a fingertip resting beside the receipt, and just enough eye contact to turn loose change into folded bills. Nothing explicit. This is the respectable side of the building, after all. By noon, the tip jar proves the method. You count it without embarrassment, only professional satisfaction. Once, you would have worried about what that practiced smile said about you. Now you worry about conversion rates. The espresso machine, at least, never pretends this isn't a transaction. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafe', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The shift begins with a list of ordinary problems: a grinder that jams, a delivery that arrives short, and customers who treat a wrong syrup as a personal betrayal. You apologize, remake drinks, and keep your eyes on the register. None of it is pleasant, but none of it is dangerous either. By noon, your feet ache and the smell of coffee has settled into your clothes. The pay is small, predictable, and earned without surrendering anything you cannot get back. For now, that makes the boredom feel almost protective. <<elseif _v == 1>> The morning crowd comes in waves: construction workers who take their coffee like medicine, office clerks who take it like communion, one old man who orders the same chamomile tea every day and always leaves his tip in exact coins, stacked in a neat little tower. You learn their faces without meaning to. It's the closest thing to a neighborhood you have. By noon your feet ache and your apron smells of burnt milk, but the money in the till is honest, and nobody in here has ever looked at you like a line item. Boring is a luxury. You're starting to understand that. <<elseif _v == 2>> Rush hour hits like weather. For two hours straight you're pouring, wiping, apologizing, ringing up, dodging the manager's stare, remembering who wanted oat milk and who wanted their change in small bills for reasons you'd rather not imagine. The espresso machine screams. Your smile holds. When it finally ebbs, you steal ninety seconds in the back room among the syrup crates, flexing your sore hands and listening to your pulse come down. The pay is small and the work is numbing, but it asks nothing of you except your hours. In this city, that's almost tenderness. <<else>> A young couple spends the entire morning sharing one pastry by the window. You notice them whenever you pass: arguing softly, making up, laughing over something on a phone. Their problems seem impossibly small. For a moment, carrying two coffees between clean tables, you can almost imagine that your own life is waiting just outside the door. Then the till opens, the figures in your head rearrange themselves into interest and debt, and the illusion is gone. You straighten your apron and call the next order. The cafe cannot give you a normal life, but it can lend you the shape of one for a shift. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flirt">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "cafe/flirt")>><<vid "cafe/flirt" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeFlirtB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The manager says the customers like a friendly girl, so you make yourself extra friendly. You leave two buttons open, bend close when the room is noisy, and draw little kisses beside the names on the cups. Men keep forgetting what they ordered, but they remember to push bills into your apron. That means you're doing it right. One of them asks whether the smile comes with the coffee. You giggle because it sounds clever, even though you don't quite understand it, then give him the biggest smile you have. He tips again. By noon your cheeks ache, your neckline is full of folded money, and everyone has been so sweet to you. <<elseif _v == 1>> You discover that carrying a tray is much easier when you make it a little dance. Step, sway, lean, smile - the cups wobble, the customers cheer, and somebody always catches the tray before anything spills. They call you a naughty barista and you like how pretty the words sound together. Hands pat your hips when you squeeze between chairs. You should probably say something, but the thoughts arrive slowly and the tips arrive fast, so you just squeal and wiggle away. The whole cafe feels warm and bright and full of people who want to look at you. Being looked at is almost the same as being loved, isn't it? <<elseif _v == 2>> The register has pictures, the cups have names, and the customers have easy happy faces whenever you lean across the counter. You understand that part perfectly. A low neckline earns more than getting every order right, so you focus on the important job: smiling, bouncing, and letting the men tuck tips wherever they can find room. The manager sighs when you forget another cappuccino, but the till is full and nobody complains for long. You blow a kiss to the queue and watch all the serious morning faces soften. Coffee wakes people up. Apparently, so do you. You're very good at mornings now. <<else>> You write HOT on every cup because the drinks are hot and the customers keep saying you are too. It is a useful word. When you stretch over the display case, three men offer to help; when you lick foam from your thumb, one drops his change. You laugh until he laughs too. By the end of the rush, you have forgotten half the menu but learned exactly how to tilt your head for a bigger tip. Your apron barely covers your skirt, your lipstick marks decorate the lids, and everyone leaves smiling. The manager calls the shift shameless. You decide he means successful. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeFlirtC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You read the breakfast crowd in a single circuit. The commuters want speed, the lonely regulars want eye contact, and the men by the window will double a tip for one slow lean across their table. You adjust your blouse by a button and sell each group exactly what it came to buy. Nothing explicit happens. It does not need to. Suggestion has better margins and requires less cleanup. By noon, the apron pocket is heavy, the manager is exercising selective blindness, and your smile has paid for itself several times over. <<elseif _v == 1>> The cafe calls it hospitality; you call it pricing the attention. A warm laugh is free, a hand on a shoulder earns a bill, and letting a customer's gaze linger down your blouse turns coins into paper. You keep every gesture measured and withdraw before invitation becomes entitlement. The old version of you might have called this degrading. The current version notes that no one touched anything you did not choose to put within reach. You count the tips twice, wipe the lipstick from a cup, and close the morning with a respectable profit. <<elseif _v == 2>> A sales team occupies the long table and starts competing for your attention before their first coffees arrive. You encourage it with professional precision: remember one name, laugh at another joke, rest a fingertip beside the third man's change. Their little contest fills your apron faster than the entire breakfast rush. You are not flirting with any of them, not really. You are managing demand. When one asks for your number, you write the cafe's on his receipt and add a heart. He tips anyway. A clean close, no liabilities. <<else>> You turn the counter into a stage without ever slowing service. The apron sits tight, your movements stay economical, and every reach toward the upper shelf gives the queue a reason to wait patiently. Desire, properly managed, is better than a numbered ticket system. One regular tests the boundary with a hand at your waist. You remove it gently, leave your smile in place, and point to the tip jar. He laughs, pays, and behaves. That is the difference between losing control and monetizing the appearance of it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeFlirt', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You notice that the men at the counter become more patient when you lean closer and more generous when your blouse slips open another button. At first you tell yourself you are merely adapting to the job. Then you catch yourself choosing the lower neckline before anyone asks. The tips make an embarrassingly persuasive argument. You keep every touch brief and every smile controlled, but by noon the performance feels easier than it should. Back in the storeroom, you button your blouse with unsteady fingers and refuse to decide whether the heat in your face is shame or pride. <<elseif _v == 1>> A group of office workers turns breakfast into a game: one bill for a wink, two if you remember a name, five if you sit on the edge of their table while taking the order. You should shut it down. Instead, you set rules, keep your feet on the floor, and tell yourself that rules mean control. They behave, mostly, and your apron grows heavy. When a hand brushes your thigh, you move it away - but softly, almost playfully, careful not to spoil the mood. That compromise follows you for the rest of the shift. <<elseif _v == 2>> The new uniform is tighter than the old one, or perhaps you have simply stopped tugging it back into place. You weave through the tables under a hundred small glances, adding a sway when the tray is light and pretending not to notice how reliably it improves the tips. The work becomes a negotiation conducted through posture. You make no promises; you only let each customer invent one. It feels clever until you realize that your body now speaks the language without rehearsal. <<else>> A regular slides his number beneath the saucer and says your coffee is not the reason he comes in. You prepare the offended reply, but what escapes is a laugh - low, practiced, almost inviting. The sound startles you more than his proposition. You do not call him. You do keep the number until closing, and you spend the shift wondering how much he would have tipped if you had let his hand remain around yours. The question feels ugly. The fact that it has an answer feels worse. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "slut">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 20, "cafe/slut")>><<vid "cafe/slut" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeSlutB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A customer follows you into the storeroom and asks for the special service. You do not remember putting it on the menu, but he has money and a nice firm voice, so you let him bend you over the sacks of coffee. The grinder covers most of the noise. That seems very convenient. When he finishes, you smooth your apron and hurry back to the counter with warm legs and an empty head. His bill is tucked safely in your pocket. You served coffee, then served him. Both made the customer happy, so both must be part of the job. <<elseif _v == 1>> The morning rush gets confusing, but the men make the important instructions simple: back room, skirt up, hold still. You like simple instructions. One customer takes you against the prep table while another waits outside with two coffees and a folded bill. You lose track of which cup belongs to whom, but nobody cares. They came for something sweeter than coffee, and you are sweet enough for everyone. At noon your lipstick is smeared, your apron pocket is fat, and you feel wonderfully useful. <<elseif _v == 2>> You start the shift carrying pastries and end it being passed across the same tables after the CLOSED sign goes up. The customers take turns because turns are fair, and you giggle whenever somebody reminds the next man to tip. Such polite boys. Your body is sore and sticky when the manager lets you down from the tabletop, but the money makes a lovely thick bundle. You hug it to your chest all the way home. You cannot remember every face, only how pleased they looked. That is enough. <<else>> One regular asks for extra cream and everyone laughs. It takes you a moment to understand, then you are laughing too as he pulls you across the counter and pushes your skirt aside. The cafe keeps serving around you. Cups clink, the machine hisses, and you moan into your folded arms like this is simply another noisy appliance. Afterward, you wipe the counter, fix your bow, and give him a loyalty stamp. He gives you three bills instead. You decide this is the best rewards program the cafe has ever had. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeSlutC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The proposition arrives with the second espresso: storeroom, ten minutes, enough cash to eclipse the whole morning's wages. You check the corridor, name a higher price, and let him bend you over the inventory ledger. The coffee sacks make poor cushions but excellent soundproofing. You return before his cup cools. The manager sees the bill disappear into your apron and chooses not to ask. Efficient service, satisfied customer, negligible downtime. You have accepted worse contracts. <<elseif _v == 1>> By nine, word has circulated that the cafe offers something off-menu. You control the queue yourself: one at a time, cash first, no marks above the uniform. The prep table is the right height and the espresso machine announces every new arrival before he reaches the back. You keep the work quick and emotionally sterile. Faces become orders; orders become bills. When the lunch delivery arrives, you sanitize the table twice and total the morning. The unofficial service outsold the coffee four to one. <<elseif _v == 2>> A regular reaches beneath your skirt while you ring up his drink. Instead of recoiling, you quote a price without looking away from the register. Five minutes later, he is using you against the storeroom door while you mentally calculate the next interest charge. That detachment used to frighten you. Now it is an occupational advantage. You fix your clothes, collect the money, and remake the drink he allowed to go cold. Professionals correct mistakes. <<else>> The manager calls the back room a liability. You call it the only square meter in the cafe meeting its revenue target. Customers disappear through the door with you and emerge lighter in the wallet, while the front counter continues selling pastries as if nothing has changed. Your body handles the second business with the same practiced rhythm as the first: position, endure, clean, reset. The distinction between waitress and merchandise matters less with every transaction. The ledger, at least, is unambiguous. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeSlut', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A customer corners you beside the coffee sacks and offers more than the shift pays. You know exactly what he expects when he turns you toward the table. The frightening part is not that you agree; it is how quickly you negotiate the amount and lift your own skirt. You return to the counter flushed and unsteady, carrying a tray past people who may have heard everything. Shame burns through you, chased by a pulse of satisfaction when you touch the folded bills. You promise it was a single desperate bargain. Even as you make it, the promise sounds temporary. <<elseif _v == 1>> The first man asks. The second has heard. By midmorning, an unofficial queue has formed near the storeroom, each customer ordering coffee in front and something else in back. You keep telling yourself you can stop after the next one, once the tips reach a round number. The number keeps moving. So does your limit. When you finally lock the door, your thighs tremble and several strangers' money fills your apron. You hate how relieved you feel to see the debt made smaller by what happened. <<elseif _v == 2>> Someone bends you over a table before the breakfast plates have been cleared. The other customers watch with the avid silence of an audience, and instead of calling for help you hear yourself naming a price. The room laughs, pays, and lets the spectacle continue. You survive the humiliation by turning it into work: breathe, hold the edge, count the bills afterward. Yet when the cafe returns to ordinary conversation, part of you misses being the center of it. That realization follows you home more closely than any customer did. <<else>> You used to think there was a hard border between serving a man and letting him use you. This morning, the border becomes a swinging storeroom door. On one side you carry coffee; on the other you spread your legs across the prep table. Both services earn tips. You wash your hands between customers and avoid your reflection in the steel sink. The routine is appalling, practical, and already becoming familiar. By noon, you can perform every step without being told. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "kink">> <<set _total += 200>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 4, "cafe/kink")>><<vid "cafe/kink" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeKinkB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The tables get pushed together after the doors are locked, making one big counter for everyone to share. They put you in the middle and pass you from customer to customer while the manager counts the morning's cash. You try to count too, but there are too many hands and numbers are slippery. It is easier to remember the rule: open when told, smile when praised, thank them when they tip. You follow it perfectly. By the end you are draped across the table, messy and glowing, surrounded by empty cups and very satisfied regulars. <<elseif _v == 1>> Today's special is you. Someone writes it on the chalkboard and everyone laughs, so you laugh too. Men take turns using your mouth and body between sips of coffee, feeding bills into your apron whenever you obey quickly enough. The room becomes a happy blur of steam, praise, and hands positioning you for the next customer. You do not have to remember orders anymore. You are the order, and everybody wants the same thing. Being popular has never felt so simple. <<elseif _v == 2>> They tie your apron strings to the table legs so you will not wander off and forget your place. It is thoughtful, really. Customers come behind the counter one after another, using whichever part of you is free while you keep smiling at the queue. Sometimes a cup needs filling, so somebody guides your hand to the machine. Mostly you are the thing being filled. The joke makes you giggle every time you remember it, which is often enough to keep the whole cafe entertained. <<else>> The manager calls it an appreciation event. The regulars appreciate you on the counter, under the counter, and across three pushed-together tables while the door stays unlocked. New customers understand the arrangement immediately and join the line. You are too busy to think and too pleased to care. Every time somebody finishes, another voice calls good girl and another bill appears. At noon, the floor is filthy, your head is empty, and the tip jar is overflowing. Perfect shift. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeKinkC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The private arrangement becomes public before breakfast ends. A regular uses you across the counter; another pays to take his place; a third holds your wrists and manages the queue. You stop pretending this is an accident and establish a price per turn. After that, the morning runs with brutal efficiency. The customers police one another, the manager keeps serving coffee, and you keep the line moving. Degradation has become a volume business. You hate the phrase only because it is accurate. <<elseif _v == 1>> They fasten you to the central table as casually as setting out the sugar bowls. From there, every customer can use you without interrupting service. You negotiate the fee in advance and insist the money goes directly into the till under your name. The body absorbs the rest: hands, mouths, strangers taking turns while cups pass above your head. You retreat into arithmetic and monitor throughput. By noon, you are exhausted, exposed, and responsible for the cafe's best morning on record. <<elseif _v == 2>> The regulars organize themselves into a line before anyone asks. You set rules, prices, and a strict time limit, converting collective appetite into something almost orderly. Almost. Once they begin passing you between them, order becomes merely the shape around the chaos. You keep one cold corner of your mind on the money. The rest of you is public equipment, serviced only enough to stay operational. When the last man leaves, you total the take before allowing yourself to feel the damage. <<else>> The manager offers the cafe for a closed-door party and offers you as its centerpiece. You demand a percentage, receive it in writing, then spend the morning restrained across the serving counter while the guests use what they paid for. Once, agreeing would have felt like the decisive loss. Now you recognize a contract with favorable terms. That recognition is the deeper loss, so you file it away with the receipts and concentrate on surviving the shift professionally. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCafeKink', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> One customer's proposition becomes a crowd's decision. Tables scrape across the floor, the door is locked, and suddenly you are pinned across the counter while familiar regulars wait their turn. You search for the moment when you could still have stopped it and realize you helped move the tables. You endure by counting ceiling tiles and listening to coins drop into the tip jar. The money cannot make this ordinary. What terrifies you is how efficiently your body does. <<elseif _v == 1>> They turn the cafe into a private club before noon, with you as the membership benefit. Men who once knew you by your coffee recommendations now hold you down for one another, discussing your body as casually as the pastry selection. You protest once, weakly, then hear your own voice dissolve into something less convincing. Every new bill makes resistance feel less practical. When the doors reopen, you are still wearing the apron, but it no longer feels like a uniform. It feels like a label. <<elseif _v == 2>> The manager straps you to the long table and continues serving around you. Customers drink, talk, and take turns using you as though this arrangement has always been part of breakfast. Their casualness is more disturbing than their hands. Somewhere during the morning, humiliation gives way to a frightening sense of belonging. You are no longer disrupting the cafe; you are one of its fixtures. When released, you catch yourself straightening the chairs before covering your body. <<else>> The chalkboard advertises an off-menu special without using your name. It does not need to. The regulars understand, the curtains close, and a line forms beside the counter. You accept each payment personally, as though that distinction preserves anything. By noon, the room smells of coffee, sweat, and the collapse of another boundary. You leave with more money than an ordinary shift could earn and the certainty that next time the line will form faster. Part of you is already planning how to manage it. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> /% Deliberately NO $wellRested bonus here, unlike the evening jobs: the cafe never had one, and granting it silently raises every player's morning income by 20% - measured at roughly 9pp off the "first run loses" probe, which is the difficulty gradient task 2 bought. %/ <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "cafe")>> Earned at the cafe: <<print _total>>$ * [[Continue|Noon]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("bar")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<set $barShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "bar">> <<if $barShifts gte 25 and not $teleBar>><<set $teleBar to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts. The regulars order by catching your eye now, and the eleven-o'clock dockers' fights start slower when you're the one stepping in.</div> <</if>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival">The stairs into the Crossroads lead down into cheap beer, stale smoke, and sweat. Neon cuts through the haze above tired workers, petty criminals, and men looking for a good time. The music is loud enough to cover the moans and cries from the rear booths. Your shoes stick to the floor as you squeeze toward the bar, already bracing for the shift.</div> <<set _base to 100>> <<set _bonus to ($beauty * 2.5) + ($promiscuity * 1)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(_base + _bonus)>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shy">> /% Bar shift type logic. 0.6 §5.1, corrected by measurement: the first pass replaced the prom bands with beauty bands (kink@45) - the sim showed the default character already sits above every anchor (beauty 50), so the whole ladder opened on day one, the top-band IQ damage hit grid workers unpaced, and bar graduation drowned in Ditz/Freeuse. Landed shape: the prom ladder stays the PACING (it gates the damage), and beauty becomes the SECOND KEY on the top rung only - kink takes beauty 45. Ditz.b keeps its band bypass; the beauty check still applies (shame-blind is not face-blind). %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 30 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<elseif _roll <= 95>> <<set _event to "slut">> <<elseif $beauty >= 45>> <<set _event to "kink">> <<else>> <<set _event to "slut">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<elseif _roll <= 75 or $beauty < 45>> <<set _event to "slut">> <<else>> <<set _event to "kink">> <</if>> <</if>> /% Implementation of Bar events %/ <<if _event == "shy">> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _barShyKey to "bar/shy/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _barShyVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _barShyKey _barShyVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarShyB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You stay behind the big wooden counter the whole time, because the big wooden thing is safe and the reaching hands can't get past it. The orders come too fast - so many kinds of beer, all of them just beer - and you get them wrong a lot, but you smile the sorry-smile and mostly nobody minds. The words all run together into a warm buzz and the beer smell soaks into your hair, and by the end your feet hurt but the tip jar is heavy, and heavy means you did good. Men look at you the whole shift, up and down, the sticky look, and you know it's the look but you can't quite make yourself worry about it - it slides right off, like water off the gloss on your lips. One of them tries to hold your fingers when he pays and you giggle and pull back and pour the next mug. When you finally go home you want a hot shower, though you couldn't really say what for. You just like the water. <<elseif _v == 1>> They keep you on the taps tonight, which is your favorite spot, because there's a whole big counter between you and everybody and all you have to do is pour and smile. The lever is fun to pull. You pull it a lot. Sometimes you forget which mug goes to which man and just hand the closest one over beaming, and it works out, it always sort of works out. A regular leans in and says something low and dirty, and the words are like a song in a language you used to know, pretty and far away and not really landing. You give him the big empty smile and the next beer. That's the trick you've got left and it turns out it's the only one the Crossroads pays for, so you smile and smile until closing, and go home with a fat little pocket of coins you don't count. <<elseif _v == 2>> The manager parks you behind the bar and you're glad, because out there is loud and grabby and behind here is just you and the taps and the nice repeating job of filling cups. Your head's gone soft and slow lately and this suits it fine - no thinking, just pour, wipe, smile, pour. The buzz of the room washes over the top of you like weather over a puddle. They stare, sure, all night, the men, and some of them say the ugly funny things, and you feel the stares land warm on your skin and then just... stop meaning anything. You used to know why that was bad. You've misplaced the why. You give everyone the sweet dumb smile that keeps them tipping, and the shift ends with no trouble and a heavy jar, and you pad home thinking about nothing at all, which is the coziest place there is. <<else>> You make a game out of filling every glass to exactly the same shiny line. Beer, foam, smile. Beer, foam, smile. The rules are easy enough to remember, and whenever you get one right you whisper good girl to yourself before somebody else can say it. A man asks what else you can do with your hands. You stare at them, honestly wondering, until the whole counter laughs. You laugh too because laughter means nobody is angry. At closing, the rows of empty glasses look neat, your pocket feels heavy, and the night feels like a test you somehow passed without learning the questions. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarShyC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You take the counter shift gratefully and without illusions - a veteran on the slow register. The oak is a moat, the taps are a rhythm, and the whole low-margin evening runs itself while you think about nothing that costs you anything. Pour, level the foam, slide it across, pocket the coins. Numbing, yes, but numb is the cheapest thing on the menu and tonight you'll take it. The leers arrive on schedule and you process them like weather reports - noted, discounted, forgotten. A regular gropes for your fingers under the guise of tipping and you withdraw them a half-second early, smooth as a card sharp, giving him nothing but the flat professional smile that costs you exactly zero. The shift ends clean. The take is thin, but so is the toll, and after the nights you've had, a shift that only bores you counts as a night off. <<elseif _v == 1>> Behind the bar you're on autopilot, and autopilot is a mercy. You've worked worse rooms than this for higher stakes; a night of just pouring beer feels almost like a vacation, the kind of honest, forgettable labor that asks for your hands and nothing further down. Rack, pour, wipe, repeat. The oak keeps the hands off you and the routine keeps the thoughts off you, and both are worth more than the pay. You clock the room out of pure habit - who's drunk, who's dangerous, who's working up the nerve to say something he'll regret - and file it all without feeling any of it. When a slurring regular reaches across the bar you're already gone, glass set down, moved along. There's a cold competence in it now that the girl who first walked in here wouldn't recognize. You walk out with modest coins, calves aching, self intact and accounted for. In the Crossroads, intact is the whole win. <<elseif _v == 2>> A slow, safe shift, and you know how to run one in your sleep: the counter between you and them, the taps as a workstation, the dead smile hung up front like a CLOSED sign nobody reads. You've stopped bothering to be offended by the place. Offense is expensive and the Crossroads doesn't cover it. So you pour, and you level, and you let the noise break over the oak without wetting you. The stares crawl over you all night. You wear them like a coat you didn't ask for: dead weight, nothing more. When one of them tries the fingers-on-the-tip maneuver you've seen a thousand times, you retract with an economy that's almost polite, and give him the smile that means nothing and ends the exchange. Shift's over, jar's light but honest, and you leave through the back before anyone can upgrade the evening. You've learned the exits in every room you work. It's the one thing you're never too tired to remember. <<else>> The keg room floods halfway through the shift and you spend an hour ankle-deep in sour beer, routing orders around the damage while the manager panics. It is almost relaxing. Pipes obey pressure, spills follow gravity, and neither pretends to want anything from you. You keep the customers behind the oak, keep the glasses moving, and charge every soaked complaint to the mental account marked not my problem. When the last tap closes, the room is still filthy but the till balances. Competence is less profitable than spectacle, yet it remains one of the few things you own outright. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarShy', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You spend the entire shift behind the bar, using the broad oak counter as a shield against the hands of drunken customers. The work is brutally repetitive: pour beer into cloudy mugs, skim the foam, wipe the same sticky patch, begin again. Conversation collapses into an irritating roar, and the sour reek of alcohol settles into your hair and clothes. Even behind the counter, you feel men undressing you with their eyes. Every regular seems obliged to offer an obscene joke or brush your fingers while pretending to leave a tip. You answer with the same dead professional smile and keep out of reach. Nothing truly happens, yet by closing your legs throb from tension and disgust clings harder than the beer. You earned the money. Now you want a shower hot enough to erase the room. <<elseif _v == 1>> You build the shift out of small, safe rituals: rack the glasses, mark the kegs, wipe the taps, start again. The oak counter is your moat, and you defend it with a barmaid's practiced footwork - a half-step back from every reaching hand, a bottle placed precisely where a wandering elbow wanted to be. The regulars learn nothing about you except that the beer arrives cold. There's a drunk at the end of the bar who recites poetry at closing time, always the same four lines, always to nobody. Tonight you catch yourself mouthing along. The pay is thin and your calves are stone, but you walk out with your dignity arranged exactly as you carried it in - which, in the Crossroads, counts as a victory lap. <<elseif _v == 2>> A fight breaks out around eleven - two dockworkers, one spilled pint, the usual liturgy - and the bouncer folds them out the door with weary efficiency while you keep pouring without missing a glass. You've learned the bar's rhythms like a sailor learns weather - when to duck, when to smile, when to make yourself so boring that even the lechers' eyes slide off you and onto the neon. The jukebox plays the same nine songs on rotation. You polish glasses until they squeak, counting the hours in racked pints. It's graceless, joyless, honest work, and the small heap of tips at the end has no strings on it whatsoever. You pocket it and slip out the back before anyone thinks to offer you a nightcap. <<else>> A woman at the end of the counter notices every time you step away from a reaching hand. She never comments. She simply shifts her stool into the worst offender's path and orders another tonic she barely drinks. For one quiet hour, her presence gives you room to breathe. You thank her with a bowl of stale peanuts and receive the smallest nod. The exchange asks for no smile, no flirtation, no explanation. When she leaves, exact change under the glass, the bar feels louder than before. You finish the shift behind the oak and hold on to that brief, ordinary kindness. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flirt">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "bar/flirt")>> <<vid "bar/flirt" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarFlirtB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight you get to work the floor, out where the tables are, and no boring counter in the way - just you and the tray and all the nice tipsy men who light up when you come over. Every wobbly trip across the room feels like a little show and you're the star, so you undo the top button because it makes them smile bigger, and you lean in extra to gather the empty glasses, and they LOVE it. The money comes and comes. They tuck bills right into your apron and the top of your skirt, giggling, and you giggle back, and when a hand pats your bottom you don't even fuss, you just laugh that high happy laugh and give a little wiggle. It's the easiest, sparkliest feeling, knowing all you have to do is be soft and pretty and they'll hand over everything in their pockets. You forget you ever felt any way about it. You're too busy being adored. <<elseif _v == 1>> They put you on the tables and it's the best, because tables means being looked at by lots of people at once, which is your very favorite thing. You float between the chairs with your tray and put on a little sway you learned from somewhere, and dip low to wipe things up, and every time you do a whole table cheers and throws money like it's a birthday. Your birthday! Every night can be your birthday if you just lean the right way. A big warm hand lands on your waist and you let it stay because it's cozy and because staying means another bill in the apron. You lose track of the drinks orders completely - who can remember drinks when everyone's smiling at you? - but nobody's cross, they just want you to twirl by again. By the end your pockets are stuffed and your cheeks hurt from grinning and you feel light as a balloon somebody let go of. Prettiest girl in the room, they kept saying. You believe every one of them. <<elseif _v == 2>> Floor duty tonight, and you clap your hands when they tell you, because out there is where all the attention lives. No counter, no hiding, just you being twirly and sweet between the tables with a tray you keep almost dropping. You pop the top button, you bend to collect the empties, you tip your head and beam, and the men come apart like it's magic - your magic, the only trick you've got and the biggest one there is. Money rains into your neckline. Somebody swats your behind and you squeal-giggle and blow him a kiss instead of getting mad, because getting mad is hard and blowing kisses is easy and easy is the whole plan now. There's a fuzzy warm buzz behind your eyes all night, like champagne you didn't drink, and under it a tiny thought tries to tell you something about pride, but pride is a big word and the bills are so shiny and so many. You choose the bills. You always choose the bills now, and it always feels like winning. <<else>> A birthday table gives you a paper crown and declares you their princess, which makes perfect sense because princesses are pretty and everybody watches them. You parade between the chairs, bend low for every order, and let the men decorate your crown with folded bills until it nearly slips over your eyes. They ask for a royal kiss, then another, and you distribute them fairly because a good princess loves all her subjects. By closing, you have forgotten whose birthday it was. Maybe yours. The crown is crushed, your lipstick is everywhere, and your apron is stuffed with tribute. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarFlirtC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Floor tonight, no counter to hide behind, which is fine - hiding was never where the money was. You read the room in one lap: the lonely one overtips for eye contact, the pack by the window pays to be performed at, the quiet one in the corner is either broke or trouble and gets neither. Then you work it, cold and precise, a button undone as a line item, a lean deployed like capital. Every gesture is priced before you make it. The take is good because the technique is good, and the technique is good because you stopped feeling it a long time ago. Bills go into the apron; a hand strays to your hip and you let it rent the space for exactly as long as it pays for, no longer. You used to call the little thrill of running them "dark excitement." Now it's just competence, and competence doesn't poison you the way the guilt used to - it just adds up, drink by drink, mark by mark, into the number that keeps Smith off your back one more day. <<elseif _v == 1>> They send you out to the tables and you go like a dealer moving to a hotter table - same game, better odds. The blouse button, the calibrated lean, the laugh pitched precisely to loosen a wallet: none of it costs you anything anymore, which is exactly what makes it profitable. You maneuver the tray through the crush and let the drunks believe they're the ones doing the choosing. They tip for the illusion. You've never sold anything else. A palm settles on your waist and you allow it three seconds, feel the bill slide home, and glide on before the three seconds can become an assumption. All night you walk that seam - warm enough to keep them buying, cold enough to keep the game yours - and in the fly-specked bar mirror your smile fires back at you, flawless, automatic, indistinguishable from real. You noticed a while ago you can't tell the difference either. You've decided that's a tool, not a wound, and you keep it sharp. <<elseif _v == 2>> Working the room tonight, and you run it like a shift on a trading floor: assets, spreads, exposure. You've got the whole hall mapped inside a minute - who's flush, who's fading, who tips for a wink and who needs the full lean before he'll part with a note. You undo one button, no more; oversupply crashes the price. Then you move through them dealing out exactly enough warmth to keep the bids climbing. The apron gets heavy fast. Hands wander and you meter them - a beat of contact per bill, the transaction closed before either party can renegotiate. There's no thrill in it and no shame either; both got repriced to zero somewhere back down the road. What's left is the clean, cold satisfaction of a good night's margins, the kind you can total in your head while you smile at the next table. You'll count it properly at home. You always know within a few dollars before you do. <<else>> A convention crowd fills the Crossroads with expense accounts and wedding rings. You identify the hierarchy before the first round lands, then flatter the junior men in sight of their bosses and the bosses just out of sight of their wives. Vanity does the rest. Every laugh has a target, every brush of your hip a measurable return. When one man mistakes the performance for permission, you pin his wrist to the table with the tray and keep smiling until he pays for the lesson. Seduction is a tool. Tools remain useful only while the hand holding them stays in control. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarFlirt', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight you are assigned to the main floor, with no counter between you and the customers. You thread a tray of clinking glasses through cramped tables, increasingly aware that every step is part of a performance. Before the second round, you deliberately undo the top button of your blouse and lean lower than necessary while collecting empties. The performance pays. Men tuck bills into your apron, your neckline, even the waistband of your skirt. When someone "accidentally" slaps your ass, you answer with a brittle laugh instead of a warning. Beneath the disgust, a darker excitement begins to stir: these crude, hungry men are remarkably easy to steer. You tell yourself that pride cannot pay interest. The tips in your pocket make the argument harder to resist. <<elseif _v == 1>> By your third lap of the floor you've mapped the whole room like a croupier: table four tips for a wink, table six for a lean, the birthday crowd by the window pays out for anything that lets them roar. You dab perfume in the back room - strategically - and adjust your neckline by exactly one button's worth of promise. It's arithmetic, you tell yourself. Just a different kind of spreadsheet. A hand settles on your waist while you're clearing empties, and you let it stay for three seconds precisely - long enough to feel the bill slide into your apron, short enough to keep the game yours. All night you walk that line, warm and loathsome and lucrative. In the bar mirror your smile flashes back at you, professional and bright. It doesn't look fake anymore. You decide not to think about that until morning. <<elseif _v == 2>> The stag party at the corner table adopts you by their second round. Suddenly you're not staff, you're the floor show - perched on the arm of the groom's chair between toasts, laughing on cue, letting them compete for your attention in units of crumpled currency. Someone dares the best man to buy you a drink; you drink it slowly, eyes over the rim, and the table erupts like you've performed a magic trick. It's degrading in a way that fizzes pleasantly, like cheap champagne. You are completely in control and completely for sale, both at once, and the two feelings braid together somewhere low in your stomach. When they finally stagger out, chanting, your apron is heavy with notes. You straighten your skirt, reset your smile, and take the next table. <<else>> The singer on the tiny stage calls you into the spotlight during his final set. You refuse once, then climb up when the audience begins laying bills along the edge. Under the neon, carrying no tray, you have nothing to hide behind except a smile that grows less reluctant with every cheer. You dance badly at first and deliberately by the end, letting the skirt ride higher because the money keeps coming. When you step down, the room's attention follows. You tell yourself you only sold three minutes. Your racing pulse insists you enjoyed owning them. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "slut">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "bar/slut")>> <<vid "bar/slut" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarSlutB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight you're not really carrying drinks anymore, you're carrying you, and that's so much simpler - no orders to mix up, just being where the men want you. You curl into laps, you let hands wander right out in the open, you follow whoever tugs your wrist off into the dark booths, soft and giggly and easy, while somewhere your fingers keep tucking the bills away because bills are good. Being told what to do is the nicest thing; you don't have to decide anything, you just have to say yes and smile. They take you in the little storage room among the crates, the wall cool on your back, one after another after another, and you go all warm and floaty and lovely, like a bath you never have to get out of. There's no big scary bottom to hit because there's no tall serious you left to fall from - just a sweet blank thing that gets used and hummed over and used again. When morning comes you're achy and empty and honestly kind of glowing, pockets fat, head quiet. Everybody wanted you all night. Lots and lots of somebodies. That's a good girl's night, isn't it? <<elseif _v == 1>> The whole idea of bringing people beer melts away and what's left is just you, being passed around, which your soft slow head finds easier than the job ever was. Laps, booths, the storeroom, the stairs - you go wherever the hands lead you and let them do the deciding, nodding along, saying the little yeses, opening up sweet and obedient. Somebody presses money into your palm and you close your fingers on it out of habit, the one clever thing you can still do. You lose count of them right away, but counting was always the hard part and you gave it up gladly. What's left just receives, warm and willing, moaning when it feels good and that's most of the time now. The peeling wall scratches your back and you barely notice, you're too busy being floaty. By dawn you're a wrung-out happy little nothing with a bursting pocket, wobbling home on bruised knees, sure of only one shiny fact: you made everyone smile, and everyone was so nice, and that means you did wonderful. <<elseif _v == 2>> Serving trays is way too many steps to keep straight tonight, so you skip to the easy part and just give them you. The shift turns into a soft warm blur of laps and dark corners and being led by the hand, and you say yes to all of it because yes is the simplest word and it makes everybody happy. Right out where people can see, you let them touch and take, and you giggle, and your fingers do the one smart trick they've got left - fold the bill, tuck it away, hold out for the next. In the back room the crates are cold and the men aren't, and you take them in a warm woozy line, floating somewhere above the ache, thinking about nothing with all your might. There's no self-respect to drown because you set that heavy thing down ages ago and never went back for it. You're the bar's own sweet toy now, made for exactly this, and being made for something feels safe and good. The money at the end is enormous and you don't count it, and you step into the cold morning empty and pink and pleased, humming. <<else>> The bartender hangs a little OUT OF SERVICE sign around your neck as a joke, then lifts it whenever a customer pays. You think it is hilarious. Drinks keep spilling because people pull you into their laps, so eventually you stop carrying drinks and crawl between the tables instead. Everyone gets a turn touching, posing, or taking you into the back. You remember to hold out your hand afterward and beam when it fills with money. By dawn, the sign is stained and crooked, your knees are bruised, and you are still giggling at the joke. You were never out of service at all. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarSlutC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Decency at the Crossroads folds early tonight and you preside over the collapse without ceremony. You stop carrying drinks and start carrying yourself, because the second job pays a multiple of the first and you've long since done that arithmetic. Laps, booths, the private dark - you take the work as it comes, letting them handle the merchandise in the open while your hands keep their own cool count of the bills. Nothing about it reaches you. That's the point of how you do it. They have you in the storeroom against the peeling wall, one after another, and you go where you always go - somewhere cold and adjacent, watching from just outside your own skin while the body performs to spec. Self-respect isn't drowning; it was liquidated a while back and you don't miss the overhead. By last call you refuse no one, not from surrender but from efficiency: deciding is friction and friction is unpaid. You walk out into the gray morning scraped hollow, with a thick roll of cash, and you've stopped pretending those are different states. The take was colossal. You'll bank it, and be back. <<elseif _v == 1>> Tonight the tray stays on the bar and you go into business properly - the real trade, the one that actually dents the debt. The bartender keeps your tally in chalk behind the taps and you keep your own in your head, sharper than his, one figure per client, running the total between them like a cabbie watching the meter. Laps, the cellar stairs, the storeroom floor; you learn each man by belt and cologne because faces are a luxury you stopped affording. The body works and obeys and arranges itself on command, and you supervise from a cold clean distance, present only enough to keep the quality up and the price honest. Cardboard prints its grid into your knees and you note it the way you'd note a tool wearing down. Between clients you reset your lipstick in the dead screen of the cigarette machine and appraise the woman in it: unbothered, unhurried, expensive. At dawn you leave hollowed out and flush, and the two feelings have fused into one line on a ledger only you can read. <<elseif _v == 2>> You switch trades mid-shift with no drama - drinks out, self on the market - because the margins aren't close and you're nothing if not disciplined about margins now. Word moves fast and a queue forms, and you work it like a production line: storeroom, crates, cold wall, next. Quick, mechanical, thorough. You price each one before he opens his mouth and you're never wrong by much. You stopped counting the men early, but only because you'd rather count the money, which you do, continuously, a running tape behind your eyes that never snags on anything as inconvenient as feeling. The names they call you land on the same dead spot everything lands on these days. What's left of you receives, performs, collects, and moves the line along. The night's take is obscene and so, technically, are you, and you regard both facts with the flat evenness of a woman reading her own inventory. You step into the daylight rich, empty, and entirely unsurprised. <<else>> A bookmaker rents the upstairs room and asks whether you come with it. You quote the room fee, your fee, and a surcharge for each additional guest before he finishes smiling. By midnight, his clients are rotating through while the bets continue downstairs. You service them between rounds, checking the clock over each shoulder and charging overtime without apology. The work is rough, repetitive, and extraordinarily liquid. At closing, you compare the bruises with the cash and conclude that the transaction cleared. You dislike the conclusion more than the bruises. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarSlut', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Whatever passed for decency at the Crossroads collapses tonight, and you are at the center of it. You stop carrying drinks and start selling yourself. The shift becomes an endless sequence of paid "favors" in dark booths and back rooms. Customers fondle you in plain view, pull you onto their laps, and name increasingly filthy requests while your hands continue counting the bills. In the storeroom, you spread your legs among crates of cheap liquor, peeling paint scraping your back as one client replaces another. Alcohol fumes, crowd noise, and arousal drown what remains of your judgment. By last call, accepting an order feels easier than making a choice. You have become another service the bar provides. The night's earnings are enormous, but when you step into the gray morning, you feel scraped empty by the way you made them. <<elseif _v == 1>> The bartender keeps your tally in chalk behind the taps - one stroke per booth, and by midnight the wall looks like a prisoner's calendar. You work the dark end of the bar on your knees, on laps, bent over the cellar stairs with your skirt shoved up, learning each stranger by belt buckle and cologne because faces have stopped registering. Cardboard boxes print their pattern into your knees. The wad of bills in your apron grows thick and damp. Between clients you fix your lipstick in the dead screen of the cigarette machine and marvel, distantly, at how little of you is present for any of it. The body performs, obeys, positions itself on command; the mind stands somewhere by the exit, coat on, waiting. At dawn you walk home scraped hollow and rich, and the two sensations have started to feel like the same thing. <<elseif _v == 2>> Word travels fast when the Crossroads has a girl who doesn't say no. By eleven there's an understanding, by twelve there's a queue - polite, even, in its grim way, men studying the fixtures while they wait their turn at the storage room. You take them among the crates of house vodka, quick and mechanical, the peeling wall cold against your back, spilled beer gluing your heels to the floor. Somebody's ring scrapes your thigh. Somebody calls you a name that used to sting. You stop counting after the fifth drink. Counting was the last thing in that room you still owned. What's left just receives, and moans on schedule, and holds out its hand for the money after. The take is obscene. So are you. The word doesn't even echo anymore - it just sits there, plain as the chalk marks, plain as daylight when you finally step out into it. <<else>> A private party claims the rear booths and requests you with every bottle. At first you bring the drinks. Soon you are part of the order, pulled onto laps, stripped between refills, and sent behind the curtain whenever someone adds another bill to the pile. You keep returning to the floor because stopping would force you to name what the shift has become. Work is an easier word. By closing, it covers almost anything: the fingerprints, the soreness, the money counted under the bartender's indifferent gaze. You leave before the word can wear thin. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "kink">> <<set _total += 300>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 1, "bar/kink")>> <<vid "bar/kink" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarKinkB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> They send you to clean the men's room and you find the little hole in the wall the regulars whisper about, and instead of the mop you sink down onto the sticky tile in front of it, because kneeling is easy and being used is simple and simple is all you can hold now. Faceless flesh comes through the wall and you take it, mouth and hands, one after another after another, moaning soft and obedient until the line runs dry. It doesn't feel like rock bottom, because there's no you left standing high enough to have fallen - just a warm wet nothing doing the one thing it's for. You get up on bruised knees with your pockets stuffed full of crumpled bills, blinking, empty, oddly peaceful. Somebody wanted you all night long. Lots of somebodies. That's a good night, isn't it? Everyone seemed so happy. <<elseif _v == 1>> The hole in the bathroom wall has a little queue tonight, and the men clap when you kneel in front of it. You clap too before remembering your hands are needed elsewhere. After that, everything is easy: open, suck, swallow, smile, next. No faces and no names, just one simple job arriving over and over. Somebody feeds bills through the gap between customers. You tuck each one into your bra and thank the wall because you cannot tell which voice belongs to which man. When your jaw stops working properly, they praise you for trying. Praise feels warm. The tiles feel cold. Together they make a cozy little world you do not need to think beyond. <<elseif _v == 2>> You decorate the gloryhole with lipstick hearts so everyone knows where the fun is. Soon there is a line outside the stall, and you spend the night on your knees greeting each new customer with the same bright hello before taking him into your mouth. The greetings become muffled, then disappear, but the men still understand you. They push tips under the door and call you the bar's good little hostess. By closing, your lips are numb, your head is pleasantly blank, and the hearts on the wall are smeared. You draw fresh ones before leaving so the place will be pretty tomorrow. <<else>> The bartender gives you a bell to ring whenever you are ready for the next man. Ring, kneel, serve, swallow. It is the nicest schedule you have ever had because every step makes a sound and no one asks you to remember anything. Sometimes the bell rings by itself when your elbow bumps it, but another customer always comes anyway. Hours later, you crawl out of the stall with money spilling from your neckline and a happy ache everywhere else. You cannot count the clients or the bills. You only know the bell kept ringing and you never made anybody wait. That must mean you did perfect. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarKinkC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> They send you to scrub the men's room and you find the gloryhole the regulars murmur about, and you don't hesitate, because you did the math on the way over: this filthy booth pays more per hour than the whole rest of the floor combined. You kneel on the sticky tile, detach yourself from the room, and work the line like a shift - mechanical, thorough, faceless, which suits you, because faces are the part you'd have to feel something about. When you finally stand, lips bruised, pockets fat with crumpled bills, you count the take and note, with a professional's grim honesty, that you can always tell yourself this is rock bottom, but you've learned there is no such thing - only the next, cheaper floor, and you've already priced the trip down. <<elseif _v == 1>> The gloryhole turns anonymity into an operational advantage. No introductions, no negotiation beyond the bill pushed under the partition, no customer mistaking the transaction for intimacy. You kneel, finish the service, collect, reset. The line manages itself. You track the count by stacking coins beside your knee until somebody's shoe scatters them across the wet floor. After that, you track only revenue. When the final customer leaves, your mouth is raw and the hourly rate is undeniable. You wash, disinfect what you can, and add the stall to your list of profitable places you never intended to know. <<elseif _v == 2>> You post three rules on the stall door: cash first, no names, five minutes. The Crossroads regulars obey better than respectable men ever did. From the other side of the wall, they become interchangeable units of demand, and you become the mechanism that clears it. Efficiency strips the act of everything except wear. Your knees bruise, your jaw slows, and you adjust the price upward when performance begins to slip. By closing, the queue is gone and the floor is littered with evidence no ledger records. You record the money. That is the part you still permit yourself to see. <<else>> The manager sells numbered tokens for access to the back stall and gives you a percentage. It is grotesquely organized: one knock, one token through the slot, one faceless service through the wall. You appreciate the absence of small talk more than you should. Near dawn, token seventeen asks your name. You do not answer. Names create people, and people complicate throughput. You finish him, pocket your share, and call the next number. The system works because no one on either side has to acknowledge what you have become. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtBarKink', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You are sent to clean the men's room, the filthiest corner of the Crossroads. In the last stall, you find what the regulars whisper about: a crude hole cut through the partition. A gloryhole. Instead of reaching for the mop, you lower yourself onto the sticky tile and accept the first bill pushed beneath the wall. The shift becomes a conveyor belt of faceless appetite. You never see the men who use your mouth from the other side, only what they feed through the opening. You serve them until the queue finally empties, surrounded by the stink of urine, cheap disinfectant, and semen. When you force yourself upright, your lips are bruised, your knees barely hold you, and your pockets bulge with dirty, crumpled cash. You wanted a bottom to this descent. Kneeling there, you realize the Crossroads can always dig another floor. <<elseif _v == 1>> A drunk points you toward the crude hole in the last stall and offers a bill to kneel. You should leave. Instead, you lock the door, fold the money into your pocket, and tell yourself one faceless customer is safer than one whose expression you would have to remember. The knock comes again before you stand. Then again. A line forms on the other side, each man paying for the silence you no longer know how to break. When it finally ends, you scrub your mouth at the sink and discover that anonymity preserved nothing. It only removed the witnesses you might have blamed. <<elseif _v == 2>> Someone has written GOOD GIRLS KNEEL above the gloryhole. You read it while lowering yourself to the filthy tile, hating the sentence, hating the money already in your hand, and hating the flicker of obedience that makes the position feel horribly natural. You never see the men. That should make the degradation abstract, but every knock becomes more intimate because your imagination supplies what the wall conceals. At closing, you wipe away the writing and pause before the last word. The delay frightens you more than anything that passed through the hole. <<else>> The bathroom attendant offers to manage the queue if you take the stall. You refuse, walk back to the bar, then return when you calculate what a full line could pay. That sequence - refusal, arithmetic, return - repeats in your mind while strangers use your mouth through the wall. You cling to the fact that you chose the price. By dawn, the distinction feels cosmetic. The attendant gives you your share, praises your stamina, and asks whether he should reserve the stall tomorrow. You cannot make yourself say no quickly enough. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "bar")>> Earned in the bar: <<print _total>>$ * [[Continue|Night]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("model")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<set $modelShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "model">> <<if $modelShifts gte 25 and not $teleModel>><<set $teleModel to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shoots. The studio keeps your sizes on file now, and the photographer has stopped explaining the tape marks on the floor.</div> <</if>> <<set _base to 100>> <<set _bonus to ($beauty * 4)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(_base + _bonus)>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "normal">> /% Photoshoot type logic. "normal" is split three ways - normal / fitting / reshoot - which are ORDINARY WORKING DAYS with identical effects and identical pay. 0.6 §5.1, corrected by measurement (see the bar note): the first pass moved the whole ladder onto beauty and opened tier-2 on day one (default beauty 50 sits under 60 only barely, and mirror-fed strategies vault it immediately) - the sim showed grid-model endings re-routed. Landed shape: the prom ladder stays the PACING, and beauty DEMOTES the risqué events - lingerie takes beauty 60, nude 75, porn 90, each falling back one rung safer when the face is not there yet. The studio photographs the face it invested in; a corruption history alone no longer books a nude set. Ditz.b keeps its band bypass (shame-blind is not face-blind, but the shoot calendar trusts the scout's verdict); the beauty demotion still applies below its own thresholds. %/ <<set _mb to $beauty>> <<if ($promiscuity < 30 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 40>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<elseif _roll <= 70>> <<set _event to "fitting">> <<else>> <<set _event to "reshoot">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 20>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<elseif _roll <= 35>> <<set _event to "fitting">> <<elseif _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "reshoot">> <<elseif _mb >= 60>> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <<else>> <<set _event to "normal">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _e2 to "normal">> <<elseif _roll <= 50>> <<set _e2 to "lingerie">> <<elseif _roll <= 95>> <<set _e2 to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _e2 to "porn">> <</if>> <<if _e2 is "normal">> <<set _event to "normal">> <<elseif _mb < 60>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<elseif _e2 is "lingerie">> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <<elseif _e2 is "nude">> <<if _mb >= 75>> <<set _event to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _mb >= 90>> <<set _event to "porn">> <<elseif _mb >= 75>> <<set _event to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <</if>> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _e2 to "lingerie">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _e2 to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _e2 to "porn">> <</if>> <<if _mb < 60>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<elseif _e2 is "lingerie">> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <<elseif _e2 is "nude">> <<if _mb >= 75>> <<set _event to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _mb >= 90>> <<set _event to "porn">> <<elseif _mb >= 75>> <<set _event to "nude">> <<else>> <<set _event to "lingerie">> <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "fitting">> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _modelFittingKey to "model/fitting/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _modelFittingVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _modelFittingKey _modelFittingVariant>> /% deckTxtModelFittingSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelFittingB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No camera at all today, just the fitting room and a lady with pins in her mouth who turns you around and around like a music box. You love being turned. You don't have to know which way is which, she just moves you, and you go soft and pliant and let her, and she says you're the easiest girl she's had all week. Standing still is the whole job and standing still is easy. Hours of it, arms out, chin up, while the fabric gets folded and refolded against you. Your feet hurt by the end and you can't remember a single thing that was said, only that everyone seemed pleased with the shape of you, and that is a perfectly nice thing to take home. <<elseif _v == 1>> The seamstress turns you by the waist, lifts your arms, and tells you when to breathe. You follow every instruction happily. Being a mannequin is restful: mannequins never need to understand why the dress changes again. At closing they praise your patience. You forget the aching feet and remember only that you were the easiest girl in the room. <<elseif _v == 2>> Pins glitter around you while assistants wrap and unwrap fabric across your body. Whenever someone says hold, you become perfectly still; whenever they say turn, you spin with a little smile. They discuss your measurements as if you are not listening. Mostly you are not. The numbers sound pretty but refuse to mean anything. <<else>> A designer drapes three unfinished dresses over you at once and asks which feels best. You say all of them, because choosing might disappoint two dresses and their people. Your answer makes everyone laugh kindly. They choose for you, and relief feels warmer than the fitting-room lights. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelFitting', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No shoot today - a fitting, which means hours on a low box with your arms out while a seamstress works around you with pins in her mouth. Nobody photographs anything. Nobody asks you to feel anything. You are a shape that clothes are being tested against, and the tape measure goes round your waist twice while two people discuss the drape as though you have stepped out of the room. It is dull work and honest work and your calves are screaming by the fourth hour, and when they finally say thank you and hand you the envelope, you notice with something like relief that nothing at all happened today. In this city that is not a small thing. You count it as a win on the walk to the bus. <<elseif _v == 1>> You stand on the fitting block while a junior designer rebuilds a jacket directly around you. The work is slow, technical, and almost aggressively ordinary. Your only task is to breathe shallowly when the pins approach. Four hours buy a modest envelope and no new shame. You value the second payment more. <<elseif _v == 2>> The sample trousers do not fit, which begins an argument between pattern cutters while you remain half dressed in the middle. Nobody blames your body; they blame the numbers. The distinction is unexpectedly comforting. When the correction finally works, their satisfaction includes you without consuming you. <<else>> Today is nothing but measurements: shoulder, waist, hip, inseam, then all of them again after lunch. You become data without becoming merchandise, a subtle difference you hold onto through the boredom. The pay is small. The ability to leave fully clothed feels like the bonus. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "reshoot">> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _modelReshootKey to "model/reshoot/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _modelReshootVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _modelReshootKey _modelReshootVariant>> /% deckTxtModelReshootSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelReshootB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Something is wrong with the lights and everyone gets grumpy about it, so you do the same pose again and again and again while men frown at little screens. You don't mind! Doing the same thing over is much easier than doing new things, and you're extremely good at holding still and smiling. They mutter words at each other you don't follow - something about the color being off - and one of them sighs at you like it's your fault, which makes your chest go small for a second. But then the lights get fixed and everybody cheers up, and you get told you were very patient. Patient is a good word. You collect it and put it with the others. <<elseif _v == 1>> Everyone says again all day, and again is a wonderfully easy instruction. Same dress, same mark, same smile. You stop remembering which take is happening and simply become the pose whenever the flash fires. The photographer calls you reliable. It is a long word for a girl who repeats nicely. <<elseif _v == 2>> The client wants yesterday recreated exactly. An assistant shows you pictures of yourself and arranges you to match them, like copying a pretty doll from a catalog. You cannot remember being the first girl, but you imitate her perfectly. Everyone is pleased with both of you. <<else>> A broken light makes your skin the wrong color, so you smile through every correction while technicians argue. When the final monitor shows you glowing properly, you clap with them. Nobody explains what changed. Pretty again is enough information. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelReshoot', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The lighting rig fails an hour in, and what should have been a morning becomes the whole day: the same four setups, over and over, while the photographer curses at a monitor and the client's representative makes calls in the corridor. You hold the pose. You hold it again. Your shoulders lock somewhere around the fortieth frame and stay locked. Nobody is cruel about it, so there is no one to blame: only equipment, weather, and other people's schedules. You leave with the same fee for twice the hours and the hollow feeling of a day that took everything and contained nothing. Still, you kept your clothes on, your name on the call sheet, and the money in the envelope. You have had far worse days for far worse reasons. <<elseif _v == 1>> A corrupted card erased the morning, and the crew reacts as though time itself betrayed them. You rebuild every pose from thumbnails while your muscles protest that they already completed this day. The fee does not double. Your exhaustion does. At least neither one is intimate. <<elseif _v == 2>> The client changes the background after reviewing the finished set. You repeat six hours of work against a wall one shade warmer, unable to see the difference that apparently invalidated your first effort. Modeling sometimes means being paid to absorb another person's indecision without showing it. <<else>> Continuity notes are missing, so the team debates the angle of your wrist and the fall of each fold. You remain on the mark while professionals reconstruct yesterday around your aching body. When they finally approve the match, relief replaces pride. Completion is enough. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "normal">> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _modelNormalKey to "model/normal-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _modelNormalVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _modelNormalKey _modelNormalVariant>> /% deckTxtModelNormalSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNormalB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Pretty lights day! The studio is all warm and bright and everyone wants you to stand SO still and look SO pretty, which is basically your two best skills, so it's the easiest job in the world. They dress you up in nice clothes and tug the folds straight and turn your chin with one finger like you're a doll on a shelf, and you love being a doll on a shelf - dolls don't have to think, they just get admired. The grumpy photographer never says you're doing good, but the little screen shows a glowing girl who is definitely you, and she's the prettiest thing in the room. You float out at the end feeling clean and sparkly, and you can't quite remember why "clean" felt so important, only that it did, once. <<elseif _v == 1>> Assistants dress you in one outfit after another and point toward colored marks on the floor. Stand on blue, smile at red, turn when the flash pops. The whole day becomes a matching game built around making you pretty. You forget every brand name but remember the applause when you get a difficult turn right. <<elseif _v == 2>> The catalog wants a happy office girl, so you hold a fake folder and laugh at a silent joke for hundreds of frames. Pretending to understand jokes is already one of your best skills. On the monitor, the office girl looks clever and organized. You are proud of her without wondering where she went afterward. <<else>> A paper garden surrounds you while fans make the summer dresses flutter. You spin whenever asked and become dizzy enough that every smile turns real. The photographer keeps the dizzy frames. Apparently happiness photographs best when thinking cannot interrupt it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNormalC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Catalog work: unglamorous, undemanding, and one of the last honest dollars you earn. You hit the marks, hold the poses past the point of aching, and give the stingy photographer his "commercial efficiency" without needing a word of praise - you stopped working for praise a long time ago. It's a grind, but it's a clean grind: layers of fabric between you and the lens, the word "model" on the call sheet instead of anything uglier. You ration these shoots like a smoker rationing the good cigarettes, because you know exactly what the rest of your income costs you, and this one only costs your feet. <<elseif _v == 1>> The mail-order client requires four angles, two expressions, and no personality visible beyond affordable confidence. You deliver the matrix with mechanical precision and finish ahead of schedule. Nobody asks you to simulate desire. The absence feels almost luxurious. <<elseif _v == 2>> You model office clothes in a fake workspace cleaner than any real office you have known. Every prop is hollow, every screen blank, but the role of competent professional still fits well enough to sting. You take the clean fee and leave the costume version of your old life on its hanger. <<else>> A streetwear campaign keeps you walking on a treadmill while the city backdrop loops behind. You maintain pace, angle, and expression without wasting a movement. The crew compliments your discipline. They have no idea where it was learned. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNormal', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The studio lights are already hot when you arrive. Today you are shooting for a catalog of everyday clothes - an endless succession of dresses, suits, and light coats. The work is exhausting: you have to stand in uncomfortable poses for hours, trying to look fresh and relaxed while assistants adjust every fold of fabric. The photographer is stingy with praise, demanding only "commercial efficiency" in every frame. You feel like a high-quality mannequin, part of a pretty picture for the middle class. For all the bustle, it feels good to have a skill someone needs. You see your face on the camera monitor - flawless, glowing, and far from the grime of the night city. The clothes stay on, and the job has a name you can say without hesitation: model. You leave tired and satisfied. Today they wanted you to make clothes look beautiful. For once, that was all. <<elseif _v == 1>> You spend the day modeling practical coats beneath lights hot enough to make winter clothing absurd. The photographer cares about seams and silhouettes, not seduction. For once your body is asked to display fabric rather than availability. The work leaves sweat, sore feet, and an uncomplicated envelope. You welcome all three. <<elseif _v == 2>> A catalog team photographs you performing fragments of ordinary life: carrying groceries, waiting for a bus, laughing over coffee. Each scene is artificial, yet playing a woman with ordinary concerns feels dangerously comforting. When the set closes, you have to return her clothes and her imaginary future. <<else>> The client wants confidence without glamour. You stand straight in sensible clothes and meet the lens as though the woman in them has savings, plans, and somewhere safe to return. The camera believes you. For several frames, so do you. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "lingerie">> <<set _total += Math.floor($beauty * 1.5)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 3)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "model/lingerie")>> <<vid "model/lingerie" _id>> /% deckTxtModelLingerieSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelLingerieB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Ooh, the pretty lacy set today - the one that's mostly ribbons and holds together by magic! You stand in the hot bright light wearing almost nothing, and the photographer keeps saying more, more, give me more, so you give and give because giving makes everybody smile. You wiggle your hips and pout the way you've seen the mirror girl do it, and it works every single time, and knowing it works makes you feel like a firework going off. Being wanted is the best feeling and there's a whole room here just to want you. You leave in a warm silk daze, sure of exactly one thing: you're for being looked at, and you're extremely good at it. <<elseif _v == 1>>The ribbons barely cover you, but everyone calls them an outfit, so you model them proudly. Each arch and pout earns praise until being almost naked feels like winning. <<elseif _v == 2>>The photographer asks for innocent and naughty together. You widen your eyes, tug the lace lower, and delight in solving the contradiction without understanding it. <<else>>Assistants arrange you on rumpled sheets and call every exposed pose perfect. By closing, perfect means whichever shape makes the room stare hardest.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelLingerieC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Lace campaign, closed set, higher rate - you know this gig cold. On command, you give the photographer passion, then languor, then a parted-lip stare that will look spontaneous in the final spread. He congratulates himself for coaxing it out of you. You hit the marks, vary the arch of your back, and keep an eye on the shot counter. The work pays a clean multiple of the catalog rate. You are not being seduced by the lens; you are operating it from the wrong side. <<elseif _v == 1>>You treat every strip of lace as product placement, repeating the angles analytics favor. The photographer calls it chemistry; you know it is tested conversion. <<elseif _v == 2>>A hotel-bed concept sells purchased intimacy. You manufacture morning softness frame by frame while tracking overtime and usage rights. <<else>>The client requests vulnerability without explicitness. You price the distinction, deliver it precisely, and leave before the crew mistakes performance for access.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelLingerie', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Today's booking is for lace lingerie, with much more skin on display. The crew clears the set, leaving only the people needed for the shoot. You stand before the camera almost naked, thin strips of silk against your skin, the photographer's gaze following every movement. He keeps calling, "More passion. Soften your eyes. Move your hips," forcing you to balance on the edge between fashion and erotica. You catch yourself enjoying the attention. The sense of your own sexual power, captured on film, awakens a new, frightening confidence in you. You learn which angles show off your curves, flirting with the lens and taking increasingly bold poses. The flirting begins to feel less like a direction and more like something you want to do. The fee is much higher than for a catalog shoot. As you dress afterward, you wonder how much of it paid for the lingerie and how much paid for the look in your eyes. <<elseif _v == 1>>The first lace set feels like clothing; the fourth feels like an excuse. You follow increasingly intimate directions and discover that the lens rewards every boundary you stop defending. <<elseif _v == 2>>A bedroom set asks you to imitate privacy before strangers. Their attention warms shame into excitement, leaving you unsure which feeling the camera actually captured. <<else>>The stylist removes pieces until only ribbons remain. You keep posing because the higher rate makes each concession look practical, even as the mirror records the direction of travel.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "nude">> <<set _total += Math.floor($beauty * 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "model/nude")>> <<vid "model/nude" _id>> /% deckTxtModelNudeSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNudeB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No clothes today, which is honestly the comfiest way to work - clothes are fiddly and buttons are hard and skin is easy. It's just you and the nice man with the camera, and he tells you exactly how to lie and bend and open, so you don't have to figure out anything at all, you just do the pose and get told you're perfect. The word perfect is your favorite; it goes all warm and buzzy in your tummy. You used to think being looked at naked was a scary humiliating thing - you can sort of remember thinking that, like remembering a dream - but now it just feels like being the sun, with everybody's eyes warming you up. You leave glowing and empty and rich, and you already can't wait to be perfect again. <<elseif _v == 1>> The set has mirrors on every side, so there are pretty naked girls everywhere you look. The photographer tells all of them how to bend, stretch, and open; you obey for the whole sparkling crowd. When he calls you perfect, every reflection smiles. It feels like receiving the same compliment a dozen times. <<elseif _v == 2>> A body-lotion campaign covers you in oil and asks you to touch every shining curve for the camera. You lose track of whether you are demonstrating the product or simply enjoying how beautiful your skin looks. The crew applauds the final pose. You leave slick, glowing, and delighted that naked can count as dressed for work. <<else>> The photographer places you beneath one hard light and moves your limbs like a doll's. Chin up, knees apart, hands behind - simple instructions that turn your body into art without requiring a single thought. You cannot explain the pictures afterward. You only know everyone stared quietly, which must mean they were very good. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNudeC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Nude set: no clothes, no witnesses, no illusions. The photographer's gaze went unprofessional a hundred shoots ago and you priced that into the day rate. You give him the harsh poses he wants - the ones meant to read as your humiliation - the way you'd give any client the service they paid for: precisely, competently, from somewhere cold and far behind your own eyes. Your body performs the vulnerability; the accountant in your skull tallies the frames and the fee. You don't confuse the heat that flares in you for anything but good lighting and better technique. You dress after, take the fat envelope, and walk out having sold, once again, a very convincing picture of a woman losing herself - manufactured, on schedule, by a woman who long since finished. <<elseif _v == 1>> The mirrors multiply every vulnerable angle, but they also let you monitor the frame. You correct your own posture before the photographer speaks, delivering exposure with the precision of technical work. He calls the result intimate. Nothing in the room came closer to you than the invoice. <<elseif _v == 2>> A skincare client requests natural sensuality, meaning nudity that must appear unconscious of the camera. You manufacture that impossible innocence through controlled breathing, softened focus, and carefully placed hands. The campaign sells authenticity. Your performance sells it efficiently. <<else>> The photographer wants humiliation in monochrome: severe light, exposed poses, no smile. You give him the appearance of a boundary collapsing while keeping the actual boundary around payment, usage rights, and the locked door. He captures surrender. You retain the negatives in the contract. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelNude', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The studio is quiet today. Only you and the photographer remain for the nude shoot, and there is nothing professional about the way he watches you undress. Without your clothes, there is nowhere to hide from him or the lens. The cold air of the studio burns your skin, but inside you, you grow hot at the thought of how much he can see. The photographer commands harshly, forcing you to take poses that seem humiliating to you, but incredibly arousing. Your mind bogs down in this sticky fog of self-admiration and shame. You enjoy how your body becomes the center of a small universe created for the sake of one thing: visual ecstasy. Debt and morality feel distant, irritating thoughts that get in the way of showing him your flesh. You leave the studio with a misty gaze and a heavy wallet, understanding that today you sold not just an image of your body, but a significant part of your self-control. You can barely gather a thought beyond the urge to be seen. <<elseif _v == 1>> The robe falls away in front of three mirrors, leaving no angle hidden from the lens or from you. At first you protect yourself with careful poses; then the photographer asks for openness and you obey further than expected. Watching yourself become an image turns shame into fascination. By closing, concealment feels less natural than exposure. <<elseif _v == 2>> A body-care campaign begins clinically, with measured light and product notes. The directions slowly become more intimate until you are touching yourself for a photograph that will pretend the moment was private. You accept the higher rate and wonder when commercial necessity became indistinguishable from desire. <<else>> Alone with the photographer, you pose beneath a single light while he asks for vulnerability, then submission, then humiliation. Each word moves your body a little farther past the line you meant to keep. The final frames are beautiful. That makes the surrender harder, not easier, to dismiss. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "porn">> <<set _total += Math.floor($beauty * 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 8)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 19, "model/porn")>> <<vid "model/porn" _id>> /% deckTxtModelPornSetup: the complete scene below supplies its own coherent opening. %/ <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelPornB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Today it's the fun kind of shoot where there's other people and toys and the director just tells you what to do the whole time, which is honestly a relief, because deciding is hard and doing what you're told is easy-peasy. You do every single thing they ask, all the dirty mechanical things, and you make the happy noises, and everybody claps and the money gets huge. You lost count of hands and holes somewhere in the first hour and it didn't bother you a bit; counting is for the old you, and she's gone gone gone. When they finally call cut you're a warm sticky puddle blinking under the lights, wondering vaguely what you're for, and the answer flickers up helpfully on a monitor: views. Lots and lots of views. You're for views. That's nice. That's a nice thing to be for. <<elseif _v == 1>> The director gives you a list of acts, but the words are long, so the performers demonstrate each one. You copy eagerly, moving from mark to mark whenever someone calls your name. Every successful take earns applause and good girl. By the end, you would repeat anything just to hear the room praise you again. <<elseif _v == 2>> Viewers chose today's scenes before you arrived. Their votes decide who uses you, which toy comes next, and how long the camera watches. You love that thousands of friends already planned your whole day. When the director says the audience will adore you, the exhaustion turns into a warm, empty glow. <<else>> The studio films many short clips, changing costumes and partners while you remain the same happy center. Cut means pause, action means open and obey; those are wonderfully easy rules. At wrap, the monitor shows rows of thumbnails filled with you. Being everywhere at once feels like fame. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelPornC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Hardcore set, top of the day rate, and you run it like any other shift: know the shot list, hit the director's marks, protect the product - which is you. You execute the mechanical orders one after another, giving the actors and the toys exactly the performance the booking demands, timing every scripted moan to the scene and nothing to yourself. Part of you stands off past the lights with a clipboard, cataloging takes, noting which setup pays the residual. They think the camera is watching you fall apart. It's watching a professional deliver a very expensive illusion of falling apart, on time and under budget. You collect an obscene fee, wipe off, and drive home having felt, on the clock, almost nothing - which is the grim skill the job requires. <<elseif _v == 1>> The subscription studio schedules eight clips with escalating acts and precise runtimes. You inspect protection, negotiate limits, and conserve energy across the shot list while each scene performs spontaneity. The director praises your endurance. You invoice the extra take instead of accepting the compliment. <<elseif _v == 2>> Audience requests have been converted into a production table ranked by revenue. You reject two unsafe items, surcharge three difficult ones, and execute the rest with disciplined detachment. The finished footage will advertise loss of control. Control is the only reason the day finishes safely. <<else>> A multi-performer shoot begins behind schedule, so the director pressures everyone to skip pauses. You enforce the contract, keep the set orderly, and deliver every required frame without donating a minute or boundary. They call you difficult until the numbers arrive. Then they call you professional. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtModelPorn', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> This is no longer a photoshoot in the usual sense - it's a shoot for a hardcore porn site. The studio has turned into a set where the camera is but a passive witness to your final downfall. You no longer need to pose; you need to execute dirty, mechanical orders from the director, giving your body to actors for use or using sex toys for the public's amusement. Your every moan and every movement are strictly regulated for maximum profit, turning sex into an assembly line. Your personality finally dissolves in this act of public shame. You stop perceiving yourself as a human being, becoming only a set of wet openings and pliant limbs earning a fortune for the site owners. The mind shuts down, unable to bear the depth of the fall, leaving only a ringing, dull emptiness filled with animal instincts. The fee is huge, though the interest is still waiting, but the price for this is your complete transformation into a living porn doll whose only value is measured by the number of views. <<elseif _v == 1>> The call sheet lists explicit acts where poses used to be. Performers take their assigned turns while the director corrects your sounds, your angles, and even the timing of each apparent climax. Turning sex into repeated takes makes it both less intimate and more devastating. You leave with a huge payment and no private language left for what happened. <<elseif _v == 2>> A website has collected audience requests, and the director works down the list while cameras record your compliance from every side. Each completed demand unlocks a worse one and a higher fee. You keep agreeing because the total keeps rising. By wrap, money is the only explanation that still feels coherent. <<else>> Additional performers enter after makeup, accompanied by a revised contract and a larger number. You sign because walking away now would turn the preparation, exposure, and need into nothing. The shoot becomes an assembly line of bodies and instructions. When it ends, you cannot decide whether the signature authorized the scene or merely documented your surrender. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "model")>> Earned in modeling: <<print _total>>$ * [[Finish the day|Night]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<set $churchShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "church">> <<if $churchShifts gte 25 and not $teleChurch>><<set $teleChurch to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts. The sisters no longer walk you through the soup line, and the candle ledger falls open to your page on its own.</div> <</if>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "chores">> /% Church work type logic (Evening). "chores" is split three ways - chores / kitchen / archive - all plain parish work with identical pay and identical effects, so the band stays balance-neutral while the player below prom 40 stops rereading one paragraph every single evening. Kept under prom 40 on purpose: T2 is unreachable there, so no dead voice branch appears. %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 40 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 40>> <<set _event to "chores">> <<elseif _roll <= 70>> <<set _event to "kitchen">> <<else>> <<set _event to "archive">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 60 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "penance">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 80 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "penance">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <<else>> <<set _event to "priest">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "priest">> <<else>> <<set _event to "people">> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "kitchen">> <<set _total to 50>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _churchKitchenKey to "church/kitchen-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _churchKitchenVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _churchKitchenKey _churchKitchenVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchKitchenB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Soup night! You get the big ladle, which is the best job, and you stand at the counter and pour and pour and say there you go, there you go, to every single person. They all say thank you. Some of them say God bless you. It fills you right up, being thanked that many times in a row. An old woman holds your wrist for a second longer than she needs to and looks at you carefully, the way people sometimes do lately, like they are checking something. You smile at her extra hard until she lets go. Then it is back to the ladle, which does not check anything, and which you are very good at. <<elseif _v == 1>>You butter bread while another volunteer handles the soup. The slices form a neat golden row, and every grateful person takes one of your little completed tasks away.<<elseif _v == 2>>You wash bowls in water almost too hot to touch. Dirty arrives, clean leaves - an easy transformation you can understand and repeat without remembering names.<<else>>You carry tea among the tables and receive blessings instead of tips. Blessings are difficult to count, but by closing you feel pleasantly rich with them.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchKitchen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The parish runs a soup kitchen out of the side hall on weeknights, and tonight you are on the serving line: ladle, bowl, bread, next. Two hundred people come through in three hours. Dockers between shifts, a man who talks to no one, a mother with two children who will not look up from the table. You stop noticing your own arms somewhere in the second hour. Nobody here knows what you do after dark and nobody asks. For three hours you are simply a pair of hands that hands out food, and the arithmetic of your debt does not follow you into the hall. When the last pot is scraped out, one of the volunteers presses the fifty into your palm and thanks you like you did her a favor. You walk out lighter than the money accounts for. <<elseif _v == 1>>You spend the evening cutting bread beside retirees who discuss grandchildren and bus routes. Nobody appraises your body or asks why you need the wage. Ordinary conversation becomes part of the meal you did not realize you needed.<<elseif _v == 2>>The dishwasher breaks, leaving you at a sink piled with bowls. The work is wet, exhausting, and unquestionably useful; every clean stack proves the hours went somewhere honest.<<else>>You deliver trays to people too frail to join the line. Their thanks are direct and uncomplicated. For once, being needed does not require becoming available.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "archive">> <<set _total to 50>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _churchArchiveKey to "church/archive-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _churchArchiveVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _churchArchiveKey _churchArchiveVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchArchiveB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> They put you in the little back room with all the old papers, which is quiet and dusty and smells like a closed book. The job is putting names in order. A before B! You know that one. You go slowly and get most of them right and nobody hurries you, and the going-slowly feels lovely, like floating. Some of the papers are very old and the writing is all curly and impossible, so you make a pile of those for somebody cleverer. There used to be a you who could read curly writing. You think about her for a second the way you would think about a song you have forgotten, and then you put another name in another box, and the thinking goes away. <<elseif _v == 1>>You sort baptism cards by colored tabs when the names become difficult. The priest says your piles are almost right and lets you keep working slowly, which feels kinder than correcting everything.<<elseif _v == 2>>You copy dates into a ledger, drawing each number carefully from the example beside it. The page looks official when finished, and looking official feels nearly as good as understanding.<<else>>Old photographs need envelopes. You match faces, smile at weddings from years ago, and give every forgotten family a tidy paper home.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchArchive', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The parish keeps its registers in a back room that has not been aired since the war, and someone has finally decided the last forty years need indexing. It is you, a lamp, and a table of ledgers: baptisms, marriages, burials, in handwriting that gets harder the further back you go. It is the first work in weeks that asks anything of your mind, and you feel it wake up and stretch. You catch two entries filed under the wrong year and a marriage recorded twice. By the end your fingers are gray to the second knuckle and you have read the entire life of a parish reduced to three columns, and the thought arrives unbidden that yours would fit in three columns too, and take up less room than most. You put the lamp out and go home oddly steady. <<elseif _v == 1>>You index decades of marriage records and watch whole lives pass through names and dates. The careful work wakes a part of your mind that the city has spent weeks trying to silence.<<elseif _v == 2>>A box of unsorted correspondence consumes the shift. Reconstructing its chronology from postmarks and references feels like solving a modest mystery whose answer harms nobody.<<else>>You digitize fragile registers one line at a time. The task is slow, exact, and preserved after you leave - a rare day when your labor creates memory instead of erasing it.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "chores">> <<set _total to 50>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _churchChoresKey to "church/chores-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _churchChoresVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _churchChoresKey _churchChoresVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchChoresB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The quiet job today, the nice easy one - wax the benches, sweep the floor, line the little books up all neat in a row. No hands, no chat, no camera; nobody in here wants anything from your body, and after a while you forget you have one to be wanted. The candles do their soft flickery thing and your empty head goes softer still, and it's the closest you come to feeling okay anymore. The priest nods at you like you're a person, which is a funny warm confusing feeling. You take the tiny bit of money at the end and drift out calmer and lighter, holding onto a little glow you couldn't name if someone paid you to. <<elseif _v == 1>>You polish candleholders until every flame has a twin in the brass. The repeated circles quiet your head, and nobody asks for anything prettier than a clean shine.<<elseif _v == 2>>You straighten hymnals by color because reading the numbers is tiring. The rows become neat anyway, and the priest praises the result rather than the method.<<else>>You sweep flower petals from the aisle after a wedding. Their soft colors make the dustpan pretty, and the empty church feels peaceful rather than lonely.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> You come here to scrub the job off you. Wax, sweep, straighten the hymnals - two hours of mindless labor in a cool stone box where nobody's paying to touch you, and the night work flakes off like old varnish. Cheapest decompression in the city; the priest even hands you a pittance for the privilege of using his church as a car wash. You don't buy the redemption, exactly - you know full well what you'll be doing tomorrow night - but you'll take the silence, and the reset, and these hours when nobody rates you out of ten. You leave a fraction cleaner and entirely aware it won't hold. That's fine. Nothing does. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchChores', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The evening church greets you with the quiet flickering of dying candles and a coolness that seems a blessing after a stuffy day. Your work today is simple and humble: you wax the heavy benches, sweep the stone floor, and neatly arrange the prayer books. The repetitive work in the silence of a sacred place lets your thoughts settle. You feel the city's sticky grime gradually recede, leaving room for calm clarity and a tiny hope for redemption. The priest occasionally walks by, nodding encouragingly to you. In these hours, you are not a debtor or an object of desire, but just someone doing an honest job. The smell of incense and old wood permeates your clothes, as if creating a protective cocoon. When you finish, you are handed a modest payment, barely enough for food, but you leave with a light heart. Today you've reclaimed a small part of yourself from Smith's merciless interest rates. <<elseif _v == 1>>You wax pews until the wood reflects the last candles. The labor asks for patience rather than performance, leaving your body pleasantly irrelevant for an evening.<<elseif _v == 2>>You replace burned-down candles and gather abandoned service sheets. Each small restoration makes the sanctuary orderly while your own life remains beyond repair.<<else>>You sweep the stone aisle alone after evening prayer. With every pass, footprints and dust disappear; the fantasy that other stains might lift so easily keeps you working.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "penance">> /% 0.6 §5.2: the penance ladder pays for submission - each rung adds ds·1. A deep-submissive church regular earns from her stillness; Caretaker becomes an economically live route, not just a moral one. %/ <<set _total to 100 + $domsub>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -10)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _churchPenanceKey to "church/penance-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 1, 3) + "-">> <<set _churchPenanceVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _churchPenanceKey _churchPenanceVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPenanceB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You kneel where they tell you and stay there, on the cold hard stone, saying the words after the stern old man in front, and it's easy - so easy - because kneeling and repeating are the two things your soft head can still do without any trouble at all. Your knees go numb and your back aches and you don't mind; the ache is simple and clear, and simple and clear feel good in all the fog. You say you're a sinner because they say to, and it must be true, because they're the ones who know things now. Afterward the kind people leave money for the good obedient girl, and you take it and feel, distantly, that you were used well today, and being used well is the whole point of you. <<elseif _v == 1>>The elder gives you a sign listing naughty things and makes you kneel where everyone can read it. Their stern looks make you feel small, safe, and wonderfully certain that someone else knows the rules.<<elseif _v == 2>>You repeat I am sorry after every accusation, even the ones you do not understand. Repetition empties the words and your head together until obedience is the only feeling left.<<else>>Parishioners pray over you while you keep your forehead to the stone. Each blessing calls you fallen and each coin calls you useful; useful is the part you carry home.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPenanceC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Collective penance: hours on your knees on unforgiving stone, chanting your own sinfulness for the crowd while the elder watches to keep your face down. You've knelt for worse men for worse reasons, so the posture is no hardship - and unlike the paying work, this kind at least scours something off. You let the humiliation do its job, coldly grateful: the more publicly you break yourself in here, the cheaper the interest out there. The donations "for repentant sinners" aren't much; the real payment is the reset. You collect both, keep your eyes down the regulation length of time, and note, with a professional's detachment, that you've gotten frighteningly good at looking sorry. <<elseif _v == 1>> The elder places you before the congregation and has you repeat a confession assembled from rumors. You correct none of it. Accuracy is not the function of public penance; submission is. Hours later, sore and calmer, you collect the donations assigned to the church's exemplary sinner. <<elseif _v == 2>> You kneel through an entire service with a placard naming sins across your chest. Strangers pray over you, condemn you, and leave coins for your reform. You treat every reaction as part of the ritual. Humiliation reduces desire with grim efficiency. The ledger calls that useful. <<else>> Tonight's penance is silence: knees on stone, eyes lowered, no defense while parishioners describe what women like you deserve. You separate their words from yourself the way you separate a client's fantasy. The technique works. That it works in church feels appropriate. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWorkChurchPenance', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Instead of cleaning, you are expected to take part in collective penance. You are forced to kneel for hours on the hard stone floor before the altar, reciting prayers and confessing your sins before the congregation. Your legs go numb, your back aches from tension, but you don't dare move under the stern gaze of the church elder. This process of publicly humiliating your body for the sake of purifying the spirit turns out to be surprisingly effective - you physically feel the thirst for decadent pleasures being washed out of you. Your humility is rewarded. At the end of the service, parishioners leave donations "for repentant sinners," and part of this money passes to you. You accept your share with deep shame, but also with the realization that obedience to the church can pay toward your debt too. You've become a little more obedient, a little less promiscuous, but a new, cold sadness has settled in your gaze. <<elseif _v == 1>> You spend the service kneeling while the elder names temptations and waits for each confession. Shame burns hot, then cools into numb obedience. The congregation leaves alms for your reform, turning repentance into another paid performance. <<elseif _v == 2>> A placard marks you as an example of fallen womanhood. You remain on the stone until your legs disappear into pain and every recent desire feels distant. The ritual works; that makes it harder to forgive. <<else>> Parishioners circle you with prayers while you repeat that your will led you astray. Eventually repetition makes the statement feel true. You leave with donations and less confidence in your own choices. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flogging">> <<set _total to 150 + $domsub>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -15)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "hypno/surgery/group")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/group" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchFloggingB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The kind priest says pain makes it true, and takes you into the dark room, and you bare your back for him because he asked, and asking is the same as telling now. The whip whistles and lands and it hurts SO much, bright and clean and loud, and the loud burns all the pink fog right out of your head for a whole minute at a time - which is almost a relief, because the fog is warm but it's also nothing, and pain is at least something. You don't scream. You breathe and take it, stroke after stroke, feeling scrubbed and small and looked-after all at once. After, he washes your cuts so gently and puts money in your hand, and you feel emptied and owned and, in the strangest way, safe. You'd come back tomorrow if he asked. He'll ask. <<elseif _v == 1>>The priest counts strokes and has you thank him after each one. Pain makes counting easy, gratitude makes him gentle afterward, and both rules fit neatly inside your soft head.<<elseif _v == 2>>They fasten your wrists so you can focus only on accepting punishment. Every bright impact knocks the naughty fog away until you are crying, blank, and proud of not resisting.<<else>>A lay elder whips you before silent witnesses. Their approval arrives whenever you stay quiet, so you swallow every scream and become the good example they wanted.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchFloggingC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> "Words are not enough. Your labor must bear the mark of pain," the priest says, leading you to the sacristy, and you go, because you've done the math: a flogging scours more of the trade off you than a week of chores, and the "alms for long-suffering" pay better besides. You bare your back and take the whip without a sound, breathing through it, watching the night-work fog burn off your mind stroke by stroke. It's clarifying in a brutal way - like sanding rust down to bare metal. He washes your wounds after with a tenderness that would unsettle you if anything still could, and presses a heavy purse into your hand. You leave hollow and striped and cleaner, having traded a layer of skin for a layer of debt, and counting it a fair rate. <<elseif _v == 1>> The priest records each stroke as a sin discharged. You count with him, using the pain to force every other thought out. The ritual is brutal, measurable, and therefore easier to trust than forgiveness. He treats the welts and pays from the alms box. Both gestures are delivered with equal calm. <<elseif _v == 2>> You choose the heavier discipline because it produces the larger reduction in desire. The priest admires your resolve; you privately admire the efficiency. Pain strips the mind down to one clean signal. By the end, your back burns and the night's temptations feel impossibly distant. <<else>> A lay elder administers the punishment while the priest recites absolution. You breathe on cadence and refuse to give either man a scream. Endurance is the last form of control available in the room. The purse afterward is heavy enough to make the calculation tolerable. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWorkChurchFlogging', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> "Words are not enough. Your labor must bear the mark of pain," the priest whispers, leading you into the dark sacristy. Today your work is to become a living example of redemption through suffering. You voluntarily accept punishment for all those dirty thoughts and actions you allowed during the day. The whistle of the whip and the burning pain on your back become your only world for the next hour. You don't scream, only breathe convulsively, feeling how with each stroke, the fog of lust evaporates from your head, replaced by the sharp, purifying reality of suffering. When the punishment ends, the priest carefully washes your wounds and places a weighty purse in your hand. This is "alms for long-suffering," payment for your willingness to break your pride for the sake of faith and money. You feel hollowed out, broken, but surprisingly clean. Dirty fantasies about clients now seem like something infinitely distant and disgusting. You earned a decent sum, but your submission to another's will has become even deeper. <<elseif _v == 1>> You bare your back and count each stroke as payment for a remembered act. Pain drives desire from your mind by leaving room for nothing else. The priest washes the marks and pays you; mercy and cruelty share the same hands. <<elseif _v == 2>> The first strike makes you regret agreeing; the fifth makes regret impossible to hold. By the end, thought has narrowed to breath, stone, and impact. You leave striped and briefly free of appetite. <<else>> A church elder witnesses the punishment so your suffering can serve as example. You refuse to scream, clinging to silence as the last thing still chosen. The alms afterward are generous. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "priest">> <<set _total to 200 + $domsub>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -20)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 15)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 32, "office/")>> <<vid "office/" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPriestB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The priest locks his door and says the Lord needs your full service, that your body is just a tool for comforting His faithful, and that makes perfect sense to you, because everything the men-who-know say makes sense now. So you kneel, and you serve, and you do it well, because serving is easy and being good at serving is the nicest feeling left. There's supposed to be a fight in you somewhere - sin against holiness, no against yes - but you can't find it; the fog ate it. You just follow the orders and feel the last of the old heat go quiet under his hands, and think, dimly, that this is what you're for: to be used by important men and told you did well. He tells you you did well. He gives you money. You float out cleansed and empty and content, a good obedient nothing. <<elseif _v == 1>>Confession ends with the priest guiding you onto your knees for private service. Holy and naughty are both difficult words now; his command and praise are simple enough to trust.<<elseif _v == 2>>He calls your mouth an instrument of redemption and uses it until thought disappears. Afterward his blessing feels exactly like a client calling you good, which makes it wonderfully familiar.<<else>>A visiting priest joins the lesson, taking turns directing your obedient body. More important men pleased means more completely cleansed, and the church purse confirms the arithmetic.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPriestC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The office door locks, the incense is thick, and the priest delivers the line about your body being "an instrument for the comfort of the faithful" - the exact same con as every client, only dressed in Latin. You kneel and serve because the ledger says it's worth it: this scours off more of the trade than anything else on the menu, and the "church treasury" pays like a private booking. You perform holy submission the way you perform it for any client, keeping your thoughts at a distance, letting him believe he's saving a sinner while you tally the fee. It costs you, though - you leave a little duller than you came, the work taking its usual toll on whatever sits between your ears. Cleansed, paid, and slightly emptier. Same as ever. You stopped expecting anything to come free. <<elseif _v == 1>> The priest calls the private service a sacrament. You recognize the ordinary transaction beneath the vestments and negotiate the donation before kneeling. Theology changes; pricing remains reliable. He blesses you afterward. You verify the cash while his eyes are closed. <<elseif _v == 2>> Tonight he requires obedience in the confessional itself, transforming whispered sins into instructions. You comply from the same cold distance used for every client, noting how sacred language launders familiar appetites. The church treasury pays promptly. Hypocrisy, at least, has liquidity. <<else>> A visiting priest joins the ritual, increasing both the service and the donation. You insist on rules before allowing either man to invoke obedience. They agree because even holy authority understands a closed door and a quoted price. You leave cleansed in doctrine, depleted in fact, and paid in cash. <</if>> <<else>> The priest closes his office door behind you and turns the key. Incense hangs over the smell of old books. "The Lord asks for your full service. Your body is an instrument for the comfort of his faithful servants." You understand that today your "work" will consist of full submission to the carnal desires of a man who should lead you to the light. In this paradoxical act of humiliation, you find a strange oblivion. You let the priest use you as he sees fit, perceiving this as the highest form of obedience and purification through shame. Your personality slowly dissolves in this sacred darkness. You stop distinguishing sin from holiness, simply following orders and feeling your former promiscuity burn in the fire of this forced service. The mind grows dull, unable to resolve the conflict between setting and action. When you leave the office, the priest hands you a significant sum from the church treasury. You are rich, you are "cleansed" of the urges of the flesh, but the price for this is transformation into a mindless, submissive puppet in the hands of the clergy. <</if>> <<elseif _event == "people">> <<set _total to 300 + $domsub>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -40)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 30)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -10)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "hypno/surgery/group")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/group" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPeopleB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The last, biggest ritual - they lead you to the closed courtyard where the chosen ones wait, and the priest holds you up like a cup everyone can pour their sins into, and you let them, because letting is easier than anything else you know how to do. So many hands, so many, in turns and all at once, and you go somewhere soft and white and gone while they use you up methodically under the columns. It doesn't feel like a nightmare, because there's no you left to have one - just a warm obedient nothing being emptied out for a higher purpose everyone keeps saying is good. By dawn you're lying on the cold stone feeling nothing at all, which is peaceful, and there's a whole fortune in your pocket for the good you did. You're clean now. Clean and empty and theirs. It's what you're for. It's nice, being for something. <<elseif _v == 1>>The courtyard is full of faithful men waiting for their turn to be cleansed through you. You accept each one happily, following the priest's gestures until faces, hands, and blessings blend into warm white nothing.<<elseif _v == 2>>They place you on the stone altar and let the congregation use every offered part. Praise arrives from all sides, and being everybody's good girl feels almost like belonging.<<else>>The chosen form a patient line beneath the columns. You serve until counting fails, then float wherever they position you, grateful that the ritual no longer requires a self.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPeopleC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The final rite: the inner courtyard, the waiting parishioners, the priest presenting you as a "vessel of redemption." You priced this one at the very top of the menu, because it should be - it promises to scour every trace of desire out of you and pays a fortune in "community contributions," and you know you will not come back from it unchanged. You leave your body at the columns and go as far inside your own skull as you can while they use you in turns and together, methodical, endless, and you endure it the way you endure weather, because the number is the number. By dawn you can barely stand, scoured to bare metal, memory in tatters - but the debt took a real hit tonight, and you'll take that trade, even knowing it's the last time "you" will do the math this clearly. Something got burned out of you in that courtyard that isn't coming back. You collect the fortune anyway. <<elseif _v == 1>>The priest presents a vetted list of participants and a fixed community contribution. You impose protection and rotation rules, then survive the congregation by treating sacrament as group logistics.<<elseif _v == 2>>A private donor circle purchases the final rite. You leave your mind outside the courtyard, letting trained routine carry the body through each turn while the promised sum remains your only fixed point.<<else>>The congregation calls collective use purification. You call it the highest-priced group booking available and manage it with the last professional discipline you possess.<</if>> <<else>> This is the night of the final sacrifice. You are led into the closed inner courtyard where "chosen" parishioners wait in the shadow of the columns. The priest announces you as a vessel of redemption through which everyone can cast off the burden of their vices. You become a common thing, a living altar for collective lust justified by a higher goal. You are used en masse, ruthlessly and methodically, erasing the very concept of your "self." In this nightmare, your promiscuity doesn't just leave - it is annihilated, burned to the ground by a colossal volume of humiliation that your consciousness simply refuses to perceive as reality. When the first rays of dawn touch the cold stone, you lie exhausted, feeling nothing but absolute, dead emptiness. Your psyche is destroyed, your memory like ragged tatters, but in your pocket lies a whole fortune - "community contributions" for your self-sacrifice. You are completely cleansed of any desires because there is no room left in you for will. You are an ideal, hollowed-out instrument, a holy slut, ready for any use as long as it's paid for. <</if>> <</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "church")>> Earned in the church: <<print _total>>$ * [[Finish the day|Night]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("reception")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<set $receptionShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "reception">> <<if $receptionShifts gte 25 and not $teleReception>><<set $teleReception to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts at the desk. The switchboard, the couriers, the flowers - the building has stopped noticing you; you're part of the walls now.</div> <</if>> /% 0.4c balance fix: was 60+IQ*2.5 ($310 at IQ100, best day job from day one). Now 40+IQ*1.5 ($190 at IQ100) - comparable to Burns office; tier bonuses (grope/tease/light/normal/kink) are the real escalation, not the base. %/ <<set _base to Math.floor(40 + ($iq * 1.5))>> <<set _total to _base>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shy">> /% Reception desk ladder (alternative office, player-driven escalation) %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 15 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 10>> <<set _event to "grope">> <<else>> <<set _event to "shy">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 35 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif _roll <= 85>> <<set _event to "tease">> <<else>> <<set _event to "grope">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 55 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 45>> <<set _event to "tease">> <<elseif _roll <= 85>> <<set _event to "light">> <<else>> <<set _event to "shy">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 75 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 45>> <<set _event to "light">> <<elseif _roll <= 85>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<else>> <<set _event to "tease">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 45>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<else>> <<set _event to "kink">> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "shy">> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 3)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 11, "office/shy")>> <<vid "office/shy" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionShyB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Easy desk day! You answer the ringy phone and say the nice greeting and point people at the elevators, and everybody's polite and nobody wants anything from your body, which makes it the comfiest kind of work there is. The lobby is bright and the coffee machine goes hum-hum and the hours just slide by soft and quiet. You're pretty sure this is what a Normal Job feels like, and Normal Job feels nice, like a warm bath for the part of you that used to worry. You take your little envelope at the end and float out, calm and clean, humming the phone-greeting to yourself because it had a nice shape. <<elseif _v == 1>> The phone has three buttons you need, and someone marks them with colored stickers. Red to answer, blue to transfer, green when you get confused. You press green a lot, but everyone stays kind. At closing they tell you the lobby felt brighter with you in it, which sounds like doing a very good job. <<elseif _v == 2>> You spend the shift giving visitors badges and pointing toward the shiny elevators. Names slide away, so you call everyone sir or ma'am and smile extra warmly. Nobody notices how little you remember. Politeness is a lovely bridge over missing thoughts. <<else>> A delivery of flowers arrives without a department name. You carry them from desk to desk asking who deserves something pretty, and the whole office laughs with you instead of at you. The mystery is never solved, so the flowers stay at reception. You decide they must be for you. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionShyC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You take the reception gig the way you take the church: to launder yourself. Answer calls, sort deliveries, smile at strangers who see a receptionist and nothing else - a full shift of being treated as ordinary, which is a thing you can no longer get any other way. The lobby is bright and harmless and pays almost nothing, and that's precisely the point; you're not here for the envelope, you're here to remember, for a few clean hours, what it felt like to be a woman with a job instead of a rate. You leave with your conscience temporarily rinsed and no illusions about how long it'll stay that way. <<elseif _v == 1>> You spend eight hours routing calls and issuing visitor badges. Nobody flirts, bargains, or tests a boundary. The absence feels so conspicuous that you keep waiting for the real arrangement to reveal itself. It never does. You accept the small envelope and classify the day as a rare transaction in which only your time was sold. <<elseif _v == 2>> A supplier mistakes you for permanent staff and asks for a decision. You solve his problem in three calls, then enjoy the unfamiliar satisfaction of being valued for competence rather than compliance. The feeling lasts until you see the wage. Still, dignity has always had poor margins. <<else>> The receptionist you replace left immaculate notes. You follow them, improve two procedures, and leave equally immaculate notes for whoever comes tomorrow. For a shift, your life has continuity, standards, and a desk with your name written on a temporary card. Temporary is doing heavy work. You let it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionShy', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The temp agency placed you at the reception of a quiet mid-sized firm, and for once the work is exactly what was promised: answering calls, sorting deliveries, smiling at visitors. The lobby is bright and impersonal, the coffee machine hums, and the hours slip by in clean, harmless routine. Nobody asks anything of you that you couldn't tell your mother about. You leave with a modest envelope and a rare, clear conscience. It isn't much money, but it's honest - the kind of shift that lets you pretend, just for an evening, that you're still an ordinary woman with an ordinary job. The remnants of your self-respect quietly thank you. <<elseif _v == 1>> The switchboard is older than you are and takes half the shift to understand: a bank of little lights, a headset with a fraying cable, and a laminated card of extensions that has been amended in biro by four different people. You misroute three calls before lunch. By four o'clock you are moving them through without looking at the card. It is such a small competence. You are aware of exactly how small it is, and you are also aware that you finished the day better at something than when you started it, which has not happened in a while. You put the headset back on its hook carefully, as though it belonged to you, and take the envelope from a man who calls you "our temp" and means nothing at all by it. <<elseif _v == 2>> Deliveries all afternoon, and the courier who does this route clearly wants to talk to somebody. So he talks: the traffic, the new depot, his sister's wedding, the van's alarming noise. You sign for eleven parcels and learn more about the wedding than about the parcels. On his last run he asks how long you are here for. Just covering, you say. He says that is a shame, in the ordinary way people say it, and goes. You stand behind the desk afterwards holding the clipboard and feel the shape of the exchange: a man who talked to you for an hour and wanted nothing except somebody to talk to, and who will not remember you by Thursday. Nothing all week has been this restful. <<else>> Nothing happens. That is the whole of it: eight hours in a bright lobby where the phone rings eleven times, four people sign the visitors' book, and the coffee machine performs its cycle at intervals you eventually learn to predict. You read the noticeboard twice. You straighten the magazines. You watch the light move across the floor. Boredom, it turns out, has a texture you had forgotten - not the anxious waiting of a night shift, just plain empty time with nothing in it that wants anything. Somewhere in the seventh hour you catch yourself sitting perfectly still, not braced for anything, and the discovery is so unfamiliar that it takes you a second to identify. You collect the envelope, which is small, and walk to the bus in no particular hurry. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "grope">> <<set _total += 80>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 7, "office/grope")>> <<vid "office/grope" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionGropeB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A nice man leans past you to reach the printer and his hand goes on your hip and gives a slow little squeeze, and you think, oh, that's a touch! People touch you a lot, it usually means they like you. He winks and tucks a folded bill into your blazer pocket, which means he liked you AND you get money, which is two good things at once. You smile at him because smiling is polite and he seems pleased, and pleased people are your favorite kind. Somewhere way down deep a tiny cold thing wants to be upset about it, but you can't quite hear what it's saying over the nice warm feeling of the money and the wink. <<elseif _v == 1>> A manager squeezes your bottom whenever he passes the desk. You start leaning toward the aisle to make it easier, because then he smiles and sometimes leaves money beside the visitor book. Helping important people is reception work, probably. <<elseif _v == 2>> In the elevator, a director pulls you close and lets his hands wander until the doors open. You giggle at the timing, and he pays for your good humor. The next ride feels strangely empty when nobody touches you. <<else>> A salesman asks whether touching the receptionist costs extra. You say yes without knowing what the regular price was. He laughs, pays, and cups you through the blouse. You feel clever for inventing a fee all by yourself. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionGropeC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A senior manager leans past you to "reach the printer," and his hand settles on your hip and squeezes, slow, testing. You don't freeze - you clocked him circling for twenty minutes and let it happen, because a hand on the hip is the cheapest thing you sell and this one comes with a folded bill and no negotiation. He winks like he's gotten away with something. He hasn't; you priced it, took it, and filed him under "harmless, tips well." It's beneath your usual rate and it doesn't touch you at all - you've been groped by richer men in worse rooms - but free money is free money, and the reception desk pays better than its job description exactly because of moments like this. <<elseif _v == 1>> A partner places his hand low on your back while dictating a message. You let it drift, then remove it the instant the message ends. The sequence is so controlled he never realizes permission had a timer. A folded bill appears beside your keyboard. You file it under unofficial compensation. <<elseif _v == 2>> The sales director tests you in the elevator with a squeeze and a grin. You hold the doors open, name the price of doing it again, and watch surprise become calculation. He pays. By the lobby, harassment has become a negotiated service. The distinction is ugly but useful. <<else>> A manager's hand settles on your thigh during a long call. You continue taking notes, making him wait for a reaction that never arrives. He leaves cash beneath the notepad, embarrassed by how little effect he purchased. Indifference, you discover, can be sold at a premium. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionGrope', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The shift is uneventful until a senior account manager leans past you to "reach the printer," and his hand settles low on your hip, then drifts to give a slow, deliberate squeeze. You freeze, telling yourself it was an accident even as his fingers linger a beat too long. When he steps away he tucks a folded bill into the pocket of your blazer with a wink, a quiet tax on your silence. It's nothing, you decide - a small humiliation, easily forgotten, easily undone. But you pocket the money instead of slapping his hand away, and some thin line inside you bends by a degree. You can still walk this back. For now. <<elseif _v == 1>> A man asking for directions rests his palm on your waist as though you are part of the furniture. You step away only after he finds the conference room. Later, a bill appears beneath the visitor log. You keep it. That small decision occupies more of the day than his hand did. <<elseif _v == 2>> In the copy room, a supervisor brushes against you once, then repeats the contact slowly enough to erase any doubt. You say nothing. His apology arrives as cash tucked beside the toner. Taking it feels like consent issued backward in time. You hate the thought and keep the money anyway. <<else>> The elevator is crowded when a hand squeezes you from behind. You turn in time to see a manager smile and place a folded note in your palm. Everyone else studies the floor numbers. The silence is communal; only the payment belongs to you. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "tease">> <<set _total += 160>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 1)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 15, "office/tease")>> <<vid "office/tease" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionTeaseB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You've figured out the best game at the desk: if you wear the tight blouse and lean over just so when the managers walk by, they get all smiley and flustered and nice to you all day. So you do it lots, because making people smiley is fun and easy and it makes you feel like a sparkler. You hold their eyes a beat too long and giggle and watch them go pink, and nothing even has to happen - the looking is the whole treat. On your way out one of them presses a big "thank-you" into your hand for basically nothing, and you skip to the elevator, delighted, a girl who has discovered she is a light everyone wants to stand in. <<elseif _v == 1>> You leave the top buttons open and count how many men forget why they approached the desk. Counting people is easier than invoices. Every confused smile earns a little flirt and every flirt makes the tip envelope fatter. <<elseif _v == 2>> The swivel chair becomes a stage. You cross your legs, uncross them, and bend for dropped pens while the managers invent questions to keep visiting. Their attention feels like applause delivered one stare at a time. <<else>> You discover that licking the end of your pen makes meetings run late. Soon three executives are waiting to dictate notes you will barely remember. You take the bonus and decide stationery is much more fun than you thought. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionTeaseC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You stopped waiting to be noticed a long time ago; now you engineer it. The tighter blouse is a deliberate choice, the lean over the desk is timed for when the right manager passes, the half-second of held eye contact is calibrated to read as invitation without ever committing to one. You're market-making - cultivating the whole floor like a little portfolio of men who'll tip to feel chosen. Nothing happens, because nothing happening is the product: you sell the idea of more and deliver only a lingering smile, and they thank you generously for the privilege of wanting. You pocket it, unbothered, a professional running a clean tease on amateurs who think they're the ones with the power. <<elseif _v == 1>> You rank the floor by generosity and spend attention accordingly. A smile maintains one manager, a leaned-over signature activates another, and a private joke revives a fading prospect. By closing, every prospect is warm and none has received the product. <<elseif _v == 2>> A visiting executive mistakes your controlled flirtation for personal interest. You sustain the error through his meeting, then redirect his invitation into a cash thank-you with no future obligation. Clean conversion, zero liability. <<else>> You test a stricter look today: fitted jacket, severe glasses, no giggling. Authority excites the floor more than availability did. The bonuses prove that changing the fantasy is more valuable than escalating it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionTease', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Somewhere along the way you stopped waiting to be noticed and started arranging to be. Today you catch yourself choosing the tighter blouse on purpose, leaning a little too far over the desk when the managers pass, holding eye contact a moment past polite. The attention is a current you've learned to ride, and you find you like steering it. Nothing actually happens - that's the game. You trade a lingering smile for a generous "thank-you" on your way out, having given away nothing but the idea of more. You're the one initiating now, and the realization is equal parts power and warning. <<elseif _v == 1>> You shorten your skirt before leaving home and spend the shift pretending not to notice its effect. Men linger, volunteer favors, and leave folded gratitude. The experiment succeeds too well to remain an accident. <<elseif _v == 2>> A manager compliments your blouse, so you wear it looser after lunch. Every glance feels chosen because you arranged it, yet every bill in your pocket reminds you what the choice was for. <<else>> You turn a routine delivery into ten minutes of flirting and receive more than the shift's hourly wage as a tip. The ease of it is intoxicating. You begin scanning the lobby for the next opportunity before he leaves. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "light">> <<set _total += 280>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -1)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 20, "office/light")>> <<vid "office/light" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionLightB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight the game gets hands in it! After everyone leaves, a manager backs you into the supply room and kisses you all hungry, and his palms go all over you over your clothes, and it feels warm and fizzy and nice, so you let him, because letting is easy and nice things are for enjoying. You keep a little bit of clothing-space between you - not for any reason you can name, just a leftover habit, like a bookmark in a book you don't read anymore. He tucks a fat bonus in your pocket after and you wander out flushed and happy, licking your lips, already fuzzily looking forward to the next time the game gets a little bigger. It always gets a little bigger. You like that it does. <<elseif _v == 1>> A manager pulls you onto his lap during the last call of the day. You keep saying the company greeting while his hands explore beneath your blazer, which makes him laugh and kiss you harder. The bonus comes with praise for multitasking. <<elseif _v == 2>> The copy room door closes and two hands begin teaching you what after-hours assistance means. You melt against the machine, delighted that the job becomes simpler whenever clothing stays mostly on and thinking stops. <<else>> A director kisses you in the dark lobby and lets his fingers roam while the security camera watches. He says the footage is private. Private sounds safe, so you relax and enjoy being his secret little bonus. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionLightC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The flirting graduates to hands, and you let it, on your schedule. After hours, floor empty, you back into the supply room with a manager and let him map you over your clothes, hungry and clumsy, while you keep one calm eye on the exit and the other on the bonus this is worth. You allow exactly enough - the kiss, the roaming palms, the caught breath performed a shade louder than you feel it - and hold the last layer back, because "almost" is the highest-margin tier before the price and the toll both jump. You straighten your blouse in the dark window, unflushed, counting. Each shift you release a little more ground, and unlike the version of you that used to swear she'd hold it, you know exactly what you're selling and exactly what it goes for. <<elseif _v == 1>> You grant a senior partner ten minutes in the records room: kissing, hands over clothing, nothing below the agreed boundary. He tests it once; you stop the clock. The lesson costs him and improves the margin. <<elseif _v == 2>> An executive pays for the thrill of nearly being caught in the elevator. You control the route, the camera blind spot, and exactly how far his hands travel. Risk is profitable when choreographed. <<else>> You let two managers compete through escalating touches while never granting either the final service. Each believes the other might win. Neither does; the combined bonuses do. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionLight', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The flirting finally tips over into something with hands. After hours, when the floor empties, you let a manager back you against the supply-room shelves and you don't stop him - the kiss is hungry, his palms map your body over your clothes, your breath catches against his neck. You keep just enough between you to call it "almost," but you both know which way the line is moving. You straighten your blouse in the dark glass of the window, flushed and a little ashamed of how much you wanted it. The bonus is real and so is the heat still humming under your skin. Each shift now you give a little more of the ground you swore you'd hold. <<elseif _v == 1>> A manager kisses you beside the copier and slides his hands beneath your blouse. You stop him before the last barrier, but only after discovering how badly you wanted to delay the refusal. His money feels like evidence. <<elseif _v == 2>> The elevator stalls between floors by arrangement rather than accident. In those purchased minutes, you let an executive touch almost everything while insisting this still is not sex. The distinction survives; its meaning does not. <<else>> You agree to a private drink after closing. It ends with your skirt around your waist and his hand between your legs, both of you bargaining through breath. You leave before the final step and spend the bonus wondering why. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "normal">> <<set _total += 460>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 19, "office/normal")>> <<vid "office/normal" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionNormalB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> "Overtime" again, which is the fun word for the thing that really happens: papers get swept off the desk you tidy every morning, your skirt goes up, and you brace your hands on the edge and let him, easy and willing, because this is just what the desk is for now and you like knowing what things are for. It's the fastest raise in the whole building and it has nothing to do with typing, which is lucky, because typing was getting hard anyway. Afterward you fix your hair in the elevator mirror at a glowing, rumpled girl who doesn't flinch at any of the words for herself anymore, and count a thick, happy stack of bonus cash. Good day. Good desk. Good girl. <<elseif _v == 1>> The manager locks the lobby doors and points at the desk. You hop up willingly, scattering appointment cards, because this is the part of reception work you understand best now. He handles the decisions; you handle being agreeable. Later you straighten the cards and count the bonus twice. The desk looks respectable again. You feel proud of both jobs. <<elseif _v == 2>> Overtime happens against the glass wall while the city shines below. You follow his instructions, pleased by how easily a dull office can become exciting once the computers are off. He calls you the company's best investment. You know investment means money, and the thick envelope proves he is right. <<else>> A partner clears a space among the paperwork and draws you close. You giggle at the seriousness of his tie while letting him use the desk for its unofficial purpose. Typing has rules; this does not, which makes it much easier. You leave rumpled, well paid, and already forgetting which forms need filing tomorrow. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionNormalC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No pretense left, which suits you; pretense was always the expensive part. The "overtime" happens on the reception desk you wipe down every morning - papers swept aside, skirt up, the city glittering indifferent through the glass - and you run it like the transaction it is, braced and businesslike, extracting the fastest raise in the building for the least negotiable service you offer. You take him willingly because willing photographs better and prices higher than reluctant. Afterward you fix your hair in the elevator mirror, count a thick, satisfying bonus, and feel the old flinch fail to arrive at the word for what you are here. It stopped arriving weeks ago. The money is good. In this city it has to be, and you make sure it is. <<elseif _v == 1>> The managing partner asks for overtime and you quote the established figure before he closes the door. Papers move, clothing follows, and the reception desk becomes the highest-paying workstation on the floor. You control pace and duration, then restore the lobby before security arrives. The bonus clears on the spot. <<elseif _v == 2>> You schedule the encounter between the cleaners' departure and the night guard's round. He thinks urgency makes it exciting; you know it makes it efficient. Ten minutes of performed abandon purchase more than eight hours of clerical work. The wage structure is obscene. You exploit it anyway. <<else>> A director wants the fantasy of taking the receptionist after hours. You provide the desk, the disordered paperwork, and exactly the resistance his fantasy requires before converting it into consent. He leaves triumphant. You leave with the larger victory folded inside your bag. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionNormal', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> There's no pretense left to keep. The "overtime" everyone politely doesn't name happens on the desk you tidy every morning, papers swept aside, your skirt pushed up while the city glitters indifferently through the glass. You take him willingly, hands braced on the edge, learning that the fastest raise in this building has nothing to do with your typing speed. Afterward you fix your hair in the elevator mirror and count a thick, satisfying bonus. The work has become a formality stretched over the real arrangement, and you've stopped flinching at the word for what you are here. The money is good. It needs to be. <<elseif _v == 1>> A partner asks you to stay after closing. You both understand the request before he sweeps the appointment book aside and bends you over the reception desk. The encounter is quick, practiced, and rewarded more generously than the day's real work. You restore the desk afterward. Restoring the boundary is no longer possible. <<elseif _v == 2>> Overtime takes place against the lobby window while office lights vanish floor by floor. You watch your reflection comply and recognize how little persuasion the arrangement now requires. The envelope is waiting beside your discarded badge. One role paid; the other merely provided access. <<else>> The manager locks the door, and you lift your skirt without being told. His approving surprise is worse than an order would have been. You have learned the routine well enough to initiate your own use. In the elevator, the bonus feels heavy and the absence of hesitation heavier. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "kink">> <<set _total += 720>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 38, "office/kink")>> <<vid "office/kink" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionKinkB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Big meeting night! The partners and their special friends, doors closed, and you're the whole reason everybody came - they pass you around the conference table hand to hand, taking turns, watching, asking for all the naughtiest things, and you say yes to every single one because yes is easy and yes makes the room so happy with you. You lost count of mouths and hands somewhere early and it felt like setting down something heavy. It doesn't hurt, being used up like this; it's warm, it's simple, it's everyone wanting you at once, which is the very best feeling there is. They stuff you with obscene money at dawn and you drift out hollow and shiny and pleased, a prized shiny nothing, and you couldn't find the door back to before if you looked, and you're not going to look. Why would you? Everyone's so pleased. <<elseif _v == 1>> The conference table is covered with drinks instead of documents, and you are the only item on the agenda. Each partner requests something different. You say yes before they finish, thrilled whenever the room laughs and praises your eagerness. At dawn they vote you employee of the month and fill your purse with cash. You cannot remember the month, but winning feels wonderful. <<elseif _v == 2>> Tonight's private meeting has clients from three firms and one shared receptionist. They trade you around like a successful merger, congratulating one another whenever you obey a new demand. By morning the business metaphors have blurred into happy noise. The money remains beautifully simple. <<else>> They make a game of ordering you from chair to chair around the boardroom. You crawl, pose, and please on command, collecting praise until your head feels lighter than the empty glasses. Someone asks whether the work is degrading. You smile because you no longer know the word, and the whole room applauds. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReceptionKinkC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The office has an after-dark economy now, and you run yourself as its prized asset. Tonight it's the partners and a few favored clients - a closed-door "meeting" where you're passed hand to hand on the conference table, every taboo itemized, the price climbing with each line you let them cross. You quoted all of it in advance; the escalation is the business model. You began to detach around the first hour and let the body handle the shift, cataloging takes, noting who overpays for what. They do overpay, lavishly, because what you provide can't be hired from a temp agency anymore and they know it. You leave at dawn scraped hollow and obscenely rich, the line between "job" and "use" erased so long ago you've stopped billing for the distinction. There's no walking this one back. You stopped pretending you wanted to. <<elseif _v == 1>> The partners submit requests in advance. You turn them into a schedule, attach prices to every escalation, and run the boardroom like a closed set. The apparent disorder exists entirely inside limits you established. By dawn the limits have cost them a fortune. You collect it without pride or apology. <<elseif _v == 2>> A client dinner becomes a private after-party with you as the shared entertainment. You rotate attention, enforce protection, and keep competitive men from turning desire into conflict. Managing them is harder than anything they do to you. They call the night wild. You know how much administration wildness requires. <<else>> Tonight the conference room hosts men who believe money abolishes rules. You make the rules expensive instead: each demand carries a surcharge, each violation ends a turn. Greed accomplishes what dignity no longer can. The final stack is obscene. So was the meeting. At least one obscenity belongs to you. <</if>> <<else>> The office has its own after-dark economy now, and you are its prized asset. Tonight it's the partners and a few favored clients, a closed-door "meeting" where you are passed between hands, used on the conference table while others watch and wait their turn, every taboo on the menu and the price climbing with each one you let them cross. You stopped keeping count of mouths and demands somewhere in the first hour. They overpay, lavishly, because what you provide can't be hired from the temp agency anymore. You leave at dawn hollowed out and obscenely rich, the boundary between "job" and "use" long since erased. There is no walking this one back; you wouldn't know where the path even started. <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "reception")>> Earned at the office: <<print _total>>$ /% 0.6 D1: work-slot event - same offer at the reception desk's shift end. %/ <<storyReaction "office">> <<set _workPop to setup.sceneRoll("work:office")>> <<if _workPop>> <<set _wev to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_workPop]>> <div class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>AFTER HOURS · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _wev.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _wev.call>></h3> <p><<print _wev.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _wev.title>></span><span><<print _wev.total>> chapters</span><span>after today’s shift</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Go">><<goto _wev.target>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_workPop)>><<goto "Night">><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<if not _workPop and setup.sceneSeen("SceneOffTalk") and $officeDealDay != $days and setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", random(1, 100)) <= 35>> <<set $officeDealDay to $days>> /% 0.6 office arc: the repeatable "negotiation" - the portfolio's evening shift. %/ <div class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">A CLIENT IS WAITING</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>AFTER HOURS · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source">THE FIRM / THE PORTFOLIO</span></div> <h3>ONE MORE OBJECTION</h3> <p>Scheduling slides a slip across the desk: a name, a suite, the word PRIORITY. The firm holds the letter; the closer holds the evening.</p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span>Negotiation</span><span>takes the evening</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Go">><<goto "OfficeDeal">><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<goto "Night">><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<storyHint "office">> * [[Finish the day|Night]] <</if>>

/% Repeatable office-arc "negotiation" (2026-10-20): offered at the office shift's end after The Conversation. Pool scene/officedeal/ (3 clips). Takes the evening (this passage replaces Night). %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -35)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(120 + 2 * $promiscuity, {receipt: true})>> <h2>One More Objection</h2> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 3, "scene/officedeal")>> <<set _vid to ("0" + _id).slice(-2)>> <<vid "scene/officedeal/" _vid>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeDeal', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> Another suite, another client who is "about to walk". You check the terms before you put down your bag. An hour later, the signatures are where they belong and his shirt is still on the floor. "Same time next quarter," says the client, retrieving it. "Put it in the request," you say. "Scheduling has the dates." <<elseif _v == 1>> Different tower, same hour. This one negotiates freight insurance out loud while conducting the custom — actually quotes a penalty schedule mid-thrust, from memory, wrong. You correct him without lifting your cheek from the desk. He tries the figure again. This time he gets it right. "Sixty days same as cash," he gasps, spent, delighted. "Forty-five," you say, into the mahogany, "and the penalties stay." You make him repeat it before he reaches for the pen. The firm will see a signed agreement and the usual supplement. Your notebook gets the longer version. You check the signature, then reach for the clean blouse in your bag. <<else>> Tonight's client is young, polite and terrified of his own procurement department. He spends most of the appointment trying to sound experienced. Afterward, in the elevator, he finally asks: "Is this... standard?" "Attendance is the terms," you say, papery and pleasant, in a voice you learned from the best. He nods as if you have explained something. At the lobby he holds the door for you. You thank him, wait until he has gone, then write down the date and the terms before you forget either. <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Iron Floor: the signed debt limit has been reached.</div> [[Close the file|EndingSlave]] <<else>> <<storyReaction "smith">> <<set _smithOffice to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<venueBeat "smith">> <<vid "place/smith-office-" _smithOffice>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival"> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% The office is reachable by every persona. The four base variants carry Smith's own dialogue and stay untouched (he speaks the same to everyone - that is his register); the bimbo and cynic decks add her side of the room only. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficePlaceB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> The carpet in Smith's office is so thick and soft you always want to take your shoes off, like at a fancy sleepover. Everything up here is quiet and expensive and nothing ever beeps at you. Smith himself is sort of like a lizard in a very nice suit - he never shouts, not ever, and men who never shout are the safest kind, probably. You sit extra-still on the big chair with your ankles crossed like the good-girl posters say, and wait to be told what today is. <<else>> The coffee smell hits you right in the tummy, warm and yummy, but nobody offers you any - it's like a rule, the coffee is just for smelling. Waiting is easy for you up here, where it's warm and hushed: you practice your sitting-pretty and let your thoughts go all frothy. Somewhere under the froth the big number lives in your head, patient and cold as the office. You always remember the number here. Just never quite what to do about it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficePlaceC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> You read the room the way you would read a term sheet: carpet thick enough to slow a charge, the chair placed exactly opposite the desk like a negotiating position, forty floors between you and the street. The coffee he never offers is itemized somewhere, you are sure - hospitality amortized, warmth denied to keep the counterparty cool. You know what this office is for. It is where the interest gets a face. You lend it yours, and watch the numbers run on the monitor he keeps turned away. <<else>> You stopped hating this room; hatred turned out to be a recurring fee, and you cut the expense. Smith is on the phone about somebody else's ruin when you walk in - your file's sibling, same tone, same tempo - and you wait like staff, because that is the rate. The window does its forty floors of indifference. You decline, as always, to be designated by any of it: you are here to transact, nothing else, and the sooner the number is serviced the sooner you are back on a street you understand. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficePlace', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The glass doors of Smith's office slide open silently, ushering you into a world of sterile cleanliness and cold calculation. It smells of expensive perfume, freshly ground coffee, and a faint hint of ozone from the equipment. Mr. Smith sits at his massive dark wood desk, his silhouette sharply defined against the panoramic window, beyond which lies the city, indifferent to your troubles. "Good afternoon," he says, not looking up from the monitor where columns of numbers run endlessly. "I've been reviewing your account. You're earning, but the interest is still due. There are ways to improve the return. Each has conditions. Shall we go through them?" <<elseif _v == 1>> The lift opens onto the same hush every time: carpet that swallows footsteps, air conditioned to a temperature nobody would call comfortable, and a receptionist who has never once asked your name because she has never once needed to. Smith's door is already ajar. It always is, by the time you reach it. He is on the phone when you come in and does not stop, and does not gesture at the chair either, so you stand. The call is about somebody else - a name, a figure, a date - conducted in exactly the tone he uses with you. When he finally hangs up he looks at you as though resuming a paragraph. "Now. Where were we?" <<elseif _v == 2>> There is nothing on his desk. That is the thing you have never got used to: no papers, no folders, no evidence of anyone's ruin, just dark wood and a monitor turned away from the door. Everything that has happened to you since you signed exists in this room as a row on a screen you are not permitted to see. "You look tired," he says, in the voice of a man noting a maintenance issue. He does not offer you coffee, although you can smell it. He waits, with the patience of someone whose money is earning while he waits, for you to tell him what you have come to do about the number. <<else>> The city fills the window behind him, forty floors of it, lit and indifferent, and every time you come here you catch yourself looking past him at it rather than at his face. He allows this. You suspect he arranged the desk precisely so that debtors would look at the view and understand the arithmetic of the room. "Good afternoon," he says with genuine courtesy. That is what unsettles you. He has no need for cruelty; he keeps the terms and lets them do the work. Then he asks, pleasantly, how you propose to spend the hours you have brought him. <</if>> <</if>> </div> <<storyHint "smith">> <<if $iq > 100>> * [[Take on an assignment|OfficeWork]] ($320+, IQ/Sex) <</if>> <<if $promiscuity <= 50>> * [[Undergo a soft hypnosis session|OfficeSoftHypno]] ($500-700, Personality correction) <<else>> * <span style="opacity: 0.5; text-decoration: line-through;">Soft hypnosis is no longer effective for you</span> <</if>> <<if $iq < 70 or $promiscuity > 50>> * [["Deep Correction" (Machine)|OfficeMachine]] ($1200, Strong transformation, IQ -20) <</if>> <<if $loanSharkPet >= 30 and $promiscuity >= 50 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingBlack") and not setup.sceneSeen("SceneGangLove")>> <div class="kink-choice"> Mr. Smith studies you for a long moment, then closes the ledger. "You keep coming back. Not for the money - we both know that by now. There is a simpler arrangement: stop counting the debt. Stay. Be mine, entirely." His voice carries no warmth, only the certainty of a man who has already read the last page of your story. <br><br> * [[Stop fighting - belong to him forever|EndingBlack]] (POINT OF NO RETURN) </div> <</if>> * [[Back|Noon]] <</if>>

<<run setup.payAssignment(600)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 8)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if $assignClient == "gangster">> <<set $metGangster to true>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "female/gangster/sub")>> <<vid "female/gangster/sub" _id>> The address is a back room behind a shuttered restaurant, and the rings are exactly as heavy as Smith implied. He doesn't ask your name. He tells you what he wants in the flat, bored voice of a man ordering food, and then he takes it, and the bored voice is the part that stays with you afterward. <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignGangB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You catch yourself trying to be good at it - actually trying, the way you used to try at things that mattered - and the wanting-to-be-good feels warm and simple and much easier than the alternative. <<elseif _v == 1>>You hurry to understand each blunt command before he repeats it. Every grunt of approval makes the ugly room feel warmer, until pleasing him seems more important than remembering Smith's envelope.<<elseif _v == 2>>His boredom turns briefly to interest when you anticipate what he wants. You glow under that scrap of attention and work harder, delighted that even a dangerous man can recognize a good girl.<<else>>You treat the assignment like a test Smith arranged especially for you. By the end you are tired, sore, and absurdly proud that neither man will have a reason to call you difficult.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignGangC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>You identify the command structure immediately and comply with enough fear to satisfy him. Internally, you track time, exits, and the precise portion of Smith's fee that compensates this risk.<<elseif _v == 1>>He wants obedience made visible, so you give him lowered eyes and prompt responses while keeping your real attention on survival. The performance works; boredom remains preferable to anger.<<elseif _v == 2>>You convert every order into a bounded task and complete it without inviting improvisation. He mistakes controlled efficiency for training and seems pleased by Smith's choice.<<else>>The client tests whether Smith delivered someone who understands hierarchy. You answer with professional submission, preserving a cold observer behind the behavior he purchased.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignGangA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You keep your breathing even and your eyes on the ceiling tile with the water stain, and you count the money in your head, and it works well enough that you only feel it later, in the cab. <<elseif _v == 1>>You obey because the locked door and his bored certainty leave no safe space for renegotiation. In the cab, you discover your hands have been trembling for several blocks.<<elseif _v == 2>>You focus on the restaurant music leaking through the wall and let it measure time. Only afterward does the ordinariness of that soundtrack make the assignment feel unbearable.<<else>>You repeat Smith's promised fee through every command until the figure loses meaning. Counting the envelope afterward makes the assignment real again.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif $assignClient == "rich">> <<set $metRich to true>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "female/rich/owned")>> <<vid "female/rich/owned" _id>> The second invitation is less theatrical than the first. No restaurant, no long drive, no patient performance: the private lift opens directly into the Rich Man's city apartment. He pours you something you can't pronounce, asks two polite questions about how you have been since the last appointment, listens to neither answer, and then the politeness folds away like a napkin. He already knows what Smith delivered; tonight he is ordering it again. <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignRichB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> It's so nice being somewhere expensive. The glass is heavy and the sheets are soft and he tells you you're beautiful in a voice like he's reading a receipt, and you decide to believe it, because believing it is nicer. <<elseif _v == 1>>The apartment glitters so prettily that the arrangement feels glamorous. You pose wherever he places you and store each dry compliment like a jewel, forgetting that Smith - not the patron - will decide what you are paid.<<elseif _v == 2>>He chooses your drink, your clothes, and the order of the evening. Having every little choice removed lets you float through the luxury without a worry, smiling whenever he inspects his lovely temporary possession.<<else>>You ask whether you are doing well, and he answers by adjusting you rather than speaking. The cool ownership in the gesture sends a happy shiver through you; expensive men must have expensive ways of showing approval.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignRichC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>His courtesy is asset care rather than kindness. You recognize the distinction, follow the house rules, and provide the polished compliance expected at this price point.<<elseif _v == 1>>Luxury removes discomfort while sharpening the power imbalance. You use the soft environment, controlled drink, and predictable schedule to complete a clean assignment with minimal emotional exposure.<<elseif _v == 2>>He makes every decision and calls the result taste. You permit the curation, observing that wealth converts domination into etiquette without changing its underlying structure.<<else>>The patron appraises you throughout the evening as if deciding whether Smith supplied the advertised grade. You meet the specification and reveal nothing that was not included.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignRichA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> He is careful with you the way a man is careful with a rented car. You understand the arrangement perfectly, which is its own small humiliation - you were hoping not to understand it so quickly. <<elseif _v == 1>>The soft sheets and excellent drink cannot hide that you are another luxury selected for the evening. His care protects the value of his rental, not the person inside it.<<elseif _v == 2>>He chooses what you wear and praises the result as though your beauty were his accomplishment. You comply, ashamed by how quickly comfort makes possession easier to tolerate.<<else>>For a few minutes his manners resemble a date. Then he redirects your body with the same calm authority he used to order the wine, and the illusion collapses without either of you mentioning it.<</if>> <</if>> <<else>> <<set $metScientist to true>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 11, "science/cum/f")>> <<vid "science/cum/f" _id>> He really does have a clipboard. He explains the session first, in full, with timings - and the explaining goes on long enough that you realize the explaining is part of it, that he wants you to have understood and agreed and be able to describe it back to him. <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignScienceB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> There are a lot of words and you lose most of them, but you like being asked questions like you're the important one, so you nod at the right places and he writes something down and you feel weirdly proud. <<elseif _v == 1>>You repeat the easy parts of his explanation and guess at the rest. Each note he makes feels like a gold star, so you answer every intimate question with cheerful honesty and hope the clever man likes your data.<<elseif _v == 2>>The sensors have colored labels, which makes preparation feel like a game. You hold still, report every sensation, and beam whenever the scientist calls your response unusually strong.<<else>>You forget the safety phrase almost immediately but remember that good subjects cooperate. By the end, the clipboard is full and your thoughts are empty, and both results seem to please him.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignScienceC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>You restate the protocol accurately, identify two ambiguities, and proceed after he resolves only one. During the session you provide precise feedback, separating useful observation from the reactions he is clearly enjoying.<<elseif _v == 1>>His insistence on informed consent is itself part of the fetishized procedure. You satisfy it with exact answers, then preserve clinical distance while the experiment steadily ceases to be clinical.<<elseif _v == 2>>You check the release mechanism before allowing the restraints. He notes your caution as a variable; you note his disappointment that fear will not contaminate the first measurements.<<else>>The assignment rewards accuracy, so you describe every response without modesty or embellishment. His excitement rises as yours becomes quantified, turning professional competence into another service Smith has sold.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtAssignScienceA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You answer his questions accurately. That is what he is paying for, and you are good at it, and being good at it is the worst part, because it means some clean and careful piece of you was in the room the whole time. <<elseif _v == 1>>You repeat the protocol back as requested. The formality should make the experiment safer, yet it mostly proves that you understood exactly what Smith sold and entered the restraints anyway.<<elseif _v == 2>>Colored sensors map every involuntary response while the scientist asks you to narrate. Hearing your own voice become data creates a distance that protects you until the machine overwhelms it.<<else>>He records your consent, your baseline, and every change thereafter. The clipboard gives the session an appearance of order; afterward, you cannot decide whether that makes your willing participation easier or worse.<</if>> <</if>> <</if>> Smith's envelope is waiting when you return to the office, unsealed, as though the outcome was never a question. * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.addRefusal(true)>> <<vid "place/smith-contract-room-" "03">> "No." You expect him to argue. He doesn't. He writes a short line at the bottom of a page you can't read upside down, caps the pen, and turns the monitor back toward himself. "Noted. The refusal will be entered against your account." He is already reading something else. "Your interest rate changes today. You will see the adjustment on the ledger. Close the door, please." <span style="color: #ff4444;">Interest rate +1pp (refusal premium: <<print $refusalPenalty>>%)</span> <<if $refusalPenalty gte 3>> <span style="color: #888;">He has stopped repricing you. Whatever number he has arrived at, he considers final.</span> <<else>> <span style="color: #888;">The premium eases if you give him no further reason to revisit it.</span> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.stampSensor("_hypnoCount")>> <<vid "hypno/iq/" 1>> The hypnosis room is dim, with a soft leather chair and faint geometric patterns turning slowly across the walls. Smith follows you in, holding a portable remote control. "Listen carefully," he says, his voice low and soothing. "We are adjusting one priority. Choose which one you want to change. The effects are listed." * [["Femininity Course"|OfficeSoftResult][$type to "fem"]] ($500, Beauty +5, IQ -3) * [["Submission Course"|OfficeSoftResult][$type to "prom"]] ($500, Promiscuity +5, IQ -3) * [["Emptiness Course"|OfficeSoftResult][$type to "void"]] ($700, IQ -10) * [[Back|Office]]

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 4)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if $type == "fem">> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "hypno/fem/")>> <<vid "hypno/fem/" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftFemB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You close your eyes and let the clicks and the soft whisper pour in, and it's SO nice - they show you the perfect girl, all sweet and obedient and pretty, and you want to be her so badly, and the wanting itself makes you feel warm and floaty. Your body goes graceful and eager to please all on its own. When it stops, the mirror-girl looks brighter and shinier, and your head feels pleasantly light and empty, like a balloon somebody let go of. <<elseif _v == 1>>The screen shows perfect smiles, delicate hands, and girls who never make anyone wait. You copy each pose while the whisper praises softness and simplicity. When the lights return, standing prettily feels easier than remembering why you once stood any other way.<<elseif _v == 2>>A metronome clicks while Smith's voice teaches you that beauty means relaxing every difficult thought. You follow along eagerly. Your reflection grows lovelier as your mind grows lighter, and both changes feel like the same reward.<<else>>The program asks you to imagine the woman everyone would want: graceful, sweet, and empty of troublesome opinions. You fall in love with her image, then open your eyes to find her smiling back from the mirror.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftFemC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>You identify the sequence immediately: idealized images, rhythmic induction, behavioral reinforcement. Recognition does not prevent your posture from softening or the approved expressions from becoming automatic. You leave more marketable and three points less capable of resisting the market.<<elseif _v == 1>>The program links elegance to compliance with methodical repetition. You monitor each association as it forms, unable to interrupt it without forfeiting the fee. Afterward, femininity feels less like presentation and more like installed procedure.<<elseif _v == 2>>Smith's recorded voice rewards graceful movement and penalizes analytical interruption. You preserve a thin observational layer through the session, but the layer now inhabits a body trained to smile before evaluating a request.<<else>>The mirror exercise converts external standards into reflex. You can enumerate the manipulation while admiring its result: improved beauty, reduced friction, and a quieter professional instrument.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftFemA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You close your eyes, listening to rhythmic clicks and a soft whisper pouring from hidden speakers. You are fed images of an ideal woman - obedient, graceful, and infinitely desirable. You feel your movements become more fluid, and the desire to please those around you fills all your thoughts. When the session ends, your face in the mirror seems brighter to you, but a strange, light thoughtlessness settles in your head. <<elseif _v == 1>>Perfect women smile from the screen while a whisper explains that grace begins where resistance ends. Your body learns the poses faster than your mind can challenge the lesson. The mirror afterward is beautiful enough to make the loss difficult to name.<<elseif _v == 2>>Each click pairs approval with softness, obedience, and a smaller version of yourself. You try to hold onto the distinction between choosing femininity and being programmed for it, but the session blurs the line deliberately.<<else>>The program builds an ideal woman from posture, beauty, and eagerness to please. When it asks you to step into her reflection, you do. The improved face is yours; the light, compliant thoughts feel borrowed.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif $type == "prom">> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 8, "hypno/prom/")>> <<vid "hypno/prom/" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftPromB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Pretty dirty pictures flash and flash, and Smith's voice whispers all warm about how sweet it is to give in, to please, to obey, and you nod along in the fog because it sounds so right and so easy. The little walls you used to keep up crumble like wet sugar, and heat spreads through you, and shame turns into a giddy, tingly wanting-to-be-bad. You drift out sticky and warm, and "no" has quietly become a word you can't quite find in your head anymore. <<elseif _v == 1>>Every flash shows another happy girl surrendering a rule she no longer needs. You breathe with the soundtrack and let your own rules float away beside hers. When Smith asks whether giving in feels good, your eager yes arrives before the question ends.<<elseif _v == 2>>The whisper calls shame a silly old habit and obedience a kind of freedom. Heat makes the lesson glow with obvious truth. You leave wanting to prove how open, useful, and wonderfully easy you have become.<<else>>A sequence of commands teaches your body to reward agreement and punish hesitation. Soon each yes brings pleasure while every attempted no dissolves into confusion. Smith stops the program only after the new reflex feels natural.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftPromC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Explicit imagery and Smith's recorded voice systematically pair submission with reward. You track the conditioning until arousal compromises the observer. By discharge, refusal remains conceptually available but physically expensive.<<elseif _v == 1>>The program reframes every boundary as inefficient shame. You reject the premise and absorb the association anyway, emerging with intact analysis attached to faster compliance.<<elseif _v == 2>>Each cycle rewards agreement before presenting a more extreme request. The escalation is transparent, but transparency offers no defense against repetition calibrated to your responses.<<else>>Smith's voice turns consent into a conditioned shortcut: yes produces relief, hesitation produces need. You leave understanding the installed mechanism and already feeling it operate.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftPromA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Vivid, explicit images flash before your eyes, and Smith's voice whispers about the sweetness of submission and the joy of fulfilling others' desires. The moral barriers you've built for so long begin to crumble under this methodical onslaught. You feel heat spreading through your body, and shame is replaced by the anticipation of disgrace. You leave the room with a sticky feeling of arousal and the realization that saying "no" is becoming harder and harder. <<elseif _v == 1>>Every image depicts a boundary being abandoned and rewarded. You recognize the pattern, yet your body begins anticipating the reward before each surrender appears. When the screen goes dark, several old limits feel remote and strangely embarrassing.<<elseif _v == 2>>Smith's whisper calls shame unnecessary weight. Under rhythmic flashes, the argument enters through sensation rather than reason, making exposure and obedience feel like relief. You leave frightened by how persuasive relief can be.<<else>>The program trains agreement one escalating prompt at a time. You try to preserve the word no by repeating it silently, but even the private repetition begins to trigger heat and confusion.<</if>> <</if>> <<else>> <<set $money += 700>><<set $dailyIncome += 700>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -10)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 11, "hypno/iq/")>> <<vid "hypno/iq/" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftIqB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You look into the middle of the spiral and it takes you, round and round, and your thoughts slow to a lovely crawl and then stop, and everything - the debt, the fear, the who-you-used-to-be - just quietly floats out of reach. There's only the little point of light, warm and simple, and it's the nicest place you've ever been. When it lets you go you can't remember where you are, and it doesn't scare you a bit. Smith puts money in your hand and you smile up at him, empty and blissful, a happy nothing waiting to be told what comes next. <<elseif _v == 1>>Numbers circle the spiral and vanish whenever you try to read them. Each failure earns a soothing chime, teaching you that not knowing is safer than effort. When Smith asks your name afterward, you giggle until he supplies it.<<elseif _v == 2>>The light invites you to set down one difficult thought at a time. Debt goes first, then memory, then the idea that thoughts belong to anybody. You return holding seven hundred dollars and no urgent question about why.<<else>>Smith counts backward while the spiral turns. Your mind becomes softer at every number, shedding worries, plans, and words until only a warm point of obedience remains. You wake smiling at the person who tells you what happens next.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftIqC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>You follow the induction while attempting to preserve an internal ledger. The spiral attacks sequencing first; figures detach from meanings, then the ledger itself becomes impossible to hold. Smith pays an instrument less capable of auditing him.<<elseif _v == 1>>The program rewards every lapse in concentration with relief. You identify the feedback loop until identification requires more working memory than remains. Afterward, the fee is clear but its cost resists calculation.<<elseif _v == 2>>You anchor yourself with your name, balance, and objective. Smith's countdown removes them in reverse order. When awareness returns, you can still accept money and instruction - the functions his system chose to preserve.<<else>>The rotating light reduces cognition through controlled overload. You observe the degradation in real time, then lose the capacity to compare the final state with the original. Smith calls the result successful.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSoftIqA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You simply look into the center of a rotating spiral. Thoughts slow down, problems seem distant and unimportant, and personality seems like an extra burden. The world shrinks to a point of light in which there are no debts, no fear, no memory of who you were before. When the light goes out, you sit for a few minutes, not understanding where you are. Smith places money in your hand, and you accept it with a mindless smile, feeling a blissful, dull emptiness reign within. <<elseif _v == 1>>Numbers drift around the spiral and disappear when you attempt to solve them. A gentle chime rewards surrender. Soon forgetting feels pleasant, and the fear of forgetting has itself become too complicated to maintain.<<elseif _v == 2>>The light asks you to release each burden: plans, memories, judgment, identity. You know these are not burdens, but resistance slows with thought until the distinction floats beyond reach.<<else>>Smith counts backward while you repeat your name and debt. The debt vanishes first, then the name, then the reason either mattered. You return to a world conveniently reduced to his voice and the money in your palm.<</if>> <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.stampSensor("_machineUsed")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 8)>> <<set $money += 1200>><<set $dailyIncome += 1200>> /% _pr, not _p: across the whole project _p means persona(), and this passage used to shadow it with a promiscuity roll - which is why the voice branch below had to invent _p. 0.6 §5.1: beauty roll 1-15 → 1-10 - with the §5.1 drift above 80 the machine was a one-button ceiling pump; the spec recalibrates it, the sim re-checks Girlfriend reach. %/ <<set _b to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", window.randInt(1, 10))>><<set _pr to setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", window.randInt(1, 15))>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', _b)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', _pr)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -20)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 14, "machine/femme/vf")>> <<vid "machine/femme/vf" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeMachineB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith takes you behind the big metal door to the Machine, all steel and wires and soft leather, and straps you into the chair and puts the buzzy helmet on your head, and then everything EXPLODES into lights and rhythm, and it's scary and huge and somehow wonderful. It works on you and works on you, burning the old heavy thinky bits right out and packing the space with warm animal want and pretty-girl feelings instead. When it lets you go you can't find your own name, and that's okay, it wasn't doing you much good anyway. Your body hums with strange new energy and your head is a lovely blank page for someone to write on. Smith gives you a mountain of money and you take it with a wobbly happy smile, brand new and empty and ready. <<elseif _v == 1>> The Machine is waiting behind the steel door with fresh straps and a helmet full of blinking stars. Smith buckles you in, promises a big reward, and starts the program. Light pours through your thoughts, washing away difficult memories while mechanical hands teach your body simpler, happier answers. When the chair releases you, numbers are hard but the stack of money is pretty. Smith tells you the treatment worked beautifully. You believe him with the uncomplicated trust of a blank page waiting for its first instruction. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith calls this configuration an accelerated course. The helmet pulses while the manipulators reshape posture, appetite, and reflex together. You try to remember something important, but every flash replaces it with warmth and a sweeter desire to please. You emerge glowing, unsteady, and unable to finish your own name. Twelve hundred dollars fits into your hands; the person who once would have priced the loss no longer fits inside your head. <<else>> The leather chair closes around you like a hug before the current begins. Pain and pleasure flicker too quickly to separate, burning heavy thoughts into sparks and filling their places with pretty poses, eager instincts, and Smith's approving voice. Afterward, your reflection looks energized and unfamiliar. Smith counts the payment for you because counting makes you frown. You smile instead, pleased to be useful and too empty to ask what the Machine removed. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeMachineC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith walks you to the Machine behind the heavy door - the steel-and-leather contraption you've heard the deep-correction rumors about - and you let him strap you into the chair and lower the sensor helmet, because you did the math and twelve hundred is more than an ordinary shift will pay. Then the world detonates into flashes and rhythm. You try to hold onto the cold observer, the one who watches and prices and endures, but the electrodes are hunting for exactly her, burning out layers faster than you can shield them. When they finally release the grips you can barely find your own name, and the professional who walked in - the one who kept the ledger, who stood outside every act - is thinner now, scorched, missing pieces. You take the huge sum in shaking hands. It's the worst trade you've ever made with your eyes open, and you already suspect it won't be the last. <<elseif _v == 1>> You inspect the restraints and accept them because twelve hundred still dominates every available calculation. The Machine detects the mental distance you rely upon and targets it first, flooding observation with signal until competence becomes another layer burned away. At release, you can identify the payment but cannot reconstruct several safeguards you planned before entering. Smith has purchased not merely capacity but the mechanism that measured its price. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith selects an accelerated protocol and secures the helmet. You maintain a sequence - name, balance, objective - while current and mechanical conditioning rewrite the body beneath it. The sequence shortens each cycle until only the objective remains: endure and collect. You leave with more cash than any ordinary shift provides and less ability to evaluate the next offer. The trade is optimized to make its own repetition likelier. <<else>> The Machine maps resistance as it works, escalating wherever the professional observer remains active. Pain, reward, and imposed beauty standards become one closed system. You watch it dismantle the watcher, then lose the grammar required to describe the process. Smith places the money in trembling hands. The sum is correct. Your capacity to determine whether correctness matters is not. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeMachineA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith leads you to the back part of the office, hidden behind a heavy metal door. In the center of the room stands the Machine - a complex weave of steel, wires, and soft leather. You are secured in a chair, a helmet with sensors is placed on your head, and your body is at the mercy of mechanical manipulators. "This is an intensive course," you hear Smith's voice before the world explodes with flashes and mechanical rhythm. The machine works ruthlessly, reshaping your mind and body at once. You feel electrodes burning out whole layers of your memory, replacing them with animal instincts and imposed beauty standards. Pain and ecstasy merge into one indistinguishable whole. When you are finally released from the grips, you can barely remember your own name. Your body trembles from an excess of unnatural energy, and your mind has turned into a blank slate on which Smith can write any orders. The payment fills your hands. You can barely gather enough of yourself to count it. <<elseif _v == 1>> The steel door seals behind you, cutting off the office noise. Smith fastens you into the Machine and lowers a helmet alive with tiny lights. You repeat the promised payment as the program begins, attempting to anchor yourself to the reason you agreed. Electrodes erase the calculation faster than the debt created it. Memory, judgment, and bodily response are rewritten together. When Smith releases you, twelve hundred dollars remains real, but the self that valued it has become difficult to locate. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith calls the selected setting accelerated correction. Mechanical arms secure your body while the helmet fills vision and hearing with synchronized commands. Every attempt to resist becomes another signal the system uses to refine its attack. You emerge physically charged and mentally scattered. Your name returns after several tries; whole pieces of memory do not. The payment is enormous only because the thing sold cannot be restored. <<else>> The Machine waits behind the heavy door like an industrial answer to desperation. Once the restraints close, Smith starts a cycle that merges pain, pleasure, beauty conditioning, and cognitive destruction into a single rhythm. When the rhythm stops, you cannot tell which new impulses belong to you. Smith counts out the money beside the chair. You accept it automatically, aware enough to recognize that automatic acceptance was part of what he bought. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<venueBeat "study">> <<set _libraryHall to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/library-hall-" _libraryHall>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival"> /% Location screens are re-entered every time the player picks the place, so they carry a deck too. Purely descriptive - no effects here, the actions below own those. %/ <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Every persona can walk in (the cynic studies here too), so the screen splits all three ways, like the church screen. The neutral 4 stay as the shared base deck. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPlaceB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> The library is the good-smelling quiet place - old paper and glue and a little bit of dust, which is apparently a smell you're allowed to like here. Nobody in here wants anything rude. Everybody's just holding their books and being hushed, and the hush feels like a big soft blanket pulled over everybody's heads at once. You always walk the pretty-shelf aisle once before you sit, not reading exactly, just letting your eyes drink, hugging whichever book has the prettiest cover. <<else>> So many books, all colors, going up and up like a wall of candy that somebody alphabetized. Your head goes quiet in here without you even asking it to, which is nice, because asking is hard. You pick the table with the sun-shaped lamp and sit with your one book for a long time, turning the pages at a lazy speed, just a girl in the quiet, which is the nicest thing to be. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPlaceC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Best-value square footage in the city: heated in winter, cool in summer, lit, silent, and free. You know the price of every room you occupy - the bar wants a drink an hour, the cafe wants a table fee dressed up as lunch, Smith's office wants you - and this one asks nothing, stamps nothing, remembers nothing. Two hours on a wooden chair under good light, unpriced and unbothered. You take the profit without sentiment, the way you take everything now. <<else>> The librarian has never once asked what you do with your evenings. No glances at your coat, no arithmetic behind her glasses - an entire desk in this city with no appraisal in it. You nod at each other, colleague to colleague, two people who shelve what the public hands them. Somewhere between the stamping and the quiet it occurs to you that there used to be rooms where nobody priced you, and that was most rooms; now it's this one. Rent paid on a self that still exists. You read while the terms last. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPlace', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Inside the library, dead silence reigns, occasionally interrupted by the rustle of turning pages and an occasional dry cough. The smell of old paper, glue, and dust strangely calms frayed nerves. Here, among the endless labyrinths of high shelves, you feel relatively safe - it is hard to picture Mr. Smith among all these books, lending anything for free. <<elseif _v == 1>> Rain today, and the library has filled up with people who are not really here for the books: a courier drying out by the radiator, two students who have not turned a page in an hour, an old man asleep behind a newspaper. Nobody is asked to leave. It is one of the last rooms in the city that lets you stay without buying anything, and everyone in it seems quietly aware of the fact. You shake the water out of your hair and pick your way to the reading room, and the smell of wet coats and old paper closes over you. <<elseif _v == 2>> The librarian at the desk has stopped asking what you are looking for. She simply nods now, the way you nod at a colleague, and goes back to her stamping. You have no idea what she thinks you do; you are fairly sure she has decided not to speculate, and that restraint has become one of the small fixed points of your week. Past her, the shelves go up and back into their own dim weather, and the noise of the street gives up somewhere around the second row. <<else>> There is a noticeboard just inside the doors and you always read it, even though none of it is for you. A lecture series on civic architecture. A choir recruiting altos. A lost cat, ginger, answers to Mabel, last seen near the tram stop. Somebody's ordinary week, pinned up in colored paper. You stand in front of it a moment longer than the information requires, then go in. The shelves smell of dust and glue, the silence is thick enough to lean on, and for the next few hours nobody in here will want anything from you at all. <</if>> <</if>> </div> You have a few hours to study. How will you use them? * [[Study independently|LibrarySelfStudy]] (Free, IQ+) * [[Hire a tutor|LibraryTutor]] (-$200, IQ++) * [[Back|Noon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("study")>> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("library")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run setup.studyIQ(5)>> You choose the most secluded table deep in the library, hidden behind massive shelves where the air seems still and heavy with age-old dust. Surrounded by thick, tattered volumes on economics, sociology, and law, you try to fully immerse yourself in the world of numbers and abstract concepts. The silence here is almost palpable; it presses on your eardrums, making your own pulse sound like dull hammer blows. You stubbornly run your finger along the lines, forcing your tired mind to follow each argument instead of returning to what waits outside. But the quiet leaves room for memories you came here to escape. Every shadow that flits by in the aisle seems like a ghost of the past, and the rustle of pages in the silence reminds you of clients' whispers. You feel a chill run down your spine, and your thoughts now and then want to slip from clear formulas back toward those memories. It's a constant struggle - word by word, paragraph by paragraph, you reclaim your right to sanity. <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "none">> /% Library "relapse" logic %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 25 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<set _event to "none">> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "none">> <<else>> <<set _event to "masturbate">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "none">> <<else>> <<set _event to "blowjob">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "none">> <<elseif _roll <= 62>> <<set _event to "masturbate">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "blowjob">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _event == "none">> <<if setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", random(1, 2)) is 1>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 21, "lib/study")>> <<vid "lib/study" _id>> <<else>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 32, "lib/studypic")>> <<vid "lib/studypic" _id>> <</if>> /% A successful study session has no mechanical effect of its own - the iq is granted at the top of the passage - so extra variants are free. This branch used to be a single paragraph shown at every promiscuity, which meant a clean player reread it every day of a 30-day run. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The words will not hold still. You read a line, and by the end of it the start has gone, like water running out of your hands. So you do the part you can still do: you copy things out in your neatest handwriting, big round letters, and underline them twice in two colors. It looks beautiful when it is done. Pages and pages of it, all tidy. You do not know what any of it says, but the doing of it was calm and the underlining was satisfying, and you feel like you have been clever for a whole afternoon. That counts. You are fairly sure that counts. <<elseif _v == 1>> You choose a book because the cover is blue and copy the nicest-looking sentences into your notebook. Their meaning slips away, but the loops of your handwriting stay neat and pretty. The librarian calls you diligent. You carry the word home even after forgetting what you studied. <<elseif _v == 2>> Numbers refuse to behave, so you sort your notes by color instead: pink for important, yellow for difficult, green for things that might make sense tomorrow. Soon every page is bright and organized. Understanding would be better, probably. Organization still feels like a small victory. <<else>> You read one paragraph aloud until the words sound familiar. Familiar is not the same as understood, but it is close enough to make you smile when you finally reach the period. An afternoon passes around that single paragraph. You leave proud that it did not defeat you completely. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You dissect Smith's interest structure using textbooks on compounding debt and predatory contracts. The arithmetic confirms what instinct already knew: the agreement is designed to preserve dependence, not recover principal. Knowing does not free you, but it replaces shame with an accurate enemy. <<elseif _v == 1>> You rebuild the week's finances as a risk model, testing which work patterns reduce exposure without sacrificing what remains of your health and concentration. The result is narrow, ugly, and usable. For several hours your body becomes a variable rather than a demand. That distance is worth the effort. <<elseif _v == 2>> A legal commentary reveals three clauses Smith relies on and one ambiguity he probably assumes you will never notice. You copy the citation by hand and memorize its location. It is not an escape. It is leverage measured in sentences. <<else>> You study cognitive conditioning and recognize several techniques used on you by name. Classification strips them of mystique without undoing their effects. You close the book colder, clearer, and less willing to mistake damage for destiny. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudy', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You manage to gain the upper hand in this invisible battle. After a few hours of intense labor, the fog in your head clears, giving way to a pleasant clarity and a sense of accomplishment. You close the books with a feeling that you've moved a step closer to understanding the trap you've fallen into, and - more importantly - a step closer to the way out. Knowledge returns your sense of control, and pure intellect temporarily silences the animal urges of your exhausted body. <<elseif _v == 1>> You spend the afternoon on a single chapter about compound obligations, and for most of it you are certain the author is being difficult on purpose. Then, somewhere in the fourth reading, it opens. The clauses stop being a wall and turn into a machine with parts you can name, and you sit back with your pen still in your hand and think: that is what has been happening to me. It is not comfortable knowledge. Understanding the mechanism does not switch it off. But there is a difference between drowning and knowing the shape of the water, and today you crossed it, and the difference tastes like something you have not had in weeks. <<elseif _v == 2>> A school group comes through at three and the librarian's polite whisper does nothing at all, so you work through forty minutes of scraped chairs and giggling with your fingers in your ears. You do not move to another table. Moving would cost you the run of books you have assembled, and you have learned to be stubborn about small territories. When they finally file out the silence comes back all at once, enormous, and you get more done in the last hour than in the first three. Your notes are ugly and cramped and entirely usable. Nobody is going to give you a quiet room; you are going to have to keep taking one. <<else>> Half the afternoon goes on a reference the catalog insists exists and the shelves insist does not. You end up in the archive stacks with the strip light that buzzes, going along the spines with one finger, and you find it eventually - misfiled by one letter, twenty years ago, by someone who never knew you would come looking. You read it standing up in the aisle because sitting down would break the spell. It is drier than dust and it answers your question exactly. Walking out past the front desk you catch your reflection in the door glass: coat, notebook, ink on your hand. Ordinary. Studious. A person with a project rather than a debt. You hold the picture as long as it lasts, which is most of the way to the corner. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "masturbate">> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 4, "lib/solo")>> <<vid "lib/solo" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyMastB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The big silence gets all thick and prickly, and the letters on the page start wiggling into naughty shapes, and a warm demanding tickle starts up low in your tummy from sitting so long. You peek around - nobody - and then you just slip your hand under your skirt, because the wanting is loud and giving in is easy and easy is what you do now. You bring yourself off quick and shaky, biting your knuckle to stay quiet, the naughty thrill of maybe-getting-caught making it extra fizzy. After, you blink at the open books like they're written in moon-language. No point reading; your head's all warm soup again, and warm soup can't do formulas. <<elseif _v == 1>>The chair rubs in exactly the wrong-right place until reading becomes impossible. You hide one hand beneath the table and chase the fizzy feeling, thrilled whenever footsteps pass without stopping.<<elseif _v == 2>>A suggestive picture in a medical book makes your tummy warm. Soon the book is forgotten, your fingers are busy, and staying quiet feels like the hardest and naughtiest part of studying.<<else>>You promise yourself just one quick touch, then keep going until the words dissolve and your knees shake beneath the desk. Afterward the page looks like something clever girls read.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyMastC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The silence turns unbearable and the print blurs into shapes your poisoned mind reads as filth, and the old familiar heat starts pulsing from too long in the chair. You check the aisle - empty - and deal with it the efficient way, hand under the skirt, quick and quiet, knuckle between your teeth, the risk of discovery a cheap accelerant you've long since learned to use. It's over in a feverish minute. You come back to yourself hollow and mildly disgusted, staring at textbooks that mean nothing now, and note, with a flat professional resignation, that this is why you can't keep an intellectual route open anymore: the trade rewired what a quiet room does to you. <<elseif _v == 1>>You recognize the conditioning response - silence, isolation, intrusive arousal - and choose the quickest release rather than lose the entire afternoon resisting. The calculation works and disgusts you precisely because it works.<<elseif _v == 2>>You set a five-minute timer, check the aisle, and handle the demand beneath the table with clinical efficiency. When the alarm vibrates, you clean your hand and resume at the next paragraph as if managing a symptom.<<else>>Arousal repeatedly breaks concentration, so you convert it into a controlled interruption. The orgasm clears the pressure but leaves the material emotionally contaminated, another clean activity absorbed into the trade.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyMast', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The dead silence of the hall suddenly becomes unbearable, suffocating. The letters on the pages start to blur, turning into bizarre, obscene patterns. You feel a flush run over your skin, and from long sitting, a familiar, demanding warmth starts to pulsate in your lower abdomen. You look around stealthily - the section is empty, only dust motes dancing in the light. Your breathing becomes shallow, and unable to resist the sudden, wild urge any longer, you slip your hand under the hem of your skirt. The rough fabric and the warmth of your own flesh trigger an instant electrical discharge through your whole body. The fear of being discovered in this sacred place only adds fuel to the fire of your arousal. You quickly, almost feverishly, bring yourself to a convulsive orgasm, biting your knuckles so as not to moan aloud. When the obsession finally subsides, you sit, hollowed out and shamed, staring at the open textbooks as something completely alien. There's no point in reading further - your mind is hopelessly poisoned by pleasure. <<elseif _v == 1>>The quiet magnifies every bodily sensation until the edge of the chair and the pressure between your legs overwhelm the page. You touch yourself beneath the table, terrified of discovery and aroused by the same possibility.<<elseif _v == 2>>An illustration catches your attention, then redirects it completely. You lock your knees around your hand and finish in silence, afterward unable to look at either the picture or your notes without shame.<<else>>You resist for twenty minutes before slipping into an empty aisle. The hurried orgasm brings relief, but returning to the table reveals that desire has claimed another place you considered safe.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "blowjob">> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -4)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "lib/bj")>> <<vid "lib/bj" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyBlowB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Your eyes stop landing on the book and start landing on a man at the end of the aisle, and the wanting gets so big and loud you can't hold a single thought. You drop your pen on purpose and bend for it slow, catching his heavy look, and the air goes all buzzy and electric. A minute later you're on your knees in the mustiest corner of the archive, happily swallowing him down, and the naughty thrill of doing it in the quiet holy library scrubs every last formula clean out of your head. You leave with sticky lips and a lovely blank fog, giggling a little. Even here, even here - and isn't that funny. <<elseif _v == 1>>A man catches you staring, and you follow him behind the reference shelves as if he answered a question. On your knees, the only lesson left is how quietly a good girl can please.<<elseif _v == 2>>You lure a reader with a dropped pen and a long look beneath the table. Minutes later your mouth is busy in the archive, and every suppressed sound makes the secret feel sweeter.<<else>>The guard finds you wandering instead of studying. You smile, kneel, and offer the service your soft head understands better than books. His praise replaces every forgotten formula.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyBlowC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Concentration goes, and you catch your gaze parked on a visitor down the aisle instead of the page - the obsessive pull the life has drilled into you. So you run the little play: "accidentally" drop the pen, linger bending for it, catch his appraising look, let the air do the rest. Two minutes later you're on your knees in the archive's mustiest corner, taking him quick and efficient, tasting the shame the way you taste everything now - from a cold distance. Whatever chart you were memorizing is gone. You walk out with sticky lips and an empty head, filing away, again, the plain fact that vice follows you into even the last clean room, so there's no point keeping one. <<elseif _v == 1>>You identify a willing visitor, choose a camera blind spot, and resolve the intrusive craving with a quick protected service. The efficiency does not prevent the lost hour of concentration afterward.<<elseif _v == 2>>The stranger's attention offers an easier reward than the textbook. You negotiate without words, service him between shelves, and return knowing exactly which habit won the cost-benefit argument.<<else>>You turn a study break into a transaction with the archive guard. The act is controlled and brief; the real damage is how naturally your mind selected it over difficult work.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudyBlow', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Concentration finally leaves you. You realize you have spent several minutes watching a man at the end of the aisle instead of reading. An obsessive, painful lust, fueled by each day of your new life, takes over the remnants of common sense. You "accidentally" drop a pen and, leaning down for it, intentionally linger under the table, catching the heavy, appraising gaze of the stranger. The air between you seems to electrify. In a couple of minutes, you're already on your knees in the darkest corner of the archive, among the smell of mold and old leather. You greedily swallow the man's cock, feeling the taste of shame and your final downfall. This dirty, hasty act in the temple of knowledge brings you perverse pleasure, completely erasing all the complex formulas and charts you were trying to memorize. You leave the library with sticky lips and absolute emptiness in your head, realizing that vice found you even here. <<elseif _v == 1>>A visitor's stare pulls you away from the page. You follow him into the stacks and kneel before deciding what you are doing, exchanging an afternoon of study for several feverish minutes of approval.<<elseif _v == 2>>You manufacture an encounter by dropping a book near a solitary man. The successful seduction feels powerful until you are on your knees, unable to remember why you came to the library.<<else>>The archive guard responds to your lingering look and guides you behind a locked door. You service him quickly, then return to notes that now seem written for another woman.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "sex">> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -6)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "lib/sex")>> <<vid "lib/sex" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudySexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Books are just paper and paper can't give your body the thing it's shouting for, so you close the tome and go hunting in the deep dark of the archive, swaying your hips at the grim guard until one long look does it - and then you're pressed rough against the cold shelves and it's PERFECT. Heavy law books thump to the floor and you give yourself over completely, dissolving happy into the pounding now with no room for thoughts or tomorrows. When it's done you can't remember what class you came for, and you don't care one bit - you're a shiny polished nothing, all burned out and warm inside, exactly the way that feels best. <<elseif _v == 1>>You close the boring book and find a man who understands what your body wants. He takes you against the shelves while volumes fall around you, and every impact knocks another difficult thought away.<<elseif _v == 2>>The guard locks the archive and bends you over the study table. You surrender happily, proud that the quiet room finally has a purpose simple enough to understand.<<else>>A reader follows your swaying hips into the deepest aisle. Soon the shelves shake, your notes scatter, and being used feels far more natural than pretending to be clever.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtStudySexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Intellectual labor reads as a bad joke now - books can't give the body what it's demanding - so you shut the tome and go hunting in the far archive, swaying past the guard until one long look closes the deal, and let yourself be pressed rough against the cold shelves. Volumes of philosophy hit the floor and you give it everything, coldly, thoroughly, letting the pulsing now blot out thought and future both, because that's the only mercy the trade still offers. When it's over you can't recall the topic you came to study, and you note the loss without feeling it: you're a shell now, polished outside, burned hollow within, and the library was the last place you'd been pretending otherwise. <<elseif _v == 1>>You recognize that concentration will not return and deliberately recruit the archive guard for a quick encounter. Managing the relapse does not make it less complete; afterward the day's material is gone.<<elseif _v == 2>>A visitor offers the immediate reward the text cannot. You choose him with clear eyes, set terms, and let him use you against the shelves while the abandoned argument proves which conditioning is stronger.<<else>>You schedule the act inside a study break as though containment were still possible. When you return, the equations no longer connect and the body is already anticipating another break.<</if>> <<else>> Intellectual labor now seems like a meaningless mockery to you. Books are just pieces of paper that cannot give your body what it so fiercely demands. You close the tome and go on the hunt in the most remote part of the library archive, intentionally swaying your hips in front of a grim guard or a random visitor. Just one long, unambiguous look - and there you are, roughly pressed against the cold metal shelves. Heavy volumes on philosophy and law fall to the floor under the rhythmic impact of bodies. You give yourself to this act of overt decadence with the fury of a drowning person, feeling every particle of your will dissolve in pain and submission. In this madness, there's no room for thoughts, no room for the future - only a pulsating "now," paid for with the remnants of your sanity. When you're finally released, you can barely remember what you came to study. You are an empty shell, perfectly polished on the outside and burned out within. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("study")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<if $money < 200>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,170,0,0.35); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #ffaa00;"> You can't pay upfront, but the tutoring agency doesn't mind: the fee goes straight onto Mr. Smith's account. At his usual rates, of course. </div> <</if>> <<set $money -= 200>> <<set $dailyIncome -= 200>> <<run setup.studyIQ(8)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "place/study")>> <<vid "place/study" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Tutoring has no promiscuity gate and even a broke player can attend (the agency bills Smith), so every persona lands here: three decks of four. The old fixed paragraph survives as variant 0 of the neutral deck. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutorB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> He's strict, but he never yells. He only says, "Again," until you get it right. At the end he puts a check mark beside the last problem. It is only pencil, but you keep opening the notebook to look at it. You finished a real problem, all by yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> Your head is slow lately and you both know it, but he never talks down to you. He breaks each problem into little steps and waits while you work through them. You earn two check marks today. On the way home, you hold the notebook against your chest. <<elseif _v == 2>> Two hours is a looong time to think. By the end your head aches, but in a nice way, like your legs after dancing. When you reach for your bag, he says, "Not yet." You solve two more problems before he finally nods. Outside, you hum all the way down the block. <<else>> You write everything in your roundest letters so it will still make sense tomorrow. He waits without teasing while you copy each step. For two hours, nobody looks at your body or asks your price. There is only the paper, his quiet voice, and your pencil scratching across the page. It may be the safest room you enter all week. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutorC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Two hundred for two hours. He is worth it: he catches two errors in his own examples and corrects them without excuses, which is more honesty than you usually buy in this city. You take careful notes. Whatever the work is doing to your mind, you intend to slow it down. <<elseif _v == 1>> You pay for competence and he delivers it. He is cold, but the numbers are colder, and that suits you. For two hours, every answer is either right or wrong; nobody can alter the terms halfway through. Compared with Smith's office, that is almost restful. <<elseif _v == 2>> Maintenance, you tell yourself. Your nights pay for the debt; these afternoons keep your mind usable. He works you hard and says "better" exactly once. You pretend the praise means nothing. It follows you out of the room anyway. <<else>> You leave with the kind of headache you had almost forgotten: two hours of concentration, nothing more. Tonight's clients will not notice the difference, but you do. He assigns homework. Later, you finish it at the bar between orders. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutor', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The tutor is a severe man in a flawless suit. He gives you no easy answers and no time to drift. For two hours you solve problems, defend definitions, and find contradictions in short passages. By the end your hand aches from writing, but your thoughts feel orderly again. The lesson was worth the money. <<elseif _v == 1>> The tutor sets a timer and refuses to accept vague language. "Define your terms," he says. You do. Later you challenge his reading of a contract clause, and after a long pause he concedes the point. You leave with ink on your hand and the unfamiliar pleasure of winning an argument on its merits. <<elseif _v == 2>> For two hours his attention stays entirely on your work. It is demanding and impersonal, and you are grateful for both. He keeps pressing whenever an answer is vague. By the end, you are tired, irritated, and noticeably sharper than you were that morning. <<else>> He is severe in a way that has nothing to do with the other kinds of severity you have come to know. When you get a sequence right on the first pass he says nothing, and marks it; when you get it wrong he makes you find the error yourself, and waits. The lesson runs over because you insisted on one more problem. Walking home, you notice you took the stairs two at a time - it took less out of you than he budgeted, apparently. <</if>> <</if>> <<if $promiscuity > 30>> <br><br> When the lesson ends, he closes the book but does not stand. His eyes move from your calculations to the slit in your skirt. "I could return today's fee," he says. "There would be a bonus as well. If you want to try a practical lesson." <br> * [[Accept the refund and bonus|LibraryTutorSex]] * [[Thank him for the lesson and leave|Afternoon]] <<else>> <br><br> You thank him and gather your notebooks. You're tired, but your thoughts are clear. * [[Continue|Afternoon]] <</if>>

<<set $money += 400>><<set $dailyIncome += 400>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 3, "lib/desk")>> <<vid "lib/desk" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% The "refund" fires from prom>30 - below the cynic threshold, so all three voices are reachable here. Old fixed text survives as variant 0 of the neutral deck. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutorSexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Money for the lesson, then more money afterward - somehow the day pays you back. You know what he wants as soon as he closes the book. The desk is cold, you knock a stapler onto the floor, and he tells you to concentrate as if this is one more exercise. Later you count the bonus twice on the library steps. Four hundred. That number stays put. <<elseif _v == 1>> He stays strict even with your skirt up. "Focus," he says, and the command makes your stomach flutter. By the end you have forgotten half the lesson, but not the bonus. Four hundred. You say it under your breath while you straighten your clothes. That's still math, probably. <<elseif _v == 2>> Afterward your head feels fizzy and your skirt is on backward. You fix it in the doorway while he counts out the bonus. A small part of you remembers that you came here to get smarter. Then you count the cash again: two hundred out, four hundred back. The answer makes you laugh all the way down the steps. <<else>> The details blur afterward: his suit, the desk, your knees on the floor. What matters is the check mark in your notebook and the bonus in your purse. You find one of your hairpins in the wastebasket and put it back without thinking. Two good things in one afternoon. You decide not to ask whether they cancel each other out. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutorSexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Two hundred net. Quick, private, no argument over the price. You have done worse work for worse men. What bothers you is how little of the lesson remains afterward. You paid to recover some ground and sold it back before leaving the room. <<elseif _v == 1>> You settle the price before you move. Two hundred for the lesson; four hundred back, including the refund. He agrees too quickly, so next time you will ask for more. While he uses the desk, you catch yourself reviewing the problem you solved ten minutes ago. It is easier than thinking about the rest. <<elseif _v == 2>> Afterward he straightens his cuffs and calls your performance "adequate." The word lands beside the check mark he gave you earlier. Same tone, same instructor. He taught you for two hours, then paid you to stop thinking. You dislike how neatly the two parts fit together. <<else>> It is a clean enough deal: indoors, brief, paid in cash. You check the amount before you leave. On the stairs you realize you have already filed the whole thing under routine maintenance, beside clinic visits and tax forms. That should worry you. It does, a little. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTutorSex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You agree before you can reconsider. He clears a space on the desk with one sweep of his arm, sending your notebook and pencil case to the floor. What follows is quick, hard, and as impersonal as the lesson. Afterward you dress in silence and gather the pages beneath the desk. He pays the refund and the bonus exactly as promised. On the way out you try to recall the last problem you solved. Most of it is gone. You leave with more money than you arrived with and less of the lesson. <<elseif _v == 1>> What frightens you is how little you hate it now. You collect your notes from the floor and straighten the textbook he knocked aside. Once, you would have argued until he withdrew the offer or threw you out. You tell yourself you still could have. The thought lasts as far as the stairs. <<elseif _v == 2>> The window across the street reflects the two of you until he turns off the desk lamp. He pays without looking at you. Two hundred out for the lesson, four hundred back afterward: the arithmetic calls it a profit. You button your blouse and decide not to argue with the arithmetic. <<else>> He counts the bonus into your hand. You count it again in the doorway, then tuck it away. There is no surprise left in the arrangement, so shame has little to work with. What stays with you is his pencil check mark from the lesson. You wonder whether, to him, that and the cash mean the same thing: finished, paid, next. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<venueBeat "prayer">> <<if setup.buff('EndingCaretaker.a') and not $confessionUsed>> /% CARETAKER-A "No Euphemisms": the full confession, once per run. %/ * [[Take the last booth - a FULL confession, no euphemisms|FullConfession]] (once per run: the whole account, out loud) <</if>> <<set _churchNave to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/church-nave-" _churchNave>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival"> The iron-bound oak doors shut out the traffic and neon. Inside, the church is cool and dim, smelling of incense and old wax. High arches vanish into shadow. What light reaches the floor through the cracked stained glass falls in red and blue pools, broken by the pews and heavy drapes. The quiet promises shelter, provided you are willing to bow your head. <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% The screen is reachable by every persona (the cynic comes here for the rites at prom 60+), so it splits all three ways. Texts/Prayers further down sit behind the prom<40 gate where the cynic voice cannot exist - those get a bimbo deck only, no cynic deck. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPlaceB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> The church is so BIG inside, and so quiet - quiet like being underwater, but warm underwater, with candles. Everything is gold-ish or deep blue-ish, like a jewelry box that somebody prayed in. Nobody in here wants anything rude from you, nobody says numbers; the whole room is just being enormous at you, gently. You stand there a while with your hands folded, doing nothing right at all, and it feels like the best thing you've done all week. <<else>> Little flames everywhere, all leaning the same way, like they agree about something. You like it here. You can't explain the feeling - the closest you get is clean, or maybe safe, like the inside of the quiet is holding you the way a bath does. A sad-faced man in the colored window has watched you come in for weeks now, and you give him a little wave, because it's polite, and because he looks like he could use it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPlaceC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> Same doors, same wax, same columns holding up the same dark. You come for the silence the way other people come for the drink: an hour in which nobody appraises you, nobody quotes you, nobody smiles at a file with your name on it. Faith has nothing to do with it. The building is simply the largest room in the city that does not charge admission, and you have learned to take your rest wherever the pricing hasn't reached yet. <<else>> The organist is running through something with the stops half-drawn, and the sound crawls around the stone like it's looking for the exit. You sit at the back and catch yourself grading the sermon board's pitch - forgiveness as retention, guilt as recurring revenue - and stop, tired of your own cleverness. Belief isn't on offer for you. But the people in these pews leave you alone. For now, you sit in the cheapest sanctuary in the district and let the organ drown out your calculations. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtChurchPlace', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You pause on the threshold, feeling the sticky weight of your sins, obligations, and shameful desires press down on your shoulders like an unbearable stone, making your knees tremble. In this silence, your every breath seems inappropriately loud, and your very presence here - almost blasphemy. You need to make a decision and choose the penance or prayer that will help at least temporarily lighten this suffocating burden and return a shred of control over yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> There is a service finishing as you arrive, a dozen people scattered through pews built for three hundred, and you wait at the back until the last of them files out past you. None of them look at you twice. It occurs to you, standing there with the organ still settling, that for once, nobody in the room seems interested in what you are worth. The doors thud shut behind the final parishioner. The silence comes back up like water filling a hull, and you are alone in it, and you have to decide what you came here to do. <<elseif _v == 2>> Someone has been at the flowers - fresh ones by the side altar, white, arranged by a person who cared how they sat. You find yourself staring at them longer than you mean to. Somewhere in this parish is a woman whose whole Tuesday went into that, whose life has room in it for a Tuesday like that, and you cannot decide whether the thought is comforting or unbearable. The incense is thick and the stone is cold through your shoes. You turn away from the flowers and consider your options: the books, the rail, or the older and harder arrangement they keep in the back. <<else>> Rain on the high windows turns the stained glass to running color, and the whole nave swims with it - reds and blues sliding down the pillars, across the flagstones, over your hands when you hold them out. For a moment the ugliness of the week outside is simply not admissible in here. It cannot get through the glass. You know precisely how temporary that is. You have walked out of this building before and been back on the ledger within the hour. But temporary is not nothing, and you have come to spend it deliberately, one way or another. <</if>> <</if>> </div> <<if ($promiscuity < 40 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> * [[Study sacred texts|ChurchTexts]] (Promiscuity -5, IQ +3) * [[Offer prayers|ChurchPrayers]] (Promiscuity -5, Beauty +3) <</if>> * [[Undergo a rite of repentance|ChurchRepentance]] (Promiscuity -10...-40) * [[Back|Noon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("prayer")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', 3)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set $trasaCount to Math.max(0, $trasaCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", window.randInt(2)))>><<set $outcallCount to Math.max(0, $outcallCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", window.randInt(2)))>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 2, "place/pray")>> <<vid "place/pray" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Behind the prom<40 gate: personas 0/1 (neutral deck, below) and - via iq<45 - the bimbo. A cynic deck is deliberately absent: prom>=60 cannot enter this passage, it would be dead text. The bimbo deck serves the "ditz-clean" route that holds promiscuity down at low iq. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScriptureB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The man at the little desk found you the big book with the biggest letters in it, and you sit with it in the nice heavy quiet and read the way you read now - slow, out loud, lips moving. Most of the words are old and twisty, but some of them behave: light, lamb, love, and a man who was lost and then was found. That one you read three times. You don't understand the whole of it, but you understand lost, and you understand found, and reading it in here makes your chest feel warm and scrubbed. <<elseif _v == 1>> You pick a short verse, the shortest one on the page, and read it over and over like the words on a candy wrapper until they go smooth and sweet. Then you copy it into your notebook in your roundest writing, all even, and draw a little flower next to it, because the page looked lonely otherwise. When you close the book you feel the way the room smells - old and clean and calm - and you decide that counts as learning, even if nobody checks. <<elseif _v == 2>> This Bible has PICTURES, which makes it the best book in the world: a shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders, a boat in a storm, a giant fish. You make up the story from the pictures, and your version is mostly about how the lamb gets carried home safe, and you like your version better anyway. The afternoon goes by all soft. Whatever this room does to your head, it's the good kind of nothing - the kind that doesn't cost anything after. <<else>> The old lady at the next pew sees you fighting with the tiny print and shows you, with one finger, where the easy prayers are printed in big type. Then she goes back to her beads like nothing happened. You read the short lines after her, a word behind, like following a song you half know. She calls you child when she leaves. Nobody has called you anything that soft in longer than you can remember, and you sit with the word a few minutes extra, the way you'd sit with something warm in your hands. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtScripture', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You choose the hardest and most uncomfortable wooden bench in a side aisle, away from prying eyes, and open a heavy book in a darkened leather binding. Ancient, strict lines, full of stern wisdom and merciless condemnation of human weakness, slowly and methodically penetrate your consciousness. Reading requires extreme, exhausting concentration, forcing your tired mind to follow arguments about virtue and self-restraint. You almost physically feel how this intellectual effort, like a cold scalpel, scrapes away the sticky, intoxicating film of lust from your thoughts, returning your former clarity and stern fortitude. With every paragraph read, with every dogma analyzed, the insane world outside the church walls seems increasingly ghostly, small, and completely unimportant. You follow the old arguments about duty and redemption, grateful to have something difficult to think about besides your account. When you finally reluctantly close the book, you feel much more composed and protected - the words of ancient teachers have become your invisible mental armor, something to hold onto when you next face Mr. Smith. <<elseif _v == 1>> The book falls open on a passage about lending at interest, and you read it three times before you accept that it is not a coincidence, only a very old preoccupation. The prohibition is fierce and specific. Whoever wrote it had watched it happen to somebody and had not got over it. You sit with that for a long while. Nothing in the page helps you - it condemns a practice that is, several centuries later, an office with glass doors and a receptionist - but there is a strange companionship in the fury of a stranger who has been dead a thousand years and was angry on your behalf without knowing it. You copy two lines into the back of your notebook. Not as comfort. As evidence that this was always understood to be a wrong done to a person, and not simply the weather. <<elseif _v == 2>> The language fights you. Half the vocabulary has drifted out from under its own words, the sentences run for a page before they consent to end, and you spend forty minutes on a paragraph that turns out to say something quite simple in an enormously complicated way. You keep at it anyway, and somewhere in the second hour you understand that the difficulty is not an obstacle to the exercise but the entire exercise. Nobody is going to be improved by reading something easy. Your mind, which has spent weeks being told it is decorative, grinds against the text and finds it can still grind. That is the whole yield of the afternoon, and you take it gratefully: not wisdom, just proof of a working engine. <<else>> Somebody has been here before you. In the margin, in pencil so faint you first take it for a crease, a previous reader has written a single word beside a passage on endurance - and then, further down, a date, and then, three pages later, the same date again, as though they had come back on the anniversary to see whether it still held. You never find out whether it did. But you spend the afternoon reading a book that has been read this way by somebody who needed it, and the ordinary human fact of that steadies you more than the text does. Before you close it you check your own pockets, find the stub of a pencil, and put a small mark of your own beside the passage that got you through today. Whoever comes next will not know what it meant either. That seems, on reflection, to be how the whole thing has always worked. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("prayer")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(5)>><<run window.updateStat('beauty', 3)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set $trasaCount to Math.max(0, $trasaCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", window.randInt(2)))>><<set $outcallCount to Math.max(0, $outcallCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", window.randInt(2)))>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 1, "place/sun")>> <<vid "place/sun" _id>> /% Prayer is a safe, non-explicit scene the clean route visits again and again, so it carries a deck rather than a single paragraph. Effects are identical in every variant. %/ <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Same reachability rule as ChurchTexts: bimbo (iq<45) or neutral only, no cynic deck. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtPrayersB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Kneeling is easy for you now - kneeling is practically your best trick - but in here it feels different, like the kneeling is the point instead of the start. The candle heat sits soft on your face, and you say sorry for the naughty stuff, all of it, the whole soft pile of it, without knowing exactly which bits, and figuring He knows, which is what He's for. When you get up, your knees are cold and your head is light and quiet, like it's been rinsed and hung up to dry. You feel almost fancy-clean, the kind you can't buy in a bottle. <<elseif _v == 1>> You pray for the simple things, because the big ones are too heavy to lift: a kind client tomorrow, shoes that stop pinching, the number to stay small and sleepy. God feels like a nice daddy you can hand the worry to for a while - Someone big who'll hold it while you rest. Somewhere in the middle of the murmuring you go all warm and dozy, and when you open your eyes the candles have burned down a whole fingernail, just for you, keeping time. <<elseif _v == 2>> You copy the old lady two rails over: hands folded, eyes shut, whisper. You peek once - she's smiling a tiny bit inside the praying, which seems allowed - and you copy that too. Being good in here is the easiest being-good there is. No thinking, no choosing, just the warm hum of everyone agreeing to be quiet together, and for a whole hour your head goes still and good, like it's napping without you. <<else>> The candle flames all lean together, like grass in a wind that isn't there, and you make a wish on yours before you remember it's supposed to be a prayer. You switch it to a prayer halfway through and then can't find the seam between the two, and decide it doesn't matter - surely the Man upstairs takes wishes too, if you say them politely. You leave a coin in the light-box like the old ladies do, so your candle gets to stay after you go, being good on your behalf. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtPrayers', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You sink to your knees on the cold stone before the altar and let hundreds of candles flicker across your face. Hands folded, you whisper a plea for forgiveness, strength, and endurance, trying to expose every wounded part of yourself without excuse. In this private act of repentance, you finally admit the depth of your weakness and ask for the strength to heal. As the prayer settles, yesterday's fatigue and gnawing anxiety ease from your expression, leaving a quiet beauty far removed from the artificial gloss of your work makeup. Prayer acts on your tormented psyche like a cool, healing balm. You feel the inner, dirty fire of lust gradually die down, giving way to icy calm, humility, and a strange sense of inner purity. Your face feels less strained. When a passing parishioner nods, you are able to return the greeting without wondering what he wants. You emerge from the warm circle of light at the altar with a sense of extraordinary lightness and inner radiance, ready, like a precious vessel, to carry this tiny flame of faith back into the life waiting outside. <<elseif _v == 1>> You kneel at the rail and discover you have brought no words with you. Everything you might ask for sounds, when you try it silently, either too small to trouble anyone with or too large to be granted. So you stay where you are with your hands folded and say nothing at all, and after a while the not-saying stops being a failure and becomes the whole of it. The candles work through their wax. Somewhere behind you a door opens and closes. You kneel until your legs complain and then a little longer, and what you carry out is not forgiveness - you would not know what to do with forgiveness - but the plain physical memory of having held still, on purpose, for an hour, wanting nothing you could name. Your face in the door glass on the way out looks like it belongs to someone who slept. <<elseif _v == 2>> An old woman is already there when you arrive, at the far end of the rail, a headscarf and a shopping bag set neatly beside her. You take the other end. Neither of you acknowledges the other, and that turns out to be the kindest arrangement available: two women on their knees in an empty church at four in the afternoon, each pretending the other has better reasons. You pray badly and she prays fluently, in a whisper you can almost catch, the same phrases cycling like a wheel. When she finally levers herself up she touches your shoulder in passing without looking at you and says something you do not hear properly. You stay a while longer in the smell of wax. Whatever it was, it landed. You leave with your shoulders further from your ears than they have been in weeks. <<else>> It takes you a shamefully long time to notice that you are negotiating. Give me one clean month and I will do the rest myself. Take the interest down and I will never set foot on that road again. The cadence is familiar and it should be - it is exactly how you talk to Smith, the same offers, the same collateral, the same small print you do not intend to honor. You stop mid-sentence, appalled, and kneel there with the discovery. Then you begin again with nothing on the table. No terms, no trade, no argument - just the flat statement that you are tired and that you would like to stop being for sale. It is the first thing you have said all week that had no price attached, and the relief of it goes through you like heat. You stay until the candle in front of you gutters, and walk out into the afternoon with your face rinsed clean of calculation. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("prayer")>> <<set $trasaCount to Math.max(0, $trasaCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", window.randInt(2)))>><<set $outcallCount to Math.max(0, $outcallCount - setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", window.randInt(2)))>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r3", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "none">> /% Repentance type logic. Below prom 40 the band is split three ways - confession / vigil / candles - all ordinary acts of penance carrying identical effects and identical cost, so the split is balance-neutral. Confined under prom 40, where T2 is unreachable, so no dead voice branch is created. %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 40 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 40>> <<set _event to "standard">> <<elseif _roll <= 70>> <<set _event to "vigil">> <<else>> <<set _event to "candles">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 60 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "standard">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 80 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "standard">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <<else>> <<set _event to "serving_priest">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "flogging">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "serving_priest">> <<else>> <<set _event to "serving_people">> <</if>> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _event == "vigil">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(10)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(2, 2, "place/pray")>> <<vid "place/pray" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentVigilB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You are supposed to kneel and stay quiet for a long time, which turns out to be the easiest thing anyone has asked of you in weeks. Kneeling is simple. Quiet is simple. Your knees go numb and then stop reporting in at all, and the numbness spreads up pleasantly, and the candles do their little wobbling dance at the edge of everything. Nobody wants anything. That is the strange part. Nobody is watching to see how you look while you do it. You stay much longer than you were told to, because leaving would mean deciding to leave, and in here you do not have to decide anything at all. <<elseif _v == 1>>You count candle flames until numbers become too hard, then simply watch them bend in the drafts. Kneeling requires no choices, so you remain long after the assigned hour.<<elseif _v == 2>>The church grows dark around you while one little lamp burns beside the altar. You copy its stillness, pleased that being good tonight means doing absolutely nothing.<<else>>Rain taps the windows through the whole vigil. You kneel, listen, and let the sound fill every empty place where troublesome thoughts might begin.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentVigil', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You keep the evening vigil: an hour on the stone, no words, no priest, nothing to confess to and nobody to hear it. Just the cold coming up through your knees and the candles going down by inches and the enormous echoing quiet of a room built to make a person feel small. For the first twenty minutes your mind runs its usual circuit - the interest, the days remaining, the arithmetic that never comes out. Then it tires of itself and stops, and what is underneath is not peace exactly, but it is not the circuit either. You get up when your legs will hold you. Nothing has been solved. You are, fractionally, less at war with yourself than when you came in. <<elseif _v == 1>>You remain alone before the altar while rain moves across the roof. Debt calculations exhaust themselves one by one, leaving only pain in your knees and the fact of continued breathing.<<elseif _v == 2>>The vigil forbids speech, movement, and distraction. At first the restrictions feel punitive; eventually they become protection from every choice waiting outside.<<else>>You watch a single candle consume itself through the hour. Nothing is forgiven, yet measuring time by wax instead of interest briefly returns the night to human scale.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "candles">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(10)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(2, 2, "place/pray")>> <<vid "place/pray" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentCandlesB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The candle stand is your favorite thing in the whole building. You put a coin in the box - it makes a lovely clink - and light a little one, and then you think of somebody else to light one for, and put in another coin, and do it again. Soon there is a whole row of them and they are all yours. You are meant to be praying for the people, and you do try, but mostly you just look at the flames doing their small bright wobble and feel warm and pleased. Later you will not be able to remember a single name you lit one for. But they are lit. They are lit whether you remember or not, and that seems like the important part. <<elseif _v == 1>>You light candles for everyone whose name you can still remember, then continue for the names that will not come. The nameless flames are prettiest because they can belong to anybody.<<elseif _v == 2>>Each coin makes a satisfying clink and each match makes a tiny sun. Soon prayer becomes a game of filling every empty holder with something warm.<<else>>You arrange the candles from tallest to shortest until the priest gently explains that prayers do not need sorting. You leave them glowing anyway, proud of the lovely row.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentCandles', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You buy a fistful of the thin candles and take your time about it. One for your mother, who does not know. One for the girl you were at the start of the year, which you are aware is not how this is supposed to work. One, after a long pause, for Smith, because you read once that this is the hardest kind and you want to know if you can. You can, barely, and it costs you more than the others put together. Then you stand in the smell of hot wax and watch the little flames lean in the draught from the door, dozens of them, most lit by people you will never meet for reasons you will never know. You are not absolved and you know it. But you came here and did something deliberate and quiet with your own hands, and you leave with the day's shame turned down from a shout to a murmur. <<elseif _v == 1>>You light one candle for every boundary you remember crossing. The supply runs out first. Watching the crowded flames, you decide remembrance is not absolution but may be its necessary beginning.<<elseif _v == 2>>One flame is for your mother, one for yourself, and one for the nameless women whose debts resemble yours. The small shared light makes isolation briefly less convincing.<<else>>You attempt a candle for Smith and spend several minutes unable to strike the match. When it finally catches, forgiveness does not arrive - only proof that hatred has not taken every choice.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "standard">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(10)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(2, 2, "place/pray")>> <<vid "place/pray" _id>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentStandard', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>The priest hears confessions in the old booth tonight, one voice after another disappearing behind the carved partition. When your turn comes, the door closes on the rest of the church.<<elseif _v == 1>>Rain drums against the stained glass while you wait for confession. By the time the priest calls you forward, the list of things you meant to say has become a single knot of guilt.<<elseif _v == 2>>A visiting confessor has replaced the familiar priest. Starting again with a stranger should be harder; instead, anonymity makes the first admission come more easily.<<else>>You are the last penitent of the evening. The candles are low, the church is nearly empty, and there is no queue behind you to limit how much truth the booth can hold.<</if>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentStandardB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You step into the cramped little booth that smells of old wood and dust, and behind the carved partition you hear the slow, heavy breathing of the priest you can't see. Naming the bad things you did is hard - the words come out slow and tangled, and you keep losing your place - but the dark is soft and warm and hides your hot face, and there's something so easy about just saying it all out into the quiet. When the priest tells you, in his cold flat voice, exactly what you have to do to be clean, you nod and nod, and the whole tight feeling in your chest goes loose, because someone finally told you what to do and all you have to do is obey. After, you feel scooped out and floaty and, somehow, so clean, like all the buzzing was rinsed right out of you. The itch to go be bad and dive back into all that sinks way down for now, covered over by a heavy warm guilt and a simple, dog-like wish to be good. You know the road back to the light is long, but you don't really think about it - you just walk out with your back straight because he told you to, keeping your eyes down like a good girl, calm and empty and pleased. <<elseif _v == 1>> You try to confess in order, but the memories tumble out in a breathless heap: money, hands, promises, then money again. The priest patiently sorts each admission into sin and penance while you cling to his certainty. By the time he finishes, the rules feel like rails beneath your feet. Outside, the rain is cold on your face. You repeat every instruction so you will not lose one, pleased that being better has been reduced to a list simple enough to follow. <<elseif _v == 2>> The unseen priest asks questions whenever your thoughts wander. His short, firm prompts pull names and places from you that you meant to hide, until there is nothing left but your sniffing breath and the warm darkness. He assigns a penance in exact steps, and relief makes you dizzy. You leave feeling light and pleasantly empty. Wanting has gone quiet; for tonight, somebody else's rules occupy all the space it used to fill. <<else>> You begin with the smallest lie and somehow end by telling him everything. Some words make your cheeks burn even in the dark, but each one becomes less frightening once it belongs to the priest as well as you. When he orders you to pray, fast, and return, you promise with eager seriousness. The city outside is still dirty and loud, yet you walk through it with lowered eyes and a wonderfully simple thought: you have been told how to be good, and now you only need to do as you were told. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentStandardC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You step into the cramped booth that smells of old wood and dust, and behind the partition the priest breathes, slow and unseen. You list your transgressions flatly, one after another like an inventory, no tears left to stumble over - you know exactly what you've done and how much, and you say it plainly and let it land. The dark is a convenience more than a comfort; it hides a face that stopped flushing a long time ago. When the priest hands down a strict penance in his cold voice, you accept it without argument, because a clear instruction is the one thing this life has taught you to value. After, you feel hollowed out - not tearful, just emptied, like something got drained off - and, to your surprise, cleaner than you expected. The pull toward the next easy, dirty transaction goes quiet for a while, crowded out by a heavy, businesslike guilt and the cold arithmetic of what it would take to climb back. You don't kid yourself that the way up is short. But you walk out with your spine straight and your eyes off the passers-by, holding the one solid handhold this hour gave you. <<elseif _v == 1>> You give the priest dates, sums, and acts without euphemism. He attempts compassion; you ask instead for a concrete sentence. The resulting prayers and restrictions sound almost like a contract, which makes them easier to trust. Nothing has been erased when you leave, but the compulsive pull has weakened. For one evening, guilt is organized, bounded, and therefore manageable. <<elseif _v == 2>> A stranger sits behind the screen tonight. Anonymity strips the confession of theater, so you report the entire decline with the precision of an incident review. Only once does your voice fail, and you wait until it works again. His penance cannot repair the damage. It does, however, give tomorrow a structure other than earning and spending, and that is enough to steady you on the church steps. <<else>> You admit not merely what you did, but how efficiently you learned to do it. That distinction finally pierces your professional calm. The priest hears the silence, then names a strict regimen intended to place friction between impulse and action. You accept it without bargaining. Outside, temptation has not vanished; it has simply lost the status of an order that must be obeyed. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentStandardA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You step into the cramped confessional, which smells of old wood and dust. Behind the carved partition, an unseen priest breathes slowly and evenly. Through tears, you list your transgressions and feel your chest grow lighter with each shameful act you name aloud. The darkness hides your burning face and creates a fragile shelter for honest contrition. In a cold, dispassionate voice, the priest assigns a strict penance. You accept it without protest, surrendering for the moment to a law larger and steadier than yourself. After confession, you feel hollowed out, as if every emotion has been drained away, yet also cleaner than you expected. The urge to surrender to vice weakens beneath guilt and a desperate desire for redemption. You know the road back will be long and painful, but repentance has given you a first solid grip on the remnants of your former life. You leave the church with your back straight and your eyes lowered from the passers-by. <<elseif _v == 1>> Rain follows you into the booth in the smell of wet wool. You struggle through the first admission, then the second comes more easily, until the whole concealed life lies between you and a man whose face you cannot see. His questions are spare and mercilessly specific. You emerge exhausted, eyes swollen, but no longer divided between the truth and the effort of hiding it. The penance ahead is severe; accepting that severity feels like the first honest choice you have made in weeks. <<elseif _v == 2>> The visiting confessor knows nothing about you, which permits no comforting shorthand. You must explain every compromise from the beginning and hear how plainly each excuse collapses when spoken aloud. Shame nearly closes your throat, yet you continue. His prescribed prayers will not pay the debt or undo the acts. Still, they give remorse somewhere to go besides inward, and you step back into the nave with a fragile sense of direction. <<else>> As the final penitent, you are allowed all the silence you need. Long pauses divide the confession, but the priest never fills them for you. Eventually you name the moments you enjoyed as well as those you endured, and that truth hurts most. The absolution does not feel like innocence. It feels like permission to attempt the difficult road back without pretending you never left it. You leave quietly, holding that distinction close. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flogging">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(15)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "hypno/surgery/group")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/group" _id>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentFlogging', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>The priest decides words are no longer sufficient and leads you below the church, where punishment leaves marks confession cannot.<<elseif _v == 1>>Tonight the discipline is administered before two silent witnesses. The priest says suffering must sometimes be seen before it can instruct.<<elseif _v == 2>>You choose the basement before the priest suggests it. The request startles both of you, but pain has become the quickest route to temporary silence.<<else>>The whip lies across the stone ledge beside a bowl of clean water. Preparation makes the ritual look clinical; the first strike destroys that illusion.<</if>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentFloggingB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Words and crying aren't enough anymore to get the dirt off your soul, the stern-faced priest says, and he takes you down to the cold stone basement under the church. You bare your back for him, shivering all over, and you take the whistling cracks of the heavy whip one after another - and oh, the bright burning pain is so big and so LOUD that it shoves every dirty little thought clean out of your head, leaving nothing but white. Each stroke pays for a bit of the fun you had chasing money, and you moan and grab the stone ledge, and it isn't a happy moan, it's a real hurting one, but underneath it your head is going lovely and blank. When it's finally over you can barely stand, your poor back on fire, but in that hurting there's a scary-sweet letting-go, like a plug pulled out of a drain. The naughty thoughts feel far away and gross now, and your own wanting is all the way gone, tucked under the will of the one who just punished you - which feels, honestly, like a relief, one less thing to hold. You kiss his heavy hand, soft and grateful, take his cruelty as the best and only good, and float out of the church broken and, for a little while, sweetly clean. <<elseif _v == 1>> Two silent witnesses watch while the priest ties your wrists to the stone rail. The first stroke shocks a cry out of you; soon you cannot count, think, or remember why being watched mattered. There is only the next command to hold still and the relief of managing to obey it. They untie you when your legs have gone soft. Wrapped in a rough blanket, you feel punished, emptied, and wonderfully certain that somebody else now knows exactly how bad you were. <<elseif _v == 2>> You ask for the whip before the priest mentions it, fumbling over the explanation until he silences you with a raised hand. Downstairs, every crack burns away another noisy thought. You grip the ledge and focus on making him proud by not pulling away. When he says the penance is complete, you almost ask him to decide again. Instead you kiss his hand, accept the ache as proof that you tried to be good, and leave with your mind quiet at last. <<else>> The bowl of water, folded cloth, and waiting whip make the basement look prepared especially for you. You kneel, confess once more, then present your back. Pain fills the whole little room until shame has nowhere left to hide and nowhere left to speak. Afterward the priest washes the marks while you tremble obediently. The gentleness confuses you more than the blows, and you carry both sensations home as one simple lesson: punishment followed because you deserved it. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentFloggingC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Words and tears won't scrub off what's caked on you by now, and you know it, so when the stern priest leads you down to the cold stone basement you don't flinch at the plan. You bare your back and take the whistling strokes of the heavy whip on purpose, clinically almost, because the sharp blinding pain is the one tool loud enough to jam the dirty reel that runs behind your eyes. Each stroke is the invoice for a session of animal pleasure you sold yourself for money. You clutch the stone ledge and moan - not aroused, just genuinely hurt - and you let your pride go where the skin goes, because there's nothing left up there worth defending. When it ends you can barely stay on your feet, and your flayed back burns like a coal, but there's a cold, clean release in the pain, an honest ledger balanced. The decadent thoughts read as distant and faintly disgusting now, and your own will lies flat under the will of the one who dealt out the sentence - and that's fine; you are too tired to call the surrender a loss. You kiss the priest's heavy hand without drama, accept the beating as the only good on offer, and walk out broken and briefly, mechanically, clean. <<elseif _v == 1>> The witnesses bother you less than the priest expects. You catalog each stroke, each involuntary sound, and each failure of composure until the sequence becomes too intense to audit. Then the counting stops and the punishment does its work without your supervision. You leave supported by the wall, pain replacing appetite with brutal efficiency. The method is crude, but for the moment its result is undeniable. <<elseif _v == 2>> You request physical discipline because confession has ceased producing measurable change. The priest accepts the premise and applies the remedy with professional severity. By the sixth stroke your clinical language is gone; by the last, so is every immediate urge. He records the penance as completed. You dress carefully around the damaged skin and note that the internal noise has fallen to zero, though the cost will remain visible for days. <<else>> Water, bandages, and the whip are arranged before you enter. Preparation removes any illusion of spontaneity: this is a procedure, and you have consented to its outcome. You brace against the stone and endure until detached observation collapses into pure pain. Once treated, you can identify no redemption beyond exhaustion and obedience. Nevertheless, temptation feels remote, and that limited result is the one you came to purchase. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentFloggingA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Simple words and sincere tears are no longer enough to wash away the dirt that has accumulated in your soul. A priest with a stern face leads you into a deep basement under the church, where the walls are made of coarse, eternally cold, and damp stone. You voluntarily, with a tremor throughout your body, bare your back and submissively accept the whistling strokes of a heavy leather whip, feeling how the sharp, blinding, and burning pain instantly displaces all the dirty, obscene fantasies from your head. Each stroke is your bloody payment for those moments of shameful, animal pleasure you allowed yourself in the pursuit of money. You moan, clutching a stone ledge with your fingers, but it's not a moan of arousal, but of genuine suffering, feeling your pride and will break along with your skin. When it ends, your legs buckle and your wounded back burns. Yet the physical pain brings a strange, frightening release. Temptation feels distant and repellent, while your own will lies crushed beneath that of the man who judged you. You kiss the priest's heavy hand and accept his punishment as the only good still available. You leave broken, but briefly convinced that providence has made you clean. <<elseif _v == 1>> The presence of two witnesses transforms private penance into judgment. You bare your back beneath their lowered gazes and try not to cry out, but the whip strips dignity away stroke by stroke. Soon concealment is impossible; your suffering is as public as the sins that led here. The witnesses depart without speaking. You remain long enough to regain your feet, ashamed of your relief and relieved by your shame, carrying a temporary revulsion toward the appetites that brought you below the church. <<elseif _v == 2>> You surprise yourself by asking whether pain might succeed where words have failed. Once the request is spoken, the priest makes you repeat it clearly before leading you downstairs. Each blow answers the question more forcefully than language could. At the end, you understand that suffering has not undone the past. It has interrupted its momentum, however, and the silence left behind feels precious enough to protect. <<else>> The prepared instruments reveal that the priest anticipated your sentence. You submit with dread, gripping cold stone while the whip converts guilt into immediate, undeniable pain. Prayer fragments between your cries until only endurance remains. He cleans the wounds after the final stroke. The care cannot make the ritual gentle, but it returns you to yourself slowly, chastened and temporarily freed from the hunger you feared would govern you forever. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "serving_priest">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(20)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 32, "office/")>> <<vid "office/" _id>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentPriest', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>The sacristy door locks, and the priest announces that ordinary penance has failed. His proposed remedy serves his body as neatly as it claims to serve your soul.<<elseif _v == 1>>Confession ends with the priest stepping out from behind the partition. He says redemption now requires direct service, then guides you toward the private office.<<elseif _v == 2>>A different priest receives you tonight, but the doctrine is identical: your obedience can purge desire if surrendered to the correct authority.<<else>>The candles have burned down before he names the final penance. The lateness, the locked door, and his hungry calm reveal the service before his words do.<</if>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentPriestB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The priest's face changes all at once, going hungry and hard and cold. "Your vice has taken root. Ordinary pain will not remove it. You need complete humility: service of the flesh to God's most faithful servant," he says, and locks the sacristy door. He points at the hard carpet in front of him and you sink to your knees right away, easy as breathing, because kneeling when a firm voice says to is the simplest, nicest thing in the world now. You know exactly what's about to happen, and the funny thing is it really does help - it scoops all your own achy wanting out of your head and pours it into just doing what he tells you. You give yourself to the priest with no fight at all, a soft empty little vessel for whatever he's been holding back. And here's the strange part: while it happens you can actually feel your own sluttiness - the thing you used to think was YOU - draining away and getting swapped out for a warm, dull, obedient nothing. Your thoughts go slow and fuzzy from a knot you can't undo, holy and sinful smearing together until they don't mean anything, and it feels fine, it feels like rest. After, you do your clothes up with clumsy floaty hands, cool and calm and blank inside, not a scrap of the old wanting left, and it's honestly kind of peaceful. <<elseif _v == 1>> Confession ends with the priest opening the booth himself and guiding you by the chin toward the locked office. He says your body must learn whom it serves. The words are frightening, but they are also wonderfully clear, and you sink onto the carpet before he has to repeat them. You follow every quiet instruction until your own restless wanting has been replaced by the simple wish to please him. When he dismisses you, you leave dazed and tidy, proud that obedience has made the bad thoughts go away. <<elseif _v == 2>> A visiting priest gives the same strange sentence in a softer voice. You hesitate until he calls hesitation another form of pride; then you let him position you and stop trying to understand where penance ends and his desire begins. By the time he is satisfied, the question no longer seems important. Your head is slow, your body tired, and all the complicated hunger that brought you here has collapsed into a warm readiness to do as you are told. <<else>> Long after the church empties, he locks the sacristy and names your final duty. You kneel in candlelight, frightened but almost grateful that he has reduced salvation to something your body already knows how to perform. His approval becomes the only measure that matters. Afterward, the shame and desire are both far away, blurred beneath exhaustion and the comforting certainty that a holy man decided everything for you. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentPriestC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The priest's gaze flips - predatory, authoritative, cold. "Your vice has taken root. Ordinary pain will not remove it. You need complete humility: service of the flesh to God's most faithful servant," he says, and locks the sacristy door. He nods you down onto the hard carpet, and you go, because kneeling is just a posture and you've knelt for worse men for less. You see the whole shabby transaction coming from a mile off - and yet the ugly irony holds: this forced "service" really does pull your own gnawing desire out by the roots and reroute it into the flat mechanical execution of a command. You give yourself to the priest without resistance, running the motions like any other job, a hollow instrument for his secret, throttled appetite. The bitter part is watching your own promiscuity - the thing you'd half-claimed as your "self" - get sluiced out in real time and replaced with a dull, absolute submission. You feel yourself go duller too, the unsolvable contradiction between holy and filthy grinding a groove where a thought used to be. Afterward you fasten your clothes with hands that won't quite steady, an icy, perfectly obedient emptiness settling in where the wanting was, and you note its absence without missing it. <<elseif _v == 1>> The priest leaves the confessional, locks the office, and states his terms without euphemism. You recognize exploitation immediately. You also recognize that refusal would return you to the same appetite you came here unable to control, so you kneel and treat the contradiction as irrelevant data. Service consumes attention more completely than prayer did. You depart with no illusion of holiness, but with desire temporarily exhausted and your will trained another degree toward compliance. <<elseif _v == 2>> The replacement priest describes obedience as a corrective discipline. His theology is self-serving and structurally coherent; arguing would only disguise the practical choice. You accept his direction and execute each demand with the impersonal competence of paid work. No money changes hands. What you receive instead is an unnerving internal quiet, purchased through submission rather than pleasure. You record the result without endorsing the method. <<else>> He waits until the building is empty before explaining that ordinary penance has failed. The locked door confirms the nature of his remedy. You consider leaving, calculate the familiar spiral waiting outside, and deliberately remain. Afterward, fastening your clothes requires concentration. The priest calls you cleansed; you call it depletion. Whatever the name, appetite has receded and obedience has become easier, which is the measurable outcome you sought. <</if>> <<else>> The priest's gaze changes, becoming predatory, authoritative, and frighteningly cold. "Your vice has taken root. Ordinary pain will not remove it. You need complete humility: service of the flesh to God's most faithful servant," he says, locking the sacristy door. He gestures toward the hard carpet. You understand the humiliation he intends, yet the command redirects your tormenting desires into something simpler: obedience to an authority that claims to stand above you. You offer no resistance, becoming a vessel for the priest's hidden appetite. The bitter irony is that your own promiscuity - the desire you had begun to mistake for part of yourself - seems to drain away during this final fall, replaced by dull, absolute submission. The contradiction between holiness and exploitation blunts your thoughts until salvation and ruin lose their boundaries. Afterward, you fasten your clothes with trembling hands and feel an icy obedience occupying the space where desire used to live. <</if>> <<elseif _event == "serving_people">> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -80)>> <<run setup.cleanseProm(40)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 20)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -10)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "hypno/surgery/group")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/group" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentPeopleB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> This is the big one, the last giving-up of yourself for a tiny far-off chance at being all the way clean. Wobbly and half-gone with fear, you're walked into the church's closed high-walled courtyard, where the "chosen" parishioners and lay ministers are already waiting, patient as a queue. The priest announces loud that today you'll be their bright shining lesson in humility, redemption through the flesh, and you close your eyes and let the faceless crowd use your body however they like, turning slow into a plain nameless thing with no feelings and no will left over. It's so much and so big that your head just clicks off, like a light switched at the wall, and honestly the switching-off is a mercy. When the thick evening dark comes down over the city you're still lying on the cold pitted stone, feeling nothing but a huge floaty tiredness. Your sluttiness is burned right down to the dirt, pulled out by the root, and the price is a mind with big soft black holes in it where things used to be - but you can't reach far enough to mind. You don't want anything now. You barely feel anything but the nice heavy weight of your own body. You're a perfect obedient shadow, a warm little mannequin whose whole and only job is to do whatever it's told, and being that empty feels, weirdly, like being held. <<elseif _v == 1>> Two rows of parishioners wait in the walled courtyard while the priest presents you as a lesson about pride. You try to remember faces, then numbers, but the crowd keeps changing and every order arrives before the last one has made sense. Eventually you stop trying and become only the body they pass between them. Evening finds you beneath a blanket on the cold stones. Desire has been drowned beneath exhaustion, and thoughts drift apart before you can hold them. When somebody says to stand, you do, grateful that the next action has been chosen for you. <<elseif _v == 2>> The lay ministers wash your feet before leading you into the courtyard. The kindness makes the waiting crowd more confusing, not less. The priest calls what follows a gift of yourself, so you repeat the phrase until words, faces, and fear all blur into one long command to endure. Hours later you wake without knowing when you closed your eyes. Your old cravings seem like something that happened to another girl. There is only heaviness, blankness, and a weak smile when the priest says you were very obedient. <<else>> Bells mark the start of the ritual, and the courtyard gate shuts behind you. At first you answer every direction aloud because good girls acknowledge instructions. Later your voice disappears, then the sense that there was ever a choice to answer at all. By dusk the priest must dress and guide you home. The crowd has emptied your body of appetite and your mind of sequence; you remember only scattered hands and the relief of no longer needing to decide what happens next. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRepentPeopleC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> This is the final entry in the ledger, the whole self signed away for a ghost of a chance at being clean. You're led, staggering and half-numb, into the church's closed high-walled courtyard where the "chosen" parishioners and lay ministers already wait. The priest announces that today you'll be their illustration - limitless humility, redemption through the flesh - and you close your eyes and let the faceless crowd use your body as they please, going still and clinical, letting yourself become a common voiceless thing with no name and no will to spend. The scale of it is past what a person carries, so the person simply steps out; you've learned that trick and you use it now, watching the nightmare from somewhere far behind your own eyes. When the heavy twilight settles over the city you're still on the cold, pitted stone, running on nothing but a bone-deep, wrung-out exhaustion. Your promiscuity is burned to the ground, torn out at the root, and the invoice for that scrubbing is a psyche cracked past mending and black gaps punched through your memory. You don't feel desire anymore - you barely feel anything but your own dead weight. You've become an ideal obedient shadow, a mannequin whose one function is to carry out any order, however filthy. You've been cleansed of the sin, and you note, flatly, that a large piece of whatever made you a person went out with it, and won't be coming back. <<elseif _v == 1>> The priest has organized the courtyard like an appointment schedule. You assess exits, numbers, and physical limits before concluding that assessment changes nothing. As the line advances, professional detachment becomes dissociation, and eventually even observation requires more self than remains available. At twilight you recover among discarded towels. Appetite is absent, but so are several hours and much of your capacity to care about the distinction. You obey the instruction to dress because instructions still penetrate where intention no longer does. <<elseif _v == 2>> Lay ministers document the ritual while selected parishioners take their turns. Being treated as an example rather than a person is explicit policy, not metaphor. You execute directions until language degrades into tone and your responses become automatic. The stated objective is achieved: desire has been reduced to nothing. The collateral damage includes memory, judgment, and resistance. You register the losses with distant precision before that precision, too, slips away. <<else>> The locked courtyard contains more participants than anticipated. You request limits; the priest reframes the request as pride and orders complete surrender. Somewhere during the long sequence, your trained composure stops being a strategy and becomes an empty reflex. When the gate opens after dark, you cannot reconstruct what occurred in what order. You can confirm only the result: profound exhaustion, extinguished appetite, and a new readiness to comply before conscious thought intervenes. <</if>> <<else>> This becomes your most complete act of self-sacrifice for a ghostly chance at complete purification. You, staggering and almost senseless from fear, are led into the closed, high-walled inner courtyard of the church, where "chosen" parishioners and lay ministers are already patiently waiting. The priest loudly announces that today you will become for them all an example of limitless humility and redemption through the flesh. You close your eyes and let this faceless crowd use your body as they see fit, gradually turning into a common, voiceless thing, devoid of a name, feelings, and the remnants of your own will. This massive, collective humiliation is so grand and extreme that your personality simply shuts down, unable to bear the nightmare unfolding. By the time evening settles over the city, you are still lying on the courtyard's cold, pitted stone, aware of nothing but crushing exhaustion. The ordeal has burned desire out at the root, but the price is a shattered psyche and black gaps in your memory. You feel little beyond the weight of your own body. You have become an obedient shadow, a living mannequin conditioned to follow even the filthiest command without question. Sin may be gone; much of what once made you human has gone with it. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<venueBeat "salon">> <<set _salonRoom to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/beauty-salon-" _salonRoom>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival"> Aphrodite Beauty Salon greets you with soft light, expensive perfume, and quiet lounge music. Here, among gold-framed mirrors and comfortable leather chairs, you can forget your debts for a few hours and simply trust the hands of professionals. The receptionist smiles politely and invites you to look over the treatments. </div> * [[Refresh your look|BeautyChoice][$price to 100, $boost to 5]] ($100, Beauty +5) * [[Comprehensive care|BeautyChoice][$price to 300, $boost to 15]] ($300, Beauty +15) * [[Luxury transformation|BeautyChoice][$price to 700, $boost to 40]] ($700, Beauty +40) * [[Back|Noon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("salon")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<if $money < $price>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,170,0,0.35); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #ffaa00;"> You're short on funds. The receptionist smiles and adds it to your tab - Mr. Smith will cover the difference. At his usual rates, of course. </div> <</if>> <<set $money -= $price>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', $boost)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSalonB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Your favorite place in the whole entire city is pink, smells like candy, and is full of people saying nice things. You sit super still in the big chair while they paint, brush, and pat every part of you prettier. Then comes the mirror girl. She is SO pretty today, maybe the prettiest ever. You blow her a kiss and she sends it right back. At the desk, you sign something about an account and draw a flower over the i. Outside, strangers keep looking. You hope the feeling never ends. <<elseif _v == 1>> You choose colors by pointing and clapping. The stylists stopped asking technical questions; now they hold up swatches until one makes you light up. They fuss over you through the whole session, and you glow under the attention. Behind the desk, someone mentions the balance and Mr. Smith. Smithy handles that; handling is what he does. Prettier means happier, and happier means prettier. That is the only math that never gets stuck. You leave with an empty purse and a wonderfully empty head. <<elseif _v == 2>> You fall asleep halfway through the facial and dream that you are the mannequin in a bright shop window. Everyone stops to admire you. In the dream, being seen feels exactly like being loved. You wake under warm towels and whisper *wow* at your reflection. The staff laugh kindly. For a second, you wonder why people became nicer as your thoughts became smaller. The question hurts, so you kiss the manicurist's cheek and let it go. <<else>> The stylist lets you hold the palette. You choose everything that sparkles, then sit happily while clever hands make your face brighter than the salon lights. Each time someone calls you gorgeous, you forget the question and thank them again. At the mirror, you need a moment to recognize the beautiful girl. Then she smiles and recognition stops mattering. The receptionist mentions a price, and you give her your prettiest signature. Outside, every stare tells you the money was well spent. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSalonC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You walk in as a regular, almost a colleague. Half the women in the chairs work the same nights you do; you recognize the tiredness beneath their eye masks. Conversation stays safely indirect: business, the rough season, that impossible regular. The manicurist knows enough about respectable men to ruin several careers. You record your chosen treatment as a business expense. You have tracked which touches earn better tips. Beauty is no longer a hope. It is equipment that needs to last through closing time, and the honesty of that makes the appointment relaxing. <<elseif _v == 1>> The stylist no longer asks what you want. "The usual - for work," you say, and the scissors start. You watch the familiar face return in stages: lips, lashes, the exact amount of shine. The finished version will earn more than the one that walked in. You remember when you used to blush and whisper your requests. The memory has little force now. You tilt your head for the blow-dry and check the result from both sides. <<elseif _v == 2>> You settle into the chair and flirt with the twenty-three-year-old masseur out of habit. He blushes into his collar. The wax hurts, the paraffin scalds, and the tweezers keep finding new hairs, but you know what each small pain will earn. At the mirror, you inspect the result rather than admire it. Lovely is beside the point; the question is whether it will work. It will. You leave through the perfumed air and meet the first stare without blinking. <<else>> You bring photographs from three recent shifts and make the stylist compare them under proper light. This lip color survives drinks; that foundation photographs badly; the softer curls add warmth without lowering the rate. Together, you design the next version around evidence. The result is beautiful because it is engineered to be. You approve the mirror, log the cost, and schedule maintenance before leaving. Vanity is what amateurs call investment when they cannot see the return. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSalon', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> For an hour, you sit beneath warm lamps while the stylist works through masks, serums, and makeup. Her hands are practiced and impersonal, which makes it easier to relax. The finished face is brighter and more rested than the one you brought in. People look when you step outside. Their attention feels good, even while the receipt in your purse reminds you how much it cost. <<elseif _v == 1>> The stylist has cool fingers, merciless scissors, and stories about clients you will never meet: the councilman's wife with the extensions, the influencer who cried over her eyebrows. You close your eyes under the cucumber mask and listen. For an hour, someone touches you without asking for anything in return. When the chair turns, the mirror shows a polished and expensive version of you. You walk out with your head higher. The first stranger on the street looks twice, and for once the money feels well spent. <<elseif _v == 2>> Beauty is mostly a sequence of small pains: hot wax, tweezers, paraffin, a scalp pulled tight until it tingles. You sit with folded hands while the stylists discuss lift and warmth above your head. At the desk, the receptionist reads the total with a knowing smile. You sign and step into the evening behind your improved face. The city is kinder to it. The eyes that follow you hold appetite instead of pity, and appetite sometimes pays. <<else>> You ask the stylist to make you look less tired. She studies your face for a long moment, then covers the evidence: sleepless shadows, a healing mark, the strain gathered around your mouth. Her gentleness makes the process harder to bear. When the chair turns, the mirror offers a rested stranger. You are grateful, then angry at the gratitude. The city has not made you safer or freer; it has merely taught you to purchase the appearance of both. You pay and carry the disguise outside. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<venueBeat "clinic">> <<set _clinicReception to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/clinic-reception-" _clinicReception>> <div class="dl-routine-arrival"> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Clinic screen splits all three ways - every persona ends up here sooner or later. The base four carry the receptionist's voice and stay untouched. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtClinicPlaceB', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> The clinic is so white it's like being inside a tooth. Everything is shiny and clean-smelling, and the ladies at the desk have the nicest faces - not-moving faces, like doll faces, but so pretty. "We create perfection," the sign says, and you believe it, because look at them. Everybody here is in the business of making girls prettier, and prettier is your favorite business to be in. You take a glossy brochure just to hold it. The girl on the front is laughing, and someday soon, you figure, that's going to be you doing the laughing. <<else>> The waiting-room music has no edges at all - it just floats there, like bubbles - and the chairs are comfy and nobody hurries you. This place feels like a holiday where you win a prize, and the prize is you, but better. You leaf through the glossy menu of procedures with your tummy doing happy flips, wanting one of each. Mr. Smith only ever sends you places where you come out prettier. That's practically a promise, when you think about it - and you think about it in the floaty way, twice, before the nurse calls your name. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtClinicPlaceC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> The decor is an expensive hotel, the paperwork is a ledger, and the function, behind the frosted glass, is an abattoir with recovery time. You read the price list with a professional eye: lips at one week of nights, body contouring at a month, the Doll program at everything you have left. Financing available, the sign says, which in your case is not an offer but a forecast. The before-and-after wall stares at you. You stare back at the seam. <<else>> You have stopped being soothed by kind voices, and this building is nothing but: kind receptionist, kind nurse, kind brochure. The kindness is load-bearing. You find the seam on every pair of photographs on the wall - the thing they cropped, the identical distance in both smiles - and the seam is always the same: a woman who stopped needing things. The clinic is where that gets installed. You are here to price it, and you already know you can afford it, which is the part worth noticing. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtClinicPlace', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> New Look Plastic Surgery Clinic greets you with the smell of expensive antiseptics, ozone, and a blinding whiteness of walls that almost makes your eyes hurt. There is no room for sympathy here - only cold calculation and a price list for remaking you. The receptionist at the front desk, a woman whose Botox-smoothed face barely moves, smiles welcomingly at you, professionally assessing your potential as a future "star" of their establishment. "Welcome. Mr. Smith said you might be coming," she says, handing over a glossy menu of procedures. "We can discuss the changes you want and what they'll cost. The aim is a result that improves your earning potential." <<elseif _v == 1>> The waiting room is done in the colors of an expensive hotel and plays music with no edges to it. Three other women are already seated, spaced as far apart as the chairs allow, each looking studiously at a phone. Nobody makes eye contact here. It is the one courtesy the clinic genuinely extends. The brochures on the low table are photographed like holidays. A girl on the cover of one is laughing at something outside the frame, and it takes you a moment to work out why the picture bothers you: she has been photographed as the result, and the result is always a woman who has stopped needing anything. <<elseif _v == 2>> "Financing available," says the sign at the desk, in the same discreet typeface as everything else, and you understand the whole business model in one glance. They are not selling surgery. They are selling it on credit, to women who are here because of credit, and somewhere upstream of both transactions is a man with a clean desk and a view of the city. The receptionist's face does not move when she smiles, and she is very kind, and the kindness is entirely real and entirely beside the point. She has your file open before you reach the counter. Mr. Smith's clients, she says warmly, are always looked after. <<else>> It is colder in here than it needs to be, and far too bright, and every surface has been chosen for how easily it wipes clean. Somewhere behind the frosted glass a machine gives three soft tones and stops. You sit with your coat still on. On the wall opposite hangs a mounted display of before-and-after photographs, cropped so that neither face is identifiable. You find yourself doing what everyone does: looking for the seam between the two women, the place where one became the other, and not being able to find it. That, presumably, is the point of the display. It works. You are still looking at it when they call your name. <</if>> <</if>> </div> <<if $surgeryLips == 0>> * [[Lip and face correction|SurgeryLips]] ($500, Beauty++, Promiscuity+) <<else>> * <span style="opacity: 0.5; text-decoration: line-through;">Your lips have already been corrected</span> <</if>> <<if $beauty >= 60>> /% 0.6 §2.3: body work is repeatable. First cut is the big one (+25); refinements add less (+8) and each repeat past the first permanently raises the loan rate by 1pp (max +2pp) - the body keeps advertising, the credit keeps pricing it. %/ <<set _bodyRate to Math.min(2, Math.max(0, $surgeryBody - 1))>> * [[Mammoplasty and body contouring|SurgeryBody]] ($1500, <<if $surgeryBody == 0>>Beauty+++, Promiscuity++<<else>>repeat: Beauty+, Promiscuity++<<if _bodyRate lt 2>>, rate +1pp<</if>><</if>>) <</if>> <<if $promiscuity >= 60 and $beauty >= 80 and $surgeryFull == 0>> * [["Ideal Doll" program|SurgeryFull]] ($3000, Max Beauty, IQ--) <<elseif $surgeryFull > 0>> * <span style="opacity: 0.5; text-decoration: line-through;">The doll is finished. There is nothing left to perfect.</span> <</if>> * [[Back|Noon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("clinic")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<if $money < 500 and $promiscuity >= 50>> <<set _procedureRoom to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/clinic-procedure-room-" _procedureRoom>> <div class="kink-choice"> You don't have enough money, but the surgeon, letting his gaze linger on your cleavage, hints that an "individual approach" could cover all the clinic's expenses. <br><br> * [[Pay in kind|SurgeryLipsSex]] * [[Refuse|Clinic]] </div> <<else>> <<if setup.coverSurgery(500)>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(127,255,159,0.35); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #7fff9f;"> Covered by the arrangement. The clinic bills your former contract directly - no charge, no credit, this visit only. </div> <<else>> <<if $money < 500>> <<set $interestPenalty to Math.min(3, $interestPenalty + 1)>> /% clinic credit risk - same rule as Body/Full %/ <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,170,0,0.35); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #ffaa00;"> You can't cover it today. The clinic adds $500 to your account - a courtesy of Mr. Smith's partnership with the clinic. </div> <</if>> <<set $money -= 500>> <</if>> <<set $surgeryLips += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 4, "hypno/surgery/lips")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/lips" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% One-off milestone, but a persona-defining one - three leaves each is enough for a scene the player sees once per run. A = neutral, same convention as BodySex. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> A cold chair, a big blinding lamp, and a bunch of quick little pinches that barely hurt. The thin needles go in again and again, pushing thick filler deep into your lips and cheekbones, and there's a stretchy feeling and then a warm pulsing glow while the surgeon squishes it all around under your skin into a perfect puffy shape. It stings a tiny bit, but you're too excited to care - you're getting PRETTIER, right now, you can feel it happening. When he finally leans back and holds up the mirror you squeal a little, because the girl looking out has the plumpest, poutiest lips, always a bit open like she's about to say something sweet. It's a face made to get looked at and wanted, and you bite your new fat lower lip and love it. With each injection you look a little more like all the other pretty dolls, and a little more like money, and both of those feel just great. <<elseif _v == 1>> They rub numbing cream on your lips first. It tastes like banana, a silly flavor for a mouth-hospital. The pinches are teeny, and afterward the nurse brings you a mirror. You practice kissy-faces all the way home: at the taxi window, at your reflection, at a pigeon. The pigeon seems into it. Your new lips look like they're smiling even when you aren't. You keep touching them with one finger, boop, all evening. Softest thing you own now. <<else>> A nurse holds your hand the whole time and calls you sweetie, and you decide she's your favorite nurse ever. The needles are over before you can be brave about it, and then it's just you and the mirror going WOW. The new lips are pillowy and a little bit heavy, like a sleeping kitten sitting on your face, and they make every word cuter. You try saying a sad word - "deadline" - and even that comes out all pretty. You giggle at the mirror, and the mirror giggles back with your brand-new mouth. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> A cold chair, the blinding lamp, a series of fast, almost painless injections. The thin needles pierce your skin over and over, driving thick filler deep into your lips and cheekbones; there's a brief swell and then a pulsing heat as the surgeon kneads the filler into shape under the skin. You track it the way you'd track any upgrade to the equipment - unpleasant, sure, but the plumper the contour, the higher the rate the mouth can command, and that math keeps you still and quiet on the chair. When he pulls back and lifts the mirror, the face that answers is barely the one you walked in with: plump, petulant lips parted in a permanent silent invitation. It's a tool, engineered to draw eyes and promise compliance, and you appraise it coldly. You bite the new heavy lip, noting that each pass of the needle makes you more generic and more sellable in the same stroke. Generic is fine. Sellable pays the interest. <<elseif _v == 1>> You read the whole consent form this time, line by line, and price the visit aloud while he works - so much per syringe, so much per milliliter, and is the numbing cream billed separately? It is. The surgeon laughs like you've made a joke, which you haven't; itemization is how you stay alive in this city. The mirror shows the finished mouth: competent work, frankly. Plumped to spec, symmetrical, engineered to hang permanently half-open - an instrument tuned mid-yes. You approve the workmanship, because disliking it changes nothing. The face sells. That is its function now. <<else>> He works like a craftsman over a lathe and you are the wood - a pinch, a squint, a pinch, a correction, no more feeling in it than a man lettering a sign. You watch in the mirror as the mouth is engineered into its permanent half-open invitation, the yes shape installed at rest. It's good work. It would be, at the price. You run the audit while the filler sets: face appreciating, self depreciating, the two lines converging somewhere just ahead of you. Every girl in this district is filing herself down into a look. The only difference is you got the itemized version. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsA', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> A cold chair, the blinding light of a lamp, and a series of fast, almost painless injections. Thin needles pierce your delicate skin time and again, injecting thick filler deep into your lips and cheekbones. You feel a slight expansion, replaced by a pulsating heat, while the surgeon professionally kneads the filler under the skin, forming an ideal, puffed-up contour. It's unpleasant, but the thought of how these new features will help you earn makes you endure in silence. When the surgeon finally pulls away and holds up a mirror, you barely recognize yourself. A girl with unnaturally plump, petulant lips that seem constantly parted in a silent invitation looks back at you. This face is created to attract attention, seduce, and promise submission. You test your new lower lip gently between your teeth, realizing that with each injection, your appearance becomes more formulaic, but also more profitable. <<elseif _v == 1>> The injections are quick and the numbness arrives before the fear does. In the mirror afterward, the tightness is the first thing you notice - not the size, the tightness - and it changes how words feel in your mouth, as though your lips are now a size ahead of your sentences. You try to summon the old face, the one from before the debt, and it doesn't come. The new one is prettier than anything you could have made yourself into honestly. That is precisely what you paid for, you remind yourself, and the reminder lands like keeping a secret you have already told. <<else>> The nurse is kind to you twice - once at the needle, once at the mirror - and both times the kindness lands somewhere behind your ribs and stays there. The face in the glass is lovely, plumped and petulant and permanently at the edge of a pout. You look like a woman who has already agreed to whatever the next sentence is. You understand, distantly, that this is the look you asked for, at a price you could barely afford, and that you will wear it into every room for the rest of your life. It smiles at you. You didn't ask it to. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]] <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<set $surgeryLips += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 20)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 9, "hypno/surgery/lipssex")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/lipssex" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Fires at money<500 AND prom>=50 - so the cynic (prom>=60) is reachable here, unlike the plain Lips path at low prom. Three leaves per persona, A = neutral. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsSexB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The deal's done! Right here among the shiny instruments and bright white walls you hop up and spread your legs for the man in the coat. The surgeon takes his "payment" fast and rough and doesn't bother hiding that he thinks he's better than you, and you don't mind - the metal table's cold on your back but your body knows this dance by heart and goes all warm and quivery for his hard thrusts anyway. The second he's done, before you can even catch your breath, he grabs the syringes, and getting your lips done right after feels kind of funny, like a treat after a treat. You stare up at the ceiling all floaty while the filler puffs your lips fat and soft - perfect for the exact thing you just paid with. All finished, and your face looks flawless, and if you left another little scrap of your pride somewhere in this room you honestly can't feel the empty spot. You can be bought or traded and that just feels normal now. <<elseif _v == 1>> The shiny room, the serious man, and the little meter running - you pay the toll like a parking meter, beep beep, and the fun part is over quick. Then the needles, then the mirror, and the lollipop the nurse gives you afterward is cherry-red and matches your brand-new lips exactly, which makes you laugh with your eyes because your mouth is busy. Dessert after dinner. You leave sucking on it, and everything about you matches. <<else>> He stays stern even during the fun part, like the fun part is also a procedure. That used to make you nervous; now it kind of makes you tingly - being handled by a man who never loses the plot. The needles afterward are the treat you earned. The best part is the mirror: your new mouth is so pretty it's almost a cartoon of pretty, and you think about all the future clients it's going to make happy, out there in the city, and feel like you did a good deed today. The nurse says you were very cooperative. You glow for hours. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsSexC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The deal is made. Here among the sterile trays and dazzling white walls you spread your legs for the man in the coat, businesslike. The surgeon takes his "payment" fast and rough, not bothering to mask his contempt, and you don't require him to; the metal's cold against your back and there's an old reflex of shame somewhere, but a body this used to it answers his thrusts with a traitorous ripple of heat regardless. You let it. It costs nothing and it ends the transaction quicker. The instant he's finished he reaches for the syringes, and the injections after the sex read as almost a joke - the fee and the service, back to back on the same table. You watch the ceiling while the filler swells your lips plump and pliable, suited to the service he expects from you. Procedure complete, face flawless, and you tally the cost honestly: another slice of pride signed over. You've known you were a thing that can be bought or swapped for a while now. This just files the paperwork. <<elseif _v == 1>> The terms are cash-neutral and clearly stated: the procedure retails at five hundred, the transaction takes four minutes on a table with twelve tiles visible from your back, one wall clock, zero conversation. You watch the minute hand pass four marks and call it a favorable rate. Afterward, in the mirror, you adjust the new mouth experimentally - pout, neutral, pout - until it stops looking like a smile you didn't authorize and settles into something you can bill against. Professional development, this. The lips are an asset now. So, apparently, is everything else. <<else>> He keeps his gloves on throughout, which is either hygiene or hierarchy, and in this clinic the two are the same policy. You note, from your back on the cold table, that the instruments overhead at least get sterilized between uses; the courtesy appears to be tiered. Then the syringes, and the mirror, and the mouth: finished, plump, sellable. You tally it once, cleanly - dignity traded for collagen at a rate the market will bear. Again. The arithmetic is getting easier, which is its own line item, and you don't currently have a column for it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryLipsSexA', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The deal is made. Here, among sterile instruments and dazzling white walls, you spread your legs for a man in a medical coat. The surgeon takes his "payment" roughly and quickly, making no attempt to hide his contempt. Cold metal presses against your back and shame burns inside you, yet a body conditioned by repeated humiliation answers him with a treacherous flicker of arousal. Before you can recover, he reaches for the syringes. The injections feel like a final mockery after what happened on the same table. You stare at the ceiling while filler swells your lips, making them plump and pliable - ideal for the kind of service with which you just paid. The procedure leaves your face flawless and another part of your pride behind in the office. You have allowed yourself to be bought and bartered, and the recognition no longer feels temporary. <<elseif _v == 1>> Two things happen in this room and the two halves do not speak to each other: the payment, brisk and graceless, and then the procedure, delicate and professional, his hands as careful with your lips as if the earlier minutes had not occurred. In the mirror the new mouth is flawless. Two line items, one invoice, a single successful visit. You practice a neutral expression until you have one that fits over the pout. The lips, at least, know how to stay out of it. That is more than you can say for the rest of you, tonight. <<else>> It is only as the filler goes in that you assemble the sentence correctly: you have just paid with your body for the right to pay with your face. The mirror shows a beautiful stranger mouthing something soft. Your own courtesy horrifies you more than anything else in this room - the thanks you said, the way you tidied your skirt, the little laugh you gave at the ceiling. The numbness spreads. By the time you leave, the only part of you with feeling left in it is the part that just became someone else's idea of pretty. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("clinic")>> <<if $money < 1500 and $promiscuity >= 60>> <<set _procedureRoom to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/clinic-procedure-room-" _procedureRoom>> <div class="kink-choice"> The amount is too large, but the doctor greedily licks his lips and offers "intensive postoperative therapy" against the debt... if you agree to become a living model for testing his new instruments. <br><br> * [[Agree|SurgeryBodySex]] * [[Refuse|Clinic]] </div> <<else>> /% 0.6 studio fix: the -60 entry drain moved here from the passage top - the "intensive therapy" branch IS the payment, and the old order charged the poor path twice (-60 entry + -70 scene = -130 on a ~200 pool, evening gone). %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<if setup.coverSurgery(1500)>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(127,255,159,0.35); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #7fff9f;"> Covered by the arrangement. The clinic bills your former contract directly - no charge, no credit, this visit only. </div> <<else>> <<if $money < 1500>> <<set $interestPenalty to Math.min(3, $interestPenalty + 1)>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,80,0,0.45); padding: 8px 14px; margin-bottom: 12px; font-size: 0.85rem; color: #ff8844;"> $1500 on credit. The clinic's financial director personally informs you that the debt has been transferred to Mr. Smith's account - along with a revised interest arrangement. </div> <</if>> <<set $money -= 1500>> <</if>> <<set _bodyRepeat to $surgeryBody gt 0>> <<set $surgeryBody += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', _bodyRepeat ? 8 : 25)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 15)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<set _type to (setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 2)) == 1 ? "tits" : "ass")>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "hypno/surgery/" + _type)>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/" _id _type>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% Beauty>=60 gate, no prom gate - all three personas reachable. BodySex below already runs full decks of four; this passage runs three each. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodyB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The stuff in the IV works right away. The heavy sweet anesthesia scoops you up and floats you off into fuzzy colored dreams where there's only far-off voices and a little clink-clink of instruments, and the scalpels and implants do their thing while you drift in the dark. When you come back, slow and syrupy, your body feels new and strange, all heavy and tight in the good new places where the surgeon worked, and you can't wait to see. The painkillers turn the sting in the stitches into a dull faraway buzz, and they can't hide the fun part - your shape is BIG now, bouncy and over-the-top, like a girl off the cover of one of those magazines. You pet the new curves and feel the firm springy silicone under your skin and giggle. Your whole body's a walking billboard for naughtiness now, catching eyes even under a baggy hoodie. You're so much prettier, and if your head's a bit foggy and slow from the drugs, well, that's cozy too - thinking hard was never the fun part anyway. <<elseif _v == 1>> Going under is the fun part: they tell you to count backwards, and counting is your favorite game because you never get very far. You wake up in slow motion with your body feeling brand new, like a surprise puppy - heavy and bouncy at the same time in the places they upgraded. Everything is BIG and new, and you pet the curves through the blanket, oooh. At work later, everyone is SO jealous, and you do a little proud wiggle even though it pulls. Worth it. Everything is worth it when you come out the other side prettier. <<else>> You surface like coming up in a warm bath, no sharp edges anywhere, just the soft beep of machines and the floaty medicine doing its nice work. The magazine shape is YOU now - the one from the covers, the impossible one - and when the nurse says "beautiful result," you believe her all the way down. At the door on discharge day you clap your hands without thinking, the stitches pull, and you laugh through the little zing. You feel like a present that's been wrapped really, really well - and honestly? You can't wait to be handed over. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodyC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The drug in the IV acts instantly. The heavy anesthesia hauls you off into fragmented color dreams, muffled voices and the clink of instruments the only signal left, while scalpels and implants do the work and your consciousness idles in the dark. When you surface, slow and painful, your body reads as alien - heavier, unnaturally tight where the surgeon rebuilt it. You inspect the changes the way you'd inspect a renovation you paid for. Painkillers dull the sting in the stitches but can't disguise the scale of it: your figure's been pushed to aggressive, hypertrophied, straight off a cheap magazine cover. You run a hand over the new curves and feel the firm, artificial density of silicone under the skin - product, essentially, upgraded stock. The body's a walking advertisement now, pulling eyes through the baggiest clothes, and that's the point; higher spec, higher rate. You're more marketable. The fog the anesthesia left behind is just the line item you paid in mind, and you log it and move on. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wake mid-morning and the audit starts before the pain does: two incisions you can feel, one drain, ceiling tiles in the recovery room - you count them, fourteen - and one body, redesigned overnight into a higher-yielding product. You go over the merchandise with a slow hand under the sheet. Capital, rearranged. The anesthesia fog is the interest the mind pays on the body's renovation, and you note with some distaste that capital which idles - shifts lost to recovery - accrues exactly the wrong kind of interest where you come from. Recovery, then. Back to earning as soon as the stitches allow. <<else>> Afterward, the surgeon gives you a tour of his work: projection here, volume there, every curve finished to showroom standard. You listen without looking down. Your body now advertises the service you sell, and he seems pleased by the consistency. You count fourteen ceiling tiles while he explains the recovery restrictions. Billing resumes before the stitches come out. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodyA', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> The drug in the IV acts instantly. Heavy anesthesia carries you into fragmented dreams of color, muffled voices, and clinking instruments. Scalpels and implants do their work while your awareness drifts in darkness. When you slowly regain consciousness, your body feels alien - too heavy and unnaturally tight wherever the surgeon worked. Painkillers dull the sting of the sutures but cannot hide the scale of the change. Your figure is aggressively provocative, its exaggerated curves copied from cheap porn magazines. You run a hand over the resilient, artificial density beneath your skin. Your body has become a walking advertisement for vice, drawing eyes even through baggy clothes. You are more beautiful, but the fog left by the anesthesia reminds you that every operation takes something from your mind. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wake beneath a new weight that shifts when you breathe. A week later, in the bathroom mirror, a cover girl looks back with sutures marking the edges of the work. You cannot return this body or take it off at night. You lift your chin and test the silhouette because the alternative is crying in a clinic bathroom over fifteen hundred dollars of yourself. <<else>> The nurse reads the aftercare instructions in the tone of a rental agreement: no lifting, avoid exertion, return immediately if an implant ruptures. Nobody mentions the lost income. In the mirror, the new body is spectacular and completely final. It may open doors you could never afford before. You sign the discharge form, and your signature looks small and outdated above the new cleavage. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]] <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<set _bodyRepeat to $surgeryBody gt 0>> <<set $surgeryBody += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', _bodyRepeat ? 8 : 25)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 30)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 15)>> <<set _type to (setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 2)) == 1 ? "titssex" : "asssex")>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "hypno/surgery/" + _type)>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/" _id _type>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodySexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You wake up not in a bed but on a gynecological chair, all weak and swimmy and completely bare. "Rehab," the staff call it, and they take turns supervising you real personally, using your brand-new still-stitched body for their own fun while you're too drug-floppy to do more than wobble. Whatever mumbly no you had just melts in the fuzz, and big rough hands squish and knead your new curves, testing out how bouncy they came out. And you don't fight it - you kind of sink into it. To them you're not a patient, you're a fresh pretty thing they just finished making tastier, and somewhere down in the warm fog that idea feels almost nice. Your body goes soft and eager under their hands, wanting more even through the ache, learning quick and happy how to be a floppy willing toy for whoever's using it. Being that, you decide dreamily, is the easiest job there is. <<elseif _v == 1>> You surface from anesthesia beneath examination lights while several staff members discuss your new body as successful work. "Postoperative therapy" begins before you can gather enough words to object. Hands test every altered curve while the drugs turn protest into sleepy sounds. Praise reaches you more clearly than pain. They call you soft, responsive, and beautifully improved, and you cling to those easy words until being used feels like another inspection a good patient should pass. <<elseif _v == 2>> The recovery room has cameras and no bed, only a padded chair already holding you open. Staff rotate through what they call stress testing, checking how the new shape moves while anesthesia keeps your limbs heavy and your thoughts bright with fog. Somewhere in the haze, shame changes into a pleased little thrill whenever they approve the surgeon's work. By discharge, you remember being handled more clearly than being healed and smile when told you adapted perfectly. <<else>> You wake halfway through "rehabilitation," naked, weak, and surrounded by people treating your body like equipment fresh from assembly. Each rough test pulls at the stitches, but the remaining drugs make surrender warm and resistance impossibly complicated. You decide it is easier to be the pretty new thing they say you are. Your body learns their expectations quickly, softening for every touch until obedience seems like the clinic's final and most successful modification. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodySexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You wake up not in a ward but on a gynecological chair - weak, disoriented, stripped bare. "Rehabilitation," under the staff's personal supervision, which means they help themselves to your freshly-cut, still-aching body while the anesthesia keeps you from doing much about it. Any protest dissolves in the drug haze, and rough hands knead the new artificial curves, load-testing the work. You clock it flatly: they're checking their own product. You don't break so much as confirm what you already knew. To them you're not a patient, you're a cut of fresh meat they've dressed up to sell better, and the cold part is how little that stings anymore. Somewhere under the pain there's a mean, useful spark of pleasure in being used this openly, and you let the body ride it because fighting costs energy you don't have. It settles obediently into the role it's clearly been rebuilt for: a weak-willed instrument for other people's appetites. You just make sure you know the rate that instrument should be charging. <<elseif _v == 1>> Consciousness returns under lights, restraints, and clinical commentary about tissue response. The staff have renamed exploitation rehabilitation and scheduled it while anesthesia prevents meaningful resistance. You document faces and sequence until the drugs erase both. The body responds despite pain, which they treat as validation. You treat it as an involuntary output from altered equipment and preserve that distinction until repeated use makes preservation too expensive. <<elseif _v == 2>> The camera is already recording when you wake in the recovery chair. They test movement, resilience, and compliance as though all three belonged to the surgical package. You allocate limited clarity to breathing, protecting the incisions, and waiting for the drugs to release your limbs. By the end, professional detachment has converted violation into another hostile workplace condition. The conversion keeps you functional; it also makes the newly conditioned obedience dangerously easy to reuse. <<else>> You regain awareness during an alleged stress test conducted by staff who never request consent twice. Anesthesia has reduced refusal to noise, so you observe the procedure from a cold distance and note that the clinic is consuming its fee immediately. Their handling teaches the rebuilt body faster responses than you intended. You leave knowing both the surgery and the exploitation increased its commercial value, which is precisely why Smith's partner clinic bundled them. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryBodySexA', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You wake not in a ward but in a gynecological chair, weak, disoriented, and naked. The clinic staff call what follows "rehabilitation." While the anesthesia still prevents you from moving properly, they use your altered, aching body for themselves. Your protests dissolve in the drug haze as unfamiliar hands roughly test the strength of your new curves. The experience breaks something inside you. To them, you are not a patient but a product they have reshaped to make more desirable. Somewhere beneath the pain and humiliation, your body discovers a perverse response to being used so openly. It yields to every touch, learning the role the clinic intended for it: a compliant instrument for other people's appetites. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wake beneath examination lamps while staff discuss your body as though you are still unconscious. Their "therapy" tests new curves with rough, proprietary hands, and the anesthesia leaves you unable to turn frightened words into effective refusal. Pain and involuntary pleasure become entangled. By the time they finish, you understand that the clinic did not merely alter your shape; it used your helplessness to teach that shape what others expect from it. <<elseif _v == 2>> A camera records the recovery chair and everyone gathered around it. They call the session quality assurance, measuring how your rebuilt body moves and reacts while the remaining drugs trap you inside it. You retreat from the scene until sensation drags you back. The most frightening discovery is not that they regard you as a product, but that part of you has begun to respond like one designed for use. <<else>> Awareness returns in fragments: bright light, exposed skin, pulling stitches, voices praising the surgeon's result. The clinic staff take their payment from a body too sedated to resist and describe each violation as necessary rehabilitation. When you can finally move, obedience has already been rehearsed into reflex. You leave more beautiful, more profitable, and less certain where medical treatment ended and deliberate conditioning began. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<<run setup.venueStories.complete("clinic")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -100)>> <<if $money >= 3000>> <<set $money -= 3000>> <<else>> <<set $money -= 3000>> /% In debt %/ <<set $interestPenalty to Math.min(3, $interestPenalty + 1)>> /% Increase interest for clinic risk %/ <</if>> <<set $surgeryFull += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 40)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 30)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -15)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 13, "hypno/surgery/group")>> <<vid "hypno/surgery/group" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> /% The Doll program gates on prom>=60, so persona is always 2 or 3 here - the neutral inline branch below is unreachable and kept only as a fallback. B and C run decks. %/ <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryFullB', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> This isn't just an operation, it's the whole big makeover, and it's kind of wonderful. A team of surgeons works on you for hours and hours, redoing every inch of you, every curve, fixing all the little "flaws" and tucking liters of silicone in until you match the picture in your head. Deep down in a sweet dark sleep you don't feel a thing, and the good strong medicine they drip into you rinses out all the heavy old worry-thoughts and leaves behind one simple happy rule: be good, do as you're told. When you finally float out of the clinic you know the plain worried girl you used to be got left behind on that table, and you don't miss her. The shop windows show a flawless, dizzyingly pretty doll, and that's YOU now, and you love her. Your face is a perfect smooth mask and your body can make people go weak just walking by. Thinking about anything trickier than being hungry or sleepy gives you a little ache, so you just... don't, and it's the coziest quiet ever. You're the shiniest prize the whole business ever turned out, a perfect living dolly, ready without one single thought to do any fun thing your master dreams up. <<elseif _v == 1>> The whole thing passes like a spa weekend you sleep through - pink dreams, floaty music, somebody always adjusting your blanket. You wake up in pieces over two days and every piece is prettier than the last. Everyone keeps saying "perfect" - the nurses, the mirror, the man from the office who comes to check the finished work - so perfect starts sounding like your new name, and you like your new name. Hard thoughts give you a little owie behind the eyes now, so you just don't have them, and nobody asks you to. You leave the clinic on the man's arm, light as a balloon on a string, going wherever the string goes. <<else>> Wakey-wakey, dolly! You come back from the deep sleep all at once, brand new everywhere, and the first thing you do is look down the front of the hospital gown and shriek with joy. Worrying still exists somewhere, technically - you can see it, the way water slides off somebody in a lotion advert - but it doesn't stick to you anymore. Nothing does. You can't find what you left behind on the table and you're not going to look. Why would you? Look at you. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSurgeryFullC', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> This isn't an operation anymore; it's a demolition, and you signed for it with your eyes open. A team of surgeons works on you for hours, remaking every centimeter of skin, every curve and proportion, cutting out "flaws" and packing in liters of silicone, sanding your individuality off under scalpels and lasers. Your mind, dropped into a deep coma, gets bathed in heavy psychotropics that sluice out the last of your will and wit and lay down a reflex of submission where they used to be. You knew the invoice before you lay down. You lay down anyway. When you finally clear the clinic doors you understand, coldly, that the woman you were died on that table. The shop windows hold a flawless, staggeringly beautiful, completely empty doll. Your face is a frozen ideal mask; your body can drop a stranger into animal want at a glance. Anything more complex than a basic need is turning physically painful to reach for, and you note the shrinking radius of your own thoughts with the last of the sharpness you had. You are the vice industry's finished product, a perfect mannequin - and the one flat consolation you allow yourself is that at least you always knew exactly what you were selling, right up to the moment there was no one left inside to know. <<elseif _v == 1>> The psychotropics do their accounting with the lights out: calculator in, child's abacus out. You run the numbers on the ride home - the rates you can charge now, the arguments you no longer have the vocabulary for - and the arithmetic is, professionally speaking, impeccable. And it was mostly arguments, the things they filed off along with the jawline; you couldn't afford to keep both of you. In the dark of the car you practice the sentence "I knew what I was selling" until it comes out smooth and blank as the new face. It does, eventually. That is the last thing you ever get good at. <<else>> The discharge interview runs twenty minutes: everything nominal, nothing real. Pain nominal, appetite nominal, mood nominal - there is no field on the form for what was removed, because it was never considered a complication. You perform one last audit with what's left of the instrument doing the auditing: beauty maximized, intellect sold to cover the margin, will relinquished in the bundle discount. The knowing is the only part not on display. It had better be enough. It is, as of this morning, what's left. <</if>> <<else>> This is no longer just an operation; it's an act of complete destruction. A team of surgeons works on you for hours, ruthlessly recrafting every centimeter of your skin, every curve and proportion. They remove "flaws" and implant liters of silicone, erasing your individuality under scalpels and lasers. Your mind, plunged into a deep coma, is subjected to the influence of powerful psychotropic drugs that wash out the remnants of will and intellect, replacing them with a conditioned reflex of submission. When you finally leave the clinic walls, you realize that the person you were died on that operating table. A flawless, fantastically beautiful, but absolutely empty doll is reflected in the shop windows. Your face has turned into an ideal, frozen mask, and your body is capable of causing instant animal ecstasy in passers-by. Thinking about anything more complex than basic needs becomes almost physically painful. You are the ultimate triumph of the vice industry, a perfect living mannequin, ready to carry out even your master's filthiest fantasy without a second thought. <</if>> * [[Continue|Afternoon]]

<div style="text-align: center;"> <img src="img/warning.png" alt="Adult content disclaimer" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto; border-radius: 8px; margin-bottom: 1.2rem;"> </div> <div class="dl-disclaimer"> <b>18+</b>This is a work of fiction. All characters are adults aged eighteen or older, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The story depicts debt, coercion and explicit sexual content, including themes some players may find distressing. If you are not of legal age, or if this material is illegal where you live, close the game now. By starting a run you confirm that you are an adult playing of your own volition. </div> <div style="text-align: center;"> <h1 style="font-size: 3rem; color: #ff0080; text-shadow: 0 0 15px #ff0080; margin-bottom: 0.3rem;">DEBT LOOP</h1> <div class="dl-start-sub">Rising Debt · Rebalanced Edition</div> </div> * [[Review your arrangement|Contract]] * [[AUTHOR'S CORNER|AuthorCorner]] <div style="opacity: 0.4; font-size: 0.8rem; margin-top: 1rem;"> * [[Skip intro — review your arrangement|Contract]] </div>

<div style="max-width: 660px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 24px 28px; line-height: 1.55;"> <h2 style="text-align:center; color:#ff0080; text-shadow: 0 0 12px rgba(255,0,128,.4);">Author's Corner</h2> <p>Hello everyone!</p> <p>I'm not the original author; this is just my reworking of an old (great) game. I highly recommend you play the original game and its largest mod - they're amazing!</p> <p>The original game - <b>Debt</b> by edenecstacy, later modded by rootf95:<br> <a href="https://tfgames.site/game/1836/debt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tfgames.site/game/1836/debt</a></p> <p>The most developed and recent mod for the original game, which largely formed the basis for my development - <b>Rising Debt</b> by HoratioTheGreat:<br> <a href="https://tfgames.site/game/2719/rising-debt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tfgames.site/game/2719/rising-debt</a><br> <a href="https://f95zone.to/threads/rising-debt-v1-5-1-horatiothegreat.115269/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">f95zone - Rising Debt thread</a><br> <a href="https://f95zone.to/members/root.3568/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">f95zone - root</a></p> <p>I can't claim credit for creating the original! I'm putting my own "talent" and ideas into someone else's creation, as usual, and seeing where they take me.</p> <p>This game has been a touchstone for my own "creative" work for a long time. It drew me in, and there was always something else to discover. I started by expanding and rebalancing it, then gradually added more of my own while trying to keep what made the original work. I hope I succeeded!</p> <p><b>More about me:</b><br> Where would we be without Patreon?: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/YellowArachnid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">patreon.com/c/YellowArachnid</a><br> For those who aren't squeamish: <a href="https://boosty.to/yellowarachnid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">boosty.to/yellowarachnid</a><br> For those who care: <a href="https://subscribestar.adult/yellowarachnid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">subscribestar.adult/yellowarachnid</a></p> <p>I hope you like the game and its development - I have a vision, and I'm trying to realize it.</p> <p>Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen!</p> </div> <div style="text-align:center; margin-top: 8px;"> * [[Back to title|Start]] </div>

<<vid "place/hospital-room-" "03">> You wake up in a strange place. You remember nothing of the last 24 hours, but by all appearances, you are in some kind of hospital ward. It's well-lit and clean, but there's something unsettling about it. Your head hurts badly, and the bright light certainly doesn't help. Squinting, you sit up and try to make sense of the room. A deep voice speaks from the corner. "You're awake. Good. I'm Mr. Smith. You've been in our care for several days. There was an accident outside one of my establishments. For a while, the specialists weren't certain you would recover. You have. Their work is excellent." His brief chuckle has so little warmth that it sends a shiver down your spine. "Their work is also expensive. The treatment and your stay have been charged to your account. I've prepared an arrangement for repayment." He says *your account* as though you have already agreed to open one. Then he shows you the papers. * [[Next|IntroFemale2]]

"Read the papers when you can sit up. You'll work here until the balance is paid. The building is mine: cafe, bar, several other businesses. There will be work available. You may stay here while we settle the account." You open your mouth to object, but instead, you start coughing. "No need to thank me. Rest now. We can discuss your schedule when you're able to stand." Before you can say anything, he presses a button, and some kind of drug is injected into your IV, quickly plunging you into a deep sleep... This new bed is at least a bit more comfortable than the hospital one, and the fog in your head has cleared slightly. You still remember nothing before the accident, but you remember the conversation with Mr. Smith and the contract he showed you. A sense of dread slowly engulfs you, but before you can panic, there's a knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, a nurse enters - or at least a high-priced model dressed as a nurse. You're fairly certain that neckline doesn't meet medical standards. <<vid "place/nurse" "">> "Hi. You're the new hire? I'm glad you're awake." She's distractingly beautiful, and her easy manner puts you a little more at ease. "Let me check how you're doing. We'll take the rest one thing at a time." As she examines you, she chats about meals, your room, the staff dress code. That last part catches your attention. "Wait. What dress code?" you ask. "It's in the contract. Mr. Smith's staff here are all women. While you're working, you'll be expected to dress and act like one, too." "I don't know how. I've never even used makeup. Where am I supposed to start?" The nurse claps her hands excitedly. "With me. I can help with the makeup. You don't have to learn everything this morning. Hold still a second..." An eternity of hair brushing, makeup application, and an outfit change later, you sit down on the sofa to evaluate the new you. You barely recognize yourself. It's amazing what hair extensions, makeup, and a dress can do. "There. Have a look. It suits you," she says happily. Then suddenly her face turns serious. "I should tell you how the money works here. The brothel pays best. You can choose other work, but the debt takes longer that way. And in the brothel, becoming a girl pays better than dressing as one. You'll earn on your back rather than on your feet. I think you understand." She notices the horror on your face and raises her hands apologetically. "You can say no. The other jobs are there. I wanted you to hear it from someone before you had to choose." She shyly adjusts her bra and for a moment seems lost in thought, then her bright smile returns to its place. "Take care of yourself," she says, heading out the door and leaving you alone with your thoughts. You're terrified of what's happening to you, and of the nurse's and Mr. Smith's hints, but there's little you can do about it right now. Hopefully, you can get rid of your debt without changing yourself too much... right? * [[Start a new life|Morning]]

<<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Iron Floor: the signed debt limit has been reached.</div> [[Close the file|EndingSlave]] <<else>> <<if $supplyNoticeDay neq $days>><<set $supplyNotice to "">><</if>> <h2>Morning - Day $days</h2> <<set $nightFirstPaid to false>> <<set _bn to setup.activeBuffNames()>> <<if _bn neq "" and $days lte 1 and not $arrangementShown>> <<set $arrangementShown to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(127,255,159,.4); background: rgba(127,255,159,.05); padding: 8px 14px; margin: 8px 0 12px 0; font-size: 0.88rem;"> <b style="color:#7fff9f;">ARRANGEMENT ACTIVE</b> - <<print _bn>>. The price is on your principal. The terms are on the sidebar. </div> <</if>> <<if _bn neq "">><div style="font-size: 0.78rem; opacity: 0.65; margin-bottom: 6px;">Arrangement: <<print _bn>></div><</if>> /% PORCELAIN pop-up (docs/OWNER-CLUB-SCENE): the Owner's cream card - rare, gated, 12-day repeat cooldown after entry; the card can wait for a later day. %/ <<if setup.storyFlow.offer("owner:lesson")>> <<set _ownerEvent to setup.ledger.eventMeta.OwnerLesson>> <div class="dl-event-call dl-event-call-owner"> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>SPECIAL INTERRUPTION · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _ownerEvent.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _ownerEvent.call>></h3> <p><<print _ownerEvent.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _ownerEvent.title>></span><span><<print _ownerEvent.total>> chapters</span><span>evening reserved</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Answer the summons">><<goto _ownerEvent.target>><</link>><<link "Pocket the card">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone("OwnerLesson")>><<goto "Morning">><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> /% POP-UP VIGNETTES (docs/SCENE-PACKS-2026-09-11.md): one offer per morning at most, rolled once per day; an unaccepted invitation remains available on a later day. %/ <<if $popDay neq $days>> <<set $popDay to $days>> <<set $pop to setup.sceneRoll()>> <<set $popLast to $pop>> <<else>> /% Same-day re-entry (Smith summons, ledger detours): restore today's offer instead of voiding it. $popLast is nulled the moment the offer is answered %/ /% (accepted or declined), so a consumed offer cannot re-appear. %/ <<set $pop to $popLast>> <</if>> /% A save from the broader draft may retain an invitation excluded from 0.6. %/ <<if $pop and not setup.ledger.eventMeta[$pop]>> <<set $pop to null>><<set $popLast to null>> <</if>> <<if $pop>> <<set _event to setup.ledger.eventMeta[$pop]>> <div class="dl-event-call"> <<if _event.cover>><img class="dl-event-call-cover" @src="_event.cover" alt="" loading="lazy"><</if>> <div class="dl-event-call-index">STORY EVENT</div> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>SPECIAL INTERRUPTION · DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _event.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _event.call>></h3> <p><<print _event.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _event.title>></span><span><<print _event.total>> chapters</span><span>replaces today’s routine</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Enter event">><<set $popLast to null>><<goto _event.target>><</link>><<link "Keep the routine">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone($pop)>><<set $popLast to null>><<goto "Morning">><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<if setup.buff('EndingFurniture.b') and $statShot.iq and not $rollbackUsed>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.25); background: rgba(255,255,255,.03); padding: 6px 12px; margin: 8px 0; font-size: 0.85rem; opacity: 0.85;"> The dark monitor shows her - day one, the ordinary office worker. Roll one stat back to the reflection (once per run): <<link "IQ">><<run window.updateStat('iq', $statShot.iq - $iq)>><<set $rollbackUsed to true>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> · <<link "Beauty">><<run window.updateStat('beauty', $statShot.beauty - $beauty)>><<set $rollbackUsed to true>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> · <<link "Submission">><<run window.updateStat('domsub', $statShot.domsub - $domsub)>><<set $rollbackUsed to true>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> </div> <</if>> <<run setup.smithTaskRoll()>> <<if $smithTask>> <div style="border: 1px solid #7fb3ff; background: rgba(127,179,255,0.06); padding: 8px 14px; margin: 8px 0 12px 0; font-size: 0.88rem;"> <b>SMITH'S MEMO ★</b><br> <<if not $smithTaskIntro>><<set $smithTaskIntro to true>> The note is heavier than usual. It contains your schedule, annotated in red ink by a man who has apparently been reading it all along. "I will occasionally have work for you outside your usual schedule," the covering line says. "You may decline. Each uncovered refusal adds one percentage point to your interest rate and $300 to your principal. Complete the work, and I may remove a previous refusal penalty. The star marks work I am monitoring. It does not promise better pay. Read the terms before you answer."<br><br> <</if>> <<print $smithTask.label>> <<if $smithTask.ledger>> <br><span style="opacity:0.45; font-size:0.8rem; font-style:italic;"><<print $smithTask.ledger>></span> <</if>> <<if $smithTask.target and setup.taskHint[$smithTask.target]>> <br><b style="font-size:0.9rem;">Do: <<print setup.taskHint[$smithTask.target]>> · today.</b> <</if>> <<if $maintCredit gt 0>> <br><span style="opacity:0.6; font-size:0.82rem;">File: <<print "\u25CF".repeat($maintCredit)>><<print "\u25CB".repeat(2 - $maintCredit)>> service credit</span> <</if>> <br><span style="font-size:0.85rem;"> <<if $smithTaskAccepted>> * Accepted for today - the ★ marks the spot on today's schedule. <<else>> * <<link "Accept">><<set $smithTaskAccepted to true>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> <span style="opacity:0.5;">(do it today - the spot is marked ★)</span> <</if>> <<if not $smithTaskDeferred and not $smithTaskAccepted>>  ·  <<link "Reschedule ($75)">><<set $money -= 75>><<set $smithTaskPending to $smithTask>><<set $smithTaskDeferred to true>><<set $smithTask to null>><<set $smithTaskCd to 0>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> <span style="opacity:0.5;">(tomorrow, reward halved)</span> <</if>> <<if not $smithTaskAccepted>>  ·  <<link "Decline">><<if $maintCredit gt 0>><<set $maintCredit -= 1>><<set $smithTask to null>><<set $smithTaskCd to 2>><<set $smithTaskMsg to "Service history covers the deviation. File: " + "\u25CF".repeat($maintCredit) + "\u25CB".repeat(2 - $maintCredit) + " - M.S.">><<else>><<run setup.addRefusal()>><<set $smithTask to null>><<set $smithTaskCd to 2>><<set $smithTaskMsg to "Declined. Your rate is adjusted by +1%, and $300 has been added to the principal. - M.S.">><</if>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> <span style="opacity:0.5;">(<<if $maintCredit gt 0>>covered by credit<<else>>+1% rate: <<print $interest>>% → <<print $interest + 1>>% · principal +$300<</if>>)</span> <</if>>  ·  [[the folded page|SmithSchedule]] </span> </div> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _morningKey to "morning/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _morningVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _morningKey _morningVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> Sunlight! It comes through the grimy window all golden and sleepy and lights up a whole slow galaxy of dust, floating and sparkling just for you. Somewhere past the wall the city yawns and stretches and starts being loud - a big busy place with something about money in it that you don't have to think about yet. Your body's a little achy from yesterday but that's okay, because a brand new day means brand new chances to be looked at, and getting ready is the best game there is. What do you want to do first? <<elseif _p is 2>> Grimy light through a grimy window, dust turning in it like it's got nowhere better to be. Beyond the wall the city clears its throat and gets back to business - a city that doesn't forgive debts, which is fine, because you've stopped expecting it to. Your body files yesterday's fatigue under cost of doing business. The day's already open for trade and it wants a decision. What's first on the schedule? <<else>> /% Base tier of the phase screens carries a deck: this is the voice the clean route lives in, and the clean route is the one that sees the same screen every day for thirty-odd days. %/ <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMorningScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Sunlight streams through the grimy window of your cheap room, highlighting dust motes dancing in the air. Beyond the wall, the hum of the waking city can be heard - a city that doesn't forgive debts. Your body still remembers yesterday's fatigue, but the new day already demands decisions. <<elseif _v == 1>> You are awake before the alarm again, and you lie still for a while working out whether that is discipline or dread. Through the wall the neighbor's radio starts up mid-sentence, someone reading traffic reports to a city that has already left. The ceiling has a crack in it shaped like a river delta. You have had a lot of time to notice this. <<elseif _v == 2>> Cold morning. The building's hot water gave up sometime in the night and the radiator has been decorative since you moved in, so you dress fast, in layers, in the gray light. On the table are the coins you emptied out of your coat last night, stacked by size the way you have started doing without deciding to. <<else>> Rain in the night has got in somewhere above the window, and there is a dark tongue of damp coming down the wall that was not there last week. Not your problem, strictly - you rent the room, not the building - but you look at it for a while anyway over the edge of the blanket, spreading quietly, on a schedule of its own. <</if>> What do you plan to do first? <</if>> * [[Look in the mirror|Mirror]] (Beauty+) * [[Take a shower|Shower]] (Promiscuity-) * [[Masturbate|Masturbation]] (Promiscuity+, IQ-) * [[Read books|ReadBooks]] (IQ+) * [[Go to the morning shift at the Cafe|Cafe]] (Base Income)<<print setup.star("cafe")>> * <<link "Skip the morning">><<run window.updateStat('stamina', 20)>><<goto "Noon">><</link>> (Rest: +20 stamina) <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -10)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', ($wellRested ? 6 : 5))>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _mirrorKey to "mirror/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _mirrorVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _mirrorKey _mirrorVariant>> <<if _p >= 3>> Mirror girl! You hurry through the cold bathroom to see her, because mornings are when she's sleepiest and cutest. You press your nose almost to the glass and study her: the lashes, the lips, the soft pink blur of her, and she studies you right back with those big shiny eyes that never seem to be thinking anything at all. Perfect. Matching. <<elseif _p == 2>> You take inventory in the cracked mirror the way a shopkeeper counts stock: face, tilt, smile - the good one, the working one. The bathroom is a dump and the lamp buzzes like a dying wasp, but the merchandise in the glass is holding up, and in this line of work that's the only weather report that matters. <<else>> You stand before the cracked mirror in a cramped bathroom that smells permanently damp. The cheap lamp flickers above you, picking out a face that seems less familiar every morning and changes you are increasingly afraid to name. <</if>> <<if $surgeryLips > 0>> Your attention is inevitably drawn to your lips - they are now unnaturally plump, constantly moist, and seem to have a life of their own. Every time you apply lipstick, you feel how the fillers under your skin make your smile petulant and provocative. <</if>> <<if $surgeryBody > 0>> Your body under the thin fabric of your nightgown has changed beyond recognition. Your breasts are heavy and high, and the curve of your hips is aggressively sexual. You run your hands over your new forms, feeling their alien, plastic elasticity that so draws the eyes of clients. <</if>> <<if $surgeryFull > 0>> But now, it's not a human looking back at you, but a flawless, expensive doll. Your face has lost all expression, becoming a frozen mask of ideal beauty. Your skin seems porcelain, and your proportions are beyond human limits. You are a triumph of surgery and shame, a living mannequin for the fulfillment of others' fantasies. <</if>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirrorB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Then comes the best game: making her prettier. You do the lashes and she flutters them, you do the lips and she pouts them, and every little stroke of the brush makes both of you happier, which is just good math. Somewhere under the counter there used to be a feeling - a squirmy, sour one, something about not recognizing - but it must have gone down the drain with the old toothpaste, because now there's only the warm hum of a job you love. When she's finished, you blow her the kiss and she catches it, same as always. She's your best friend and your whole job and, a small quiet voice adds, very nearly all that's left - but the voice is tiny and the lip gloss is very, very shiny, and only one of those things can hold your attention at a time. <<elseif _v == 1>> You practice smiles with the mirror girl: sweet, sorry, flirty, and the big empty one that makes angry men become nice. She copies every expression perfectly. You cannot remember which smile belongs to you when nobody is watching, so you choose the prettiest. Mascara, blush, gloss. Each step makes the girl clearer and the room less important. When you finish, she looks ready for anything someone might ask. You feel proud of her. She has become so good at being you. <<elseif _v == 2>> The mirror girl looks sleepy, so you wake her with bright lipstick and sparkles at the corners of her eyes. Soon she is smiling again. Pretty girls should smile; everyone says so, and everyone cannot be wrong. For one second, you wonder why her eyes still look tired. Then the light catches the gloss and the question vanishes. You kiss two fingertips and press them to the glass. She meets you exactly halfway. <<else>> You count your best features and reach three before the numbers get slippery: lips, breasts, and the whole middle part. That is probably more than enough. People rarely ask you to count when they are looking anyway. You brush your hair until it shines and tell the reflection she is a good girl. The words make both of you glow. Whatever else used to live behind those eyes, praise reaches farther now. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirrorC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The gaze that meets yours in the glass is heavy-lidded and knowing - the look clients pay to have aimed at them, resting on its default target. You run a fingertip along your cheekbone with detached approval. Whatever Smith's city has been making of you, the manufacturing is nearly complete, and you've stopped pretending you don't sign off on each stage. You paint the mouth, set the hair, calibrate the shine - a gunsmith's morning, methodical and almost tender. There was nausea once, in this exact spot; you remember it the way you remember an old song, all melody and no feeling. Beauty stopped being your face a long time ago. It's your instrument, your license, your one legal weapon in this city - and you keep your weapons immaculate. <<elseif _v == 1>> You inspect the reflection for wear: shadows beneath the eyes, a bruise near the collarbone, lipstick ground into a cracked corner of the mouth. Nothing concealer and posture cannot convert into deliberate mystery. Ten minutes later, fatigue has become languor and damage has become style. The mirror shows no truth, only a successful correction. You approve the work and take the instrument back into circulation. <<elseif _v == 2>> The face in the glass has become a dashboard. Skin reports sleep, pupils report appetite, the mouth reports what rate the evening can support. You read each signal without vanity and adjust what can be adjusted. When the numbers look favorable, you stop. Admiration is optional; maintenance is not. Still, as you turn away, the reflection catches you with your own practiced look, and you feel the smallest professional thrill at how convincing it remains. <<else>> You test three versions of yourself beneath the bad light: respectable, available, expensive. The transitions require only a change in lipstick and the angle of your chin. Once, such flexibility would have felt like dishonesty. Now it feels like inventory. You settle on expensive. The debt may own the schedule, but presentation still affects the price. You leave the mirror wearing the version with the best margins. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirror', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Your eyes look heavy beneath the poor light, softened by the low, persistent arousal that never entirely leaves you now. You trace one cheekbone and wonder how much of your former face remains beneath the cosmetics and imposed femininity. Applying lipstick no longer brings the nausea it once did. Instead, you feel an uneasy satisfaction in knowing how easily a glance or a turn of the shoulder can redirect someone else's desire. Beauty is becoming more than an appearance. It is a weapon, one of the few this city permits you to carry, and survival keeps teaching you to sharpen it. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wipe steam from the cracked glass and search for the face you remember. The proportions are familiar enough, yet the expressions arrive from somewhere else: lowered lashes, parted lips, a softness learned under observation. You correct the expression and watch it return when your attention slips. Makeup covers the evidence without resolving it. By the time you leave, the stranger looks composed. You are less certain about the person wearing her. <<elseif _v == 2>> Morning light exposes every change the neon forgives. You catalog them carefully: the sharpened brow, the fuller mouth, the instinctive tilt that invites a second look. None appeared overnight. That makes them harder to excuse. You apply cosmetics with restrained precision, restoring control one line at a time. The finished face is beautiful and useful. You resent both facts, then practice the smile that profits from them. <<else>> You hold an old mental picture beside the reflection and try to identify what survived. The eyes, perhaps. The frown. Even those have learned new habits. Memory proves less reliable every morning. The brush moves through its familiar sequence while you think. Conceal, define, brighten. When the routine ends, doubt remains underneath but no longer shows. In this city, invisible damage is considered excellent presentation. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Noon]]

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -($wellRested ? 4 : 3))>> <<if $promiscuity < 0>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _showerKey to "shower/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _showerVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _showerKey _showerVariant>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShowerB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Water! You could stay under it forever - warm rain that belongs only to you, bubbles that smell like peaches, the little squeaky song the pipes sing. You wash everywhere, twice, because being clean feels like being new, and being new feels like being extra pretty. Somewhere in the middle you forget what exactly you were washing off, which must mean it's gone. That's how washing works. You're almost sure that's how washing works. You stand with your face up in the spray for a long, long time, thinking about nothing with tremendous skill. The water drums on your skull and rinses right through, the way it can now that there's so much room in there, and what comes out the other side is quiet and smooth and pink. Even a doll gets hosed down between shows, some faraway voice remarks. You laugh, because dolls are pretty, and turn the hot tap higher. <<elseif _v == 1>> You make mountains out of bubbles and give each one a silly name. They slide down your body and disappear before you can remember all of them, but that is fine; names are not what bubbles are for. The water washes away makeup, sweat, and every complicated thought that tries to stay attached. When you step out, the mirror is foggy and your head matches it. Clean, warm, empty. Perfect. <<elseif _v == 2>> The shower smells like peaches today, so you pretend you are a peach being polished for a very fancy display. You scrub until your skin turns pink and shiny, then spin beneath the spray to rinse every side. A dark mark on your thigh makes you pause. You cannot remember who left it, only that somebody wanted you very much. That feels nicer than worrying, so you hum and wash around it. <<else>> You sing into the shampoo bottle because the bathroom echo makes you sound famous. Half the words vanish, but the high notes come out pretty. Pretty is the important part of songs, just like it is the important part of you. By the last chorus, yesterday has gone down the drain in gray ribbons. You wrap yourself in a towel and bow to the invisible audience. They adore you. Invisible people are always so polite. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShowerC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The water pressure in this building is a war crime, but you've learned the trick: shoulders first, then neck, then stand dead center where the stream is honest. You wash off the night the way a bartender wipes the counter - no scrubbing, no drama, just routine restoration of the working surface. The stares, the hands, the whispered numbers: down the drain, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. And yet - every time, somewhere around the third minute, the ritual turns real. The noise of the water builds a small white room where none of them have ever been: no Smith, no ledger, no appetite pressed against your hip. You stand in it and breathe. Whatever you sold this week, these fifteen minutes weren't on the invoice. You dry off slower than you need to, keeping custody of yourself a little longer. <<elseif _v == 1>> You inspect bruises beneath the spray, sorting them by severity and probable source. Soap, heat, antiseptic, moisturizer. The routine is less cleansing than servicing, but serviced equipment lasts. Then the water reaches the back of your neck and calculation briefly stops. You remain there until the pipes complain. Five unpaid minutes of stillness: an indulgence with no customer and no witness. <<elseif _v == 2>> The first rinse removes the cosmetics. The second removes the room smells. The third is for whatever cannot be named without giving it weight. You work methodically, never scrubbing hard enough to compromise tomorrow's appearance. Steam erases the walls, leaving only water and breath. You know the refuge is chemical, temporary, and metered by the building's failing boiler. You take it anyway. Professionals use every available resource. <<else>> You bring the night's cash into the bathroom in a sealed bag and count it while the water heats. By the time steam fills the stall, every bruise has a number attached. Pricing the damage does not reduce it, but uncertainty is worse. Under the spray, the numbers blur without disappearing. You wash carefully, preserve what needs preserving, and leave the shower ready to work again. That phrase once would have horrified you. Now it simply gets you moving. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShower', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Cold, stinging water strikes your shoulders and steals your breath. In the mold-stained stall, you try to wash away more than sweat and street dust: the leering faces, the supposedly accidental touches, the dirty whispers carried home from yesterday's shift. You scrub until your skin burns, as though humiliation might come off with the top layer. For a few minutes, the curtain removes the rest of the world. There is no Smith, no contract, no debt, and no treacherous warmth answering memories you wish only disgusted you. You close your eyes and breathe beneath the water. It cannot restore everything the city has taken, but it gives you one private ritual of refusal, one small piece of yourself returned clean. <<elseif _v == 1>> The water begins brown around your feet, carrying away street dust and old makeup. You scrub until it runs clear, then continue because memory has no visible color and you cannot tell when enough is gone. Behind the curtain, the city becomes only plumbing and distant traffic. No one can look at you here. No one can buy the next minute. You stand beneath the failing stream and guard that small fact until the water turns cold. <<elseif _v == 2>> You wash in a strict sequence: hair, face, arms, torso, legs. Order helps. It turns the body back into anatomy instead of the collection of surfaces other people assessed yesterday. When your hand reaches a bruise, the sequence breaks. You breathe, begin again, and finish. Cleanliness cannot undo anything, but completing the ritual proves you can still give yourself an instruction and obey it for your own sake. <<else>> Steam gathers on the cracked tiles while you work soap into your skin. The scent is cheap and medicinal, yet it gradually replaces perfume, smoke, and strangers. Layer by layer, the room begins to smell like no one. You close your eyes and imagine the debt dissolving as easily as makeup. It does not. Still, when you step out, your thoughts are quieter and your body feels temporarily returned. Temporary ownership is ownership enough for one morning. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Noon]]

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', ($wellRested ? 6 : 5))>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "female/mirror/slut")>> <<vid "female/mirror/slut" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMastB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Your hand is already there when you wake up, like it never really left. It's just what mornings are now - teeth, hair, this. You don't bother with a fantasy. You don't need one. There's warmth and colors behind your eyelids and your own fingers, which know their job better than your head knows anything. You lose count of how many times, but that's fine - counting is hard even with clothes on. Afterward you lie in the tangle of sheets, sticky and pleased with yourself, humming a song that might not be a real song. Somewhere far away there's a day waiting, with money things in it. It can wait a tiny bit longer. Everything important is already here, purring. <<elseif _v == 1>> You ride the pillow in slow, lazy circles, half dreaming, singing little nonsense words in your head - good girl, pretty girl, round and round. The fantasy is simple, the fantasy is always simple now: everyone looking at you. Everyone clapping. You give the invisible audience a show and the audience loves you, loves you, loves you. You finish with a squeak and a shiver and lie there glowing. What day is it? A day. There are only two kinds anyway - days when people are nice to you, and days when you make them nicer. Your tummy growls. Breakfast is a much more interesting thought than whatever the other thoughts were. <<elseif _v == 2>> There's a mirror across the room, and that's all you need these days. You watch her - the girl with the messy hair and the flushed cheeks, moving under the blanket - and she watches you back, and honestly the two of you make a great team. You wave. She waves. You both laugh, and the laugh turns into a gasp partway through. She's so pretty when she comes. You could watch her all morning. You used to worry about something, in this bed, in the mornings - the worry had a shape and a name and everything. Gone now. Whatever it was, the girl in the mirror clearly doesn't miss it, and you trust her completely. Your head feels like a warm milkshake. It's your favorite feeling. It might be your only one. <<else>> The toy buzzes under your pillow before you remember turning it on. That is a lovely surprise, like finding candy in a pocket. You press it where the buzzing feels brightest and let your legs fall open, watching the ceiling blur into soft pink circles. You come quickly, then again because the button is easy to find and stopping would require a reason. Afterward, the clock says the morning has moved without you. You kiss the toy, tuck it back under the pillow, and promise to remember breakfast. Promises are much easier than remembering. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMastC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No ceremony, no guilt, no warm-up. You know this body the way a locksmith knows locks - which pin, what pressure, how long. The fantasy is efficient too: a specific pair of hands from last night, a specific voice, edited and improved in the retelling. You work yourself with brisk professional strokes, chasing the release, not the romance. Two quick, businesslike orgasms later you're stretching against the headboard, loose-limbed and clear-eyed, appetite awake in every sense. Once upon a time this took half a morning of shame and bargaining. Now it's gymnastics. You're not sure whether that's progress or damage, and your body votes that it doesn't care. <<elseif _v == 1>> Even alone, you perform. Some habit from the cam nights: you arch for the empty room, narrate filth to nobody in a low murmur, angle yourself toward the best light out of sheer muscle memory. There's a running commentary in your head, dirty and funny at once, and the laughter mixes into the arousal until you can't tell them apart. The finish leaves you buzzing and cocky rather than wrecked - though you notice, later, reaching for a word that isn't there, that the morning's clarity got spent along with everything else. Fair trade, you decide. Words were always the cheapest thing you owned. <<elseif _v == 2>> You wake up already wet from a dream set somewhere unglamorous - the bar's back room, of all places, cardboard and spilled beer - and your body doesn't see the problem. It wants what it wants, loudly, first thing. You've long since stopped negotiating; the toy lives under the pillow now, next to where the fear used to sleep. You take yourself apart in five practiced minutes, biting your lip out of consideration for the neighbors. Afterward you stretch like a cat in a sunbeam and lie admiring the ceiling, the ache, the whole disgraceful machinery of you. Shame checks in sometimes, briefly, like a relative passing through town. You always tell it the same thing: you should see what I charge for this. <<else>> You set a timer for ten minutes and treat the urge like maintenance. The body has been restless since dawn, attention snagging on every remembered hand from the night before, so you give it a controlled release before it starts making decisions for you. The technique is exact, the result immediate. When the timer sounds, you are already cleaning the toy and reviewing the day's options. Pleasure used to interrupt your life. Now you schedule it, service it, and move on - though the satisfied pulse between your legs makes the arrangement feel less clinical than you pretend. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMast', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The alarm screeches on the nightstand. You pull the blanket closer instead of getting up. It is warm and smells of your skin; for a few more minutes, you can pretend there is nothing outside it. Your hand drifts down toward the heat already gathering between your legs. Debt and Smith's demands recede as obscene fantasies take their place, vivid enough to make your cheeks burn. Your breath catches. Your fingers move faster, chasing pleasure hard enough to drown out the fear. You imagine clients' greedy hands and rough, commanding voices, the obedience they expect before you have even understood the request. When the orgasm hits, your back arches off the empty bed. For a few seconds there is no account to settle and no one to answer to. Then you open your eyes. The room is still stuffy, and the day is still waiting, but your thoughts will not gather. Your body is satisfied; even the simplest decision feels heavy. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wake halfway inside a dream that has no plot, only heat - a voice giving orders you can't quite hear, hands that know exactly where they're going. Your own hand is already moving before you're properly awake, slipping down under the waistband as if it made the decision without you. You keep your eyes closed to stay in the dream a little longer, hips rocking slowly against your fingers, breath going ragged in the stuffy room. The finish takes you by surprise, sharp and bright, and you bite the pillow to keep it quiet. Afterward the morning arrives all at once - gray light, unpaid bills, the smell of your own skin. Your body is loose and satisfied and your head is full of warm sand. Thinking can wait. Everything can wait. That's the problem. <<elseif _v == 2>> You open the window first, because the shame needs air. Then you lie back and take your time with it, drawing the pleasure out in long, deliberate strokes, stopping every time the edge comes close - once, twice, four times, until your thighs are trembling and the city noise below has turned into a distant audience. That's the fantasy this morning: being watched. Being appraised. Being worth the price they'd pay. When you finally let go, the orgasm rolls through you in slow waves that leave you laughing weakly at the ceiling, a small, scandalized sound you barely recognize. The clarity you traded for it doesn't come back. Names and figures feel slippery for the rest of the morning, and the debt, for one warm hour, seems like something happening to someone else. <<else>> You tell yourself you are only trying to quiet the ache. No fantasies, no names, nothing borrowed from work - just your own hand beneath the blanket and the stubborn hope that private pleasure still belongs entirely to you. Then a customer's voice slips into your thoughts, followed by the memory of being watched, and your body responds before you can reject either. The orgasm arrives tangled with shame. You lie still afterward, wondering whether solitude counts when the city has learned how to follow you inside your own head. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Noon]]

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<set _studyRoom to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/home-study-" _studyRoom>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', ($wellRested ? 6 : 5))>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -3)>> <<if $promiscuity < 0>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReadB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The letters keep moving. They never used to do that - you're pretty sure. After reading the same paragraph three times, you draw hearts in the margin instead. Those come out perfectly. Halfway down page two, you remember that books used to be easy. The thought hurts, so you think about your new lip gloss until it passes. Still, one fact stays in your head. You repeat it all morning, pleased with yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> You choose the thinnest book. Strategy. See? Still smart. You mouth each word slowly. Sentences behave; numbers don't. You finish two pages. In your head, the strict tutor says, "Well done," and the praise feels better than the coffee. For the rest of the morning you feel smart. That may not be the same as being smart, but today it will do. <<elseif _v == 2>> The textbook has been under your coffee cup for three days. This morning you wipe off the ring and try again. The words feel heavy. Your eyes keep slipping toward the mirror and your nails. Then one formula suddenly makes sense. You gasp and clap once before remembering you're alone. It used to be this easy all the time, didn't it? You write the formula on your wrist before it can disappear. <<else>> You use lipstick to mark every sentence you understand. Soon the page is covered in bright little lines, and although some marks circle the same sentence twice, the color makes progress look real. Real enough is good enough this morning. One idea stays with you: interest grows when ignored. You repeat it until the words stop drifting apart, then write it on the mirror where tomorrow-you cannot miss it. Tomorrow-you is sometimes silly, but today-you has left her a very smart present. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtReadC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You are not reading for pleasure. You want to understand the rules Smith uses against you. You dog-ear the chapter on compound interest and cover the margins with calculations. After half an hour your attention begins to wander toward easier ways of using a sturdy desk. You bargain with yourself: one more chapter, then work. By noon the margins hold three possible ways out. Two are useless. You are not sure about the third. <<elseif _v == 1>> Laundry day. You study in stockings and an old shirt, your hair pinned up with a pencil. Distraction arrives every few pages, warm and specific, and every time you pull yourself back. You no longer study the way you did before the debt. Now you work fast: identify the problem, find what it wants, solve it, move on. Twelve pages later, you have only lost the thread twice. Good enough. <<elseif _v == 2>> Economics sounds filthy now: liquidity, exposure, aggressive positions, servicing debt. You laugh at a sentence about collateral, then read it again until you understand what it actually says. Your concentration is worse than it used to be, but persistence still works. You finish the chapter out of spite. The city gets enough of you at night; this hour remains yours. <<else>> You choose contract law for obvious reasons. The prose is dry, precise, and difficult to twist with a smile. Clause by clause, you learn where the words hide their leverage. By noon, three pages are crowded with notes. One possible loophole is circled hard enough to tear the paper. It may be worthless. You will check. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtRead', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You clear the unpaid bills and salon flyers from the desk and open an old textbook. At first the lines blur. Your thoughts keep drifting toward easier, dirtier things, but you read the paragraph again and work through the first problem. The second comes faster. By the fourth, the noise in your head has quieted enough for you to follow an argument from beginning to end. Nothing outside the room has changed, but when you close the book you feel steadier. Smith has a claim on nearly everything you own. He does not have this hour. <<elseif _v == 1>> Someone before you filled the margins with neat pencil notes: underlined theorems, small corrections, one triumphant "YES" beside a proof that takes you three tries to follow. Their notes help. Slowly, your mind begins to keep pace. Your coffee goes cold unnoticed. When you finally close the book, the city outside looks a little less mysterious. It has rules. Rules can be learned. <<elseif _v == 2>> You read aloud because silence invites other voices: clients, Smith, the soft chime of another interest charge. Definitions and proofs sound awkward in your mouth, then easier. For the first half hour your mind resists. After that, something catches. You finish the exercises in a steady rhythm and keep going past the timer. Whatever happens tonight, this hour was yours. <<else>> You copy a difficult chapter by hand. It is slow, almost punitive work, but the act forces every sentence through your mind instead of letting your eyes skim over it. Ink stains your fingers; understanding arrives in small, stubborn increments. When you finish, the debt remains and the city has not softened. Still, the page in your handwriting proves that your thoughts can follow a line from beginning to end. Today that modest fact feels less like study than resistance. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Continue|Noon]]

<<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Iron Floor: the signed debt limit has been reached.</div> [[Close the file|EndingSlave]] <<else>> <<set _cityNoon to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/city-noon-" _cityNoon>> <h2>Noon - Self-Improvement</h2> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> The city at midday is a big warm buzzing anthill, and you love it. Giant shiny holograms bump into each other in the air, all promising to make people young and pretty and debt-free - for a price, but the prices are written in the kind of squiggles you don't read anymore. You've got a few sparkly hours before your real shift, and there are so many nice things to do to yourself first. <<elseif _p is 2>> The city at noon is a sweltering anthill, and every hologram stacked over the street is selling the same thing you sell - eternal youth, instant relief, for a certain price, of course. You know the markup on that pitch better than the ad men do. A few hours before the main shift; time to reinvest in the merchandise before it clocks in. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtNoonScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> At noon the city is a sweltering anthill. Advertising holograms overlap above the street, promising eternal youth and instant relief from debt - for a price, of course. You have a few hours before your main shift to take care of yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> Lunch hour, and the pavements fill with office people carrying sandwiches in paper bags, all moving at the same unhurried pace, all going back at the same time. You stand in the middle of it waiting for a light to change and feel the loneliness of being the only person on the street who is not on anybody's schedule but the interest's. <<elseif _v == 2>> The heat sits in the street between the buildings and does not move. There is a queue at the cash machine on the corner, six people long, everyone doing arithmetic they would rather not do in public. You walk past it. You already know your number to the dollar, and you would rather it stayed a private figure for another few hours. <<else>> A man with a folding table has set up outside the transit entrance and is selling watch batteries, phone cables and, for some reason, single roses. Above his head a hologram thirty feet high promises a new life in six easy installments. The two businesses seem to be doing about the same trade. You have a few hours before the shift that actually pays. <</if>> <</if>> <<if $stamina <= 0>> <div style="color: #ff4444; border: 1px solid #ff4444; padding: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> YOU ARE EXHAUSTED. Your body refuses to obey, and your eyes are closing with fatigue. You cannot continue working today. <br><br> * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] </div> <<else>> Where will you head? * [[Mr. Smith's Office|Office]] (Money/Transformation) * [[Library|Library]] (Intelligence)<<print setup.star("library")>> * [[Church|Church]] (Purification) * [[Beauty Salon|BeautySalon]] (Appearance) * [[Clinic|Clinic]] (Body) * [[Skip|Afternoon]] <</if>> <</if>>

<<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Iron Floor: the signed debt limit has been reached.</div> [[Close the file|EndingSlave]] <<else>> <<set _cityEvening to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>> <<vid "place/city-evening-" _cityEvening>> <h2>Evening - Work</h2> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> The sky goes all pink and purple and then the club signs blink awake one by one, and your tummy does the happy flip it does. For other people this is bedtime, kind of; for you it's when the good part starts - lights and music and people who want to look at you. The city wants its money, but the city always says that, and mostly what you hear is that it's time to go be adored. Time for the fun job. <<elseif _p is 2>> The sky bruises over into neon and the clubs flick their signs on, one appetite at a time. For most people this is where the day winds down; for you it's the main floor, the shift that actually moves the needle on the interest. The city wants its payment and you've made your peace with being how it collects. Time to clock in. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtEveningScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The sky darkens as the first nightclub signs flicker on. Other people are heading home. You are heading to the shift that has to cover the interest. The city is waiting for its payment. <<elseif _v == 1>> The pavements reverse direction: everyone who spent the day in the towers now flows toward the transit entrances, coats over arms, talking about dinner. You go the other way, against all of them, which is a small daily indignity you have decided not to mind. Somewhere behind you a shutter comes down over a shopfront. Ahead, the signs are warming up. <<elseif _v == 2>> Rain again, fine and persistent, and the neon has started to run in the puddles the way it does - whole signs broken up and rearranged underfoot, the same promises upside down. You turn your collar up at the corner and stand a moment doing the calculation you do every evening at this exact spot: what tonight has to earn. Then the light changes and you cross with everybody else. <<else>> The changeover hour has its own particular quiet, thirty minutes when the day's noise has stopped and the night's has not started. Delivery vans idle. A man hoses down the pavement outside a restaurant. Someone tests a sound system inside a doorway, twice, and gives up. You use the quiet to decide where you are going. It never takes long, and it is never quite a free choice, but the ritual of standing still to make it is one you have kept. <</if>> Time for your main job. <</if>> <<if $stamina <= 0>> <div style="color: #ff4444; border: 1px solid #ff4444; padding: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> YOU ARE EXHAUSTED. You don't even have the strength to stand on your feet. Work today is impossible. <br><br> * [[Skip the evening|Night]] (Too tired to work) * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] </div> <<else>> * [[Office Work|WorkOffice]] (IQ)<<print setup.star("office")>> * [[Reception Desk|WorkOfficeAlt]] (Soft → escalates)<<print setup.star("reception")>> * [[Photoshoot|WorkModel]] (Beauty)<<print setup.star("model")>> * [[Webcam Session|WorkWebcam]] (Prom + Beauty)<<print setup.star("webcam")>> * [[Bar Shift|Bar]] (Mix)<<print setup.star("bar")>> * [[Library Shift|WorkLibrary]] (IQ, steady → escalates) * [[Help at the Church|WorkChurch]] (Moral) <</if>> <</if>>

<<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Iron Floor: the signed debt limit has been reached.</div> [[Close the file|EndingSlave]] <<else>> <h2>Night - The Choice</h2> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _nightKey to "night/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _nightVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _nightKey _nightVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> The city out the window never goes to sleep - the lights stay on and the cars keep whooshing, and somewhere in all of it is that money thing, ticking away where you don't have to watch it. Night's the time for the easy choice: go out and let some nice man be sweet to you for a while and come home with a little extra, or curl up and sleep until the morning's shiny again. Near your house and down the warm glowy alleys, there are people already waiting who want to pay just to have you near them. Isn't that nice? Every one of them is a little less owed - and something else too, some faraway word about losing your "self," but you can never quite hold onto that one, and it doesn't feel like it's about you. <<elseif _p is 2>> The city outside never sleeps - ad lights, engine noise, the debt ticking upward in the dark whether you look at it or not. Night is the last decision of the day and the coldest: put the body back on the market for one more round, or bank the hours in sleep and come back at full strength. You run the margins on it the way you run everything now. Near your building, down the alleys, the buyers are already loitering. Each one is a chip off the balance - and, sure, another step toward that "final loss of self" the mind used to fret about. You've stopped itemizing that part. It doesn't change the rate. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtNightScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The city outside the window never sleeps. Advertising lights and the noise of cars remind you that life continues while you are trapped in this endless cycle of debt and interest. Night is the time of the hardest choice: to try and wring a little more money from fate by sacrificing yourself, or to fall into a restless sleep to gather strength for tomorrow's struggle. Near your house and in the alleys, those who are ready to pay for your attention are already waiting. Each of them is a chance to reduce the amount of debt, but also a step towards the final loss of your "self." <<elseif _v == 1>> The hour when the city changes populations. The last of the office windows go dark in the towers, the buses run emptier and further apart, and a different set of people comes up out of the transit stations to work the other half of the clock. You know several of them by sight now. None of you ever says anything. Somewhere out there the night is willing to pay for you, and somewhere behind you is a bed and a locked door. The arithmetic is always the same arithmetic. It is only your tolerance for it that moves. <<elseif _v == 2>> The building settles into its night noises: someone's television two floors down, the lift starting and stopping, a tap running somewhere in the pipes. Through the window the street does its slow neon breathing, red into blue into red. You stand there a while with your coat still on, which is how you know you have not decided yet. On one side of the decision is money and a piece of you. On the other is an empty ledger line tomorrow and the interest waiting patiently at the end of it, having lost nothing at all by your rest. <<else>> You do the sum again at the window, out of habit rather than hope: what is owed, what came in today, what tomorrow can be made to yield. The numbers arrive fast now. You used to need paper. Down on the street a taxi idles at the kerb with its light on, going nowhere, and beyond it the city keeps its lights burning for people with somewhere to be. Both doors are still open to you tonight - the one that pays and the one that lets you sleep - and the awful part, the part you have stopped saying out loud, is that it gets a fraction easier every time to reach for the first one. <</if>> <</if>> <<if $stamina <= 30>> <div style="color: #ffaa00; border: 1px solid #ffaa00; padding: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> YOU ARE EXTREMELY TIRED. Another encounter could finally undermine your health. Sleep seems to be the only reasonable way out. </div> <</if>> * [[Prostitution|Prostitution]] (Earn with your body) <br> /% Streetwalking / pimp ladder = ONE progressive slot: each stage REPLACES the last. walk -> highway(trassa) -> Vince's outcall. Once pimped, Vince takes you off the guardrail, so the highway is gone (see PimpTryout: "you never freeze out here again"). %/ <<if $pimped>> * [[Answer Vince's call|Outcall]] (Outcall - his cut, but the real money) <<elseif $trassaUnlocked>> * [[Walk out to the highway|Trassa]] (Streetwalking)<<print setup.star("trassa")>> <<else>> * [[Take a walk before bed|NightWalk]] (Wind down... and maybe more) <</if>> <<if $pimpDeclined and not $pimped>> * [[Call the number Vince left|PimpTryout]] (Take him up on it) <</if>> /% 0.4 buff actions (docs/RUNS-BUFFS): Vow.a gift, Channel.a second stream, UnderTable.a late cafe. %/ <<if setup.buff('EndingTheVow.a') and not $vowGiftArmed and not $vowUnpaidNight>> * <<link "Give one away - not on orders">><<run window.updateStat('domsub', -10)>><<set $vowGiftArmed to true>><<goto "Night">><</link>> (domsub -10; tonight and the next night pay nothing) <</if>> <<if setup.buff('EndingChannel.a')>> * [[Evening stream - the camera on a stack of books|NightStream]] (Second paid activity of the evening) <</if>> <<if setup.buff('EndingUnderTable.a')>> * [[The late shift at the cafe|CafeNight]] (Night work: pays like the bar, gentler than the curb) <</if>> <br> * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] (Restore strength, buff for tomorrow) <</if>>

<<set $stamina to Math.clamp($stamina + 200, 0, $maxStamina)>> <<set $sleptToday to true>> <<set $shortNight to false>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _sleepKey to "sleep/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _sleepVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _sleepKey _sleepVariant>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSleepB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Bed! You flop into it face-first, shoes still somewhere near the door, or maybe the hallway, or maybe the bar. The day was full of smiles and men being so, so nice to you. Your skin is still buzzing with all the attention. You try to remember the important thing. It had numbers in it, and you were supposed to worry. The thought almost forms, then slips away. You giggle at the ceiling and fall asleep before it comes back. <<elseif _v == 1>> You count kisses instead of sheep. Today's and yesterday's blur into one warm smear of mouths, hands, and compliments. The alarm clock glows at you, but the numbers will not hold still long enough to matter. You hug the pillow and pretend it is someone big and certain who handles all the thinking. Traffic murmurs outside while you dream of pink rooms and people clapping for you. <<elseif _v == 2>> You remember about the door lock when you're already half asleep, one leg out of the covers, lip gloss still on. Locks are for people with secrets, you decide, and the thought feels deep, so deep you want to write it down, but the pen is far away and your hand is heavy. Your head empties so easily now. It used to take hours to quiet the noise about money, tomorrow, and the person you were. Tonight, two or three little thoughts appear and then there is nothing. The nothing feels soft and safe. <<else>> You arrange the pillows around yourself and line up tomorrow's clothes on the chair: stockings, skirt, pretty top. Morning-you will not have to solve anything difficult. You feel clever for taking such good care of her. The neon outside paints the ceiling pink. You count four flashes, lose the number, and decide four is plenty. Soon there is only warmth and blankness. The clothes are ready for whichever girl wakes up in the morning. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSleepC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You come home with smoke in your hair, cologne on your collarbone, and a pleasant ache in the muscles that earned tonight's money. Your clothes form a trail from the door to the bed. You stretch out on top of the covers, tired and satisfied. You count the takings and sort the night into denominations. Sleep catches you halfway through the total. Whatever you have become, you no longer waste rest arguing with it. <<elseif _v == 1>> Your body is still humming when you lie down, replaying the pressure of hands on your skin. You review the shift: this went smoothly; that should have been priced higher. In the dark, you catch yourself smiling. The ease of it still bothers you, though not enough to keep you awake. You punch the pillow into shape, roll over, and fall asleep without making a wish. <<elseif _v == 2>> Maintenance first: cream on the bruise at your hip, a stretch for the lower back, hair pinned safely out of the way. You care for the body because it earns the money. The trade has taught you at least that much. In bed, the old calculation starts again: debt, interest, days, then the rates per hour, act, and client that once would have made you blush. You fall asleep before reaching the total. <<else>> You shower, inventory the bruises, and leave two glasses of water beside the bed - recovery laid out with the same discipline as tomorrow's makeup. Exhaustion has become another cost center, predictable if properly managed. Sleep takes longer than expected. Your body keeps replaying touches without asking whether they were pleasant, and your mind keeps attaching prices to them. Eventually the ledger blurs. You fall asleep knowing exactly what the night earned and refusing to calculate what it spent. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSleep', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You fasten every lock and collapse onto the bed without taking off your clothes. Sleep comes at once, heavy and dreamless. Tomorrow the routine starts again. For a few hours, you are only a sleeping person, not a debtor. <<elseif _v == 1>> You don't remember getting undressed. The bed takes you like deep water, and the city noise dissolves into a distant, harmless murmur - sirens, bass lines, somebody's laughter two floors down. None of it can reach you here. For a few merciful hours there is no ledger with your name on it, no interest ticking upward in the dark. Just warmth, weight, and breathing. You surface once, somewhere in the small hours, heart pounding from a dream you can't hold onto - something about doors that wouldn't lock. Then sleep pulls you under again, deeper this time, and keeps you until morning. <<elseif _v == 2>> You go through the nightly ritual on autopilot: check the lock, check it again, wedge the chair under the handle. The room is cold enough that the blanket feels like an achievement. You lie staring at the water stain on the ceiling - the one shaped like a country you'll never visit - and let the day drain out of you muscle by muscle. Sleep comes not as escape but as maintenance, the body powering itself down for a shift that will be no kinder. If you dream at all, you dream in numbers - columns that never balance and hands that keep reaching. By dawn you remember none of it, which is a mercy. <<else>> Rain begins after midnight, soft enough to cover the traffic but not the ticking clock. You fold your clothes, wash your face, and place the day's earnings beneath the chipped lamp. These small acts restore an order the rest of your life refuses to keep. Under the blanket, you listen until the rain becomes only texture. Tomorrow is waiting with its contracts and appetites, but it cannot enter this hour. You sleep curled around that boundary, guarding it even after consciousness lets go. <</if>> <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]]

<div class="tally-screen"> <<vid "place/smith-contract-room-" "03">> <<silently>> <<run setup.smithTaskExpire()>> /% 0.6 studio fix (economy pass): ONE push per tally - the raw push below used to run next to the adjusted one, halving the window to 5 real days and mixing raw and adjusted snapshots (phantom event movement, live detector under-firing against everything the sim calibrated). The adjusted push is the only one. %/ /% Eternal Debt rule (calibrated 2026-08-21, 5x200 sim probes): a stall-day is a day whose trailing 10-day window moved less than $600 either way. Novice/tempted/ passive: 0 conversions; only the marathon optimizer tail (~1%, day 67+) qualifies. Deliberate dwellers accumulate ~1/day and cross 40 around day 50 - exactly the "city keeps you afloat" population this ending is for. 0.6 C1/D6 (docs/PATCH-0.6): a body in active use is not "still water" - days at promiscuity 80+ count as motion even if the cash window barely moves (sim step 0 flagged the Furniture starvation: same still-water root). Thresholds retuned to day 30 / stall 20 - the old 45/40 never fired outside marathon tail runs. 0.6 §4 (sim step 7, measured): the window reads HER trajectory, not windfall - $eventTake (cumulative flat event pay, setup.eventPay) is subtracted on both ends of the comparison, and the window itself widens 600->900 - the $600 edge was calibrated before any event layer existed; the flat pay plus its x1.1/x0.9 mark set the new noise floor (sim: OnTheHouse 100->0% at 600, 73% at 900+). 0.6 E2 (studio fix): post-win the prom-80 valve lifts - stillness is stillness when there is no debt left to hide from. A night still worked moves the window and never counts; a prom-80 body sleeping flat does. %/ <<run $moneyHist.push($money - ($eventTake || 0)); if ($moneyHist.length > 10) $moneyHist.shift();>> <<if $moneyHist.length gte 10 and Math.abs(($money - ($eventTake || 0)) - $moneyHist[0]) < 900 and (($promiscuity||0) < 80 or $postWin)>><<set $stallCount += 1>><</if>> /% Well-rested buff applies the day AFTER sleeping, and clears if the night was spent working %/ <<set $wellRested to $sleptToday and not $shortNight>> <<set $sleptToday to false>> /% Neglect decay: lose IQ if the mind was not exercised at all today %/ <<if not $iqGainedToday>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>><</if>> <<set $iqGainedToday to false>> /% The contract preview and the daily tally use the same progressive rate ladder. 0.6c: a purchased starting file REPLACES the ladder with its own flat rate for the whole run ($fileRate, set by shopApplyFile) - Fresh Page stays 7%, the Eviction stays 3%, no matter what the ladder would say about the balance. %/ <<set _baseRate to ($fileRate or setup.baseRateForMoney($money))>> /% Add clinic penalties and final calculation. The modifiers stay at full weight on purpose: with a 1pp tier step each point is now a whole tier, and the clinic penalty is the only channel that currently punishes a naive first run. Halving them was measured and flips the curious-first-run probe from Slave 65% to Freedom 87%. %/ /% Refusal premium decays 1pp per 2 days without a refusal, so saying no once is a setback and not a permanent tax. A permanent +1 is a whole tier for the rest of the run now that the curve steps by 1pp, and it compounds with the smoothing into an unwinnable game - measured: permanent drops "clean but tempted" to 27% wins, decaying leaves it at ~50%. %/ <<if $refusalPenalty > 0>> <<set $daysSinceRefusal to $daysSinceRefusal + 1>> <<if $daysSinceRefusal >= 2>> <<set $refusalPenalty to $refusalPenalty - 1>> <<set $daysSinceRefusal to 0>> <</if>> <</if>> /% Smith reprices when the ledger shows you are going to make it - so this lands ONLY on runs about to win, and never on runs already lost. Measured: triggering on daily income instead was a switch, not a dial (the novice went from 54% losses at a $550 threshold to a clean 100% at $650), because every probe earns about the same and the threshold caught them all at once. Solvency targets far better. 0.6 C2 (sim step 2, docs/PATCH-0.6/SIM-STEP-1.md): the zone widens -5000 -> -6500 so the mid-run plateau stops being free. The second revision was tried and REJECTED by its own rollback guard: two refusals (-$3600 body +4pp) drowned the clean-but-tempted window to 21% (floor: 38%); one refusal at -6500 lands it at 52% with the window alive and the novice untouched. See docs/PATCH-0.6/ sim-step2-revision.txt (x2, rejected) and sim-step2b-revmax1.txt (shipped shape). %/ <<if setup.runRevisionDue(State.variables)>> <<set $revisionDue to true>> <</if>> <<set $interest to Math.max(1, _baseRate + ($surgeryFull * 1) + (($surgeryBody gt 1 ? Math.min(2, $surgeryBody - 1) : 0)) + $interestPenalty + $refusalPenalty + $revisionPenalty + $buffRate + ($onTheHouseLock and $days lt 30 ? 2 : 0) + ($harborActive and $revisionCount == 0 and $money > -8000 ? -1 : 0))>> <<set $interest to setup.runInterest($interest, State.variables)>> /% 0.6 §2.3: body repeats past the first are financed on worse terms - permanent, like the doll's +1pp, capped at +2pp. surgeryBody never decreases, so this never heals; the clinic menu prices it into the button label. %/ /% Only debt accrues interest. Without this guard a positive balance would GAIN money and the HUD would print "Accrued interest: -−N$". %/ <<if $favorDay eq $days>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to 0>><<set $favorDay to 0>> <<elseif $money < 0 and not $quietFreeze>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to Math.floor(-($money * ($interest / 100)))>> <<set $money -= $dailyInterestAmt>> <<else>> <<if $quietFreeze>> /% QUIET FLOOR-A (measured 2026-09-11, docs/BALANCE-WAVE2): the freeze covers the first $600 of the day's interest - the excess still accrues - and the cooldown is 8 days. At 5/free-unlimited this mode paid for itself 8-18x on library builds (win rate 85->98%). %/ <<set $quietFreeze to false>><<set $quietCd to 8>><<set $quietNote to true>> <<set _fullInt to Math.floor(-($money * ($interest / 100)))>> <<if _fullInt gt 600>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to _fullInt - 600>> <<set $money -= $dailyInterestAmt>> <<else>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to 0>> <</if>> <</if>> <<set $dailyInterestAmt to 0>> <</if>> /% Next threshold calculation. MIRRORS the "Progressive interest calculation" ladder above - every threshold here must match one there, and each _nextRateStr must be the rate of the tier BELOW that threshold. Editing one ladder without the other makes the HUD hint lie. %/ <<if $money > -12000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -12000>><<set _nextRateStr to "6%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -13000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -13000>><<set _nextRateStr to "7%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -14000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -14000>><<set _nextRateStr to "9%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -15000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -15000>><<set _nextRateStr to "11%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -16000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -16000>><<set _nextRateStr to "13%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -17000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -17000>><<set _nextRateStr to "16%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<elseif $money > -18000>> <<set _nextThreshold to -18000>><<set _nextRateStr to "20%">><<set _isEndzone to false>> <<else>> <<set _nextThreshold to -24000>><<set _nextRateStr to "">><<set _isEndzone to true>> <</if>> <<set _distToNext to Math.abs($money - _nextThreshold)>> /% Smith mood %/ <<if $money > -2000>> <<set _smithMood to "alarmed">> <<elseif $dailyIncome > $dailyInterestAmt>> <<set _smithMood to "cold">> <<elseif $dailyIncome < $dailyInterestAmt>> <<set _smithMood to "pleased">> <<else>> <<set _smithMood to "indifferent">> <</if>> /% 0.3 A2: one-time Smith milestones on the long flat plateau (-12k..-5k pays the same 5% for months of play). Two emotional beats where the curve gives none. TEXT ONLY - no effects. %/ <<set _mile to 0>> <<if $smithMile1>> <<if not $smithMile2 and $money > -6500>><<set $smithMile2 to true>><<set _mile to 2>><</if>> <<elseif $money > -9000>> <<set $smithMile1 to true>><<set _mile to 1>> <</if>> /% 0.3 A3: deterministic Slut spiral. Replaces the invisible random(1,100)<=10 roll with a visible 4-day counter at peak promiscuity: days 1-3 escalate below, day 4 ends the run. Falling back under 100 (or unlocking the highway, which is immune) resets the count. %/ <<if $promiscuity >= 100 and not $trassaUnlocked>> <<set $prom100Days += 1>> <<else>> <<set $prom100Days to 0>> <</if>> <</silently>> <div class="tally-ledger"> <div class="tally-ledger-head"><h2>DAY $days TALLY</h2><span>daily ledger</span></div> <div class="tally-grid"> <div class="tally-card tally-income"> <span class="tally-card-label">Total earnings</span> <strong class="tally-card-value">+<<print setup.clarity.earningsToday()>>$</strong> </div> <div class="tally-card tally-rate"> <span class="tally-card-label">Interest rate</span> <strong class="tally-card-value">$interest%</strong> <<if ($surgeryFull + (($surgeryBody gt 1 ? Math.min(2, $surgeryBody - 1) : 0)) + $interestPenalty + $refusalPenalty + $revisionPenalty + $buffRate) > 0 or ($harborActive and $revisionCount == 0 and $money > -8000)>> <span class="tally-rate-detail">base _baseRate%<<if $harborActive and $revisionCount == 0 and $money > -8000>> − harbor 1%<</if>><<if $surgeryFull > 0>> + surgery $surgeryFull%<</if>><<if $surgeryBody gt 1>> + implants <<print Math.min(2, $surgeryBody - 1)>>%<</if>><<if $interestPenalty > 0>> + clinic $interestPenalty%<</if>><<if $refusalPenalty > 0>> + refusals $refusalPenalty%<</if>><<if $revisionPenalty > 0>> + terms $revisionPenalty%<</if>><<if $buffRate > 0>> + arrangement $buffRate%<</if>></span> <</if>> </div> <div class="tally-card tally-interest"> <span class="tally-card-label">Accrued interest</span> <strong class="tally-card-value">−<<print $dailyInterestAmt>>$</strong> </div> <div class="tally-card tally-debt"> <span class="tally-card-label">Current debt</span> <strong class="tally-card-value"><<print Math.abs($money)>>$</strong> </div> </div> <div class="tally-threshold"> <<if _isEndzone>> <span style="color:var(--danger);"><<print _distToNext>>$ until total enslavement</span> <<else>> <<print _distToNext>>$ until rate rises to _nextRateStr <</if>> </div> <<if $prom100Days gte 1 and $prom100Days lt 4>> <div class="tally-warning"> <<if $prom100Days == 1>>PROMISCUITY 100 - DAY 1: The city has learned your name. Whispers follow you between clients now. <<elseif $prom100Days == 2>>PROMISCUITY 100 - DAY 2: Clients have stopped negotiating. They simply wait their turn and name no price. <<else>>PROMISCUITY 100 - FINAL WARNING: Even Smith's ledger has gone quiet about you. One more day at the peak and there is no way back. <</if>> </div> <</if>> </div> <<dailyVoices _smithMood>> /% 0.3 A2: Smith's one-time plateau milestones. Fires once per threshold crossing, ledger voice. No stat, money, or rate effects - the plateau finally says SOMETHING, that is all. %/ <<if _mile == 1>> <div class="tally-note tally-milestone"> <span class="tally-note-label">MR. SMITH - ADDENDUM TO TODAY'S ENTRY</span> <em>"For the first time, you've reduced the principal by a sum worth noting. I've updated the file. Tomorrow's expectations will reflect it."</em> </div> <<elseif _mile == 2>> <div class="tally-note tally-milestone"> <span class="tally-note-label">MR. SMITH - ADDENDUM TO TODAY'S ENTRY</span> <em>"You are past the halfway mark. This is where clients tend to take an extra day off or spend money they have not earned yet. The interest continues while they celebrate. Keep your figures current."</em> </div> <</if>> /% Endings check in order of priority %/ <<run setup.runAccountCheck()>> <<if setup.runFloorReached()>> * [[DEFEAT: YOU ARE PROPERTY|EndingSlave]] <<elseif $money >= 0>> /% 0.6 C1 (docs/PATCH-0.6): the graduation the text always promised - your MAIN workplace, the highest counter, whichever it is - at 25 shifts (veteran perk -5/rank), not 40. The fixed Smith-first chain graduated one ending for nine jobs and left the other eight mathematically dead (sim step 0: six endings at 0 hits in 400 runs). %/ /% 0.6 E2 (docs/PATCH-0.6/01-scope.md, Terakahn 28.09): after "Keep working" the wins stop firing - Freedom and the graduation grid no longer exist for this run. What still ends it: every DEFEAT the free asset can still reach. Studio fix (economy pass): the defeat gates now live IN this branch - at a solvent balance the elseif chain below never ran, so the documented ceiling did not exist; a solvent keeper could play forever untouched. Solvent, the money-gated endings (Slave, the acquisitions) are out of reach by definition; the mind, the gangster's arc, the spiral, the fall-through net and the still-water ceiling are not. Sinking back into the red re-opens the full chain below. %/ <<if $postWin or not setup.runCanWin()>> <<if not setup.runCanWin()>><div class="dl-bureau-note">Overtime Agreement: the debt is repaid, but victory remains closed until day 35. Other ending conditions still apply.</div><</if>> <<set _pwFree to true>> <<if $iq < 30 and not $trassaUnlocked>> * [[DEFEAT: EMPTY DOLL|EndingDitz]] <<elseif $metGangster and $loanSharkPet >= 40 and $domsub >= 60 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingBlack") and not setup.sceneSeen("SceneGangLove")>> * [[DEFEAT: THE GANGSTER'S SHADOW|EndingBlack]] <<elseif $promiscuity >= 100 and not $trassaUnlocked and ($prom100Days gte 4 or ($domsub >= 65 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingFreeuse")))>> <<if $prom100Days gte 4>> * [[DEFEAT: FINAL DOWNFALL|EndingSlut]] <<else>> * [[DEFEAT: FREE USE|EndingFreeuse]] <</if>> <<elseif $domsub >= 75 and $loanSharkPet < 10 and $petTaming == 0 and $churchShifts < 10>> * [[DEFEAT: COMMON PROPERTY|EndingCommonProperty]] <<elseif $days gte 30 and $stallCount gte 20>> <<set _pwFree to false>> <<set _job4 to setup.mainJob()>><<set _thr4 to setup.workThresholds()>> <<if _job4 and _job4.shifts gte _thr4.timeout>> * <<link _job4.gridTitle>><<goto _job4.grid>><</link>> <<elseif $stallCount gte (20 + setup.stallBonus())>> * [[DEFEAT: ETERNAL DEBT|EndingEternalDebt]] <<else>> * [[Start the next day|Morning]] <</if>> <</if>> <<if _pwFree>> The ledger is clean and you are still here. The contract no longer cares about the balance - the city counts shifts and still days now, and somewhere past it, owners keep files on assets nobody holds a paper for. * [[Start the next day|Morning]] <</if>> <<else>> <<set _job to setup.mainJob()>><<set _thr to setup.workThresholds()>> <<if _job and _job.shifts gte _thr.esc>> * <<link _job.escTitle>><<goto _job.esc>><</link>> <<else>> * [[VICTORY: YOU ARE FREE!|EndingFreedom]] <</if>> * <<link "KEEP WORKING">><<set $postWin to true>><<goto "Morning">><</link>> (The clean exits are closed for this run.) <</if>> /% 2026-07-29: moved -20000 -> -24000 together with the smoothed curve. The 20% band now opens at -18000; at -20000 the player crossed it and hit the ending inside a single day, so the "until total enslavement" warning was never actually readable. %/ /% 0.3 utility: the clinic buys the paper before Smith does - checked ahead of Slave because its gate (-15k) is stricter and its fiction is a rescue-shaped acquisition. %/ <<elseif $surgeryLips > 0 and $surgeryBody > 0 and $surgeryFull > 0 and $money < -15000 and $beauty >= 90>> * [[DEFEAT: THE RESULT|EndingExhibit]] <<elseif $money < -24000>> /% 0.6 C1: drowning acquisitions at 18 shifts of the MAIN workplace (was 30, Smith-first - same sim-dead grid). The venue that knows you best buys the debt. %/ <<set _job2 to setup.mainJob()>><<set _thr2 to setup.workThresholds()>> <<if _job2 and _job2.shifts gte _thr2.fall>> * <<link _job2.gridTitle>><<goto _job2.grid>><</link>> <<else>> * [[DEFEAT: YOU ARE PROPERTY|EndingSlave]] <</if>> <<elseif $iq < 30 and not $trassaUnlocked>> * [[DEFEAT: EMPTY DOLL|EndingDitz]] /% 0.6 studio fix (design pass): the Shadow claims only a woman the gangster has actually met - the Smith ladder pumps domsub to 60 without any gangster content, and pet 40 is the Contract threshold too. Without this check the ladder auto-fired a Gangster's Shadow on players who never met him. Every other gangster gate requires metGangster; this one does now as well. %/ <<elseif $metGangster and $loanSharkPet >= 40 and $domsub >= 60 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingBlack") and not setup.sceneSeen("SceneGangLove")>> /% 0.6 T1: once the love arc has started, the Shadow is no longer something the ledger slides into - it has to be chosen at the end of the arc (GangFinale). %/ * [[DEFEAT: THE GANGSTER'S SHADOW|EndingBlack]] <<elseif $promiscuity >= 100 and not $trassaUnlocked>> /% 0.3 A3: the day-4 counter replaces random(1,100)<=10. The rule is now visible in the tally box every day of the spiral, and dropping back under 100 actually saves you. Freeuse ordering preserved: it still only fires while the Slut countdown runs. %/ <<if $prom100Days gte 4>> * [[DEFEAT: FINAL DOWNFALL|EndingSlut]] <<elseif $domsub >= 65 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingFreeuse")>> * [[DEFEAT: FREE USE|EndingFreeuse]] <<else>> <<if $revisionDue>> * [[Mr. Smith has asked to see you|SmithRevision]] <<else>> * [[Start the next day|Morning]] <</if>> <</if>> <<else>> /% 0.3 utility: Common Property catches the fall-through nobody claims - maximal submission with no holder, while every other ending declined to fire. 0.6 D5 (docs/PATCH-0.6/02-economy.md): a church regular is not fall-through - at 10+ church shifts her stillness belongs to the parish, and the day-30 conversion below should be the one reading her file (The Vow), not this net. %/ <<if $domsub >= 75 and $loanSharkPet < 10 and $petTaming == 0 and $churchShifts < 10>> * [[DEFEAT: COMMON PROPERTY|EndingCommonProperty]] <<elseif $revisionDue>> * [[Mr. Smith has asked to see you|SmithRevision]] <<elseif $days gte 30 and $stallCount gte 20>> /% 0.6 C1: Eternal Debt retuned to day 30 / stall 20 (was 45/40 - the old gate fired only in the marathon tail, ~1%). Twenty stall-days of still water by day 30 - not sinking (Slave takes those), not climbing, treading water. E1: the Bought Time perk lifts the ETERNAL DEBT component by +5 - studio decouple (economy pass): the timeout conversion keeps its own 20-day timing, because the perk is sold as slack for the ending, and the gate used to tax the player's own way out by the same five days (sim step sim-step1-e1-stall5.txt re-run). The day floor stays. Main workplace with the timeout threshold (20, veteran -5/rank) converts the timeout into its own acquisition. %/ <<set _job3 to setup.mainJob()>><<set _thr3 to setup.workThresholds()>> <<if _job3 and _job3.shifts gte _thr3.timeout>> * <<link _job3.gridTitle>><<goto _job3.grid>><</link>> <<elseif $stallCount gte (20 + setup.stallBonus())>> * [[DEFEAT: ETERNAL DEBT|EndingEternalDebt]] <<else>> * [[Start the next day|Morning]] <</if>> <<else>> * [[Start the next day|Morning]] <</if>> <</if>> /% Advance to the next day AFTER the tally has been displayed for the day just played %/ <<if $money gte 0 and not $debtClearedDay>><<set $debtClearedDay to $days>><</if>> <<set $days += 1>> <<if $quietCd gt 0>><<set $quietCd -= 1>><</if>> /% 0.6 §5.1: beauty drifts a point a day above 80 - the city's attention is a perishable asset. A ceiling is not maintenance: below 80 nothing fades. The pump sources (the machine, the salon, the studio itself) get a counter-pressure, and the model ladder (§5.1: tiers at beauty 60/75/90) is priced to hold the ceiling. %/ <<run setup.runBeautyDrift()>> /% CARETAKER-B "The Letter Box": on the run's first 10th day the candle box pays $250 straight off the principal - the parish's small change, one thick envelope, no sender named. 0.6 D8: was $150 every 10th day forever, which made the clause a free insurance policy on long runs; now it pays once, and pays properly. %/ <<if setup.buff('EndingCaretaker.b') and $days % 10 eq 0 and not $candlePaid>> <<set $money += 250>> <<set $candlePaid to true>> <<set $candleNote to true>> <</if>> <<run setup.clarity.settleDay()>> <<print setup.clarity.dailyHtml()>> <<set $prevDayIncome to $dailyIncome>> <<set $prevDayInterest to $dailyInterestAmt>> <<set $dailyIncome to 0>> <div class="tally-alerts"> <<if $smithTaskMsg neq "">> <div class="tally-alert tally-alert-info"> Your phone buzzes once. "<<print $smithTaskMsg>>" </div> <<set $smithTaskMsg to "">> <</if>> <<if $quietNote>> <div class="tally-alert tally-alert-ok"> A quiet day: the library paid for itself - no interest accrued today. </div> <<set $quietNote to false>> <</if>> <<if $candleNote>> <div class="tally-alert tally-alert-warn"> The candle box pays $250 toward the principal - one thick envelope, rolled bills, no sender named. </div> <<set $candleNote to false>> <</if>> </div> /% First-run onboarding (setup.tutMsg): Smith's instructions as an SMS card, fixed top-right so it never pushes the tally around. Days 1/2/4/7/10, run one only. %/ <<if setup.tutMsg()>> <div style="position:fixed; top:12px; right:12px; max-width:280px; background:rgba(18,18,26,.96); border:1px solid #7fb3ff; border-radius:8px; padding:8px 12px; font-size:0.82rem; color:#cfe4ff; z-index:1100; box-shadow:0 2px 14px rgba(0,0,0,.55);"> <b style="color:#7fb3ff;">✉ SMS - M.S.</b><br><<print setup.tutMsg()>> </div> <</if>> </div>

/% THE PRESSURE CHANNEL. Fires once, at the moment the ledger shows the player is going to make it (debt above -6500, see Tally - 0.6 C2 widened the zone), so it lands only on runs about to win and never on runs already lost. Both branches cost, in DIFFERENT currencies, which is the whole design: meet the Owner -> promiscuity jumps, the player is knocked off the clean path, and the upper rungs of every ladder start firing - and those rungs THEMSELVES pay promiscuity, so it accelerates on its own. The endgame becomes a race: close the debt before the corruption closes you. decline -> Smith adds to the principal and lifts the rate. A pure economic setback, no risk to who she is. Counterplay exists on the corrupt branch (Shower and Church cut promiscuity) but costs days, which is the tactical decision the endgame previously lacked. %/ <<set $revisionDue to false>> <<set $revisionCount to $revisionCount + 1>> <<set $metOwner to true>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _smithRevisionKey to "smith/revision/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _smithRevisionVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _smithRevisionKey _smithRevisionVariant>> <h2>An Interested Party</h2> The message is waiting when you get in: no greeting, just a time and an address you already know. When you arrive, he sees you immediately. You had hoped for a few minutes alone in the waiting room. This time the monitor is turned toward you. It is your own account, and you have never seen it from this side before: every day of the last weeks in a column, every figure you brought in, and the balance closing on zero like a door. <<if _p gte 3>> "Someone has been reading about you," he says, and taps the screen where your good numbers are. Somebody important saw how well you were doing and got interested! That is a nice thing to hear. People being interested in you is the best kind of news there is. He explains it slowly, in the short words he uses with you now. There is a man - the Owner, he calls him - who wants one day of your time. Smith will arrange everything. If you accept, the number stays exactly as it is. If you refuse, the number has to be corrected upward, because you have shown you can carry more than he assumed. "Your choice entirely," he says, and you believe him, because he has never once lied to you. One of these makes an important man happy. The other makes the number bigger. You are slow these days but you are not so slow that you cannot see which of those is the nice one. <<elseif _p is 2>> "Your file crossed a desk it does not normally cross," he says. "The Owner has taken an interest. He asked me to pass on an offer." You read the offer off his face before he makes it. The logic is elegant, and you hate that you admire it: you are about to clear the account, so he has priced your earning power too low. Collect the difference before you leave. You have modeled this exact play on his own tablet during paid shifts. "Accept one assignment under his authority, and your terms stand as written. Decline, and I correct the assessment - the balance was priced against a capacity you have plainly exceeded." He caps the pen. "You have breached nothing either way. This is simply what the file is worth now, and one of the two ways of paying it." <<else>> "Your file crossed a desk it does not normally cross," he says. "The Owner has taken an interest in you. I am obliged to pass on his offer." You start to say that you are four days from clearing this, and you stop, because you can already see where the sentence ends and it does not end anywhere good. "You are nearly done. That is why we are having this conversation," he says, without any pleasure at all. "The original assessment underestimated what you can earn. Accept one day of work arranged by the Owner, and your terms remain unchanged. Not a dollar added. Decline, and I revise the balance and the rate. The figures are in front of you." He lets that sit. "You have breached nothing. Your performance has been exemplary. That performance is why the account is being reassessed. You have shown that you can earn more than we allowed for." A pause, exactly long enough. "The Owner will not be there. His people will. They are instructed not to damage the asset. I cannot promise you will come back unchanged. I think you understand that much already." So that is the offer, laid out flat: one day of work for the Owner, or a corrected file and a worse rate. The day ends. The rate does not. <</if>> * [[Accept the Owner's terms|OwnerMeeting]] (One assignment. Terms unchanged. Everything else at risk.) * [[Decline|SmithRevisionRefuse]] (Your terms are revised upward)

<<set _owed to 1800>><<set _add to 2>> /% A rate premium alone is arithmetically toothless this close to solvency - at -5000 the step from 5% to 6% is about $50 a day. What bites is the addition to the PRINCIPAL: devastating at -2000, mere noise at -20000, so it cannot punish a run already lost. %/ <<set $revisionPenalty to $revisionPenalty + _add>> <<set $money to $money - _owed>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _smithRefuseKey to "smith/revision-refuse/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _smithRefuseVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _smithRefuseKey _smithRefuseVariant>> <h2>Revised Terms</h2> "No." You expect him to argue, or at least to look up. He does neither. He writes a short line at the bottom of a page you cannot read upside down, caps the pen, and turns the monitor back toward himself, and the whole refusal costs him about four seconds of his afternoon. <<if _p gte 3>> He is not angry, which is a relief, because angry is scary. He just says the number has to be bigger now, and shows you, and the number is indeed bigger. You look at it for a while. It was going to be finished soon and now it is not finished, and you cannot quite work out how that happened, only that it did, and that you did it, and that he was very polite about the whole thing. <<elseif _p is 2>> No lecture, no leverage, no theater - he simply reprices and moves on, and you note with a professional's cold respect that refusing cost him nothing and cost you everything you had banked this fortnight. He did not need you to say yes. He only needed you to say something. <<else>> "Noted," he says. That is all. The correction appears on the screen in front of you, unhurried, itemised, and entirely within the terms you signed in a hospital bed with your head full of fog. You walk out with the arithmetic reassembling itself in your head - the days you had counted down now counting back up - and the worst of it is not the money. It is that he was not testing you, and there was no trap, and no trick: you were offered two prices and you paid the one you could still afford. You would choose it again. You will probably have to. <</if>> <span style="color: #ff4444;">Balance revised: -$<<print _owed>> added to the principal. Interest rate +<<print _add>>%.</span> * [[Leave|Morning]]

/% K3 "Schedule Audit" (0.4b): Smith's schedule - the full map, always accessible from the memo ("the folded page"). Data-driven from taskHint + game knowledge. %/ <h3>The Folded Page</h3> <div style="font-size: 0.88rem; line-height: 1.5; max-width: 580px;"> A single sheet, folded twice, in Smith's hand. Red ink. It is your schedule - annotated. <br><br> <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; font-size: 0.85rem;"> <tr style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2);"><td><b>Morning</b></td><td>Cafe (base income, no gate)</td></tr> <tr style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(127,127,127,.15);"><td><b>Noon</b></td><td>Library (free, +IQ) · Church (free, cleans prom) · Beauty Salon ($) · Clinic ($)</td></tr> <tr style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(127,127,127,.15);"><td><b>Evening</b></td><td>Bar (open, prom tiers inside) · Office/Burns (open, IQ pay) · Reception (open) · Photoshoot (beauty pay) · Webcam (open, prom tiers inside) · Library shift (open) · Church work (open)</td></tr> <tr style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(127,127,127,.15);"><td><b>Night</b></td><td>Prostitution: Intern (always) · Gangster (prom 20+) · Athlete (beauty 40+) · Rich Man (prom 50+ & IQ under 90, or via Smith) · Scientist (IQ 120+ or prom 60+) · Owner (via broker) · Highway (via walk/night) · Vince (after pimping)</td></tr> </table> <br> <span style="opacity: 0.6; font-style: italic;">"The star means I am reading your schedule. That is all it means."</span> </div> * [[Fold it back|Morning]]

/% Mount once; transactions stay in the existing meta-save. %/ <div id="dl-shop" class="dl-bureau"><div class="dl-contract-loading">Opening the Back Office…</div></div>

<div id="dl-dossier" class="dl-bureau"><div class="dl-contract-loading">Opening your record…</div></div>

/% =================================================================================== THE OWNER'S TERMS - the authored half of the Smith pressure channel. Do not change the stat block without re-running the balance simulator. The promiscuity jump knocks the player off the clean route and into self-accelerating upper job tiers; the IQ loss prevents that route from becoming a strict economic upgrade. The scene is rendered inside one replaceable container. Each continuation clears the previous text and media before including the next stage, so only one asset is ever live. =================================================================================== %/ <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 55)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 15)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -12)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -80)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnerDeal")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnerDeal")>> <h2>The Owner's Terms</h2> <div id="owner-deal-stage"><<include "OwnerDeal01">></div>

<<vid "place/owner-warehouse-" "01">> The car arrives at nine sharp. The driver is also the guard: a broad man with tattoos climbing above his collar and the patient, incurious manner of someone who has delivered many packages before you. He says little on the drive. Smith has already explained the only part that matters. The Owner controls a network of businesses; tonight, one of those businesses has earned a reward. You are the reward. The city thins into an industrial belt, then into dark fields and isolated sodium lamps. At last the car turns through a wire gate and stops beside a warehouse large enough to swallow the trucks parked around it. Inside, five men in work clothes wait among crates, oil drums, and stripped engine parts. They smell of diesel, sweat, and two weeks of overtime. "They beat the target this month," the driver says. "The bonus pays out next month. Tonight's his thank-you." Every face turns toward you. <<linkreplace "Enter the warehouse">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/2" "">> For one stupid second, you try to explain. You were almost finished. A few more payments and the debt would have been gone. Smith called this an assignment, not this. The red-haired worker laughs, not cruelly so much as incredulously. "We all owe somebody. Tonight, you're our bonus." The driver settles both hands on your shoulders and steers you toward a pair of old mattresses laid between the trucks. His grip never tightens. It does not need to. "You accepted the Owner's terms," he says near your ear. "This is the term he chose. Make it easy and they will, too." The red-haired man unfastens his belt. Around him, the others open beers and take places on crates as if a shift briefing is about to begin. Your knees meet the dusty mattress. A rough hand gathers your hair and tilts your face up. "Open." <<linkreplace "Obey">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/3" "">> The first taste is sweat, cheap soap, and the metallic edge of panic. He guides rather than forces, setting a slow rhythm while the room grows quiet around the wet sounds of your mouth. "Trained," somebody observes. "Smith said she would be." Their approval is worse than laughter. It turns the act into proof of quality, another line in the file Smith showed you. The red-haired man watches your eyes as he presses deeper. When you gag, his hand eases just enough to let you breathe, then draws you forward again. Behind him, belts loosen. Boots scrape across concrete. The men have stopped watching from a distance. <<linkreplace "Keep going">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/4" "">> Another man steps beside the first and offers himself with the casual impatience of someone joining a queue. A third takes your wrist and folds your fingers around him. Soon there is no empty space in front of you: only work trousers, heavy thighs, and hands correcting the angle of your head. They trade places whenever one of them needs to slow down. One uses your mouth while you stroke the men on either side; then another catches your chin and turns you toward him. Names pass above you - Tommy, Pablo, Juan - but they blur almost as soon as you hear them. The youngest, Juan, cannot meet your eyes until the others tease him. When he finally steps forward, his hands rest on your shoulders as if he needs you to hold him upright. <<linkreplace "Take the next man">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/5" "">> They crowd closer until you are working in every direction they can reach. A hand in your hair decides who gets your mouth. Other hands close around your wrists and reposition them whenever your pace falters. Juan finishes first, retreating with a red face while the older men congratulate him like a boy after his first drink. Pablo immediately fills the space he leaves. He is thick through the shoulders, with a dragon tattoo curling up his neck, and he instructs you in a low, practical voice: softer grip, more tongue, do not stop when somebody else touches you. The lesson makes sense only because refusing to understand it would change nothing. Someone moves behind you and lifts the hem of your dress. <<linkreplace "Brace yourself">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/6" "">> The man behind you enters with one hard thrust. Your cry disappears around Pablo, and the workers laugh at the accident of timing. Then they find a rhythm together: every thrust from behind drives your mouth farther forward, turning you into the moving part between them. Your palms slide on the mattress. Fingers hook into your hips and hold you level. Pablo's hand stays at the back of your head until his breathing breaks; he finishes without pulling away and keeps you there until you swallow. The man behind you continues after Pablo steps aside. You are left on all fours beneath the warehouse lights, dress bunched at your waist, while the others smoke and comment on the view. When he finally shudders and withdraws, he gives your ass an approving slap. "Break," he announces. "Then we find out how many places in this shop she fits." <<linkreplace "Catch your breath">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDealBreak">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "place/owner-warehouse-" "02">> You sit against a crate with a warm beer pressed between both hands. Nobody offers water. Pablo tells you to rinse your mouth and grins when the others complain that it would waste the flavour. "What happens now?" Your voice is scraped thin. He considers the question as if you have asked about the remaining work order. "We rest. Then we keep going. Cab, hood, workbench - plenty of places. At the end of shift, the driver takes you back." "And the Owner?" Pablo shrugs. "He already got what he wanted." Around you, the men talk about engines, football, and next month's rota. Their ordinary conversation is the most frightening thing in the room. This is not a frenzy to them. It is a company benefit, scheduled and approved. Tommy crushes his cigarette under one boot and stands. "Break's over." <<linkreplace "The shift resumes">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage01" "">> They bend you over the nearest truck and pull your dress out of the way. One man keeps your wrists against the metal while another takes you from behind. The engine housing is still warm beneath your chest. <<linkreplace "Later">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage02" "">> Pablo holds you upright for the next man, one arm locked beneath your breasts. You learn to let their hands carry your weight. It is easier than trying to keep your own legs steady. <<linkreplace "Hours pass">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage03" "">> Back on your knees, you are passed from one worker to the next. They no longer give instructions. A tap against your cheek is enough; your mouth opens before you have time to decide whether it will. <<linkreplace "The work continues">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage04" "">> At the steps of a truck cab, one man uses your mouth while another works between your thighs. The steel edge digs into your knees. Each time you try to shift away from it, a hand pulls you back into place. <<linkreplace "Another position">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage05" "">> Inside the cab, the air is close and hot. You lie across the passenger seat with your legs spread around one man's hips while another watches from the narrow aisle. The windows fog until the warehouse beyond them disappears. <<linkreplace "Noon becomes afternoon">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal12">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage06" "">> They turn you over in the same seat. Your cheek presses into cracked vinyl; your body rocks between the armrests while a hand keeps you from sliding into the footwell. <<linkreplace "Through the glass">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal13">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage07" "">> From outside, the bright red truck looks parked and silent. Only the movement behind its windscreen betrays what is happening in the cab. The workers waiting below smoke and watch the glass. <<linkreplace "Back on the floor">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal14">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage08" "">> Someone calls you down before your legs recover. You kneel between two trucks and service the next man while grease from the concrete stains your palms and knees. <<linkreplace "Toward evening">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal15">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage09" "">> By late afternoon, they have stopped taking turns. One holds you bent over the open engine while the others form another line. You recognize them now by their boots before you see their faces. <<linkreplace "One more">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal16">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage10" "">> The machinery bucks against your ribs as another man drives into you from behind. Your voice is gone; all that leaves your mouth is breath, timed helplessly to each impact. <<linkreplace "The last truck">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal17">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/montage11" "">> They lay you across the hood, legs hanging open over the orange metal. Somebody wipes a clean patch with his sleeve before pushing into you. The gesture is absurdly considerate. You stare at the warehouse ceiling and let the final hour happen. <<linkreplace "End of shift">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDeal18">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownerdeal/7" "">> Sunset burns through the high warehouse windows when Tommy calls everyone together for the final round. They arrange themselves in a half-circle and put you on your knees in the middle, naked except for the dress twisted around your waist. "Eyes up," Tommy tells you. "The Owner paid for the shift. We're finishing it." Five fists move in front of your face. You remain where they place you, mouth open, while their breathing grows ragged. The first hot streak crosses your cheek. Another lands on your lips, then your breasts, then your hair. They finish over you one after another, laughing and swearing, until you are painted with the evidence of a successful day. When it is over, Tommy tosses you a rag dark with machine grease. "Clean yourself up. The boss wants his property returned in one piece." <<linkreplace "Go home">><<replace "#owner-deal-stage">><<include "OwnerDealAftermath">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<set _ownerAfterBg to either("03", "04")>> <<vid "place/owner-warehouse-" _ownerAfterBg>> You do what you can with the rag and a sink in the staff toilet. It only smears the dirt. Your clothes absorb what remains, clinging cold and damp when you pull them back into place. The driver is waiting by the car. He looks you over once, checking inventory, then opens the rear door. Nobody says goodbye. Behind you, the warehouse has already returned to ordinary business: bottles collected, tools uncovered, mattresses dragged out of sight. You sleep through most of the drive back. He leaves you outside your building shortly before dawn. "You handled yourself well," he says through the open window. "The Owner will hear that." Then the car is gone. You stand alone in the exhaust haze with your account exactly where it was yesterday. Smith kept every word of the bargain. Not one dollar was added. The terms remain untouched; only you have been revised. <span style="color: #ff4444;">You are a long way off the clean path now. The upper rungs of every job will start finding you - and they pay in the same coin.</span> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<elseif _previewReturn is "ScenePreviews">> * [[Previous preview: The Owner|PreviewOwnerMeet]] * [[Back to scene previews|ScenePreviews]] <<else>> * [[Continue|Morning]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: the authored scene without the stat block of :: OwnerMeeting. %/ <h2>The Owner's Terms</h2> <div id="owner-deal-stage"><<include "OwnerDeal01">></div>

/% =================================================================================== PORCELAIN - semi-unique Owner pop-up (docs/OWNER-CLUB-SCENE-2026-09-11.md, RU v3 approved 2026-09-11; clip content verified via local JoyCaption pass). Trigger: Morning roll - metOwner, ownerVisits >= 2, 12-day cooldown, 25% chance. Stat block mirrors the OwnerFavor doctrine (bible: prom/iq knock per visit); the spark roll is 50/50 and deliberately unreliable - it only sets a flag. Rendered inside one replaceable container, one asset live at a time. =================================================================================== %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -80)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 16)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -10)>> <<set $money += 600>><<set $dailyIncome += 600>> <<set $ownerVisits += 1>> <<set $lastOwnerLesson to $days>> <<if random(1, 100) lte 50>><<set $sparkNoticed to true>><</if>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnerLesson")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnerLesson")>> <h2>Porcelain</h2> <div id="owner-lesson-stage"><<include "OwnerLesson01">></div>

It arrives on a Tuesday - in daylight, routine as an electricity bill. Not a call, not a text: a card has been slipped under your door of thick cream stock. No name, no signature - an address, a time ("20:00"), and one printed line at the bottom: "The outfit will be provided." You stand in the doorway holding the card and catch yourself already counting: how much you can earn before eight, what a refusal costs, whether refusal even has a price here - or whether he simply never hears the word no, only "later". Last time you came back from that floor with a new rate and the taste of it in your mouth. You remember that room clearly. You had hoped it was finished with you. By eight there is a car at your door - not the one that drives clients: quieter, cleaner, the driver younger. He opens the rear door without meeting your eyes. Looking people in the face is not done here. You learned that already. <<linkreplace "Get in">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The elevator opens into a corridor you have not seen in any house in this city: white stone, not a single painting, not an inch wasted. It smells of polish and - faintly, underneath - of tobacco: his evening has already been lit somewhere here. Two guards wait outside the sitting room. One opens a smaller side door for you. A bathroom. Enormous, bright, white tile to the ceiling, gold fittings, a window full of night city, and on the floor - a beige pelt, long, from the bath to the door. Through the wall, voices from the sitting room. His voice among them you recognize at once: it does not rise. It never rises. "You will wait here," says the second, and leaves. The door closes. You remain in the white room with the sound of somebody else's dinner behind the wall - invited, but not to dinner. <<linkreplace "Wait">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

On the hook hangs the evening set: a black top in white polka dots, translucent, held by a promise; a pink skirt with black trim - shorter than seems possible; and a collar - red leather, a silver ring, the clasp at the back. A bag waits on the shelf beside it. Your own clothes go inside; you put on the issued outfit. Changing takes three minutes, and the last thirty seconds go to the collar: fastening it blind behind your neck is harder than it looks, and the ring tips your head slightly forward. You get used to it. In the mirror above the sink stands a girl with dark hair, heavy shadow, and someone else's posture. The lipstick is red, and industrial-grade. Industrial-grade - because tonight will test it. Through the door, his voice, the first of the evening, calm as dictation to a secretary: "On your knees. Begin." <<linkreplace "Kneel">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "01">> You lower yourself onto the pelt - your knees remember last time at once; the body learns faster than the head. The pelt is deep, warm, expensive; your weight sinks into it. Your hand finds the gold tap: water runs thin, and the sound becomes the metronome of waiting. The door opens a palm's width - not him: the driver. He stands in front of you without a word and undoes his belt. Behind the wall, something is poured into glasses; somebody laughs. "Slower," says his voice, not interrupting his own conversation. "She is in no hurry." You obey, taking your time. <<linkreplace "Begin">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "02">> The work is familiar, and there is somewhere to hide in it: eyes closed, tongue tracing the whole length - slow, deliberate, along the rim, under the head, back down deep. His hand rests on the back of your neck - not pressing: holding it the way one holds a cup one is in no hurry to drink. Saliva runs; you do not wipe it. Here that is part of the service. Behind the wall his evening proceeds: voices, the ring of glass, a clipped phrase about customs. Your mouth works in time with somebody else's deal. At some point it seems the tempo is set not by the hand on your neck but by the voice behind the wall - a short sentence, and you take him deeper; a pause, and you are slow again. You catch yourself waiting for the next phrase. <<linkreplace "Work">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "03">> He says it in passing - between "sign here" and "excellent": "Have her see to the porcelain." There is no joke in the voice, and no malice - his whims are meant seriously. The driver steps away. You bend over the toilet - white, expensive, immaculate, the one object on this floor that lips are applied to twice - and run your tongue along the rim. Slowly, thoroughly, without coming up for air: the industrial lipstick leaves a half-moon on the porcelain - the only inscription you will leave on this floor. In the polished flank, as in a mirror, you are visible whole: a girl on her knees, skirt up, collar glinting. "Poorly," the voice decides. "Inside. Again." <<linkreplace "Again">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "04">> Again means deeper: head into the bowl, hands braced on the seat, hair gathered in the driver's fist - held like a wheel. You lick the porcelain clean from the inside, and the sound it makes is somehow domestic, shameful - as if you were tidying away somebody else's disgrace in somebody else's flat. Cold vitreous china against your cheek; the smell of chlorine and money. And there - in the polished flank - you meet your own eyes. You look. You do not look away. The corner of your mouth climbs - not at him, not at the driver: at the situation, the absurdity, yourself-in-the-reflection. The door behind you opens a palm's width, and in the gap - him. Looking for three seconds. Or at his watch. From this distance there is no telling. <<linkreplace "Hold still">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "05">> He steps in - the first and only time this evening. You start to rise; a palm settles under your chin and stops the movement. It turns your face left, into the light, right. The nails are short, the hand groomed, dry, and perfectly indifferent - the way one lifts a sample from a counter. The lipstick is smudged at the corner, the cheek is wet, the eyes - on the eyes he lingers a quarter of a second longer than proper. Or a quarter less. He lets go. "It will do," he says, and leaves. That is the only time he touches you tonight. <<linkreplace "Further">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "06">> "Further" means properly. They lay you onto the pelt, face down into the fur, skirt over your back. The driver takes you from behind, measured, workmanlike - he has worked this floor for years and knows how: one hand holds your hair like a handrail, the other your hip, setting a long, real tempo, the kind that wakes the body - and that is the ugliest part, that the body does not care whose floor, whose porcelain, whose whim. Through the wall a clock strikes the quarter. The sitting room has fallen silent. Dinner is over. He is still there, waiting. <<linkreplace "Thank him">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "07">> Then - back onto your knees, facing the door. "Thank him," from beyond it, already drowsily, the way one puts a full stop. Gratitude on this floor has a shape: mouth open, eyes up, both hands on your thighs. You give thanks. Long? Brief? He will decide. <<linkreplace "Show him">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "08">> "Show him what you like." They set you on top - on the driver, on the pelt, facing the door. And for the first time this evening the rhythm is yours: your own pace, deep, slow or fast, on your own count. Your head tips back, the top slides, your breath tears. The doorway is empty, but you know this floor is always watching. And somewhere past the middle it stops mattering whether you are acting: the body catches up with what it began an hour ago, and when you come it is no longer on an order - it is on the evening's momentum. Slower. Slower. Good girl. <<linkreplace "The examination">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson12">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "09">> He gives the instructions for the final act himself - "like an examination": on your knees, deep, in time with a stranger's hand on the back of your head, eyes up - the rule of this floor: look with gratitude. Deep means deep: the throat learns not to argue, saliva runs off your chin onto the pelt, your lashes stick together. You hold the rhythm and look up - at a stomach, at a belt, at the edge of the door behind him. Behind the wall, not a sound. Even the clock seems to have gone quiet. <<linkreplace "Endure">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson13">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerlesson/" "10">> It takes a long time. Tonight he seems intent on using every minute: the hand on your neck does not hurry, does not break, keeps its own tempo, and you keep it, the throat no longer voting. When he finally comes - into your mouth, deep - the sitting room remains silent: he left without waiting for the curtain. The sated leave before the end of the show. The driver does himself up in silence, straightens his belt. Onto the cistern goes a banknote folded in quarters - not into your hand: onto the porcelain you washed. For the work. The outfit stays on its hook - "until next time," the driver says from the door. And adds, meeting your eyes for the first time all evening: "He rarely returns to the same thing twice. Take it as a compliment." <<linkreplace "Downstairs">><<replace "#owner-lesson-stage">><<include "OwnerLesson14">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

Elevator, night, car. The banknote in your fist - the first piece of paper this evening that does not smell of other people's hands - only of porcelain and chlorine. The pelt remembers your knees. The collar went into the bag together with the top: issued - to be worn here. You sit in the car and go over the evening like beads on a string: the mouth, the porcelain, the palm under your chin, "it will do". And one pause in the doorway - a quarter of a second longer than proper. Perhaps it seemed. Perhaps the light fell wrong. Or perhaps not. Until next time. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: the authored scene without the stat block of :: OwnerLesson. %/ <h2>Porcelain</h2> <div id="owner-lesson-stage"><<include "OwnerLesson01">></div>

/% =================================================================================== FIRST OWNER APPOINTMENT - available on the first Owner visit after Smith introduces him. This is the authored version of the first OwnerFavor. The mechanical block deliberately mirrors OwnerFavor: later visits still use the shorter recurring passage in Gentlemen.twee. Each continuation replaces the entire stage, leaving only one media element on screen. =================================================================================== %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -100)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 11)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 16)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 5)>> <<set $money -= 1000>> /% First visit always receives the first rung of the existing diminishing relief curve. %/ <<set _relief to 3>> <<set $interestPenalty to Math.max(0, $interestPenalty - _relief)>> <<set $refusalPenalty to Math.max(0, $refusalPenalty - _relief)>> <<set $ownerVisits += 1>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnerMeet")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnerMeet")>> <h2>The Owner</h2> <div id="owner-meet-stage"><<include "OwnerMeet01">></div>

<<vid "place/owner-residence-" "01">> Smith gives you an address rather than a name. He says the Owner has unusual tastes, that you are likely to suit them, and that it would be wise to make sure you do. The Owner pays well when pleased and corrects disappointment personally. Until your debt is cleared, Smith reminds you, the distinction between his property and the Owner's is mostly administrative. Two guards meet you at the address. They take your phone, lead you to a white tiled room, and leave you with a shower and a neatly arranged set of black lingerie: soft bra, high-waisted panties, garter belt, sheer stockings, and high heels with brilliant red soles. The outfit is elegant, almost old-fashioned. That makes its purpose feel more deliberate, not less. When you are dressed, they escort you through the quiet building to a lived-in sitting room. A broad-shouldered man waits in a deep red leather chair, immaculate in a dark three-piece suit. A fur rug lies before him like a marked place. One guard presses lightly on your shoulders. You understand. You lower yourself to your knees. <<linkreplace "Approach the Owner">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage01" "">> You crawl across the rug. The Owner follows your approach with the detached attention of a buyer inspecting an acquisition. He offers no greeting and no name. Expensive tobacco hangs in the air; a grandfather clock measures the silence behind you. "Smith called you an interesting case," he says at last. "A blank slate with a high price attached." He nods toward his trousers. "Do not waste my time. My acquaintance enjoys company. I do not. You are here to work. Keep the complaints to yourself, tonight and on any future visit." You shift between his knees. The coarse fur catches beneath your stockings as your fingers find his belt. <<linkreplace "Begin your work">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage02" "">> The fastening opens with a small metallic click. He is already hardening when you free him, thick and pale against the charcoal wool of his suit. You close your lips around the head and begin carefully, using your tongue and one hand the way experience has taught you. The Owner does not sigh or close his eyes. He watches your technique as if it were a demonstration submitted for approval. When you try to make the movement seductive, his expression remains unchanged. His hand settles around the back of your neck. The pressure is not hurried or violent; it is simply absolute. He draws you deeper until your throat tightens around him. "Do not choke," he says. "Do it properly." <<linkreplace "Adjust to his rhythm">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage03" "">> He begins to thrust with the precision of a metronome. Your mouth is not something he is sharing pleasure with; it is equipment being tested under load. Each measured stroke pushes against the back of your throat, pauses just long enough for breath, then returns. Your eyes water. Wet gasps escape whenever he permits you enough space to make them. You brace both hands against his thighs, but he controls the depth with one hand at your neck and never once looks away. The arithmetic of Smith's office keeps you kneeling: principal, interest, another recalculation waiting at the end of the week. The Owner sees the calculation pass across your face. "Good," he murmurs. "You know which choice costs less." <<linkreplace "Keep serving him">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage04" "">> He holds you down until your jaw aches and your breathing becomes a thin, desperate whistle through your nose. Only then does he release you. You pull back coughing, saliva shining across your lips. "Smith has made a passable little whore out of you," he says. In his voice, the word is neither praise nor insult. It is a classification. His fingers close in your hair. He lifts you by it, rising from the chair at the same time, and turns you toward the red leather. "Not too much today. You are inexperienced. I will allow for it once." He folds you over the arm of the chair. <<linkreplace "Let him position you">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage05" "">> The leather is cool beneath your breasts. Your heels barely find the floor, leaving your hips raised and your body displayed across the chair that framed him moments ago. The Owner takes his time. One broad hand travels up your stocking, pauses at the garter, then lands across your ass in a sudden slap. The crack fills the room; your body jumps against the leather. "Responsive," he observes. "You are paying attention." He hooks two fingers beneath the black lace and draws it aside. His examination is clinical and invasive, testing your readiness without pretending concern for your comfort. When he is satisfied, he replaces his fingers with the blunt pressure of his cock. "Stay still. Let your body accept the debt." Then he pushes inside. <<linkreplace "Hold still">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage06" "">> The first thrust drives the air from your lungs. He remains buried for several seconds, allowing your body to stretch around him, then withdraws almost completely and enters again with the same deliberate force. Each stroke is paced and exact. The leather grain presses into your chest; his grip tightens at your waist whenever you slide forward. When you begin to shake, he notes it aloud as if adding a figure to a report. He gathers your hair into a rough bundle and winds it around his fist. The new handle lets him pull your spine into a steep arch and hold you at precisely the angle he wants. "You are still resisting," he says near your ear. "Stop. Accept it." The rhythm accelerates. <<linkreplace "Submit to the pace">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage07" "">> "Down. On the rug." He does not release your hair while steering you off the chair. Your heels strike the wooden frame before your hands and knees land in the coarse fur. He sets you on all fours, chest lowered and hips raised, as precisely as he might reposition furniture. He enters again before you settle. The lower angle carries him deeper, and the shock tears a cry from you. "Better," he says. "Silence is not the same thing as obedience." One hand controls your hair while the other grips your hip and drags you back to meet every thrust. The luxury of his suit and gold watch only sharpens the animal simplicity of what he is doing. <<linkreplace "Remain where he put you">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage08" "">> His composure finally begins to fracture. The measured cadence becomes a hard, relentless drive. He uses your hair to prevent escape and your waist to pull you onto him, forcing sound from you whenever your voice fades. "You are not a person in this room," he says between thrusts. "You are an investment. Earn what you cost." The words dissolve into the impact of his body against yours. He hauls you into one last rigid arch and drives as deep as he can. A low snarl replaces his careful breathing. His fingers bruise your hip as he empties himself inside you in a series of heavy pulses. He stays buried until the last contraction passes, then withdraws with a wet sound and lets you collapse onto the rug. <<linkreplace "Wait for his next instruction">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeet10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "ownermeet/stage09" "">> The Owner reclines on the fur as though finishing a light exercise. He lights a fresh cigar, exhales toward the ceiling, and makes a brief downward gesture with two fingers. No towel is offered. You crawl between his legs and clean him with your mouth, slowly and thoroughly, tasting smoke, salt, and the remains of the transaction. He watches through the drifting haze, more interested now than he was during the act itself. When you finish, he grips your chin and lifts your face. "Efficient," he says. "Most waste this moment crying or asking to clean up. You finish the task." He releases you with a small flick of his wrist. <<linkreplace "Receive his assessment">><<replace "#owner-meet-stage">><<include "OwnerMeetAftermath">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "place/owner-residence-" "02">> The Owner rises and crosses to a mahogany sideboard. He pours two fingers of amber liquor while you struggle upright in rumpled black lace. "Take off the shoes," he says without turning. "You click around like a nervous bird." Barefoot, aching, and suddenly smaller, you wait for him to finish evaluating you. "You will do," he says at last. There is no affection in it; this is a collector approving a useful mechanism. "There is potential. Enough for today. Smith will handle the details." The revised rate is real, but the visit has its own price: a thousand dollars charged to your account. Your body and mind absorb the rest. The Owner dismisses you toward the door. Guards return your clothes and phone, then deliver you back to the street without conversation. By the time you reach home, Smith has already sent an updated statement. The figures are marginally kinder. You are not. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<elseif _previewReturn is "ScenePreviews">> * [[Previous preview: A Patient Man|PreviewRichMeet]] * [[Back to scene previews|ScenePreviews]] * [[Next preview: The Owner's Terms|PreviewOwnerDeal]] <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: the authored scene without the stat block of :: OwnerMeet. %/ <h2>The Owner</h2> <div id="owner-meet-stage"><<include "OwnerMeet01">></div>

/% =================================================================================== FIRST RICH MAN APPOINTMENT - available on the first visit after Smith introduces him. The mechanical block mirrors RichFavor exactly. Later visits still use the shorter recurring passage in Gentlemen.twee. Each continuation replaces the complete stage, so only one media element remains active at a time. =================================================================================== %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -80)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> /% 0.6 T2b: same taming gate as the recurring visits (Gentlemen.twee) - the first appointment tames only if she arrived submissive enough (ds 10+). Keeps the arc from starting its count for free. %/ <<if $domsub gte 10>><<set $petTaming += 1>><</if>> <<set $richFirstDone to true>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneRichMeet")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichMeet")>> <h2>A Patient Man</h2> <div id="rich-meet-stage"><<include "RichMeet01">></div>

<<vid "richmeet/dinner" "">> Mr. Smith strongly recommends that you meet a man he calls simply the Rich Man. His guards collect you at the address on the card and provide an outfit before you are introduced: suede skirt, fringed vest, boots, and a proper brown cowboy hat. It is authentic enough to avoid looking like an escort costume, which somehow makes the role feel more intimate. Your companion is middle-aged, silver at the temples, and far quieter than the vulgar oil baron you expected. He wears denim and immaculate boots. The restaurant he chooses is all polished wood, leather booths, bourbon, and steaks aged on the premises. "Do you mind waiting?" he asks over dinner. "For something worth waiting for, I mean. I rather enjoy it." "Lately, I can't afford to wait," you admit. "Something is always due. By the time I've earned it, something else is due." He studies you over his glass. "Yes. Smith's paperwork is thorough. I know your principal, your rate, even the hour of your next recalculation. You're working out how long you can stay here, aren't you?" He is right. Worse, he seems to know the room where you do it. Then he changes the subject with effortless courtesy, and for the remainder of dinner you can almost pretend this is a pleasant date. <<linkreplace "Leave the restaurant">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage01" "">> A black car carries you beyond the city to a low, modern ranch hidden among dry hills and sculpted trees. At the compound, the guards search you and lead you to a windowless dressing room with a shower. The second outfit waits on a wooden stand: brown hat, black lace bra, burgundy garter belt, stockings, and scraps of matching underwear. The western costume from dinner has been stripped down to its honest purpose. When you emerge, the Rich Man is waiting beside a wall of windows, changed into dark linen trousers and an open black shirt. Mountains and sun-bleached grass stretch behind him. He kisses you as you approach, tasting faintly of bourbon. One hand rests at your waist while the other explores the lace and exposed skin with proprietary appreciation. "What is the point of being rich," he asks with a smile, "if you can't indulge in a little adventure? A little theater?" His hands settle on your shoulders. The pressure is gentle, but its meaning is clear. <<linkreplace "Kneel for him">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage02" "">> You lower yourself into the rectangle of sunlight at his feet. He watches your fingers open his trousers but makes no effort to help. <<if $metOwner>>Unlike the Owner, he does not seize control the moment your lips touch him.<<else>>He makes no move to take control when your lips touch him.<</if>> He gives the performance to you. You kiss along the shaft, circle the head with your tongue, and take him slowly into your mouth. His hand rests against the glass while the other brushes the brim of your hat back far enough to see your face. "Good," he says softly. "No hurry. We have the afternoon." The permission feels almost generous. Then you remember that he purchased the time in which he allows you to choose the pace. <<linkreplace "Show him what you can do">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage03" "">> You use the freedom he gives you. Your tongue traces every sensitive place you can find; your hand works the portion your mouth cannot manage. You try to take him deeper, but his size stops you halfway and brings tears to your eyes. He does not force the rest. That restraint is part of his pleasure. He watches you struggle voluntarily, lets you retreat for air, then smiles when you try again without being told. "Patience," he reminds you. "There is nothing else on my calendar tonight." When your jaw begins to ache, he reaches down and helps you stand. For an instant the gesture resembles kindness. Then he catches one of your legs and lifts it against his hip, opening you to him beside the window. <<linkreplace "Let him lift you">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage04" "">> Balanced on one heel, you cling to his shoulders while he searches between your thighs. The first push is slow enough for you to feel every inch entering, your body stretching around him in the bright afternoon light. His arm supports your raised leg and draws you closer. He kisses you again while he moves, unhurried and deep, enjoying the small sounds that escape into his mouth. Outside, the empty landscape makes the room feel isolated from every rule except his. There is no visible cruelty in him. He touches you like a lover and studies you like a purchase, and the combination makes it dangerously easy to stop distinguishing the two. <<linkreplace "Stay close">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage05" "">> "Do not spend everything at once," he says, withdrawing. "We have only begun." He sits on the broad windowsill and pats his thighs. You lower yourself onto him with your back against his chest, guiding him inside again. His hands stroke your sides but provide no rhythm. The work belongs to you now. You rise and sink in slow, careful movements, stockings whispering against his legs. When your pace falters, he does not correct it. He waits, letting your own need and the pressure of the arrangement make you continue. His calm is more effective than an order. You find the angle he prefers and repeat it until his breath grows heavier against your neck. <<linkreplace "Keep moving">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage06" "">> He rises without leaving you, pushing you forward until you catch yourself against the window frame. One hand gathers both wrists behind your back; the other steadies your hip. The view outside wavers with every thrust. His earlier patience becomes control applied with quiet efficiency. He holds your arms where he wants them and draws you back onto him, never violent, never uncertain. "There," he murmurs. "You think too much when your hands are free." The observation lands because it is true. With your balance and choices held behind you, the figures in your head finally begin to scatter. <<linkreplace "Let the numbers fade">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage07" "">> He changes the angle and takes over completely. Your restrained wrists become a handle, your body tilted forward just enough for each measured stroke to reach deeper. When your legs weaken, his grip keeps you upright. He presses two slick fingers to your lips. You clean them without waiting to be asked. The small act of obedience seems to please him more than any theatrical moan could. The room fills with the soft impact of bodies and your increasingly uneven breath. You try to count the strokes, then the windows, then the payments left on your debt. None of the numbers remain intact for more than a few seconds. <<linkreplace "Follow him to the couch">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage08" "">> He stops abruptly, pats your ass, and slips out. "Come and sit with me. You've been standing long enough." The joke is strange in his accent. He guides you across the room and lowers you face-down onto dark leather, arranging your arms above your head and your hips beneath him. Your hat lands on the floor beside the couch, the last respectable piece of the costume discarded. He enters in one smooth stroke and settles his weight over you. The position leaves no space to adjust or retreat. He holds you flat and begins a steady, penetrating rhythm, no longer performing patience or control for your benefit. This is simply the work at the center of the arrangement. <<linkreplace "Endure the steady rhythm">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage09" "">> The leather pushes back against your cheek with every thrust. His hands grip your hips and pull you onto him, leaving faint marks that will outlast the evening. You attempt arithmetic as a place to hide: square footage, interest, the number of movements. Each deep impact knocks the calculation apart. Soon you are no longer a frightened debtor or even a woman on a strange date. You are a professional coefficient in someone else's equation, useful because you make his desired result possible. His rhythm loses a fraction of its polish. Breathing grows rough against your shoulder. Before he can finish, he withdraws and rolls you onto your back. "I want to come while I am looking at you." <<linkreplace "Look back at him">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeet11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "richmeet/stage10" "">> He folds one leg toward your body and enters again. At first the movement is almost considerate of your exhaustion, but the control he has worn all afternoon begins to split. Short, urgent thrusts replace the patient cadence. He watches your face rather than your body now. Sweat darkens his hairline; one hand anchors your thigh while the other brushes a thumb across your lower lip. "Watch me," he says. You do. The pleasant companion from dinner and the careful collector at the window collapse into a man chasing release. His final thrust pins you into the leather. He comes deep inside you, gaze fixed on yours until his eyes finally lose focus. For a long moment he remains there, breathing hard. Then the polished calm returns. He withdraws carefully and studies the ruin of lace, sweat, and exhaustion spread across his couch. "Good," he says. "Very good." <<linkreplace "Finish the appointment">><<replace "#rich-meet-stage">><<include "RichMeetAftermath">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

He dresses with effortless efficiency while you remain on the couch, waiting for your legs to feel connected to the rest of you. "You may shower. Fresh clothes are in the cabinet," he says. At the door, he pauses. "I'd like to see you again. There is no need to answer now." The guards return your phone after you wash and dress. A car takes you back to the city. Five hundred dollars reaches your account before you reach home - generous pay for one client, just as Smith promised. The other part of the price is harder to enter into a ledger. Something in your thinking has softened around the edges. Submission comes a little more naturally; being decorated, positioned, and used has left you slightly better suited to the role he purchased. The Rich Man paid for an evening. He also made an investment in the next one. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<elseif _previewReturn is "ScenePreviews">> * [[Back to scene previews|ScenePreviews]] * [[Next preview: The Owner|PreviewOwnerMeet]] <<else>> <<if ($petTaming >= 4 or ($domsub >= 60 and $iq < 70)) and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingPet")>> * [[DEFEAT: HOUSE PET|EndingPet]] <</if>> <<if $stamina >= 100>> * [[Find another client|Prostitution]] <</if>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: the authored scene without the stat block of :: RichMeet. %/ <h2>A Patient Man</h2> <div id="rich-meet-stage"><<include "RichMeet01">></div>

/% The live Ledger is mounted by LedgerUI.twee after SugarCube displays this passage. The selection remains in $contractSel; the metagame stays in debtloop_runs. %/ <<if !$contractSel>><<set $contractSel to {}>><</if>> <div id="dl-contract" class="dl-contract" aria-label="The Arrangement"> <div class="dl-contract-loading">Opening Mr. Smith's ledger…</div> </div>

/% PENTHOUSE - the Rich Man's long reception. Trigger: metRich, petTaming >= 1. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>> <<set $petTaming += 1>> <<run setup.eventPay(800)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("ScenePenthouse")>><<run setup.markPlayed("ScenePenthouse")>> <h2>Penthouse</h2> <div id="penthouse-stage"><<include "Penthouse01">></div>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/intro-" "01">> He does not call, and he does not warn. When your shift ends the car is already waiting outside - the same one as always, with the driver who has never once looked at you in the mirror. "Dinner?" you ask, for the record, getting in. "Later," he says. You will understand what that "later" means only toward the end of the evening. The elevator climbs a long time; your ears pop. The penthouse greets you with light and white leather - a lot of light, a lot of leather, not one spare object. In the dressing room the set is already laid out: white hold-up stockings and pale blue lingerie, nearly weightless; the silk settles on your breasts with a chill. On the table lies his card, the first he has ever written by hand: "There is no hurry." You sit on the edge of the white couch exactly as long as it takes to understand: he really is in no hurry. Not tonight. Not with you. <<linkreplace "Begin">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "01">> He comes out to you without a word. He strips away the pale blue lingerie, leaving you in the middle of his living room in nothing but stockings. He turns you to face the window with the whole city lying in it and enters at once, to the hilt, in one motion. You grab for the glass. It is ice-cold, and the contrast - burning inside, freezing palms - runs a shiver through your body that you cannot stop and do not try to. "I expect a return on my investment," he says into your shoulder, and sets the first tempo: hard, proprietary, without preamble. It is only the beginning of those four hours. <<linkreplace "Slower">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "02">> When the glass fogs under your palms, he lays you on your back - on the same white leather, only from below now. The leather cools your shoulder blades; he throws your legs over his elbows and enters again - slowly, deeply, looking at the place where you are joined. He has changed tempo. No more haste: long, even strokes, each one to the bottom and held, as if he is testing how you take him at depth. It cramps low in your belly; your breathing turns short and tight. "You're wet," he says. Not a compliment. A reading. <<linkreplace "Show him">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "03">> Then he leans back and settles you on top. "Show me what I invested in." You take him in, sinking slowly under your own weight down to the base, and begin to move: draw the stroke out upward - and sit back down, hard, feeling his stomach tense beneath you. He does not touch you. Leaning back, he watches: your breasts, the way you take him, your face. With every glance he seems to pay extra - and suddenly you catch yourself trying not for the money but for his "good". That, it seems, is the minute he truly buys you. <<linkreplace "Again">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "04">> He likes watching you come. He finishes you with his thumb, finding without error the spot where you are joined, and does not look away while you break: your back arches, muscles clench around him, something senseless slips off your lips. Legs raised, your palms on your breasts, your eyes on his - he demands you keep them open, and you keep them, until the wave covers you head to toe. "Again," he says. The only word he ever hurries anyone with. <<linkreplace "Wine">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "05">> A pause for wine. He drops a robe over your shoulders - the one gesture of the evening that resembles care - and pours it himself, not trusting the staff. You sit on the edge of the bed with a glass; a sweet, hollow ache lingers between your legs, and your lingerie is still lying on the living-room floor. He takes the glass back unfinished. Sets you on all fours and enters from behind - in his favorite tempo: deep, unhurried strokes, each one setting a seal. He presses your face into the sheet - the print of your lipstick stays there - and holds you by the nape, not letting you rise. "Patience," he says without breaking rhythm, "is always worth paying for." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "06">> And he truly does not break it - for a very long time. The same tempo, the same depth, an hour, maybe more. After your second one, which he counts as just another repetition, you stop keeping track of time; your body, tired of resisting, adjusts on its own, and all you hear is his breathing at your back, even as a metronome, and your own sounds, the ones you no longer control. Below, the indifferent city glitters. On the nightstand his watch lies face up. He has not looked at it once - the only man in this city with nowhere to hurry. <<linkreplace "After the bath">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "07">> After the bath - a different rite. He wraps you in a towel, and when it falls you are already on your knees before him, and two things remain on you: the pale blue top rolled under your breasts, and the thin collar. He left the collar with the outfit. You understand what it means now: while you are wearing it, the evening is not over. You take him into your mouth yourself, unhurried. You lick the whole length, base to head, slowly, the way he taught: "like a tasting, not a dinner." Take, hold on the tongue, release. Again. He watches from above, shoulder against the doorframe, and says nothing. <<linkreplace "Deeper">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "08">> Then his palm comes to rest on the back of your head. It does not push - it simply rests there, and you understand the tempo has changed: deeper now. You take him into your throat as far as you can; tears rise on their own, you draw ragged breaths through your nose, and your lips pull the skin downward. His hips do not move a centimeter. All the depth is your work, your effort; the palm on your nape only marks the frame. He does not need your throat. He needs you to reach the end yourself. And you reach it. <<linkreplace "Look up">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "09">> You lift your eyes: wet lashes, mouth stretched, a thread of saliva linking your lips to his stomach - and you smile at him from below. That is what he loves. Sometimes it is enough on its own: he can stand like that for ten minutes, holding your chin lightly, watching you smile at him through tears. The most expensive thing in this penthouse is not the couch, and both of you know it. <<linkreplace "Closer">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "10">> Then he lifts you under the arms, carries you to the bedroom and lays you on the turned-down bed. Then he enters you - slowly, one unbroken motion to the very end, never taking his eyes off your face. Your breath breaks. The room stops existing: all that remains is his eyes, his weight, and your own hands opening you for him - knees wider, wider still, however far he asks. <<linkreplace "Face to face">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse12">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "11">> The last hour he spends with you face to face. Between thrusts he kisses - long, deep, with tongue, as if checking what you have accumulated over the evening. The sheets are wrung into a rope, bodies stuck together, and down there it is no longer a client and an investment - just two people who should have finished long ago and do not. At the end he draws back a centimeter, looks at your swollen lips and says: "A different taste. Better." You do not ask better than what. You are afraid you know the answer. <<linkreplace "The examination">><<replace "#penthouse-stage">><<include "Penthouse13">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/penthouse/" "12">> At the very end - his examination. He rises, and you go down onto your knees before him one last time: mouth open, eyes up, his hand in your hair. He moves his hips himself - a rarity for him - deep, tearing your breath away; tears flow on their own, and you manage to whisper "forgive me" - "You needn't apologize. Keep going." And you work - until he comes deep, into your throat, holding you by the back of the head, and for the first time all evening something in his face lets go. He is tired. He, it turns out, knows how to be tired. Tomorrow there will be a new set. It has already been chosen: on the chair by the window stands a box, white, with a blue ribbon, not yet unwrapped. The investment is growing. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: the authored scene without the stat block of :: EvPenthouse. %/ <h2>Penthouse</h2> <div id="penthouse-stage"><<include "Penthouse01">></div>

/% NIGHT CONSULTATION - the clinic's preventive hours. Trigger: any surgery done. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run setup.eventPay(200)>> <<set $interestPenalty += 1>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneNightClinic")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneNightClinic")>> <h2>Night Consultation</h2> <div id="nightclinic-stage"><<include "NightClinic01">></div>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/intro-" "01">> The message arrives late in the afternoon: "Preventive care. 23:00. Lateness is billed separately." No signature - the number says everything on its own. By day New Look is white light, perfect faces at the desk, an anthill of patients. By night the clinic is a different place. The hall is empty, the reception desk dark, one duty lamp burning; the door opens by itself, a moment before you reach it - as if you were expected here. Or as if no one has been expected here for a long time, and the door simply works as it should. The procedure room greets you with green walls - surgical color, calm and institutional. A robe on the hook, a chart on the desk. In the corner, a teaching skeleton on its stand: the only witness, and it does not care. "Take a seat," says the night doctor, not looking up from the chart. He is in a green surgical cap and already wearing gloves - ten minutes before the first touch. "Tonight is an extended consultation." You undress and fold your things onto a chair, the way people fold them when they already understand how things work here. The robe comes off its hook and onto you; the paper sheet crackles under you as you settle onto the examination table. <<linkreplace "Sit">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "01">> "Chest examination" - that is what the chart calls it. The doctor sits you on the edge of the table, pulls the robe up to your collarbones and works with his fingers: gloved, methodical, without a single second thought. Cold latex passes over one breast, then the other; the fingers travel in circles from base to nipple, weighing, comparing, pressing. Somehow that is the worst part - you could have been grabbed, pinned, pawed. Instead you are being examined. "Breathe in. Hold it. Good response." By "response" he means your nipples. They rise under his fingers - from the cold of the glove, the air, the regularity, it does not matter from what - obedient as a knee under a reflex hammer. Your skin rises in goosebumps; the doctor notes it and ticks a box. "Response within normal limits," he says - not to you, to the chart. <<linkreplace "Sign">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "02">> Next - signatures. He does not release you from the table: he simply turns you around, bends you over the edge, and waits for your palms to find the countertop. A clipboard with the "consent to procedures" form slides under your elbow, a pen lands in your hand - and in the same moment he enters from behind, even and businesslike, as if that were part of the diagnostics too. You do not yet know how to write in this position. Your surname comes out alive: it flinches on every consonant, the letters crawl below the line, and the final flourish slides sideways - he thrusts you forward, and your hand writes on its own, no longer by the rules of penmanship. The clinic's lawyers have seen worse signatures. They probably keep a separate folder for them. <<linkreplace "Rinse">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "03">> "Oral hygiene" - the chart's wording. In reality you are on your knees by the desk, robe open, mouth occupied. The doctor holds your nape with one hand; in the other, the chart; he moves unhurriedly, with the dignity of a man whose appointment book is running on time, and now and then marks something in the chart without withdrawing from you. Your mouth tastes of latex and antiseptic: the clinic looks after sterility, yours included. You match the rhythm that suits his handwriting: while the hand writes - calm; when the hand returns to your nape - deeper. "Rinse afterward," the doctor jokes grimly. The skeleton in the corner agrees with everything. Why should it care. <<linkreplace "Hour two">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "04">> The second hour - face down on the examination table. A strap across your calves: a good clinic, everything for diagnostic convenience. The paper sheet has stuck to your belly; gloved hands settle on your hips, patient and unhurried, and he enters again - at the same working speed with which an hour ago he palpated your breasts. These hands manage everything. In the corridor pass a cleaner's footsteps; a mop knocks against the baseboard and recedes. A woman used to it. Nothing that happens in the procedure room after eleven has surprised anyone here for a long time: she washes the hall, and what goes on behind the green door is not her business. Everyone has their own shift. <<linkreplace "Massage">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "05">> "Massage" - the next line of the chart. They move you to the massage table, onto a towel; warm oil runs down your back - the first warm thing all evening - and the doctor bends over you. He dictates to the chart himself: "lymphatic drainage, forty minutes." In fact the procedure is more targeted. The fingers run along your spine, work the oil over your tailbone, between your buttocks - and further, to where a massage was not supposed to go. Slowly, in circles, with pressure; the body answers before you have time to decide whether it is against. You lie with your face in the headrest of the massage table and think about the interest rate. It helps less than it used to. <<linkreplace "The midpoint">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "06">> The consultation changes positions again. The doctor lies down on the table himself - the one time all evening he allows himself haste - and you are arranged above him, working with your mouth. The desk opposite doubles the composition: on the monitor - the two of you through the eye of the camera on its bracket, the red recording dot, good light, a frame within a frame. Watching yourself from the outside is a separate kind of procedure. You see your head rise and fall, your palms resting on his thighs, how even the rhythm comes out. You switch yourself out of the frame - you look at the wall, at the skeleton, at anything. The red dot looks back at you. "Beautifully shot," the administrator will say later, rewinding the recording. The footage will go to the archive, and the best few frames to the "patient portfolio": that clause you signed without looking, on the consent form you could barely sign. The clinic loves documentation. <<linkreplace "The shot">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "07">> "Night injection" - the second-to-last line. The examination table again, and you bent over it again. The doctor changes gloves - a snap of latex - and enters in one motion, to the end. This is no longer diagnostics: fingers clench your hip to bruising, the rhythm hard and short, the table walks half a finger's width across the tile with every thrust, the paper under you crushed into a wet lump. You grip the edge of the tabletop until your knuckles go white. You must breathe to the rhythm; you were taught that too - just not here. Meanwhile the bill for the visit grows, all by itself, by the line "consumables". The gloves, by the look of it, are priced like good wine. <<linkreplace "Consolidation">><<replace "#nightclinic-stage">><<include "NightClinic09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nightclinic/" "08">> The finale is called "consolidation" in the chart: the same position, the tempo still climbing, the robe twisted into a rope, the skeleton as silent as it has been all evening. You come first - from the speed, from someone else's patience, from the thought of the bill; the table keeps walking under you while you shake, and the doctor does not miss a single beat - he waits for you to finish the way people wait for their turn at reception. Then he brings it to an end as well - briefly, proprietarily, two or three deep strokes - and buttons up at once. "The consultation is over," he says, stripping off his gloves. "Next preventive appointment in a month. You needn't call to confirm. The bill will serve as your reminder." In the empty hall the duty lamp burns as before. While you dress, your phone blinks with a notification: a credit of $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>>, the rate up a point. The arithmetic of the night consultation balances without you. The door opens by itself - this time to let you out. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Night Consultation</h2> <div id="nightclinic-stage"><<include "NightClinic01">></div>

/% HOUSE SHIFT - a shift at Vince's house. Trigger: the pimped route. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -90)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneHouseShift")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneHouseShift")>> <h2>House Shift</h2> <div id="houseshift-stage"><<include "HouseShift01">></div>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/intro-" "01">> Vince's message is short as a slap: "The house. 21:00. Outfit provided." Three words and a time - the whole vocabulary he needs. "The house" is a rented ground-floor flat Vince keeps for two weeks and lets out by the shift: nobody here by day, in the evening - this. You arrive at five to nine and see from the street how it all works: eight men smoking by the entrance - not loitering, standing, phones in hand, backs to the house, like a queue at a government office. Nobody makes noise. Told to come at nine - they came at nine. The door is opened by the madam: twenty years older than you, a cigarette, a dressing gown, the gaze of a counting machine. The hallway smells of other people's tobacco, lotion and yesterday's shift; from the depths - a dark room with a blue couch and drawn curtains. The second girl dozes on a cot in the corner: tonight you are the first shift. The madam hands out lingerie from a bag; she does not ask your size - here they know size by eye. While you change behind the screen - stockings, a belt, nothing else - she finishes her cigarette and sets the evening's task, looking past you: "Long shift tonight. Vince wants everyone seen to, nobody sent away. Make it to the end and there's a bonus." And one rule, instead of safety instructions: "First come, first served. The last one brings the tips." The queue from the street is let in two at a time. Such is a shift at the house. <<linkreplace "Clock in">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "01">> The first two come in the way men come into a flat they have been in before: without embarrassment and without greetings. While one sets his phone on the windowsill, the other is already busy at the couch - and that is how they say hello here: one thrusts his cock straight into your mouth - unshaved, smelling of someone else's day; the other strips your panties to your knees and enters from behind in one motion, to the end, a working entry, no frills. The blue couch holds all three. The one behind grips your hips and pounds at a rate there is no need to guess: they find a shared tempo in ten seconds - without a word, by breathing, like partners who have worked the same shift for years. Your job is not to break their rhythm: rock back onto the cock in your cunt without losing depth in your mouth, find moments to breathe, work the base with your hand when your jaw tires. Spit runs down your chin, the springs creak in time. The front one slams deep without warning, right into your throat, holding your head - and comes, long and hard; you swallow, because that is how it is done here, and he zips up without stepping away, as if clocking out. In the doorway the madam clicks her lighter and counts clients by heads. Click - one. Click - two. <<linkreplace "Next">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "02">> The second one likes it slow. He stretches out on the couch alone and orders the rest with a gesture: you lick, unhurried. You run your tongue from his balls up the shaft - flat, thorough, like exam work - close your lips over the head, suckle, let go again; eyes closed, all geometry as ordered. He props himself on an elbow and films it on his phone, choosing the angle fastidiously. "Look at the camera," he asks, almost polite. You look. The flash picks out your face with your mouth full - his cock pressing into your cheek from the inside - a frame that tomorrow will do the rounds "for the friends", across three chats. Advertising in this house runs on word of mouth. Tomorrow the clip will do its work. He comes onto your tongue, leaning over you, holding his cock at your lips - and wipes the lipstick off your cheek with his thumb himself, tidying the frame. His memory of the evening will stay neat. <<linkreplace "Queue">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "03">> While your mouth is busy, the next one waits behind your back: breathing, the rasp of a belt, the sound of a hand driving blood along the shaft - you feel it with your lower back. In this house it is called "no gaps": a queue without pauses. A "gap" is when a girl stands idle, the madam explained the first evening, in the tone of someone explaining why water must never get into the fuel. The owners dislike downtime. Between clients the madam manages to wipe your face and your cunt with a waffle towel - conveyor hygiene, two motions - and the next pair is already in the room. The windows here were bricked up along with the curtains. <<linkreplace "Ride">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "04">> The middle of the shift: a client wants "just her". He sets his phone aside, lies down on the couch himself and seats you on top - lowering you onto his cock slowly, to the very root, holding your hips with surprising gentleness. You move, and for a whole minute it is almost pleasant: warmth, a living tempo, someone else's palms that do not grab but hold. Your cunt slides along him on its own - after four hours of shift it is wet no longer from desire but from mechanics - and then his size, his rhythm under you, fall suddenly into yours, and you nearly fall behind your own thoughts. He breathes into your collarbone. You feel his breathing gather and hold back under you. From the corner the madam watches jealously, so that the "almost" does not grow into anything. Feelings spoil throughput. He comes quietly, thrusting upward, eyes shut. You climb off, and the "almost" stays on the couch with him, along with his semen, which runs out of you right there. "Almost" is also a rate: a surcharge for an illusion that ends with the client. <<linkreplace "The sandwich">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "05">> Then the house's signature "sandwich". Two come in, a practiced pair: matching jackets, the same smell of machine oil. "These ones are on schedule," the madam says, and points at you: lie down. The first lies on his back and seats you on himself - his cock enters your cunt to the root - the second kneels behind, spits on his fingers, works your ass and enters there, second, without ceremony but carefully, as the schedule requires. Then comes what they are scheduled for: two men, one tempo, synchronous. Two cocks move in and out in unison, one mechanism with two drives; the wall between them stretches inside you to a ringing, and the couch beneath you no longer creaks - it groans. You are spread between them, filled to the limit, stretched on two shafts - and inside that very fullness there is a strange quiet: nothing to think about, nothing to decide, only keep your breathing on their common beat and do not forget where your hands go. That is how porters work - the men they will be again by morning: in step, without fuss, because heavy things are carried by two. You are between them - the heavy thing. <<linkreplace "One in the morning">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "06">> One in the morning. The street queue is finished; only the advance bookings remain, and the house hums quieter. The bed, white light under the lampshade, two men: mouth and hands busy, each on his own side, like a watch. You work lying on your side: one in your mouth - deep, to tears, down to his balls - the other in your fist, kept in the tempo of your mouth, and you swap them on the command "swap". The first grabs your hair, lifts your head and comes on your tits - heavy white lines from nipples to throat - and drops back onto the pillow. The second waits his turn in your hand with the patience of everyone waiting their turn in this house, and you cover him with your mouth without letting go of your fist. Fatigue is no longer felt - it has not passed, it has moved somewhere below the waist, into muscles that now work on their own. The body knows the sequence: hand-mouth-hand, a breath at the change of tempo. Meanwhile you count the interest on the loan instead of the clients. The sum comes out better than it ever does by day. This is what they call getting into the rhythm. <<linkreplace "Marks">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "07">> One of the night ones likes a hand on the throat. He sets you doggy-style by the couch, enters your cunt in one motion - slick from the shift already - and lays his palm on your neck: not squeezing, just laying it there. A status thing. A palm on the throat is like a stamp on a document: marked - passed on. There is no pressure, only weight. His cock works deep and measured; you feel it through the thin wall of your belly - somewhere under the palm holding your throat - your heart hammers into someone else's fingers, your breathing goes short and tight, and from that tightness it pulls low down harder than from the tempo itself. The madam watches sternly, through cigarette smoke: "No marks. She's on an outcall tomorrow." The palm retreats reluctantly, to the back of your head - also status, but no longer a claim to ownership. He comes on your lower back, carefully, outside the frame - the house looks after the goods. Not out of pity. Out of logistics. <<linkreplace "The photoshoot">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "08">> Toward morning, when the queue has thinned to the last three - the "photoshoot" by the window. Two lift you in their arms, holding you under knees and shoulder blades, spread your legs and turn you to the glass: in the mirrored darkness - the city, lights, storeys; in the foreground - your open cunt with someone else's semen running down the perineum onto the inner side of a thigh, spit and smeared red lipstick. The pose holds for ten seconds. They do it smoothly - rehearsed, and not on you. The third stands by with a phone, directing: "Chin a little higher." "Pretty," the madam says, looking into her own phone. "Frame it." <<linkreplace "The last hour">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "09">> The last hour - three again, the sturdiest: conveyor tempo, mouth, hand, a third waiting behind, the whole shift in one position, eyes closed. The faces have merged into a single gray blur with a queue inside; the bodies differ only by tempo - this one deeper, this one sharper, this one breathing into the back of your neck. The first comes inside you, from behind, driving in the last strokes and holding your waist; the second - straight after, almost without a pause, into the same hot slack - it runs back down your thighs; the third stands at your face, and you open your mouth by the rules of the house, without waiting for the command. The waffle towel is no longer keeping up; the madam has stopped clicking her lighter and just keeps the count in her head. You stopped counting back at the "sandwich". Now the madam counts for you - and it is convenient: outsourced arithmetic. All that is left is to hold the tempo and breathe through your nose. <<linkreplace "Wrap up">><<replace "#houseshift-stage">><<include "HouseShift11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/houseshift/" "10">> The end of the shift is a solo. They seat you in the chair by the window for the "ad shot": legs like this, hands like that, everything as ordered - the madam shooting now, professionally, from two angles. Photos for future clients; Vince will write the caption. "I'll tell Vince you finished the shift," she says, putting the phone away. "The bonus is what we agreed." On top - the tips: crumpled notes counted into your palm by someone else's fingers. Your net fee is $<<print setup.eventQuote(500)>>, Vince's cut already taken. The tips are yours. The house sleeps: the second girl snores on the cot in the corner, the madam switches off the corridor light. You walk out at seven in the morning, past the last of the queue who never got inside - their shift is next. The house sleeps. Tomorrow - again. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>House Shift</h2> <div id="houseshift-stage"><<include "HouseShift01">></div>

/% THE INTERVIEW - a position with a partner firm. Trigger: reception/burns shifts. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneInterview")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneInterview")>> <h2>The Negotiation</h2> <div id="interview-stage"><<include "Interview01">></div>

The note appears at your reception desk on Tuesday, though your drawer locks: "Wednesday, 16:00. Client negotiations. You will assist. White top, dark skirt or trousers." No signature - the firm assigns tasks the same way it withholds pay: silently. After six shifts - here or at Burns's office - you are already part of the company; "negotiation support" sounds almost like a promotion. The client, the break-room gossip has it, is a promising one: a yearly contract on which this half-year's bonuses depend. The partner handles it personally. Your role, judging by the dress code, is to be present and set off the furniture. At 15:50 on Wednesday you stand in front of the tower - a different tower, at the far end of the city - in the white top and dark skirt, as ordered. The wording stopped at the dress code; there is nothing to interpret: white blouse, dark skirt, shoes you can walk past security in. The client's secretary walks you in without asking your name - you were expected here, and that is worse than not being expected. The negotiation room: a glass table, two laptops, blinds, a window half a wall. Everything as in other worlds where other women live. The client is polite. First questions about the firm - then, for some reason, about you: is your schedule flexible. Are you open to business trips. Can you keep confidentiality. You answer yes, yes, yes - and somewhere around the third yes you understand the questions were never about the schedule. Beside you the partner is silent and does not look at you, the way one does not look at a line item until it has been discussed. <<linkreplace "The final question">><<replace "#interview-stage">><<include "Interview02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interview/" "01">> The client asks it, closing the laptop's lid - quietly, matter-of-factly, the way deal terms are confirmed: "How flexible are you? In practice, I mean." You look at the table. At the blinds. At the door - the door is already closed, and the click of the lock seems to have happened somewhere between the second yes and the third. The partner pretends to study the presentation - but has not turned a page for a minute. "I can demonstrate," says your own voice, politely, as if this too were an agenda item. No job description will save anyone now. The client nods - this is the answer he has been expecting since 16:00 sharp - and pushes his chair back from the table. The partner finally turns the page. <<linkreplace "Demonstrate">><<replace "#interview-stage">><<include "Interview03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interview/" "02">> The first demonstration takes place under the table - during the negotiations. You sink to your knees on another office's carpet, undo the client's trousers and take into your mouth a cock already standing - he does not bother pretending surprise. It is heavy, groomed, smelling of expensive soap; you work unhurriedly: head, shaft, a hand at the base, deep into the throat and back, at an even office tempo. The client goes on leafing through your firm's presentation. Above your head the talk moves to volumes and deadlines - the partner recites figures in a level voice, and you hear him through the tabletop as if through water. The client's face does not move a muscle. That is how equipment is load-tested, not people: silently, without praise, to protocol. "Good. Continue," the client says to the air, and books a meeting for Thursday. You continue. Your knees are burning on the carpet, spit has gathered in a drop on your chin, and above you they are discussing warranty terms. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#interview-stage">><<include "Interview04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interview/" "03">> The second demonstration is on the veranda. The client rises (you rise after him, on legs that feel like cotton), leads you through the glass door onto the veranda with its couch and the city to the horizon, and bends you over the couch: hands on the backrest, skirt rucked to the small of your back, panties pulled aside - he does not take them off, he shifts them, the way a folder is shifted. His cock enters from behind in one motion, to the end - you cry out into the couch back, and the city below goes on flowing past, indifferent as a river. The client keeps a negotiator's tempo: measured, unhurried, with pauses, as if weighing every stroke - and every stroke somehow lands exactly where it matters, which makes you angrier at your own cunt than at him. Behind the glass, in the negotiation room, the partner stands at the window with his phone, pretending to check his mail. He does not take off his shirt. He does not take off anything: management does not undress - management is serviced. <<linkreplace "His turn">><<replace "#interview-stage">><<include "Interview05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interview/" "04">> The third demonstration is his generosity. The client sits down on the couch, pulls your panties to your ankles, lays one of your legs over his shoulder and leans in - with his tongue, unhurried and thorough, the way small print in a contract is read. A check of "the terms of the deal": they turn out, to his satisfaction, to be above average - your cunt glistens and leaks straight onto the leather cushion, the body more honest than the presentation. He works his tongue deliberately: circles around the clit, inside, circles again, and stops exactly one second before you are ready to come. "That answers my question," he says, raising his head. The only gesture of equality in the whole negotiation. You stand over him, trembling and wet, and hate him about as much as the city outside the window. <<linkreplace "Sign">><<replace "#interview-stage">><<include "Interview06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interview/" "05">> The negotiations end where they were held - on the couch, missionary, with a signature. The client lays you on your back, enters to the end, sets the contract folder beside you - and while you cry out into his shoulder and he keeps to his negotiating tempo, he signs right over your shoulder, on the last page, without a pause or a missed beat. His cock pulses inside you on the rise: he comes together with the flourish - deep, in throbs, with the face of a man closing a deal. Then he stands, zips up, and offers his hand to the partner - the handshake of the closed deal happens across your back, and it is, perhaps, the most accurate description of your position. "We have a deal. The assistant is included," the client says. "One month's probation. Same dress code: white top, dark skirt or trousers." The partner smiles for the first time all evening - at you, with his lips only. In the evening a letter arrives from the firm: "Congratulations." It confirms a payment of $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>> - on paper, a "bonus for participation in negotiations". You got what you wanted. Some of it. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Interview</h2> <div id="interview-stage"><<include "Interview01">></div>

/% THE SUBLET - Smith's office after hours. Trigger: smithShifts >= 8. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(350)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSublet")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSublet")>> <h2>The Sublet</h2> <div id="sublet-stage"><<include "Sublet01">></div>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/intro-" "01">> The assignment comes as a memorandum: "Stay after closing. The office will be occupied. Assist." After eight shifts in this office you can already read Smith's formulations between the lines; this one is entirely between the lines. Smith himself never stays. Private distaste, professional neutrality: at eight sharp he switches off the desk lamp, and after that his office is sublet - like a meeting room. The rent includes everything: the furniture, the view of the city, you. What exactly the item "assist" covers is not specified in the contract - like everything real in this city, it exists without being put in writing. The partner arrives with his own briefcase and his own "hm". A polite "hm" at the door, an appraising "hm" at the sight of you - nothing personal; that is how one looks over a meeting room before a deal. You stay in your daytime clothes: white blouse, black skirt. A uniform that now works by itself. <<linkreplace "Assist">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "01">> While he leafs through the papers you go down under the desk - this too is "assisting". You undo his trousers and take out a heavy, groomed cock and take it into your mouth: unhurried, following the familiar routine, deep and back, tongue along the shaft, a hand at the base. Smith's red telephone is silent. The brass clock ticks. In your mouth the partner's flesh works; above, his signature: he signs a document with one hand while the other steadies the back of your head, setting the depth - executive multitasking. He turns the pages at his usual pace. You hear the rustle above your head and understand that you are included in the price of this meeting room, along with the chair. "Hm," he says at the end of a page. To you as well. <<linkreplace "Eye contact">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "02">> He likes eye contact from below. "That way I see what I'm paying for," he explains, looking at you over the desk: you beneath it, a cock in your mouth, eyes raised as protocol requires. Your palm keeps working the shaft - and at some moment his hand comes down across the tabletop, finds your free hand, and you shake hands across the desk: a handshake over a blowjob, the signature gesture of this office. The deal is concluded; both parties are satisfied; one of the parties is on her knees. <<linkreplace "The desk">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "03">> Then - the desk. By day it is the desk you work at; tonight it is rented out: he unbuttons the blouse to the end, rucks the skirt to your waist, lays you on the polished wood and throws your legs over his shoulders. His cock enters in one motion, to the end, and you arch on Smith's desktop, feeling with your back the edges of the documents beneath you. The papers are pushed aside, not removed: the stationery remains present. The edge of a folder digs into your shoulder blade; the partner's finger finds your clit and works it evenly, like an abacus - and that exactness both drives you and infuriates you. You stare at the ceiling and know: this is still not the "bonus". <<linkreplace "The desk">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "04">> The chair. He sits in Smith's chair - leather, high-backed - and you sit down on top of him, taking the cock into you to the base and beginning to move. "A management position," he says. The only joke of the evening. Jokes made by management are not discussed - they are noted for the record, like everything else. You ride, palms on the armrests of Smith's chair, while his hands rest still on your hips, doing nothing, a supervisory board of a touch. The city burns behind the blinds; your cunt slides on a stranger's cock in the chair of the man you owe, and this is the most honest refinancing scheme you have ever been offered. <<linkreplace "The chair">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "05">> The finale - over the back of the chair. He sets you facing the window, chest on the backrest; the heels hold, the skirt holds nothing - it is rucked to your shoulder blades, the panties dangling from one ankle. His cock enters from behind, into a cunt made slick by the shift, and his tempo now is not the negotiator's but the deal-closer's: deep, without pauses, an "hm" on every thrust. The blinds are open. The floor is high, the city far, the lights indifferent: the show is not for an audience - it is for self-respect. You stand in a stranger's office, impaled on a stranger's cock, above a million burning windows, and even this is served up here as a privilege. <<linkreplace "Over the backrest">><<replace "#sublet-stage">><<include "Sublet07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesublet/" "06">> At the end - under the desk again, this time ceremonially. You go down on your knees before the dark office - Smith has long gone, but his chair regards you with its empty armrests - close your eyes and open your mouth. The partner lays a hand on the crown of your head, like a wreath. He comes on the exhale "agreed" - deep into your throat, in throbs, deliberately, the way a stamp is set. You swallow to protocol. In the morning a report on "successful negotiations" lies on Smith's desk. You are in the appendix, item "other services", a payment of $<<print setup.eventQuote(350)>>. Smith reads the report and does not read you, and nothing stirs in his face: professional neutrality is the one thing in this city that is not for sublet. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Sublet</h2> <div id="sublet-stage"><<include "Sublet01">></div>

/% PERSONAL BEST - the athlete's new flat. Trigger: promiscuity >= 40. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run setup.eventPay(250)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("ScenePersonalBest")>><<run setup.markPlayed("ScenePersonalBest")>> <h2>Personal Best</h2> <div id="gymflat-stage"><<include "PersonalBest01">></div>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/intro-" "01">> He texts after midnight: "Won the competition!! Can you come over?" Two exclamation points and a question mark. Tonight even his punctuation is celebrating. The flat is new, rented, with the neon lighting he proudly calls "the zone" - like an arena. Medals are laid out on the couch, and in the fridge - protein and champagne, nothing else: his diet reads off two shelves. He opens the door himself - in a team jacket smelling of champagne and the changing room - and asks, twice, as always, honestly, whether you are comfortable. You are. By this city's standards - unexpectedly comfortable. <<linkreplace "Warm-up">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "01">> First - the warm-up. You go down on your knees right there on his "zone"; he stands over you, and the neon paints you both green, like players on a pitch. You unzip his track pants: the cock springs out young, stone-hard, quivering with impatience - and you take it into your mouth to the full length, down to the balls, deep at once. His breathing after a finish: ragged, happy, vicious. He slides his fingers into your hair and holds - not pushing, holding, the way a grip is held; his thighs tremble finely, like before a start. You work your mouth in his tempo: fast, from tongue to throat, a hand kneading his balls, spit running down your chin and dripping onto the neon floor. "Wait, wait," he breathes, and pulls you up by the chin. "Not now. First - you." <<linkreplace "Set one">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "02">> First set: he kisses the back of your neck, runs his tongue from ear to shoulder, and enters from behind - long, to the end, with a boyish delight that has not learned to hide. His palm settles on your throat: not squeezing - holding, like a bar at the start. "Tell me if it's too much," he mutters into the back of your head. You are silent. Not yet. He moves deep and greedy, laying out an athlete's whole honest effort in every thrust; your cunt takes all of him, down to the base, and from that young strength and rhythm you are carried faster than you are ready to admit. Sweat drops from his chest onto your back - he works over you the way he works over apparatus, and somehow it is not humiliating. Just hot. <<linkreplace "Set two">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "03">> Second set - on the couch, missionary with elevation: he throws your leg over his shoulder, like onto a bench, and comes in at a new angle - so deep you grab his back and leave nail marks. His abs tighten above you, each muscle distinct, ridging under the skin with each motion. A medal has slid under your shoulder blade - it presses. You say nothing: let it. A competition day has to end somehow, and it is ending correctly. He keeps a finalist's tempo - powerful, even, to the limit; your cunt squelches, the couch scrapes the floor, the neon paints your skin green and violet. You come first, arching under him, and he covers your cry with his palm - carefully, like a mouthguard. <<linkreplace "Set three">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "04">> Then - "the second approach", as he calls it: he turns you over, settles behind you and resumes the same tempo, as if no turn had happened. The wardrobe opposite has a mirror: it doubles you. The neon doubles you too. In the mirror you see his face - concentrated, honest, slightly stunned that any of this is happening to him - and your own eyes above your back. You sway together; his palms on your hips pull you onto him with every thrust, and the sound is wet, loud, athletic. "There. You've got the rhythm," he comments, a coach to himself. <<linkreplace "Oral">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "05">> Third approach - oral. He sits down on the couch, you between his knees; he cradles your head in both palms, like a ball, and sets the tempo - deep, even, with a finishing acceleration on the approach. The cock passes into your throat to the base; tears rise on their own, mascara runs, and you keep your eyes open, because he is watching. And he apologizes. In a whisper, on every stroke: "sorry... sorry..." - as if he has surprised himself. He will apologize again in an hour, by text. It is, probably, the most honest thing anyone has said to you in this city for money. <<linkreplace "His favourite">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "06">> Then - his favorite. You on the couch, legs in his hands, spread and thrown over his shoulders, and he works with his tongue: slowly, thoroughly, with deliberation - looking up at you, checking the reaction the way a coach checks technique. Clit, entrance, clit again; two fingers inside find the spot and hold the rhythm, the tongue never missing a beat. "Good. Again, like that," he orders quietly. Your reaction is positive: your back arches, your thighs tremble in his palms, and you come into his mouth, loudly, no mouthguard, pressing his head to you with both hands. He licks everything to the end, carefully, to the last spasm - and rises with a winner's face. <<linkreplace "To the max">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "07">> The finale - "to the max": mouth open, your eyes on his, his palm on the back of your head. He moves himself - fast, hard, at a finalist's pace; the cock pulses on your tongue, his balls draw up, and on the last exhale he comes deep into your throat - in hot throbs, long, copious. "Personal best," he breathes. Whose - he does not specify. You swallow and decide not to argue: in this event you are both winners today. <<linkreplace "Toward morning">><<replace "#gymflat-stage">><<include "PersonalBest09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gymflat/" "08">> Toward morning - a repeat: slow, tired, from behind, in his neon. Neither of you is in a hurry any more; he moves sleepily and carefully, a palm on your belly, breath at the back of your neck. You close your eyes and simply feel the warmth - someone else's, simple, with no documents and no presentations. "Come to the next one," he says sleepily. "I'm bringing back gold." In the morning, on your phone - a payment of $<<print setup.eventQuote(250)>> from him, captioned "for recovery!!". Judging by last night, you can definitely handle gold. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Personal Best</h2> <div id="gymflat-stage"><<include "PersonalBest01">></div>

/% AFTER THE JOB - the gangster shares the bonus. Trigger: loanSharkPet >= 20. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -90)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAfterJob")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAfterJob")>> <h2>After the Job</h2> <div id="afterjob-stage"><<include "AfterJob01">></div>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/intro-" "01">> The message comes without words: a restaurant address and "22:00". No signature, no question - in his world an invitation and an order are set in the same type. Behind the restaurant is the same table they lay for their own after closing; tonight there is no food on it. There are cigarette ends, a map of the city on someone's phone, and the gangster's good mood: the job came together, the cargo is whole, "the boys" delivered. He wears that rare smile after which someone in this quarter usually disappears - but tonight, it seems, no one. In his world a bonus is a simple, collective thing: everyone celebrates together. And he shares, because generosity is cheaper than wages, and he can count better than anyone in this yard. They seat you on the couch between two of the "boys". The gangster says nothing - his silence means "begin". <<linkreplace "Begin">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "01">> Introductions, by the local rules, without names: one, fat and heavy, leans forward at once and puts his cock in your mouth - halfway, expectantly - while the second stands by for now, stroking himself and watching, waiting his turn, like a warm-up before the shift. You take him deeper: the head pushes into your throat, you wrap the shaft in your palm and work the full length - mouth, hand, mouth - feeling him fill under your lips. The fat one breathes through his teeth. The second steps closer, and you find him with your free hand - and now you are serving two, turning your head in turn. From the table the gangster nods approval. His palm comes down on your nape and stays - weight, not direction. The owner is nearby. <<linkreplace "Sparring">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "02">> Then - "sparring", as they call it: one behind, into your cunt in a single thrust, to the balls; the other in front, into your mouth, a palm steadying the back of your head. And the tempo - shared, synchronous, working-class: a thrust from behind feeds you forward, a thrust in front pushes you back, and you are the transmission between two drives. They work in step, grunting on the exhale like loaders. Your cunt squelches, spit runs, the couch creaks under three bodies in a rhythm that was not set by you. At the table, meanwhile, the gangster signs some receipt with the waiter - the life of his people runs in parallel and does not stop over a trifle like you. <<linkreplace "The third">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "03">> The third is missionary, with a thorough approach: he was told "anything goes", and he takes it literally. He lays you on your back, throws your legs over his elbows and goes in without preamble - dry, greedy, deep; you manage to spit into your palm and pass it between your legs, and after that he slides more easily. He works conscientiously, accelerating, hammering your back into the couch; his chest rolls in waves under his T-shirt, his eyes glassy-happy. You lie beneath him and count your breaths to keep from drifting. "Easy," the gangster drops, not looking up from his phone. "Easy. She's for everyone." The third slows at once, frightened. That is his tenderness - gangster-style: a reprimand instead of a caress, but the item stays whole. <<linkreplace "The fourth">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "04">> The fourth likes "the narrow way". He turns you onto your side, presses your lower leg to him, lifts the upper one over his hip - and goes into your ass slowly, centimeter by centimeter, with terrible, inhuman restraint. The ring burns, stretching around the head; you breathe the way you were taught - short, into the belly, passing each thrust through yourself. "Hold on," the gangster says. "The client is old. Valuable." The old client goes deeper and deeper, sighing like a man in a good bath. You focus on the breathing and on the fact that the currency goes round tonight, and the circle is finite: you count them the way one counts stops before home. <<linkreplace "The fifth">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "05">> The fifth - from behind again, doggy-style, the couch holds; after four, your cunt is past caring: he slides in freely, to the end, and works with the relish of a man at a free session. His palm settles on your reddened behind - and lands on it, full swing, once, twice: here marks are currency, and the minting runs at the going rate. The slaps ring over the table. Behind the wall the restaurant plays out its last slow track - a saxophone through brick, the beat you moan to as well, lips into a stranger's couch. <<linkreplace "All together">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "06">> The finale - "all together", the team's full group broadcast: two at once - one beneath, in your cunt, the second behind, in the ass, already worked open and slick - and a third takes your mouth, drawing you into the common rhythm. Three tempos converge into one; you are between them - sounding, working, breathing on the exhales, and your body is no longer yours: it is communal, like the bonus. They finish in turn, almost to protocol: the one below - deep, in throbs, with a growl; the one behind - straight after, smearing; the one in your mouth holds your head and comes into your throat, long and generous. The gangster watches from the end of the table; cigarette smoke rises in a column, his eyes content. "Good girl," he says. "That's for keeping everyone happy." Then he calls the waiter, and an envelope lands on the table: your share of the bonus: $<<print setup.eventQuote(400)>>. Generosity is cheaper than wages. But dearer than nothing. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>After the Job</h2> <div id="afterjob-stage"><<include "AfterJob01">></div>

/% THE GUEST - the gangster's important partner. Trigger: metGangster, loanSharkPet >= 10. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneTheGuest")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneTheGuest")>> <h2>The Guest</h2> <div id="theguest-stage"><<include "TheGuest01">></div>

<<vid "scene/theguest/intro-" "01">> The car brakes at your building after dark - no call, no message: he never gives warning. A long insolent honk, the window slides down, expensive tobacco and cheap deodorant drift out, and from the back seat his two usual companions watch you in silence. "Listen, baby. Tonight's for a friend of mine," the gangster says, not turning his head. "Business partner. Big deal. Keep him company for me, yeah?" He says nothing more the whole way. The city changes from yours to someone else's, from someone else's to glass; the lift climbs so long your ears pop. The flat at the top is bright, empty, windows full of sky: no curtains, no cupboards - a couch, a bed, and the city below your feet. People who have no one to hide from live like this. The guest is big, slow, heavy as a safe; he looks you over the way a new phone model is looked over: without lust, sizing up the features. The gangster settles by the window with his coffee and lets the guest speak. Tonight he is following someone else's lead. His silence tonight is a form of respect. Toward the guest. Not toward you. <<linkreplace "Introductions">><<replace "#theguest-stage">><<include "TheGuest02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/theguest/" "01">> Introductions pass without handshakes. The guest stands in the middle of the living room; you sink to your knees, calmly, without hurry - no one is rushing anywhere here - undo his trousers and take out a cock heavy, thick, calm as its owner. It fills in your palm unhurriedly, with dignity. His palm comes down on the crown of your head. Not a rough gesture - a proprietary one: that is how a hand is laid on the bonnet of a car already bought. By the window the gangster does not move. The steam from his cup rises in an even column. <<linkreplace "Work">><<replace "#theguest-stage">><<include "TheGuest03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/theguest/" "02">> You work unhurriedly: eyes closed, a palm holding the base, your mouth at a comfortable depth - head, frenulum, head again; the spit spreads along the shaft, and you carry your lips the full length of him, warm and slick. The guest breathes through his mouth - deep, slow, his belly moving under the shirt in time with you. "Good," the gangster drops from the window. And a minute later, to make sure, once more: "Good." Twice - like a stamp. Keep going. <<linkreplace "Deeper">><<replace "#theguest-stage">><<include "TheGuest04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/theguest/" "03">> Deeper. His hand comes into your hair and sets the tempo - measured, without jerks: down, into the throat, a hold, up. You pass him through yourself on the exhale, your tongue running along the shaft from below, your throat opening to take the head entirely; tears stand in the corners of your eyes, breathing only through the nose, short and businesslike. The watch on his wrist ticks evenly. He has not missed a single beat: important men do not spend heartbeats on what need not be spent. <<linkreplace "Thank you">><<replace "#theguest-stage">><<include "TheGuest05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/theguest/" "04">> Before the finale the guest stops you by the chin - lifts your face and looks into your eyes, attentively, proprietarily, the way one looks at a screen while signing. "Thank you for agreeing," he says. A racketeer's politeness: to thank without releasing the chin. You nod - mouth full, as local etiquette requires. <<linkreplace "Dessert">><<replace "#theguest-stage">><<include "TheGuest06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/theguest/" "05">> The finale - on the bed. He lays you on your back, shifts up to your face and enters your mouth again - deeper, slightly faster, both palms on your head; you keep your eyes open, as taught, and above you see his face - stone, calm, composed. He comes without accelerating - deep, copious, in throbs, holding you in place through all of it; and for the first time that evening he smiles - briefly, genuinely, the way one smiles at a well-closed deal. By the window the gangster sets his cup on the sill. The deal all of this was for had been closed long ago - before you were ever put in the car. You were the dessert. On the way back he tosses $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>> onto your knees without looking: "He had a good time. Nice work, baby." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Guest</h2> <div id="theguest-stage"><<include "TheGuest01">></div>

/% HOUSEWARMING - the intern's first flat. Trigger: promiscuity >= 30. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneHousewarming")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneHousewarming")>> <h2>Housewarming</h2> <div id="housewarming-stage"><<include "Housewarming01">></div>

<<vid "scene/housewarming/intro-" "01">> He has rented the first flat of his life - and naturally invites you at once "to celebrate". The word arrives in quotation marks, and you can hear them even through the message: "celebrate", from him, means what it means from everyone in this city, only with shy ellipses after it. The flat is one room on the top floor of a building with no lift, its windows facing the neighbor's wall. Empty, echoing, smelling of fresh paint and cheap shampoo: an air bed against the wall, pink bedding from the old place - his mother's, with cornflowers - and a TV remote in the middle of the bed, like a museum exhibit. His whole new life in three objects. He opens the door in an old T-shirt, turns red before he says hello, and does not know what to do with his hands. He holds his phone awkwardly. "Could I record a bit? Just to remember tonight?" You nod, and he nearly drops it before finding the button. You walk in and start taking off your coat. That, apparently, is the planned programme. <<linkreplace "Celebrate">><<replace "#housewarming-stage">><<include "Housewarming02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/housewarming/" "01">> He apologizes for the mess - twice: for the cardboard boxes, and for the kettle still in its bag. Then for what is happening - three times, on the rise: when you are down to your underwear, when you lie down on his mother's coverlet, when your palms slide over your own body - over your breasts, your belly, lower - to where he is watching without blinking. He films with a shaking hand. The horizon in the frame is tilted; you are not: you move slowly and confidently, part your knees for the camera, run your fingers along your clit and inside, and on his hopeless angles it looks better than in his dreams. You smile with your eyes closed - beside his expectation, half a step ahead of it. "Is this... okay?" he whispers. You nod without opening your eyes, and you hear him shift his grip to keep the phone from falling. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#housewarming-stage">><<include "Housewarming03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/housewarming/" "02">> Then he stops apologizing - for the first time in all your visits. You sink to your knees before him on the air bed, pull his track pants down together with his briefs and take into your mouth his young, rigid cock; he exhales as if released from work early. His palm settles on the crown of your head - clumsy but honest: not steering, just holding on, the way one holds a handrail. You work at an even, careful tempo - lips, tongue, a hand at the base - feeling all of him go rigid, from his toes to his breathing, knowing in advance every second of that response. The remote falls from the bed to the floor. Neither of you bends for it. He comes fast and plentifully - into your opened mouth, onto your chin, whimpering something between "sorry" and "thank you" - and drops onto the air bed, staring at the ceiling as if into a new sky. In this flat, on this mattress, you are the first grown-up event. He will remember this evening all his life. You - hardly. In the morning, on your phone: a hundred and fifty dollars and "thank you!!!". Three exclamation marks - like his whole new life. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Housewarming</h2> <div id="housewarming-stage"><<include "Housewarming01">></div>

/% APPLIED CONDUCT - the costume shift behind PRIVATE LESSONS. Trigger: library shifts + prom. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(250)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneConduct")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneConduct")>> <h2>Applied Conduct</h2> <div id="conduct-stage"><<include "Conduct01">></div>

<<vid "scene/conductlesson/intro-" "01">> Behind the PRIVATE LESSONS door, in the tutor's ledger, a new line appears, calligraphic, like everything of his: "Costume shift. Outfit provided." The outfit is issued straight over the counter, like a book: a white shirt, a plaid skirt, a tie. Cut to your measurements, on a grown woman, and for some reason that is not funny but worse. A client named the format "evening school"; the establishment adopted the phrase without blinking. The tutor looks over his spectacles - his gaze staying on your face for once. "Applied ethics today," he says. "The client is older, respectable, and particular about discipline. Do not disappoint him." You take the outfit under your arm and go to change. The corridor smells of books and polish; somewhere behind the wall the ordinary library is seeing out its shift. <<linkreplace "Lesson one">><<replace "#conduct-stage">><<include "Conduct02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/conductlesson/" "01">> Lesson one - the greeting. The client - in a blue shirt, gray-haired, composed - stands by the bathroom; you go down onto the tiled floor, and the tie slides askew at once. You undo his trousers, take out a calm, heavy cock, and put your mouth on it unhurriedly, the way a book is taken from a shelf - with respect for the object. His palm settles on the crown of your head and steadies it - not pressing, steadying, like a bookmark: it marks the place where he stopped. You work at a greeting tempo, measured and deep, feeling under your lips how he fills; above you stands a man for whom this is evening school, and the lesson runs to plan. Over his shoulder hangs a picture: a city, lights, bridges. Somewhere out there is adult life. <<linkreplace "Lesson two">><<replace "#conduct-stage">><<include "Conduct03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/conductlesson/" "02">> Lesson two - patience. Eyes closed, mouth occupied, the cold of the tile coming through your knees. He does not move at all - stands and waits, and you work yourself: lips along the shaft, tongue in circles over the head, down, to the balls, up again; spit runs down your chin, your neck stiffens, and in that motionlessness of his lies the whole lesson. He checks his watch. Punctuality is also discipline. You quiet your breathing and hold the tempo the way a queue is held: without murmuring and without pauses. The tile counts the time instead of the clock. <<linkreplace "Lesson three">><<replace "#conduct-stage">><<include "Conduct04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/conductlesson/" "03">> Lesson three - gratitude. His palm now holds your head motionless - fixed, like a tripod - and all the work is left to the tongue: a learned, clean motion, only the tongue, circular, thorough, over the whole head and the frenulum, even and unhurried. You feel him tremble under your tongue, hear him breathe - deeper, farther apart. On the hooks hang towels. They hang evenly, by the line. Order here matters more than either of you. <<linkreplace "The examination">><<replace "#conduct-stage">><<include "Conduct05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/conductlesson/" "04">> The examination. On the last breath he leaves your mouth - a palm lifts your face: the tip of his cock touches your outstretched tongue, eyes up, and he straightens your tie himself, with two fingers, carefully. And comes - onto your tongue, precisely, copiously, along its whole length; you hold the pose and do not swallow until he nods. "Passed," the client tells the tutor, smoothing his shirt over his chest. A tick goes into the ledger. Beside it - the sum: $<<print setup.eventQuote(250)>>. Your fee, entered in the same column as the others. The outfit stays with you: "until the next line", as the tutor says. You fold the shirt and skirt on top of your books and carry them out of the library feeling like withdrawn literature - issued on loan. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Applied Conduct</h2> <div id="conduct-stage"><<include "Conduct01">></div>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> /% THE CHANNEL-A "Camera on a Stack of Books" (0.4): the second paid activity of the evening - small pay, small prom, the side hustle of a woman with two shifts. %/ <<run setup.nightCost(25)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(50 + ($promiscuity * 2) + ($beauty * 1))>> <<run setup.payNight(_total)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<vid "place/webcam-room-" "03">> The laptop balances on a stack of books because the desk is still boxed from the move you never finished. You stream the way you always do at this hour: tired, honest, half-complaining about prices and neighbors. The chat calls it real. The tips are small and steady, like rain on a window. * [[Go home and sleep|Sleep]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason(passage())>> <div class="dl-bureau-note"><<print setup.runBlockReason(passage())>></div> <<link "Return to the schedule">><<goto setup.runBlockReturn(passage())>><</link>> <<else>> /% UNDER THE TABLE-A "Night Orders" (0.4): the late shift at the cafe - pays like the bar, gentler prom than the curb, Smith's dispatcher counts it as work. %/ <<run setup.smithTaskDone("cafe")>> <<run setup.nightCost(40)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(100 + ($beauty * 2.5) + $promiscuity)>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "cafe")>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<set $cafeShifts += 1>> <<vid "place/cafe-" "02">> After closing the owner leaves the lights on the back half and the door unlocked. The late menu is short: coffee, sandwiches, and whatever else the regulars have learned they can order. You work the room the way the day girls never have to - and the register rings like the bar's ugly little sister. * [[Head home|Sleep]] <</if>>

/% CARETAKER-A "No Euphemisms" (0.4): once per run, the full confession - dates, sums, acts - zeroes promiscuity. The parish's box closes what the year opened. %/ <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -$promiscuity)>> <<set $confessionUsed to true>> You take the booth at the end of visiting hour and you do not stop until all of it is said: the dates, in order; the sums, to the dollar; the acts, in the plain words the city uses for them. No euphemisms survive the hour. Behind the partition the priest breathes evenly and does not interrupt once, and when it is finally quiet he says only: "I have heard your confession." The slate is not clean - slates never are - but the count starts from zero tonight. * [[Rise|Church]]

/% STAY - the gangster's quietest hour. She comes because she wants to see him, not because she has to. Thursday is the day she looks forward to. The love-thread: she's drawn to the private version of him - the one who cooks, who has a scar, who closes his eyes. Not the boss. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(200)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangLove")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangLove")>> <h2>Stay</h2> <div id="ganglove-stage"><<include "GangLove01">></div>

You check the time three times on the bus. Not because you're late - you're early, you're always early on Thursdays - but because you want to be. Because Thursday is the day that doesn't feel like the others, the one that has a shape, a smell, a direction. The other days point down. Thursday points here. You wore the white t-shirt. There's a hole near the hem nobody else would notice. You notice it. You notice it because you thought about what to wear, which is something you haven't done for anything in this city since the night you stopped dressing for clients and started dressing for survival. But you thought about it today. You stood in front of the closet - three hangers, a shelf, a bag from a store you can't afford anymore - and you picked this shirt because of something you can't name and don't want to. The boys on the corner nod at you now. They used to whistle. They stopped that a while ago, and you're not sure why and you don't ask, and the nodding is fine, the nodding is almost nice, the nodding makes you feel like someone who lives here instead of someone who passes through. You nod back. One of them - the tall one, the young one who always looks like he's about to say something and never does - half-smiles. You half-smile too. The restaurant's back light hums. You don't knock because you never knock and he doesn't expect you to. Inside, the kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and the heavy sweetness of onions that have been cooking since morning. A pot on the back burner. Oxtail - he told you once, just the word, *oxtail*, like that explained everything. It did. You stood in this kitchen a month ago and ate a bowl of it standing up and he leaned against the counter across from you and didn't speak and you didn't speak and the silence was the most comfortable silence you've had since you moved to this city, and you have been chasing that silence every Thursday since. <<linkreplace "Go up">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The stairs creak on four and seven. You step over them because you know this building now - not the way you know your own apartment (functional, necessary, the knowledge of a tenant) but the way you know a friend's house (warm, incidental, the knowledge of someone who's been invited enough times to stop counting). The bathroom door is open. Steam. The pipes knock their slow, arrhythmic pulse. You lean against the wall and wait and you realize you're not nervous. You used to be nervous - the first few times, your hands would shake, your jaw would clench, your whole body braced against the fact of what you were about to do. The shaking stopped. The bracing stopped. What replaced it is something harder to name: a kind of settling, the feeling of arriving somewhere you didn't plan to go and finding, against all expectation, that you don't want to leave. He comes out with a towel draped over his shoulders, chest bare. You have seen him often enough to know his body in fragments; this is the first time he has stood still and let you look. The muscle has begun to soften at thirty-nine. A scar runs along his left side. You have never asked about it, and he has never covered it from you. The towel partly covers a cursive name on his right shoulder. You could lean closer and read it. You don't. For once, it feels good to leave a boundary where it is. He sees you. His face does the thing it does - which is nothing, absolutely nothing, the most perfectly still face you've ever seen on a living person - and then: "Hey, babe." Two words. Flat as always. And you feel a flutter in your stomach that you could call excitement if you were willing to admit why you keep coming. <<linkreplace "Stay">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove/" "01">> "Gettin' comfortable," he says, and it sounds - just for a second - like he means it as a compliment. You kick off your sneakers and kneel on the tile. You're in your work clothes: white t-shirt, jeans, the bra you've had since before any of this. The choker is at your throat. You don't think of it as his - you think of it as yours, the way a wedding ring becomes yours even though someone else put it there. It's black leather with a silver clasp and it fits perfectly because he measured you with his fingers before he bought it, and the fact that he measured - that he took the time, that he cared about the fit - is something you think about more than you should. You reach for his belt. Two and a half turns, always. His jeans drop and you take him in your hand and the weight of him is familiar now. Like picking up a book you've read before. You know the cover, the spine, the way it opens. You take the head in your mouth. He tastes clean, like the cheap soap from the corner store, and underneath that the salt of skin that's been under hot water. You run your tongue along the ridge and feel him respond - a thickening, a firming, the body's quiet acknowledgment that you're here and your mouth is warm and this is Thursday. <<linkreplace "Take your time">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove/" "02">> "There you go," he says, and his hand comes to rest on your head - not gripping, not directing. Just resting. And this is the part you like. Not the sex, not the act, not the performance. This: the weight of his palm, the warmth of it through your hair, the way his fingers are slightly spread like he's laying his hand on a table he trusts not to wobble. You've been touched by a lot of men in this city. Rough hands, grabby hands, hands that treated your body like a product they were testing for quality. His hand is different. His hand says: *I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Keep going.* You work him slow because slow is what this is. There's no rush on Thursdays. No driver, no lineup, no clock ticking down the hour he has paid for. It's just the two of you and the pipes and the pot downstairs that's been simmering since morning, and the pace you set is the pace of a woman who's stopped thinking about what comes after and started thinking about what's happening now. Your tongue finds the vein that runs from base to tip and you trace it with the flat, wet heat of your tongue, and his stomach muscles tighten under it, the body's way of saying *yes, there*. You cup his balls with your other hand - smooth, heavy, the skin like warm silk - and you roll them between your fingers while your mouth follows the path your tongue drew. You can taste him now, the pre-cum mixing with the soap, salt and bitter and something underneath that's just him, just his body, and you realize you know this taste. You would know it blind. You would know it in a room full of men. And the knowing makes you feel - not powerful, exactly. Just *aware*. Aware that you've been paying attention. Aware that he's been letting you. "Jus' like that," he murmurs, and his voice has dropped a register, and the grain in it - that low, rough edge - is something you only hear on Thursdays. Not on the street. Not with the boys. Not when he's being whatever he is out there, in the daylight, in the world. Just here. Just with you. And you carry that sound out of this building every week like a coin in your pocket that you don't spend. <<linkreplace "Deeper">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove/" "03">> His hand tightens a quarter-turn. He never pushes, but you know the signal now. You take him deeper because he wants more and, tonight, you want to give it. The head pushes past the back of your tongue and into your throat and your eyes water and your mascara runs and you don't wipe it because wiping would mean stopping and stopping would mean coming up for air and coming up for air means the moment breaks and the moment - this specific, quiet, pipe-knocking, garlic-smelling moment - is the thing you've been looking forward to all week. You pull back for air - strings of saliva connecting your lip to his skin, hot and wet and obscene - and you look up at him before you go back down. He's looking down at you. Not through you. Not past you at the wall or the door or the schedule in his head. At *you*. And his expression hasn't changed - the jaw is still set, the eyes are still gray and steady - but there's something in the way he's looking that you've been trying to identify for weeks, and tonight you think maybe it's this: he's not performing either. Out there, with the boys, with the clients, with the whole machinery of whatever he does when the sun is up, he's always on. Always calculating. But here, with your mouth around him and the steam thinning and the soup on the stove, he's just a man getting a blowjob from a woman he likes. You go back down. Deeper. Your throat opens and you hold him there, your nose against the coarse hair at his base, and you swallow - a deliberate contraction of the muscles in your throat, a squeezing that makes his hips move forward a centimeter. Not a thrust. A lean. The smallest possible concession to the fact that what you're doing feels good, and he's going to allow himself to feel it because nobody's watching and nobody's keeping score. "Thas' it," he says, and his voice is almost gone. <<linkreplace "Look at me">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove/" "04">> "Look at me." You tilt your chin up until your eyes meet his. Mascara runs down your cheeks; your chin is wet and your face burns with the effort of holding him in your throat. He looks at you as if there is nothing else in the room. For once, you believe him. Outside this room, you're a booking: the woman who comes on Thursdays, the white girl with the collar. Here, on the tile and in the steam, you're the woman he lets see him with his eyes closed. "You know what you do to me?" he says, and it's not a question, and it's not a line, and it's the most he's ever said in this bathroom. His hand moves from the crown of your head to your cheek. His thumb traces the line of your jaw, smearing the mascara, and the touch is so light it could be accidental except nothing he does is accidental. He is a man of exact movements and exact money and exact silence, and his thumb on your jaw is exact too. It says: *I see you. I'm here. Don't stop.* You don't stop. You take him deeper and hold his gaze, your eyes watering while his stay dry. Whatever this is, it has no name. It has Thursday nights, a familiar kitchen, and a pot of soup on the stove. For now, that is enough. "Good girl," he says, and his thumb brushes your cheekbone, and your chest does something that has nothing to do with your throat. <<linkreplace "Come with me">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove/" "05">> "Fuck," he breathes - and it's the most human sound you've ever heard from him. Not the flat tone, not the contract voice, not the silence that does the work of a paragraph. Just *fuck*, the way a man says it when his body takes over and his mouth forgets to be careful. You feel it building. His thighs tense under your palm. His stomach goes rigid. The muscle in his jaw - the one you've been watching for months, the one that clenches when he's thinking and goes slack when he trusts - jumps twice, three times. He pulls out. You open your mouth. The first pulse hits your tongue - hot, thick, salt and bitter and something that's just *him*, just his body, the taste you'd know anywhere. You hold still with your mouth open and your eyes up and his hand moves from your cheek to your hair, not gripping, just holding, his fingers threading through the strands like he's memorizing the texture. His eyes close. One second. Maybe two. The only time. The only moment in all the Thursdays you've been coming here where he stops watching, stops measuring, stops being the man with the plan and the rules and the jaw that could open a bottle. For one breath he's just a person standing in a bathroom with his eyes closed, and you're the only person who sees it, and that - not the money, not the choker, not the soup - is why you come back. He opens his eyes. He's back. You swallow. You lick your lips. You look up at him and he looks down at you and neither of you says anything because there's nothing to say. The moment is already over and the next one hasn't started and the gap between them is warm and quiet and smells like garlic. He steps back. He pulls his jeans up. He doesn't fold the towel this time - he drops it on the rail in a heap, which is the most disheveled thing you've ever seen him do, and you notice, and you keep it. <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The bathroom is quiet when he leaves. The pipes settle. The steam has cleared and the mirror shows you a face you almost recognize: mascara smeared, cheeks flushed, lips swollen and wet. You look like someone who's been kissed. You haven't been kissed. You've been used, technically, in the way that a man uses a woman's mouth when he stands and she kneels and the transaction is clear. But you don't feel used. You feel - and you know how stupid this is, you know, you *know* - you feel chosen. On the sink: $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>>. Folded in quarters. You take it and you don't count it because counting would make it a payment and you're not ready to think about it as a payment yet. You'll count it on the bus. You'll count it and you'll subtract it from the number and the number will get smaller and the gap between here and freedom will narrow by $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>> and for a moment, on the 47, with the city sliding past the windows and the taste of him still on your tongue, you'll hold both truths at once: *this brings me closer* and *I don't want to be closer. I want to be here.* You wash your face. His soap. The cheap white bar that comes six to a pack and doesn't smell like anything and is, for that exact reason, the most honest thing in this building. Downstairs, the kitchen. The pot is off the burner. On the counter: one bowl, one spoon. The ladle resting across the rim. He didn't have to do this. You know that. He's not the kind of man who leaves notes or says *I made extra* or does anything that could be construed as an overture. He's the kind of man who puts a bowl on a counter and lets the bowl say it. And the bowl says: *you were here. I noticed. I made enough for two.* And that's - that's more than the $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>>. That's more than the choker. That's the thing you'll think about on the bus and in the shower and in the five minutes before you fall asleep, the thing that will make you check the schedule three times next Wednesday night. You eat the soup standing up. It's good. It's always good. Rich and bone-deep and seasoned with something you can't put a name to. Time, mostly. The time it took to make. The fact that he started it in the morning, hours before you arrived, which means he was thinking about tonight before you were. You rinse the bowl. You put it on the shelf - second from the top, next to the others, in the spot that's become yours without anyone declaring it yours. You dry your hands on the towel by the sink. You let yourself out. The back light hums. The street is quiet. You stand on the step for a moment with $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>> in your pocket and the taste of soap and salt on your tongue and the warmth of his soup settling in your chest, and you think about Thursday. Not the debt. Not the rate. Not the number. Thursday. When you'll wear the white t-shirt again. When he'll say *hey, babe* in that voice that sounds like nothing and means - to you, only to you, in the private dictionary you've been building one Thursday at a time - *I'm glad you're here.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Stay</h2> <div id="ganglove-stage"><<include "GangLove01">></div>

/% Original batch and 0.6 continuations: twenty-one illustrated events built from approved docs (docs/SCENE-*-vN.md). Generator: tools/build_sceneevents3.py — regenerate with it, do not hand-edit structure. Gangster love arc and athlete arc are strictly sequential (sceneDefs gates via setup.sceneSeen). %/

/% MORE - the second Gangster Love scene. One of the boys called her "his white bitch" on the corner. He found out. His answer is not a conversation — it's cunnilingus, which no client in this city has ever done for free, and which she will spend the rest of the week trying to fit into the dictionary she's been building. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangLove2")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangLove2")>> <h2>More</h2> <div id="ganglove2-stage"><<include "GangLove201">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/ganglove2-01.png"></div> It starts on the corner, the way things in this neighborhood always do. You're walking from the bus stop — the 47, the same route, the same cracks in the sidewalk — and Marcus is there. Not the tall one who half-smiles. The other one. The one with the gold chain and the mouth that works faster than his brain. He's leaning against the lamppost outside the chicken place with two other guys you don't recognize, and they're laughing about something, and then Marcus sees you and the laugh changes shape. "Yo, look who it is." He pushes off the post. His eyes travel from your shoes to your face the way a hand travels when it's checking for a wallet. "Goin' to see the boss? He up there waitin' for you, girl. Better hurry — he got that look today." And then, to the two guys, loud enough for you to hear because it's meant for you to hear: "That's his new thing. The white girl. She come every Thursday, like clockwork. Ain't that right, baby?" He doesn't touch you. He's not stupid — Marcus is a lot of things but he's not stupid enough to put his hands on something that belongs to the man who signs his checks. But the word *thing* lands on your skin like a fly. You can feel it walking. And the word *baby* — the same word, the same two syllables that the gangster uses every Thursday like a key turning in a lock — comes out of Marcus's mouth sounding like a brand. You don't stop. You don't look back. You walk the last two blocks with your jaw set and your fists in your jacket pockets and the hole near the hem of your white t-shirt suddenly feeling less like a secret and more like a target. <<linkreplace "Knock">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You don't knock. You never knock. But tonight you hesitate — half a second, maybe less, your hand rising and then not rising, your knuckles an inch from the wood — and the door opens from the inside. He's standing there. Not coming out of the bathroom this time. Not towel-drying his hair. Standing behind the open door the way a man stands when he's been waiting for a knock that doesn't come, and the fact that he's here, in the doorway, at the exact moment you arrive, means one of two things: either he was watching from the window (he wasn't; the window faces the wrong direction) or someone told him you were coming (they did; Marcus, probably, or one of Marcus's audience, a text message: *she's on her way*). He looks at you. He reads your face the way you've watched him read a room — fast, total, missing nothing. He sees the jaw. He sees the fists. He sees the way you're standing slightly back from the door, half a step further than usual, as if the distance between the sidewalk and this threshold got longer in the last two blocks. He doesn't ask what happened. He already knows what happened, or he can guess, because he knows his crew the way a shepherd knows the dogs — not by name but by instinct, by the shape of the trouble they make when he's not looking. "Come inside," he says. Not *hey, babe*. Not the Thursday greeting. Something quieter. Something that sounds, in the private dictionary you've been compiling, like: *I know. I'll handle it.* You go inside. <<linkreplace "Upstairs">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "01">> The bedroom this time, not the bathroom. You notice because change is information, and information is the only currency that matters more than money in whatever this is. Thursdays are the bathroom: the tile, the pipes, the standing-while-you-kneel geometry of it. Tonight is the bedroom. The bed is unmade — sheets pulled back, pillow dented, the particular disorder of a man who made his bed this morning and has been sitting on it since, thinking, which is something you've never seen him do because sitting and thinking are both things he does in private, which means this is private, which means you're being let in past a door that's not the one on the street. He sits on the edge of the bed. You kneel in front of him because that's what you do, because the architecture of Thursdays has trained your body to fold at his knees the way water folds downhill. But his hand catches your shoulder before you reach the floor. "Not tonight," he says. You look up. Two words. Not the contract voice. Not the flat *hey, babe* tone. Something underneath it, something you haven't heard before — not softness, he doesn't do softness, but a kind of... redirection. As if the routine has a side door and he's opening it. "Take that off," he says. He means the jacket. You meant to keep it on. You take off the jacket. He reaches for the hem of your t-shirt and pulls it up, slowly, and you lift your arms because the alternative is resisting and the thought of resisting doesn't even form properly, it just dissolves, because his hands are on your ribs and they're warm and they're moving up and your skin responds before you can decide what the touch means — not the trained response, not the professional warming-up, but the involuntary, animal rising of flesh toward a touch it wants. Your t-shirt comes off. Your bra. His hands on your bare skin, calloused, careful, and you realize he's undressing you the way you'd unwrap something fragile — not hurried, not rough, not the way clients do it, tearing at the packaging. Slowly. Like the wrapping matters. <<linkreplace "Let him">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "02">> He lays you back on the bed. The sheets smell like him — soap and cotton and the particular, slightly bitter note of a man's skin at the end of a day. You sink into the mattress and the mattress holds you and for a disorienting second you're not sure which way is up because you've never been on your back in this apartment. You've been on your knees, on the tile, in the bathroom. You've never been horizontal, never been the one lying at ease while he does the work. He kneels between your legs. You expect him to undo his belt, to pull his jeans down, to feed himself into your mouth the way he always does — the standing, the kneeling, the geometry that puts him above and you below. Instead, his hands slide along the inside of your thighs, and his thumbs part you, and he lowers his face. "What are you —" He doesn't answer. His mouth finds you. He has never done this for you. You never asked; asking would mean admitting what you wanted from him beyond the Thursday routine. But his mouth is on you now, his tongue is between the folds of you, and your back arches off the mattress and your hands grab the sheet and the sound you make is the sound of a woman who has been giving for so long that she's forgotten what it feels like to receive. His tongue works you with the same patience his hands work everything — slow, deliberate, the tongue of a man who is not in a hurry because he has decided not to be in a hurry. He finds the place — you know the place, you've found it yourself, in the dark, in the minutes between clients, in the shower — and he presses the flat of his tongue against it and your hips lift and your fingers tighten in the sheet and you say something that might be his name or might just be a vowel. He doesn't stop. He doesn't speed up. He holds the same rhythm — slow, steady, the rhythm of a man who has all night and intends to use it — and you can feel something building in your lower back, something warm and unfamiliar, something you haven't felt since before the debt, since before the city, since before you became a woman who measures her worth in hourly rates. <<linkreplace "Oh God">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "03">> You come with your eyes closed and your fists full of sheet and your thighs pressed against his ears and a sound in your throat that you've never made in this city — a raw, unpracticed sound, the sound of a woman who forgot she could feel this and has just been reminded. It lasts longer than you expected and hits harder and when it's over you lie there, flat, wrecked, pulsing, with your eyes still closed and your chest heaving and the sheet damp under your fingers. He lifts his head. You can feel the absence of his mouth like a draft. When you open your eyes he's looking at you. From between your legs, instead of down at you as he does when you kneel on the bathroom floor, his chin wet, his jaw set, his gray eyes watching you the way they watch everything: completely. And you think — with the last functioning neuron in a brain that has just been emptied by orgasm — *this is what he looks like when he's not performing.* Not the boss. Not the silence. Not the flat voice and the exact money and the door that's never locked. This face. This wet chin. This man between your legs who just did something for you that he didn't have to do, that no one in this economy does for free, that means — in a language older than money — *you matter.* You know it doesn't mean that. You know you're reading tea leaves. You know that a man who goes down on a woman is not necessarily a man who loves her, and a man who loves her is not necessarily a man who won't hand her to his crew on a bad night. You know all this. You don't care. "Come here," you say. It's the first time you've told him what to do. <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove206">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "04">> He comes up. His body covers yours and the weight of him is different from anything you've felt — not the crushing weight of a client pinning you for leverage, but the settled weight of a man who has decided to be exactly where he is. His chest against your chest. His hips between your hips. His face an inch from your face, and you can smell yourself on his breath, and instead of turning away you turn toward it, because it's evidence. It proves what just happened. It's the receipt. He enters you slowly. Not the rough, goal-oriented entry you're used to — the kind that treats your body like a door to be opened and walked through — but a slow, deliberate pressure, a gradual filling, the patient occupation of space. You're wet from his mouth and he slides in deep and you both stay still for a moment, not moving, just breathing, just being here, in this bed, in this room, in this building where the pipes knock and the soup simmers and the door is never locked. "Fuck," he says against your neck. Not the performative *fuck* of a man narrating his pleasure. The involuntary *fuck* of a body that has been reminded what it feels like to be inside someone it wants to be inside. You wrap your legs around him. Your arms. You hold on. And the holding is — you know how pathetic this sounds, you know — the holding is the best part. Not the sex, which is good, which has always been good, which is the only consistently good thing in this city. The holding. The fact that he lets you hold him. The fact that he doesn't pull away, doesn't roll off, doesn't stand up and fold the towel. He stays. His weight on you, his face in your neck, his breath slowing, his body still inside yours. You run your fingers through the short, bristled hair at the back of his head. You feel the shape of his skull underneath. You feel the bent edge of his left ear. You feel the specific architecture of a man you have no right to know this well and no reason to stop knowing. <<linkreplace "Again">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "05">> He turns you over. Not rough — a hand on your hip, a gentle rotation, the way you'd turn a page. You end up on your stomach and he enters from behind, and the angle is deeper, and different, and your face is in the pillow and the pillow smells like his shampoo and you can hear him breathing — actually hear it, the rasp of it, the slight catch at the top of each exhale that means he's close, that you've learned to hear the way you learned to hear the pipes and the bus schedule and the particular silence that means *right* in a language where every other syllable is a mistake. His hand finds your hair. Not pulling. Just holding. The fist closes around a handful at the base of your skull and the sensation travels down your spine like a current, and you push back against him — meeting his rhythm, matching his pace — and for a moment the two of you are not a man and a woman in a transactional arrangement on a Thursday night in a city that runs on debt. You're just two bodies that have found a tempo together, and the tempo is the truest thing you've shared with anyone since you can't remember when. You come again. Or something close to it — a tightening, a release, a warmth that starts between your legs and radiates outward until your fingers and toes are buzzing. He feels it — the contraction of you around him — and his rhythm breaks, finally, the control cracking, and he says your name. Not *babe*. Your name. You didn't know he knew it. <<linkreplace "Stay a little longer">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove208">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "06">> He helps you turn onto your back, staying close. You lie beneath him for a while, both of you breathing, with the white ceiling above you. There's a crack in the plaster above the light fixture. A thin, meandering line that starts at the corner and travels inward. You follow it with your eyes while your heartbeat slows. He pulls out. He rolls onto his back beside you. You expect him to get up — to pull his jeans on, to fold the towel, to walk out and leave you with the sound of the mattress creaking and the click of a lamp. He doesn't. He lies on his back and his arm is behind his head and his chest is rising and falling and you can see the scar on his left side clearly now, from this angle. It's long — longer than you thought, longer than the glimpses you've caught — running from just under his armpit to his hip, a pale ridge against the dark skin. You don't ask about it. He doesn't volunteer. But you're lying next to it, and you can see it, and he knows you can see it, and he hasn't covered it, and that — in the currency of a man who covers everything — is a fortune. The room is quiet. No pipes. No soup. No boys on the corner calling you *thing* or *baby* or anything at all. Just the two of you, and the crack in the ceiling, and the sound of a man breathing next to a woman he just went down on, in a city where going down on someone is the most expensive thing you can do for free. "You eat yet?" he says. You shake your head against the pillow. "I'll make something." He gets up. He pulls on his jeans — no shirt, no shoes, just the jeans, low on his hips — and walks barefoot out of the bedroom and down the stairs, and you hear the kitchen: the fridge opening, a pan on the burner, the particular competence of a man who knows where everything is in his own kitchen. You lie in his bed. In the sheets that smell like him. In the room with the crack in the ceiling and the light he turned off and the pillow that still holds the shape of his head. You lie there and you think about Marcus on the corner and the word *thing* and the way it felt like a fly on your skin, and then you think about the man who just had his face between your legs and his hands on your ribs and his mouth on your mouth, and the distance between *thing* and *this* is the distance between a sidewalk and a bed, and you have just crossed it. Downstairs, something is sizzling. You should go. You always go. You eat the soup and you catch the bus and you count the money and you don't look back. You almost don't. You lie in his sheets for another minute, then two, listening to the pan, memorizing the crack in the ceiling, letting the warmth of the mattress hold you the way his arms didn't quite — and then you think about the number. Not the debt — the *rate*. The daily tick that doesn't care about Thursday, that doesn't know about oxtail soup, that accrues interest while you lie in a man's bed and pretend, for the length of a breath, that you're someone who can afford to stay. $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>>. That's what tonight paid. The interest on a bad day is more than that. On a good day — a day when you work the bar and the cafe and skip lunch — you barely cover the tick. And tonight you spent the whole evening here, in this bed, with this man's mouth between your legs and his name in your mouth, and the ledger didn't pause. The ledger never pauses. You get up. You find your t-shirt on the floor. You find your bra. You find your jeans and your sneakers and your jacket, and you put them on in the dark, and each piece of clothing is a small re-entry into the person you are on the street — the woman with the debt, the woman with the schedule, the woman who cannot afford to lie in a man's bed on a Thursday night because a Thursday night spent horizontal is a Thursday night that doesn't pay. He's at the stove when you come down. He doesn't turn around. He knows you're leaving — he always knows, the same way he knows the bus schedule and the creak in the fourth stair and the exact distance between *thing* and *this*. He hands you a container. Not a bowl this time. A plastic container with a lid, still warm. "For later," he says. You take it. You hold it against your chest. It's warm and it smells like his kitchen and it's the most tender thing anyone has given you in this city, and you hate that it's not enough. You hate that $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>> and a container of soup and the memory of his mouth don't add up to a dent in the number waiting on your account. The bus is cold. The container is on your lap. You don't open it. *Next Thursday.* *If the debt lets you.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/ganglove2-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>More</h2> <div id="ganglove2-stage"><<include "GangLove201">></div>

/% THE FIRST TIME - the third Gangster Love scene. He kisses her. Standing. In the kitchen. Before anything else. In this city, a kiss on the mouth is worth more than a night, and he spends it on her like it's nothing. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangFirst")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangFirst")>> <h2>The First Time</h2> <div id="gangfirst-stage"><<include "GangFirst01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangfirst-01.png"></div> It rains on Thursday. Not the dramatic, cinematic rain. The ugly kind — sideways, cold, the kind that finds the gap between your collar and your neck and sits there like a judgment. Your umbrella broke two weeks ago and you haven't replaced it because umbrellas cost eight dollars and eight dollars is a meal, or a bus ride, or the difference between making the interest payment and not making it. You arrive wet. Wet enough that your white t-shirt — the same one, always the same one — is transparent at the shoulders. You can see your bra through it. You can see the edge of the choker through the collar. You can see, if anyone were looking, exactly what you are: a woman who walked three blocks in the rain to get to a door that's always open. He's in the kitchen. Not upstairs. Downstairs, at the counter, with a cup of something that steams. He looks up when you come in and his eyes do the full scan — the wet hair, the transparent shirt, the choker, the small river of water running from your left ear down your jaw. "You're soaked," he says. Not *hey, babe*. An observation. A man looking at a problem. "I'm fine." "You're drippin' on my floor." You look down. You are, in fact, dripping on his floor. A small puddle, spreading from your sneakers. You feel stupid — the kind of stupid that's not about intelligence but about class, about the distance between a woman who owns an umbrella and a woman who doesn't. "Take that off." He means the shirt. You pull it over your head. It clings. You drop it on the counter and stand there in your bra and your rain-wet jeans and the choker, and he puts his cup down and crosses the kitchen in three steps and stops in front of you. Then he does something he has never done before. He kisses you. On the mouth. Full. His hand comes to the back of your head — not gripping, not steering — cradling. His fingers slide into your wet hair and his thumb rests against your jaw and his lips taste like black coffee, and you forget to breathe. You forget the rain. You forget the debt. He pulls back an inch. Close enough that you can feel his breath on your wet lips. "Go upstairs," he says quietly. "Get out of those wet clothes." <<linkreplace "Go">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "01">> You go upstairs. You peel off your wet clothes — jeans, sneakers, socks, bra — and drop them on the floor next to the bed. You are standing naked in his bedroom, with rain still drying on your shoulders and the choker at your throat, and the only light is the lamp on the nightstand. He comes up. You hear him on the stairs — four, seven, the creaks he doesn't skip because this is his house. He comes into the bedroom and closes the door behind him, and the click of it sounds different from every other Thursday because every other Thursday the door stays open. Tonight it closes. Tonight does not feel like one of the old Thursdays. He takes off his shirt. You see the scar — the long one, from his armpit to his hip, a pale ridge against the dark skin. You want to touch it. You don't. You reach for his belt — the buckle, the familiar gesture — and he lets you. You unbuckle him, pull his jeans down, and take him in your mouth because that's what Thursdays are, that's the architecture, that's the shape your body folds into when it enters this room. His cock is half-hard, heavy on your tongue, tasting of soap and skin and the particular warmth of a man who waited indoors while you crossed the rain to reach him. You work him slowly, your hand at the base, your lips sealed around the shaft, and his hand comes to rest on your head — the Thursday weight, the familiar permission. "That's it," he murmurs. But his voice is different. Softer at the edges. And his hand slides from the crown of your head to your cheek, and his thumb brushes the corner of your mouth where your lips stretch around him. "Not yet," he says. He pulls you up. <<linkreplace "Lie back">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "02">> He lays you back on the bed. The sheets smell like him — soap and cotton and the particular warm animal smell of a man's bedroom. You sink into the mattress. After so many visits spent kneeling on the bathroom tile, lying here still feels unfamiliar. He kneels between your legs. His hands slide along the inside of your thighs and his thumbs part you and he lowers his face. You remember the last time he did this, how long you spent afterward trying to decide what it meant. Tonight his mouth is on you again, his tongue flat and warm, and your back arches off the mattress and your hands grab the sheet and the sound you make is the sound of a woman who has been giving for so long she forgot what it feels like to receive. He works you with the same patience he works everything — slow, deliberate, the tongue of a man who has decided not to be in a hurry. He finds the place and presses and your hips lift and you say something that might be his name or might just be a vowel. You come with your eyes closed and your fists full of sheet and a sound in your throat that is raw and unpracticed and entirely yours. He lifts his head. His chin is wet. His jaw is set. His gray eyes are watching you from between your legs, and you think: *this is what he looks like when he's not performing.* Not the boss. Not the silence. This face. This man who just did something for you that no one in this economy does for free. "Come here," you say. Asking him for what you want is getting easier. <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "03">> He comes up. His body covers yours. His face is an inch from yours and you can smell yourself on his breath, and instead of turning away you turn toward it, because it's evidence. It's the receipt. He enters you slowly. Not the rough entry of a man crossing a finish line. An inch at a time. You feel every inch — the thickness of him, the heat of him, the way your body opens to the familiar shape of him, face-to-face, with his eyes open and his mouth still tasting of you. "Fuck," he says into your mouth. Not performative. Involuntary. The sound a body makes when it remembers what it's for. You wrap your legs around him. Your arms. You hold on. And the holding is the best part — not the sex, which is good, which has always been good, but the holding. The fact that he lets you hold him. The fact that he doesn't pull away. He moves. The rhythm he sets is the rhythm of the pipes — steady, with small breaks, the heartbeat of a building that has been standing longer than either of you. You match it. Not practiced, not choreographed. Accidental. Two bodies finding the same tempo because they've spent so long learning each other and didn't know they were practicing for this. His hand is on your hip. His other arm is braced beside your head, holding his weight just enough that you can breathe, and you watch the vein in his forearm — the small, blue-green line beneath his dark skin, shifting as his arm takes his weight — and you think: *he's alive. I'm alive. We're here.* <<linkreplace "Turn">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "04">> He turns you over. A hand on your hip, a rotation, the way you'd turn a page in a book you're not ready to finish. You're on your stomach now, face in the pillow, and he enters from behind and the angle is deeper. Less controlled. With clients, this is where you check out. Your body stays and your mind goes to the bus schedule, to the debt, to the crack in the ceiling of your own apartment. But tonight you don't check out. Tonight you stay — face in the pillow that smells like his shampoo, his hand in your hair, his hips against yours — and you can hear him breathing. The rasp of it. The slight catch at the top of each exhale that means he's close. His hand moves from your hair to the small of your back. His thumb traces your spine — vertebra by vertebra, like he's counting. Like he's reading you the way you read the crack in his ceiling: slowly, with attention, because the details matter when you're memorizing something you're not sure you'll get to keep. He pulls back and enters again, deeper this time, and you push against him — meeting his rhythm, matching his pace — and for a moment you're not a man and a woman in a transactional arrangement. You're two bodies that found a tempo, and the tempo is the truest thing you've shared with anyone since you can't remember when. <<linkreplace "Come back">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "05">> He turns you back. Face to face. He wants to see you — and you know this because he turns you back instead of letting the moment end with your face hidden, because the face-to-face is the position that costs him something. He's choosing to look at you while he's inside you. He's choosing to be seen. You look at him. Really look. The broken nose. The gray stubble. The jaw that could open a bottle. The mouth that tasted like coffee and you. And his eyes — gray, steady, never blinking first — are looking at you the way a man looks at something he built, and you want to tell him that you're not something he built, you're something he found, already broken, already priced, already half-used, and he took you home anyway and kissed you in the kitchen with rain in your hair. "Say my name," you whisper. It comes out before you can stop it. He doesn't say it. He leans down and puts his mouth against your ear and breathes — once, warm, coffee-scented — and it's the closest he comes to answering. It's enough. He moves faster now. The control is slipping — his rhythm losing the metronome precision, his hips stuttering, his breath ragged. You feel it building in you too, the warmth spreading from where he is to where you are, from the base of your spine to the tips of your fingers, and you hold on to his shoulders and he holds on to your hip and the two of you are holding on to each other in a way that has nothing to do with balance and everything to do with not wanting to let go. <<linkreplace "Almost">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "06">> You come first. Or he does. You've lost track — the way you've lost track of the debt and the days and the number of Thursdays. His body stiffens and his jaw clenches and he pushes deep, deeper than before, and he says something that might be your name, might be *fuck*, might be nothing at all — just a sound, a vowel, a breath forced out of a body that has stopped being careful. You feel him come. Inside you — not on your tongue, not on your chest, not in the careful withdrawal of a man following his own rules. Inside. Which means he forgot the rule, or changed it, or decided that tonight, this one time, the rule doesn't apply. You come with him. Or after. Or before. Your back arches and your legs tighten around him and your hands grip his shoulders and your mouth opens against his neck and you make a sound that isn't a performance and isn't a word and isn't anything you've done in this city before. It's just a sound. It's just you. He rolls off. His arm goes behind his head — the posture, *I'm staying* — and his other arm drapes across your stomach. Not holding. Resting. You put your hand on his hand. You interlace your fingers. He lets you. The ceiling has a crack. You've never seen it from this side — you've seen it from the other pillow, from the guest position. But from his pillow, the crack looks different. It travels left instead of right. You look at it and you think: *I could learn this crack. If he lets me come back.* <<linkreplace "Stay">><<replace "#gangfirst-stage">><<include "GangFirst08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangfirst/" "07">> You stay longer than you've ever stayed. Not the night — you can't afford the night, the debt is a clock that doesn't stop for intimacy. But longer. Long enough that the rain stops and the window goes quiet and the light through the curtains changes from gray to dark. You lie in his bed with your fingers still interlaced and your body still humming and the crack in the ceiling memorized from his side of the pillow. He gets up eventually. No words — he never speaks after. The silence is his way of staying in the room without having to fill it. You hear him on the stairs, in the kitchen, the fridge, the pan. The particular competence of a man who cooks the way he does everything else. He brings the bowl up. A bowl, not a container. And he sits on the edge of the bed and hands it to you and you eat the oxtail soup sitting up in his sheets with the choker at your throat and his pillow behind your back, and it's the best meal you've had in this city, and it has nothing to do with the soup. He watches you eat. Not staring. Watching. The way a man watches a fire he built. "Next Thursday?" you say. It comes out before you can stop it. A check. *Is this still running? Are we still going?* He takes the bowl. He sets it on the nightstand. "I'll call," he says. And you know — because you know him now, because knowing him is the only thing you've done consistently since the debt started — that "I'll call" from a man who never calls means: *this is not a Thursday anymore. This is something else, and something else needs a different name, and I don't have the name yet but I'll call when I do.* You believe him. That's the part that will save you or destroy you. Right now, in this bed, with the taste of soup and coffee still on your tongue, you don't care which. *Next Thursday. If the debt lets you.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangfirst-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The First Time</h2> <div id="gangfirst-stage"><<include "GangFirst01">></div>

/% FAMILY - the fourth Gangster Love scene. He introduces her to his brother. She doesn't want to be shared. He asks — not orders, asks. And she says yes because it's him asking, and saying no to him has become harder than saying yes to anyone else. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangShare")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangShare")>> <h2>Family</h2> <div id="gangshare-stage"><<include "GangShare01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangshare-01.png"></div> He's quiet at dinner. Not the usual quiet — the productive kind, the silence of a man who's thinking about the next move while chewing. This is different. This is the quiet of a man who has something to say and is trying to figure out how to say it, and the figuring is taking longer than usual because whatever it is, it's not a number. You eat the oxtail soup. You always eat the soup. It's become the punctuation of Thursday — the meal that says *you're still here, I'm still feeding you, this is still a thing that is happening.* But tonight the soup tastes like waiting. "My brother's in town," he says. You look up. He's never mentioned a brother. In all the Thursdays, all the kitchen conversations that aren't conversations, all the moments where he's said one word and you've filled in the paragraph — he has never once said *brother*. "Older or younger?" you ask, because asking is easier than asking *why are you telling me this*. "Younger. By two years." He spoons the soup. He doesn't look at you. "He's been in Atlanta. Moved back last week." "That's nice." "He wants to meet you." The spoon stops halfway to your mouth. The soup cools in the spoon. You set it down. "Meet me." "He's heard about you." His voice is flat, the business voice, the voice you haven't heard since before the kiss. "From the boys. From Marcus." "Marcus called me a *thing*." "I know what Marcus said." His jaw tightens. Not at you. At the memory. At the word *thing* sitting in the air between you like a stain. "My brother ain't Marcus. He's family." *Family.* The word lands differently when he says it. Family means something to him — something structural, something load-bearing. His world runs on rules, and family is the first rule, the one that came before the money and the unlocked doors and the word that's worth more than a signature. Asking you to meet his brother isn't asking you to meet another client. It's asking you to meet the only person whose opinion of him matters. "Meet me how?" you say, and the question is louder than the words because you both know what *how* means. He looks at you for the first time since he said *brother*. His gray eyes are steady and his face is doing the thing it does — the nothing — but his hand, the one resting on the table, has curled into a fist. Not anger. Tension. The specific tension of a man who has decided to ask for something and is not sure he has the right. "He's my brother," he says. Like that explains everything. It doesn't explain everything. It explains enough. <<linkreplace "Okay">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You go to the bathroom. Not because you need to — because you need thirty seconds alone with the word *okay* before it becomes real. You look at yourself in the mirror. The choker. The face. The woman who walked three blocks in the rain that wet Thursday and got kissed in a kitchen and thought — stupidly, pathetically, with the full knowledge of her own stupidity — that the kiss meant the Thursdays would change. That the routine would become something else. That *I'll call* meant *I'll call you because I want to see you* instead of *I'll call you because there's someone I want you to meet.* You grip the edge of the sink. The porcelain is cold. The pipes knock behind the wall — *bmm, bmm* — the building's heartbeat, the metronome that has measured every Thursday since the first one. You think about saying no. You think about walking down the stairs and out the back door and onto the 47 and back to your apartment and your three hangers and your bag from a store you can't afford. You think about the interest accruing while you ride. You think about the debt. And then you think about him. Not the boss. Not the money. Him. The man who cooks oxtail soup and has a scar he won't discuss and a brother he's never mentioned and a hand that cradled the back of your head in the rain. He asked. He didn't order. He could have — he orders everything, his whole world is orders, the door that's always open is an order, the money on the table is an order. But for this, he asked. You take off your jacket. You unbutton the top button of your shirt. You run cold water over your wrists — a trick your mother taught you, for nerves, a lifetime ago in a kitchen that smelled like something other than oxtail and debt — and you dry your hands on the towel he never folds anymore. You go back downstairs. "Okay," you say. He nods. He doesn't smile — he doesn't smile — but his fist unclenches. "He's in the bedroom," he says. <<linkreplace "Go">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "01">> His brother is sitting on the bed. He looks like a younger version of the same blueprint — same jaw, same nose, same dark skin, but softer, not yet worn into the architecture of a man who carries things for a living. His hair is longer. His eyes are brown, not gray. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers that still have the creases from the box. "Damn," he says when you walk in. Not to you — to the room, to the air, to the fact of you. "She's even finer than Marcus said." "Watch your mouth," the gangster says from behind you. His voice has an edge you haven't heard before. Not anger — calibration. The fine-tuning of a man establishing the terms before the terms establish themselves. "My bad." The brother holds up his hands. The grin doesn't leave his face. "You look good, is all I'm sayin'. Real good." He stands up. He's tall — taller than the gangster by an inch, narrower in the shoulders, built like a runner instead of a loader. He crosses to you and his hand comes up and brushes a strand of hair behind your ear, a gesture so casually intimate it makes your chest hurt, because it's the kind of thing a boyfriend does, not a stranger, and the brother is doing it like he's already been told he can. "You gonna be nice to my brother?" the gangster says. Not to his brother. To you. You nod. "Say it." "I'll be nice." "Good." He puts his hand on the small of your back. His palm is warm through your shirt. He guides you forward, toward his brother, toward the bed, toward whatever this is about to become, and the warmth of his hand is both a comfort and a direction — *this way, not that way, I'm right behind you* — and you let it guide you because right now, in this moment, you would follow that hand anywhere. The brother reaches for the hem of your shirt. <<linkreplace "Let him">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "02">> You let him undress you. Not the way the gangster undressed you — slowly, like unwrapping something fragile. The brother is faster, more eager, his hands already everywhere before your shirt is fully off. He cups your breast through your bra and squeezes, and the squeeze is good — firm, not rough — and you feel your body respond even though your mind is still catching up. "See, I told you," the brother says over his shoulder. "Told you she was down." The gangster is leaning against the door frame. Arms crossed. Watching. His face is doing the nothing, but his eyes are tracking every place his brother's hands go, and the tracking is not possessive — it's protective. He's watching the way a man watches a kid brother ride a bike for the first time: ready to catch, hoping he won't have to. "Take your time," the gangster says. To his brother. But the words land on you too, because *take your time* is what he said the first night, in the car, when you didn't know what you were doing and he did. The brother pulls down your bra straps. Your breasts come free and he dips his head and takes one nipple in his mouth — hot, wet, the pull of it traveling from your chest to your stomach to the place between your legs — and you gasp, and the gasp is involuntary, and the brother grins. "She likes that." He's not wrong. You do like it. You like the attention and the warmth and the fact that someone new is looking at your body like it's worth looking at, and the liking makes you feel guilty because you're supposed to be doing this for *him*, not for you, but the guilt is quiet and the warmth is loud and the brother's mouth is doing something with his tongue that makes it hard to think in complete sentences. You reach for his belt. He's already hard — you can see the shape of him through his jeans, long and insistent — and you unbuckle him with the same familiar motion you use every Thursday, except this isn't Thursday and this isn't the same belt and this isn't the same man. His cock springs free. Dark, curved, thick at the head. Different from the gangster's — longer, thinner, a different weight in your hand. You stroke him once, twice, getting the feel of him, learning a new shape the way you learned the old one: with your palm and your attention and the willingness to make mistakes. "Damn," the brother breathes. "She's gonna —" You take him in your mouth. <<linkreplace "Suck">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "03">> He tastes different. Not worse — just different. A different soap, a different skin, a different chemical signature that your tongue maps in real time the way a cartographer maps new coastline. You work him slowly at first — getting the depth, getting the angle, learning the ridge and the curve and the place where his breathing changes from baseline to something held. "Yo, she's good," the brother says. To the gangster. Not to you. A review delivered over your head, past your bobbing mouth, to the man standing in the doorway. "Where'd you find her?" "Don't matter where I found her." The gangster's voice is flat. "Be respectful." "I'm bein' respectful. I'm just sayin'." The brother's hand comes to the back of your head — not gripping, just resting, the way you'd rest your hand on a dashboard to steady yourself on a turn. "I'm just sayin' — she's got a mouth on her, man. Like — *damn.*" You feel yourself blush. Not from embarrassment — from the praise. The stupid, chemical, Pavlovian flush of a woman being told she's good at something, even when the something is sucking a stranger's cock while his brother watches from a doorway. You blush because your body doesn't know the difference between this compliment and any other compliment, and the warmth in your cheeks travels down your neck and across your chest and settles between your legs, and you're wet now, actually wet, not the trained professional warmth but the real involuntary heat. You take him deeper. Your hand cups his balls — heavy, loose, the skin like warm silk — and you roll them while your mouth works, and the brother's thighs are trembling, and his breathing has that catch you've learned to hear. "I'm — yo, I'm close —" "Not yet." The gangster's voice cuts through the room. "Don't you dare finish yet." The brother groans. You feel the vibration of it through his cock. You pull back — a string of saliva connecting your lower lip to the head — and you look at the gangster, because his voice told you to stop, and his voice is the voice you follow. He's looking at you. Not his brother. You. And in his eyes there's something you can't read — not anger, not jealousy, not the flat professional assessment of a man checking inventory. Something else. Something that looks, in the dim light of the bedroom, like the way he looked at you in the kitchen when it was raining. "Get on the bed," he says. <<linkreplace "On the bed">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "04">> You lie back on the bed. His bed. The sheets smell like him and the pillow still has the dent from your head and the crack in the ceiling is still there, traveling left instead of right, forking once before it reaches the water stain. You know this crack. You learned it from his pillow. The brother climbs between your legs. He doesn't go down on you — that's not what this is, that's not what he's here for. He positions himself and enters in one thrust, and the entry is good — thick enough, deep enough, a different angle than you're used to but a good angle, an angle that hits a place the gangster's cock doesn't reach because it's a different cock and a different body and a different man. "Shit," the brother says. His eyes close. "She's *tight.*" You arch your back. Your body is accepting him — not reluctantly, not with the professional accommodation you've trained into yourself, but with a warmth that surprises you. He feels good. He feels different from Thursday, and different is not bad, and the newness of him is like a sentence in a language you're learning — you don't understand all of it, but you understand enough to know it's saying something nice. The gangster moves from the doorway to the bed. He sits on the edge. His hand finds your hair. Not your head — your hair. He runs his fingers through it, a gesture so tender it makes your throat tighten, because he's touching you while his brother is inside you, and the tenderness didn't leave when the other man arrived. It's still here. It's sitting next to you on the bed, stroking your hair, being careful. "You okay?" he says. Quietly. So his brother can't hear. "Yeah," you say. And you mean it. "Good." His thumb brushes your temple. "Just breathe." The brother sets a pace — faster than Thursday, less deliberate, the pace of a man who is enjoying himself and has been told not to finish too quickly. His hips slap against yours and the sound is wet and full and fills the room with the particular rhythm of sex that is not making love and is not a performance and is somewhere in between — recreational, maybe. Or familial. The kind of thing you do because you're part of something now, part of a structure, and structures have rooms you haven't been in yet. The gangster's hand is still in your hair. His brother's cock is inside you. You close your eyes and you let both be true. <<linkreplace "Turn over">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "05">> "Turn over," the brother says. "I wanna hit it from the back." You turn. Face down, ass up, the position you know best. The pillow is under your face and it smells like him and you breathe him in while his brother fucks you from behind, and the contradiction is so sharp it's almost poetic — the man's pillow under your face, the man's brother inside your body, the man's hand on your back, steadying you, grounding you, making sure you don't fall. "Look at that," the brother breathes. His hands grip your hips. "Look at that *ass.* Marcus wasn't lyin'." "Don't talk about Marcus," the gangster says. "I'm just sayin'!" "Don't." One syllable. The temperature in the room drops. The brother's grin falters. For a second — just a second — the air goes thin, and the brother remembers whose bed this is and whose woman this is and whose rules these are. "My bad." Softer now. "She's just — she's really good, man." "I know she's good." The gangster's hand moves from your back to the base of your skull, and the pressure is gentle, and the gentleness says: *he's an idiot, but he's my idiot, and I'm sorry, and I'm here.* The brother's pace picks up. His cock hits deeper from this angle and you feel every thrust in your stomach, and the feeling is — not pleasure exactly, not the warm spreading orgasm-building feeling, but something rawer. More physical. The blunt, honest sensation of being fucked, hard, by someone who is not the person you want to be fucked by but is close enough, is related enough, has the same jaw and the same nose and the same dark skin and is, in the dim light, with your eyes closed, almost him. Almost. You reach between your legs. You find yourself — wet, swollen, the clit hard under your fingers — and you press, and the double sensation (his cock inside you, your fingers outside) is enough to tip you over the edge, and you come with a sound that's half-gasp and half-sob, your face in his pillow, your body shaking, your fingers wet. "Yo, did she just —" "Yeah." The gangster's voice is warm. Actually warm. The first warm thing he's said all night. "She did." <<linkreplace "Finish">><<replace "#gangshare-stage">><<include "GangShare08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangshare/" "06">> The brother pulls out. "Where you want it?" "On her," the gangster says. Not *in her*. Not *on her face*. Just *on her*. The instruction is vague enough to be permission and specific enough to be control. The brother strokes himself — three, four, five — and comes on your lower back. You feel the warm stripes land on your skin, one, two, the last one reaching the curve of your ass. He exhales. A long, satisfied, slightly stunned sound. "*Damn,*" he says. "That was — yeah." He stands up. He pulls his jeans on. He looks at the gangster, and the look passes something between them — not words, not even a conversation, just the silent transaction of brothers who have shared something and are now recalibrating the balance. "I'm gonna grab a beer," the brother says. "You want one?" "I'm good." The brother leaves. His footsteps on the stairs — four, seven, the creaks he doesn't skip because he grew up in this building too, because these stairs know his weight the way they know the gangster's, the way they're starting to know yours. You're on the bed. On your stomach. On the towel that someone placed there before you arrived. With another man's come cooling on your skin and the pillow still under your face and the gangster sitting on the edge of the mattress with his hand still in your hair. "You okay?" he says. For the second time. "Yeah." "You sure?" You turn over. You look up at him. His face is doing the nothing — the same flat, careful nothing it's been doing all night — but his hand is still in your hair and his thumb is still brushing your temple and his eyes are still gray and steady and looking at you like you're the only person in a room that just had three people in it. "I'm sure," you say. He nods. He stands up. He walks to the bathroom and comes back with a warm towel. You turn onto your stomach again, and he sits beside you to wipe the come off your back — carefully, gently, the way you'd clean a wound — and the gesture is so tender it makes your eyes sting, because this man just watched his brother fuck you and now he's cleaning you up and the distance between those two things is the distance between the man he is on the street and the man he is in this room, and you have fallen in love with both of them and neither of them is enough and both of them are all you have. "There's money on the table," he says. "I know." "You did good." Three words. *You did good.* Not *good girl* — that's the Thursday word, the bedroom word, the words that make it harder to think. Just *good.* A man telling a woman she did well. Simple. Clean. You get dressed. You take the money. You kiss him at the door — quickly, on the mouth, because you can do that now, because he kissed you first, because the kiss is yours as much as his. He lets you. His hand comes to the back of your head for just a second, and then you're out the door and down the stairs and onto the 47 and the bus is cold and the money is in your pocket and the taste of his brother is fading and the taste of him — coffee, soap, rain — is not. *Thursday.* *Maybe just the two of us.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangshare-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Family</h2> <div id="gangshare-stage"><<include "GangShare01">></div>

/% BROTHERS - the fifth Gangster Love scene. The second time with the brother. Both of them this time. "You already did this. Nothing new. We just wanna try somethin' — make it fun for you too." She says yes because saying no to one of them is saying no to both, and she's not ready to lose either. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(350)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangBro")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangBro")>> <h2>Brothers</h2> <div id="gangbro-stage"><<include "GangBro01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangbro-01.png"></div> The brother shows up on a Thursday. Not your Thursday — not the eight-o'clock, the-bus-is-the-47, the-white-t-shirt Thursday. A different Thursday. A Thursday where you knock on the door instead of walking through it, because the door is closed for the first time since you've known him, and the closed door is a message you're still learning to read. He opens it. Not the gangster. The brother. Standing in the doorway in a tank top and basketball shorts, with a beer in one hand and the other braced against the frame, blocking the entrance the way a tollbooth blocks a road. "She's here!" he calls over his shoulder, into the apartment, to the man somewhere inside. Then to you, with the grin — the same grin from last time, the one that looks like the gangster's except it's never been broken in: "Come on in, girl. We been waitin' on you." *We.* The word sits in your stomach like a cold coin. You step inside. The apartment smells different — not just oxtail and soap but beer and cologne and the faintly sweet smoke of something you don't recognize, something that clings to the curtains and the couch and the air in a way that says *men have been here for a while, doing nothing, waiting for something to arrive.* You are the something. The gangster is on the couch. He's got a beer too. His feet are on the coffee table and the TV is on — a game, basketball, the Nets losing — and he looks up when you come in and his face does the thing it does. The nothing. Except this time the nothing is softer at the edges, warmer, the nothing of a man who is comfortable in his own apartment with his brother and a beer and a woman he's expecting, and the comfort is so domestic it makes your chest hurt. "You ate?" he says. "I'm good." "You sure? We got wings." "I'm sure." He nods at the couch. You sit between them. The cushions sag on both sides and you sink into the middle and the sinking is not unpleasant — two warm bodies, the sound of the game, the smell of beer and cologne and the oxtail that's always on the stove — and for a second, just a second, it feels like something you could get used to. A Thursday night with two men who smell like family and talk about basketball and don't ask you for anything. Then the brother puts his hand on your knee. <<linkreplace "Easy">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

"So," the brother says. His thumb traces a circle on your kneecap. "Last time was fun, right?" You look at the gangster. He's watching the game. The Nets are down by six. His jaw is doing the thing — the muscle along it, tight, deliberate, the tension of a man who is not watching the game at all. "Yeah," you say. "It was fine." "*Fine?*" The brother laughs. "Girl, you came so hard I thought you were gonna cry. That was *fine?*" You blush. The blush is involuntary and stupid and you hate it and you can't stop it. The brother sees it and his grin widens and his thumb moves from your kneecap to the inside of your thigh. "I'm just sayin'. My brother told me you was cool. And you *are* cool." His thumb is higher now, pressing against the denim between your legs. "So we figured — next time, why not make it interestin'?" "Interestin' how?" Your voice comes out thinner than you want it to. The gangster mutes the TV. The silence is sudden and total — no announcer, no crowd, no background noise to hide behind. Just the three of you and the couch and the hand on your thigh and the question you haven't asked yet. "Both of us," the gangster says. Not looking at you. Looking at the muted screen, at the moving players, at anything that isn't your face. "At the same time." The words hang in the air like smoke. "You already did this," the brother says. His thumb presses harder. "Last time. Just me. Nothin' new. We just wanna try somethin' different — make it fun for you too." His voice drops, goes softer, goes into the register that sounds like his brother's but isn't — the borrowed warmth of a younger man who has learned that gentleness gets you further than force. "You trust us, right?" *Us.* There it is again. The word that makes you one-third of a thing instead of one-half of another, and the arithmetic is wrong, the arithmetic has always been wrong, but the hand on your thigh is warm and the beer smells like his kitchen and the game is muted and the man you love is sitting next to you asking for something he can't ask for while looking at you, and the man you don't love but don't not-love is already halfway there. "Okay," you say. The same word from last time. The same thirty seconds of bathroom courage compressed into two syllables. The same stupid, pathetic, inevitable *okay.* The brother's grin splits his face. "Thas' what I'm talkin' about." He stands up. He pulls his shirt over his head in one motion — younger body, less scarred, the same dark skin over muscle that hasn't been asked to carry as much. "Come on. Let's take this upstairs." The gangster stands. He puts his hand on the small of your back — the same gesture, the same warmth, *I'm right behind you* — and you go. <<linkreplace "Upstairs">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangbro/" "01">> They undress you together. Not gracefully — there's no choreography, no rhythm. Four hands pulling at buttons and straps and zippers, and you stand in the middle of the bedroom with your arms up and your eyes half-closed while two men who share the same jaw pull your clothes off like they're opening a package they've both been waiting for. The brother gets your bra. The gangster gets your jeans. Your shirt goes somewhere — over a shoulder, onto the floor, it doesn't matter. You're standing in your underwear and the choker and nothing else, and two pairs of eyes — one gray, one brown — are looking at you the way men look at a table they've set. "Damn," the brother breathes. He reaches out and cups your left breast, weighs it in his palm, runs his thumb across the nipple until it hardens. "Every time, man. Every time I see her I'm like — *damn.*" "Take your time," the gangster says. The same words. The same instruction. But this time they're directed at both of you. You sink to your knees. Not because someone told you to — because the floor is where you go when there are two men and one of you and the math doesn't work standing up. You reach for the brother first because he's closer, because his shorts are already off, because his cock is hard and curving upward and the head is dark and wet and waiting. You take him in your mouth. The taste is familiar now — two Thursdays of familiarity, the specific soap-and-skin of a man whose body you've started to learn. You work him the way you learned: slow, wet, your hand at the base, your tongue flat against the underside. The gangster's belt hits the floor. You hear it — the metallic clatter, the sound of a Thursday beginning — and then his cock is at your other cheek, pressing against your face, and you turn your head and take him too. Two cocks. One in each hand, your mouth moving between them. You suck the brother for four strokes and then switch to the gangster for four and then back, and the rhythm is not a rhythm — it's improvisation, it's jazz, it's two instruments playing over each other while you try to keep the melody. "Yo, look at her," the brother says. His hand is in your hair. "She's fuckin' *insatiable.*" "She's bein' polite," the gangster says, and his hand is also in your hair, and the two hands are touching, their fingers interlacing above your crown, and the interlacing is not about you — it's about them, about the shared thing, the thing brothers do when they're doing something together and the togetherness is the point. <<linkreplace "Bed">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangbro/" "02">> They move you to the bed. The same bed. His bed. The sheets smell like him and the crack is in the ceiling and the pillow has your dent. But tonight the bed is not a Thursday bed. Tonight it's a platform. The brother lies on his back. "Come here, girl." He pulls you on top of him. You straddle his hips and his cock slides inside you — familiar now, the length, the curve, the angle that hits the place the gangster doesn't reach. You settle onto him and your weight is accepted and for a moment it's just the two of you, the same as last time, the same rhythm, the same good-deep-different feeling. Then you feel hands on your back. Pressing you forward. Pushing your chest against the brother's chest. The gangster's hands. "Relax," he says in your ear. His voice is low and warm and his breath smells like beer and his cock — hard, thick, the cock you know better than any other — is pressing against the place where his brother already is. "Wait," you say. "I don't —" "You can take it," the brother says beneath you. He's not moving. He's holding you in place, his hands on your hips, his cock buried inside you, and his voice is gentle but his hands are not. "You already did this. Just me, last time. This is just — one more. One more and it's gonna feel so good, I promise." "Listen to him," the gangster says. His hand moves from your back to your ass. His thumb traces the ring of muscle — tight beneath his thumb — and the touch is gentle, exploratory, the touch of a man who is asking permission with his fingers because his mouth can't form the question. "We'll go slow. Just breathe." "Breathe," the brother echoes. And the word is tender, genuinely tender, and the tenderness is what breaks you, because two men are being gentle with you at the same time and the gentleness is real and the realness is enough. You breathe. The gangster pushes in. <<linkreplace "Oh God">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangbro/" "03">> The sensation is — you don't have a word. Not pain. Not pleasure. Something past both, something that occupies a space your vocabulary hasn't mapped yet. You are full in a way you have never been full — two cocks inside you, two bodies pressed against you, two sets of hands holding you in place while they find their rhythm inside you. "Fuck," the brother says beneath you. His eyes are closed. "She's even tighter like this. I can feel you, man." "I know." The gangster's voice is strained. Controlled. The voice of a man who is using every ounce of his discipline to go slowly, to not thrust, to let your body adjust to the impossible geometry of two men occupying the same space. "Just — hold still. Let her get used to it." "I'm trying, but she's so — *fuck.*" "I said hold still." The brother holds still. The gangster holds still. You are the only one moving — small, involuntary contractions, your body trying to accommodate, trying to make room, trying to understand what is happening to it. And slowly — slowly, slowly, the way water finds a crack in stone — your body opens. The impossible becomes possible. The pain becomes pressure. The pressure becomes fullness. And the fullness becomes — not pleasure, not yet, but the *absence of not-pleasure*, which is the first step. "Move," you whisper. "You can move." "You sure?" The gangster's breath is hot against your neck. "Yeah." They move. Not together — they're not synchronized, they haven't practiced this, they're not a machine. They move in opposition. When the brother pulls out, the gangster pushes in. When the gangster pulls out, the brother pushes in. And you are the point between them — the hinge, the pivot, the fulcrum on which two men are balanced — and every thrust sends a shock through your body that starts at your core and radiates outward until your fingers and your toes and your teeth are buzzing. "Yo, she's —" the brother starts. "Don't talk," the gangster says. "Just move." They move. Faster. The rhythm finding itself — not opposition anymore but coordination, two bodies learning to share the same woman the way two hands learn to share the same instrument. You are the instrument. You are being played. And the music is — you close your eyes and you let it be whatever it is. <<linkreplace "More">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangbro/" "04">> It builds. Not like Thursday — not the slow, deliberate climb of a man who has all night. This is faster, messier, the staccato accumulation of too many sensations in too many places. The brother's cock hits the front wall of your cunt on every upstroke. The gangster's cock fills your ass with every downstroke. And between them, in the narrow space where your bodies overlap, your clit is being ground between your pelvis and the brother's stomach, and the friction is relentless, and you can't escape it, and you don't want to. "I'm close," the brother says. His voice is ragged. His rhythm is faltering. "Not yet." The gangster's voice is iron. "Not till she comes." "How you know she hasn't?" "Because I know her." Four words. Spoken into your hair, so quiet the brother can't hear. *Because I know you.* And the knowing is so intimate, so private, so specifically *him* — not the brother, not the Thursday, not the routine — that it's the thing that pushes you over. You come with a sound that scares you — not a moan, not a gasp, something rawer, a sound from a place you didn't know your body could reach. Your muscles contract around both of them and the contraction triggers a chain reaction: the brother groans and his hips buck and he comes inside you — hot, thick, pulsing — and the gangster feels it, feels his brother's orgasm through the thin wall between them, and that's all it takes. He comes too. Both of them. Inside you. At the same time. Filling you from both directions, two pulses that are not synchronized but are close, so close, two men who share the same blood releasing into the same woman at almost the same moment, and you are the center of it, the meeting point, the place where their family history and your debt and the whole stupid, beautiful, terrible arithmetic of this city converges into a single, warm, shaking, unbearable moment. You lie there. Between them. Under one, over the other. Filled with both. You know the crack in the ceiling is still there, traveling left, forking once, and you think: *I am never going to be able to look at that crack again without feeling this.* <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#gangbro-stage">><<include "GangBro07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangbro/" "05">> They pull out of you separately. Not at the same time — one first, then the other. The withdrawal leaves you empty in a way that is physical and also not physical, a hollowness that has nothing to do with anatomy and everything to do with the sudden, violent absence of fullness. Your body is a house that has been vacated. The rooms echo. The brother rolls onto his back. He exhales — a long, slow, shattered breath. "Holy *shit.* That was — I don't even — *holy shit.*" The gangster gets up. He walks to the bathroom without speaking and comes back with a towel — warm, damp, the same towel he used last time — and he sits on the edge of the bed and he cleans you. Not just the surface. Between your legs, where both of them were, where the evidence of what just happened is cooling on the inside of your thighs. He wipes it away with the same careful, patient, wound-dressing attention, and his hand doesn't shake, and his face doesn't change, and the steadiness is the most terrifying thing about him. "You okay?" he says. His familiar question. His private question. His *I'm asking because I need to know, not because I'm supposed to.* "Yeah." You're not sure if you're lying. You're not sure what the truth would sound like. You're not sure of anything except the weight of the towel and the warmth of his hand and the fact that your body has just done something it has never done before and survived. "That's my girl," he says. Quietly. Almost to himself. And the words — *my girl* — land differently than *good girl*, differently than *you did good*, differently than any of the other words he's used to describe what you are to him. *My girl* is not a performance review. It's a claim. The brother is already half-asleep. His breathing has slowed, his eyes are closed, his mouth is slightly open. Without the grin, he looks as exhausted as if he had played a full basketball game. "Should I —" you start. "Stay," the gangster says. Not a request. Not a suggestion. The same word from the first Thursday. The word that means more than it says. You stay. You lie between them. The brother on your left, already asleep, his breathing the slow rasp of a young man who has exhausted himself. The gangster on your right, on his back, his arm behind his head, his other hand resting on your stomach. Not holding. Covering. The way a hand covers a wound that has stopped bleeding. The crack in the ceiling travels left. You watch it. You memorize it from this angle — this new angle, this third angle, the angle of a woman who is lying between two brothers on a Thursday night in a city that runs on debt. *This crack looks different from every side.* *Like everything else.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangbro-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Brothers</h2> <div id="gangbro-stage"><<include "GangBro01">></div>

/% TOY - the sixth and final Gangster Love scene before the Black ending. He introduces her to the crew. Not as a girlfriend. As a fact. "She's with me. She can take it. Try her." She takes all of them, gives as good as she gets in the banter, and at the end — when the boys are done — he takes her back. She falls asleep with him inside her. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -90)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 15)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangToy")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangToy")>> <h2>Toy</h2> <div id="gangtoy-stage"><<include "GangToy01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangtoy-01.png"></div> He tells you on Wednesday. Not Thursday — Wednesday. A short text. *Tomorrow. Wear nothin' nice.* You read it four times. *Wear nothin' nice.* Nothing worth keeping clean, then. As if the occasion calls for something other than the white t-shirt and the jeans and the bra you've had since before all this. The instruction is to be undressed before you arrive, in spirit if not in fact, and the spirit of it sits in your chest like a swallowed stone. You don't sleep. Not because you're anxious — you're past anxiety, you've been past it since the second Thursday, since the body learned to metabolize dread into a kind of numb readiness. You don't sleep because the ceiling in your apartment doesn't have a crack, and you've become a woman who needs a crack to look at, and the absence of one is its own kind of insomnia. At eight p.m. on Thursday you knock on the door. It's closed. It used to be open whenever you came, and the closing is a text in a language you've been studying: *tonight is different. Tonight has an audience.* The brother opens it. He's not smiling. For the first time since you met him, the grin is gone, replaced by something more careful, more watchful — the face of a man who is not the host tonight, just the doorman. He steps aside without speaking. You walk in. The living room is full. Not *full* the way a bus is full — strangers pressed together, anonymous warmth. Full the way a room is full when every person in it was invited for a reason and the reason is sitting in the kitchen. You count without turning your head: four on the couch, two by the window, one at the counter with a beer he hasn't opened. Seven. Seven men who look like variations on the same theme — dark skin, strong builds, the particular physical density of men who lift things that aren't weights. Some of them you recognize from the corner. Some of them are new. They all look at you. The looking is not hostile. It is not friendly. It is *appraising* — the specific, clinical attention of men evaluating an asset that has been described to them but not yet demonstrated. You have been looked at this way before. By Smith, who looked at your debt. By clients, who looked at your body. By the city, which looked at your signature. But never by seven men at once, in a room that smells like weed and cologne and the oxtail soup that is — tonight — not for you. The gangster comes out of the kitchen. He's wearing the navy shirt. The one from the dinner, the one he wore when he introduced you to his brother. The shirt means something — it's his formal wear, his presentation uniform, the costume he puts on when he wants the world to see him as a man who owns things. He stands next to you. His hand finds the small of your back. The warmth is there — the same warmth from every Thursday, the *I'm right behind you* — but it's different tonight. Tonight the hand is not just guiding you. It's presenting you. "This is her," he says. To the room. To the seven men who are looking at you like a menu in a language they all speak. "She's with me." *I'm with him.* Not *I belong to him.* Not *I'm his.* *I'm with him.* The preposition is doing all the work. *With* implies choice. *With* implies agency. *With* implies that you walked three blocks from the bus stop on a Thursday night because you wanted to, not because you were told to. And the fact that he chose *with* instead of *mine* — in front of his crew, in front of the men who measure his authority by the size of his possessions — is either a slip or a statement, and you don't know which, and the not-knowing is the story of your life in this city. "She been tested," the brother says from the couch. He's got his feet on the coffee table. The grin is back. "Me and my brother already broke her in. Both holes. She can take it." *Both holes.* The phrase is crude and reductive and anatomically inaccurate — there are more than two, and you have more than two, and the reduction of your body to a pair of orifices is the kind of thing that should make you angry. But you're not angry. You're standing in a room where seven men have just been told that you can take multiple cocks, and the man who loves you is standing behind you with his hand on your back, and the brother is grinning, and the oxtail soup is on the stove, and somewhere outside the 47 is running its route, and you are — you realize, with a clarity that is almost peaceful — already wet. "Try her," the gangster says. Two words. Quiet. Final. The voice of a man who has made a decision and is not going to explain it. <<linkreplace "Begin">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "01">> The first one is the one by the window. Tall, bald, arms like bridge cables. He crosses the room in three strides and puts his hand on your shoulder and pushes, gently, and your knees fold and you're on the floor and his cock is in your mouth before you've finished the thought *this is happening*. He tastes like beer and something sweeter underneath — the weed, maybe, or just the particular chemistry of a man who's been sitting in a room getting high and waiting for this. You work him the way you've learned to work every man in this city: with attention, with care, with the professional's understanding that the first one sets the tone. Your hand finds his balls — heavy, full, warm against your palm — and you roll them while your mouth takes him deeper, and above you he groans, and the groan is a signal, and the signal means: *she's good.* Another one. On your left. The one from the counter. He's shorter, thicker, with a beard that hasn't been trimmed in weeks. His cock is already out — you didn't see him unzip — and he presses it against your cheek, against the side of your mouth, and you turn your head and take him too. Two cocks. You know this part. You learned it with the brothers. Your mouth moves between them — one, then the other, then back — and your hands are full and your jaw is aching and the floor is hard under your knees and the room is watching, the room is *participating*, and the participation is not just the two men you're sucking but the five who are standing around with their drinks and their phones and their erections, waiting, and the waiting is part of it — the *audience* is part of it, the fact that they're watching you service their friends and knowing they're next. "Yo, she's got a mouth on her," the thick one says. Not to you. To the room. "Don't let her hear you say that," the brother says from the couch. "She'll bite." You do, actually. Not hard. Just enough to make him yelp. And then you grin around his cock and the room laughs and the laughter is — not cruel, exactly. Appraising. The laughter of men who have just discovered that the entertainment is interactive. "She's got jokes," someone says behind you. "She's got teeth," someone else says. "She's got three holes and we only usin' two," the bald one says, and the room laughs again, harder, and you feel the sound of it travel through his cock into your mouth. <<linkreplace "More">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "02">> They move you to the couch. Not gently — not roughly. The way a group of men move a piece of furniture they've all agreed to use: with a kind of practical, impersonal coordination. Someone pulls your shirt over your head. Someone else pulls your jeans down. Your bra goes one direction, your underwear another, and you are naked on the couch in a room full of clothed men and the asymmetry of it — them dressed, you not — is its own kind of statement. "Look at that," says the one with the beard. His hand is between your legs, his fingers inside you, pumping lazily. "Already wet. She *likes* this shit." "I do not," you say, and your voice is breathier than you intended. "Your pussy says otherwise." He curls his fingers and hits a spot and your back arches and the arch is involuntary and damning. "She's a liar," the bald one says. He's stroking himself, watching. "She's a dirty little liar who gets off on being the party favor." "At least I'm honest about being a party favor," you say. "You're pretending you're not next." The room laughs. Real laughter — surprised, genuine. Someone says "oh *shit*" and someone else says "she's got fire" and the brother, from somewhere behind the couch, says "told you. Told you she was cool." The bald one leans down. His face is an inch from yours. "You gonna keep that mouth busy or you gonna keep talkin'?" "Depends," you say. "Can you handle both?" He grins. He shoves his cock back in your mouth. The answer, apparently, is both. <<linkreplace "Next">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "03">> The third one enters you without preamble. No foreplay, no buildup, no *are you ready.* He's been waiting and the waiting is over and your body is the venue and the venue is open. He pushes inside you — thick, insistent, the cock of a man who fucks the way he drives: fast, confident, without checking his mirrors. "Shit," he says. "She *is* tight." "Told you," the brother says. "For a white girl," someone adds, and the qualifier sits in the air like a fart — noticed, unacknowledged, allowed to dissipate. You want to say something. You want to say *for a white girl? Really? That's the best you've got?* You want to be sharp and funny and the woman who bites back. But the cock inside you is hitting a place that makes words difficult, and the cock in your mouth is hitting the back of your throat, and between the two of them your capacity for wit has been reduced to the vowels of agreement — *ah, oh, mm* — which are not words but are, apparently, sufficient. The third one sets a pace. Fast. Businesslike. The pace of a man who has a schedule — other holes to fill, other orifices to try, the whole evening planned like a delivery route. His hips slap against yours and the sound fills the room — wet, rhythmic, the percussion section of an orchestra that is tuning up. A fourth one is at your face now. You've lost count — not of the number, you can count, you can always count, the debt taught you counting — but of the *order*, the sequence, which cock came before which and whose turn it is and who's next. They blur. Not in a cinematic way — not the soft-focus montage of a woman losing herself to pleasure. In a practical, managerial way. They blur the way tasks blur on a to-do list. You do one, you do the next. You cross one off and another appears. "Flip her," someone says. They flip you. <<linkreplace "Flip">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "04">> You're on your hands and knees on the couch now, and the angle is different — doggy, the position you know best, the position where you don't have to look at anyone's face. Someone enters you from behind. Someone else feeds you from the front. Your hands are on two more — one in each palm — and you are, for the first time, using every part of your body that can be used simultaneously. Four men at once. You didn't plan this. You didn't *not* plan this. You walked through a door on a Thursday night and said *okay* and the okay has led here — to a couch in a room that smells like weed and cologne, with a cock in your mouth and a cock in your cunt and a cock in each hand and seven men (five? six? you've lost the count) watching and waiting and commenting. "Look at her go," someone says. Admiring. "She's a fuckin' machine," someone else says. "She's a *toy,*" the bald one corrects. "Christmas morning, man. Brand-new toy. Everybody gets a turn." You pull your mouth off the cock you're sucking. You look at the bald one. Your mascara is ruined and your lipstick is gone and your hair is stuck to your forehead with sweat and you are — you know this for a fact — a mess. "Christmas morning?" you say. "It's July." The room *explodes.* Genuine laughter — the kind that comes from surprise, from the shock of a woman who is being gangbanged on a couch and still has the presence of mind to correct the season. The bald one shakes his head. The brother, from somewhere, says "*that's* what I'm talkin' about." The gangster is not laughing. He's standing by the kitchen doorway. The same doorway where he stood when his brother fucked you. Arms crossed. Face doing the nothing. But the nothing is different tonight — thinner, more transparent, like a wall that's been painted too many times and is starting to show the structure underneath. His jaw is clenched. His eyes are on you — only on you, not on the men, not on the cocks, on *you* — and in his eyes there is something you've seen before and hoped you'd never see again. It looks like cost. <<linkreplace "Keep going">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "05">> They rotate. The word comes to you from somewhere — an article you read, a documentary you half-watched, a lifetime ago, about the way factories work. *Rotate.* The men rotate through you like stations on an assembly line. Each one takes his turn at each station. Mouth. Cunt. Hands. Ass. The ass is new — not new in the sense of untried (you already know what it feels like with the brothers) but new in the sense of *public*, new in the sense of *witnessed*, new in the sense of a man pushing into your ass while five other men watch and one of them says "goddamn, she's really takin' it." You are really taking it. Someone finishes in your mouth. You swallow because that's what you do, because Thursday training applies to non-Thursday events, because your throat has been calibrated to receive and process and move on. Someone else finishes on your chest — warm stripes on your skin, cooling in the air-conditioned air, the particular viscosity of semen that you've felt so many times it's become a kind of weather. "Goddamn," the one who finished says. "That was — yeah." "Yeah," someone echoes. Already positioning himself. You close your eyes and you let it happen. Not because you've given up — giving up implies a struggle you no longer remember starting. You let it happen because this is what Thursdays have become, and Thursdays have become this because you said *okay* one too many times, and each *okay* was smaller than the last, and the smallness was the point — the gradual, almost imperceptible erosion of the distance between *I'll do this* and *I am this*. But somewhere — between the third cock and the fifth, between the joke about Christmas and the hand that gripped your hair — you stopped thinking about the distance. You stopped thinking about the debt. You stopped thinking about the crack in the ceiling and the bus schedule and the number between you and freedom. You started thinking about the soup. The soup is still on the stove. The oxtail is still simmering. The building still creaks on four and seven. The pipes still knock. And somewhere in this apartment — behind a closed door, or standing in a doorway, or sitting on a couch pretending to watch — is the man who makes that soup every Thursday and who just called you *with* instead of *mine* and who is looking at you right now with something in his eyes that looks like the price he's paying for a decision he hasn't explained. You open your eyes. You look at him. *Are you okay?* you mouth. His question. Your question. The private question you stole from each other and now trade back and forth like a coin. He nods. Once. Barely. *Liar,* you think. And the thought is so warm, so specific, so *yours* — not the debt's, not the city's, not the crew's — that it carries you through the next rotation, and the next, and the one after that. <<linkreplace "Almost done">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "06">> They wind down gradually. Not all at once — not a switch that flips from *party* to *done.* A deceleration. The men who were standing sit. The men who were sitting lean back. The energy in the room shifts from *active* to *sated*, the way a restaurant shifts after the last plate is served — the kitchen still warm, the tables still dirty, but the rush is over. You are on the couch. On your back. Your legs are open and your body is a map of the evening — come on your stomach, come on your chest, come drying in your hair, the interior evidence you can feel but can't see. You are — you know this without looking — wrecked. Used. A woman who has been the venue for a seven-man party and is now lying in the wreckage, breathing, staring at the ceiling. There is no crack in this ceiling. You look for one. There isn't. "Yo, that was —" The bald one. He's pulling his jeans on. "That was *educational.*" "Happy to broaden your horizons," you say. Your voice is hoarse. Your throat is raw. The words come out sounding like they've been dragged behind a truck. "*Broaden.*" He laughs. "She uses big words. I like that in a party favor." "I'm a *guest.* There's a difference." "What's the difference?" "A guest gets invited back." The room laughs — the last laugh, the wind-down laugh, the one that means *the show is over and the cleanup is about to start.* One by one they file out — the front door, not the back, because these men don't use the back door, they are not deliveries, they are the ones who order. The brother is the last to leave. He looks at you on the couch and he doesn't grin. For once, he doesn't grin. "You good?" he says. "I've been better." "Yeah." He scratches his head. "He, uh — he wouldn'ta done this if he didn't —" He stops. He shakes his head. "He's my brother, you know?" "I know." He leaves. The door closes. The apartment is quiet. <<linkreplace "Just you">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "07">> The gangster sits on the edge of the couch. His hand finds your hair — the same gesture, the same warmth, the same *I'm here.* His fingers are gentle in the mess they've made. He brushes a strand off your forehead. He tucks it behind your ear the way his brother did the first time, except when *he* does it the gesture means something different. When his brother did it, it was a claim. When the gangster does it, it's a question. *Are you still here? Are you still mine? Did I break the thing I was trying to keep?* "Hey," you say. "Hey." "You okay?" He looks at you. The nothing cracks — just for a second, just a hairline fracture in the architecture of his control. Underneath the nothing is not anger. Not regret. Something more specific, more private, more expensive than either of those. Something that looks, in the dim light of the living room, like the face of a man who has just watched seven men use the woman he kisses on Thursdays and has realized, too late, that the watching cost more than the event. "You're askin' *me?*" "Somebody has to." He almost smiles. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitches and the twitch is the closest thing to emotion he's shown since he said *try her* two hours ago. "I'm good," he says. The lie is so transparent it's almost honest. "Li-AR," you say, and the word comes out slurred because your jaw is wrecked and your lips are swollen and you've been using your mouth for so long that forming consonants takes effort. He stands up. He holds out his hand. You take it. He pulls you to your feet and your legs buckle — not dramatically, not a collapse, just a small structural failure, the kind that happens when a body has been horizontal for two hours and vertical is suddenly a lot to ask. He catches you. His arm around your waist. Your body against his chest. "Come on," he says. "Let's get you cleaned up." <<linkreplace "Clean">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "08">> He takes you to the bathroom. The Thursday bathroom. The tile, the pipes, the mirror. The room where every other Thursday started and this one ended. He turns on the shower and the pipes groan and the water is hot and the steam fills the room and for a moment you are standing in a cloud that hides you from the mirror and the mirror hides you from yourself. He undresses. The navy shirt. The jeans. The boxers. All of it on the floor, and then he is naked in front of you and his body is the body you know — the scar, the tattoo, the muscles softening at thirty-nine, the particular geography you have been mapping one Thursday at a time. His cock is hard. You look at it and you think: *after everything. After seven men. After two hours. He's still hard. For me.* You step into the shower. He follows. The water hits your back and it's warm and the warmth is so simple, so uncomplicated, so free of agenda that it almost makes you cry. He stands behind you and his hands are in your hair and he's washing it — not sexually, not as a preamble to more, but the way a nurse washes a patient, the way a mother washes a child, with a tenderness that has no destination except the next strand. "You did good tonight," he says into the steam. "I did *everyone* tonight." He almost laughs. The almost is enough. "You know what I mean." "Yeah." You lean back against his chest. The water runs over both of you. His cock is against your lower back, hard and warm and patient. "I know what you mean." He turns you around. He lifts your chin. He looks at you — the way he looked at you in the kitchen when it was raining, the way he looked at you in the bedroom when he kissed you, the way he has never looked at anyone else because looking is his currency and he doesn't spend it lightly. "You're mine," he says. Not a question. Not a claim. A fact — the same way he says *the money's on the table* and *the door's always open* and *Thursday.* A fact about the structure of the world, delivered in a voice that doesn't need anyone's agreement. "I know," you say. He kisses you. On the mouth. In the shower. With the water running and the steam rising and seven men's fingerprints still drying on your skin. He kisses you and the kiss is not an apology and not a thank-you and not a redemption. It's a bookmark. A placeholder. A note that says: *we were here. This is where we left off. We'll come back to this page.* <<linkreplace "Bed">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "09">> He carries you to the bedroom. Not carries — guides, supports, his arm around your waist, your feet barely touching the stairs. Four and seven creak and he doesn't skip them because tonight he wants you to hear the creaks. He wants you to know you're going up. He wants you to know you're going to his bed. He lays you down. On the sheets that smell like him. On the pillow that has your dent. Under the ceiling with the crack that travels left and forks once before it reaches the water stain. He enters you. Not fast. Not rough. Not the way seven men entered you tonight — with purpose, with schedule, with the practical efficiency of men who have a slot to fill. He enters you the way he entered you the first time: slowly, an inch at a time, his weight on his elbows, his face above yours, his eyes open and gray and looking at you and only at you. "Fuck," he says. And it's not the performance. It's the prayer. You wrap your legs around him. Your arms. You hold on. And the holding is different from the holding on the couch — the couch was survival, was anchoring, was a woman trying not to be swept away by a current she agreed to enter. This holding is *choosing*. This holding is a woman who has been everywhere tonight and has chosen, out of every mouth and every hand and every cock and every position and every joke and every comment and every inch of this evening, to be here, in this bed, with this man. He moves. Slowly. The pipes knock — *bmm, bmm, bmm* — and the rhythm is the same rhythm it's always been, the building's heartbeat, the Thursday metronome, the only consistent thing in a city that has been inconsistent with you since the day you arrived. "I'm not gonna last," he says. Into your hair. Into your ear. Into the private space between your face and his that no one else has been inside tonight. "Then don't." He doesn't. <<linkreplace "Sleep">><<replace "#gangtoy-stage">><<include "GangToy11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/gangtoy/" "10">> He comes inside you. Not on your tongue, not on your chest, not on your back the way the others did — the controlled withdrawal of a man following a rule. Inside. Deep. Where nobody else was allowed to finish. The place he reserved for himself in an evening where every other place was open to the public. You feel it. His body tenses and his jaw locks and his forehead presses against yours and he exhales — a single, broken, defeated sound, the sound of a man who has been holding back all night and has finally, in the last five minutes, in the only room with a closed door, let go. And you come with him. Or after. Or the line between the two has dissolved entirely, because your body is wrecked and your mind is soup and the difference between *his orgasm* and *your orgasm* has been reduced to a distinction without a meaning. Everything is warm. Everything is full. Everything is — for the first time in two hours, for the first time in a week, for the first time since the debt started — quiet. He doesn't pull out. He rolls onto his side, taking you with him, his cock still inside you, still semi-hard, still present. He shifts behind you, slides one arm beneath your head and the other across your waist, then draws your back against his chest and his breath is in your hair and his heartbeat is against your back and his cock is in your cunt and you are — you realize, with the last functioning part of a brain that has been slowly, deliberately, carefully shutting down all evening — you are surrounded. Completely. Held. Contained. The crack in the ceiling travels left. You watch it. You know it. You learned it from his pillow. "Stay," he says. Into your hair. The word from the first Thursday. The word that means more than it says. "Okay," you say. The word from the second. The word that means less than it should and more than you can afford. Your eyes close. Not because you're tired — although you are, you are so tired, you are tired in a way that goes past muscles and into the architecture of the self. Your eyes close because his chest is warm and his heartbeat is steady and his cock is inside you and the crack in the ceiling is still there and the soup is still on the stove and the pipes are still knocking and the door is still — even now, even tonight, even after everything — unlocked. You fall asleep with him inside you. In his bed. Under his ceiling. In a city that has taken everything from you and given you, in exchange, this: a Thursday, a man, a crack in the plaster, and the sound of a building breathing. *Not a bad trade,* you think. Just before you go. *Not a good one either.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/gangtoy-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Toy</h2> <div id="gangtoy-stage"><<include "GangToy01">></div>

/% AFTERMATCH - the Athlete's pre-fight night. You watch him spar, come over, and blow him on his couch. The sex is dirty and explicit. His dialogue is athletic. Your mouth is not. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run setup.eventPay(250)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAftermatch")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAftermatch")>> <h2>Aftermatch</h2> <div id="aftermatch-stage"><<include "Aftermatch01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/aftermatch-01.png"></div> <em>Sparring today. Come watch if you want.</em> No question mark. No emoji. The facts — time, place, invitation — the way a coach texts a player. You know what this means from him. It means: <em>I need you in the room.</em> The gym is a rectangle with heavy bags and a ring and the smell of menthol baked into concrete. He's sparring when you walk in — headgear on, gloves up, moving the way water moves. His partner is bigger. A heavyweight with a jaw like a cinder block. You sit on the folding chair and watch him take a body shot that leaves a red mark on his ribs like a brand. His eyes don't flinch. They calculate. <em>Left hook. Drops his guard on the follow-through.</em> The eyes of a man who turns pain into data. The round ends. He sees you in the chair and the calculation drops. "You came." "You asked." "I said <em>if you want.</em>" "I wanted to." He nods. The nod is his version of a thank-you speech. "My place. Recovery day." He looks at you with brown eyes that measure everything and file it. "You should come." "Okay." <<linkreplace "Recovery">><<replace "#aftermatch-stage">><<include "Aftermatch02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

His apartment smells like menthol and protein powder. The neon strip is on — it's always on — and the green light makes the medals on the shelf look like they're underwater. He's on the couch with an ice pack on his ribs, watching fight footage on his phone. Not his fights — the opponent's. Studying. The cinder-block jaw hitting other men. You sit next to him. Your thigh against his. His thigh is warm against yours. He holds the ice pack in place without looking away from the footage. "He's slow," you say. "But he doesn't get tired." "I know." "You're faster." "I know." "Can't let him land clean." He puts the phone down. He looks at the ice pack on his ribs. He looks at you. "One shot and it's over. Not the fight — the <em>season.</em>" You put your hand on the red mark. Not to heal — to acknowledge. The way he acknowledged you at the gym: <em>you're here, noted, filed.</em> "Let me help you recover." He looks at you. He measures. He nods. "Okay." <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#aftermatch-stage">><<include "Aftermatch03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "01">> You slide off the couch onto the blue rug. Your knees sink into the pile and the neon makes your skin look green and his skin look green and everything is underwater, everything is quiet, everything is the opposite of the gym where men were hitting each other for money. You pull his shorts down. His cock springs free — half-hard, thick at the base, curving up toward his stomach. Not fully hard yet. He's a man who warms up before everything, and right now he's warming up in your hand. You wrap your fingers around the shaft and squeeze gently and you feel him respond — a pulse, a twitch, the first rush of blood filling the tissue, the weight of him doubling in your palm in the space of three heartbeats. You lean forward. You run your tongue from the base to the tip — a slow, flat, wet stripe along the vein that maps the underside of his cock — and the taste of him hits your tongue: clean sweat, the salt of skin that was under a hot shower twenty minutes ago, and underneath that the faint, mineral tang of pre-cum already beading at the slit. You close your lips around the head. "Oh." One syllable. His hand comes to the top of your head — not gripping, not pushing. Resting. The way a spotter's hand rests on a barbell: present, ready, not interfering. You take him deeper. Your lips slide down the shaft, sealing tight, your tongue pressed flat against the underside, and you feel the ridge of his glans slide across the roof of your mouth and hit the back of your throat. Your jaw stretches. Your lips strain at the corners. You cup his balls with your free hand — heavy, drawn up tight, held close beneath him — and you roll them between your fingers, feeling the weight of them, the heat of them, the way they pull slightly toward his body when your thumb brushes the seam. "Good," he says. His voice hasn't changed register. Same flat, athletic tone. Same measurement. But his breathing has — it's deeper now, slower, the post-workout rhythm that means his body is shifting from one mode to another. "That's good." You pull back. Your lips make a soft, wet pop around the head of his cock, and a string of saliva connects your lower lip to his slit, catching the green light. You lick it away. You look up at him. His eyes are open. He's watching you the way he watches fight footage: completely, missing nothing, filing every detail. "You don't have to," he says. "I want to." "Your neck. Tell me if it hurts." "My neck is fine." You take him back in your mouth. All the way. Your nose presses against the trimmed hair at his base, and his cock fills your throat, and you swallow around him — a deliberate contraction of the muscles, a squeezing that makes his hips jerk forward a centimeter. "Shit." The first crack in the flat voice. The first word that wasn't measured. <<linkreplace "Rhythm">><<replace "#aftermatch-stage">><<include "Aftermatch04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "02">> You find your rhythm. Not the professional rhythm — the one that gets clients off in twelve minutes and collects the envelope. Your rhythm. The pace your mouth sets when your mouth is choosing. Slow. Wet. Deliberate. You slide down until your lips meet your hand, then back up until just the head sits on your tongue, then down again, and each stroke is a full circuit — base to tip, tip to base — and each circuit leaves more saliva on his shaft, coating the skin, making the next stroke smoother and dirtier and louder, the wet sucking sounds filling the room under the green light. "Oh my God." His head drops back against the couch. His eyes close. The muscles in his neck go taut and the veins stand out under the flushed skin of his throat, and you watch them — the small blue-green lines beneath the taut skin — while your mouth works the thick purple line pumping in your hands. Your tongue finds the frenulum — the small, sensitive ridge just under the head — and you press it flat, apply pressure, and his thighs clench. Not the gym clench, the controlled, deliberate squeeze of a man working a machine. The involuntary clench. The one his body does when something feels so good the nervous system takes over and the conscious mind — the calculating, filing, measuring mind — goes offline. "Oh — oh, <em>fuck.</em>" His hips shift. Not a thrust. A lean. The body's involuntary push toward the thing that feels good. His hand tightens in your hair — still not gripping, still not pushing, but <em>present</em> — and you feel the weight of his palm increase on the crown of your skull. You cup his balls again. Tight. Full. Held close in the heavy sac, the skin warm and slightly damp, the texture like warm silk. You massage them while your mouth works the shaft, and the dual stimulation — your tongue on his cock, your fingers on his balls — makes his abdominal muscles ripple, one by one, from his pelvis to his ribs, the visible chain reaction of pleasure traveling through a body that has been trained to endure pain and is discovering it has no training for this. "I'm — should I —" His speech has degraded to fragments. "Do you want me to —" You pull off just long enough to look at him. Your hand keeps stroking — wet, tight, the saliva making your grip slick and hot. "You don't need to tell me." "Are you sure?" "<em>Yes.</em>" You take him back. Deep. Your throat opens and you hold him at the base, your nose in the coarse hair, your lips pressed against your own hand, and above you his breath catches and holds and his thighs lock and his hand in your hair tightens one final degree, and you feel his cock swell — a thick, hard pulse, the body's last warning — and then he comes. <<linkreplace "Finish">><<replace "#aftermatch-stage">><<include "Aftermatch05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "03">> The first spurt hits the back of your throat — hot, thick, salt-bitter, salt and musk filling your mouth. You feel the pulse of it travel through his cock into your mouth, the way a heartbeat travels through a wrist, and you swallow around him, your throat muscles contracting, milking the head. "Fuck." Quiet. Almost to himself. The word a body uses when the brain has stopped supplying vocabulary. The second spurt. The third. Each one smaller, each one a little less force, each one adding to the warm, thick pool at the back of your tongue. You hold him there — cock in your mouth, lips sealed around the shaft, your hand still gently massaging his balls as they empty — and you swallow. Slowly. Deliberately. You feel the warmth slide down your throat and settle in your chest. His hands are at his sides. Not in your hair, not gripping the couch. Open. Fingers loose. The pose of a man who has surrendered completely to a sensation and doesn't have the energy to pretend otherwise. You pull off. Your lips make the same soft, wet sound — <em>pop</em> — and you sit back on your heels on the blue rug and lick your lips. The taste of him lingers: salt, musk, the warmth of him still on your tongue. His come. His body. The body that will be hit on Saturday. He opens his eyes. Brown, steady, looking at you with something that isn't wonder and isn't gratitude and isn't the slack-jawed amazement you've seen on other men's faces. It's assessment. He's filing this. Not under <em>pleasure</em> or <em>gratitude</em> or <em>emotion.</em> Under <em>recovery.</em> "Good session," he says. "Good session? That's all?" "You want a score?" "Would you give me a good score?" "Eight point five." "Eight point five?" "Left hand was late on the follow-through. Fix that, it's a nine." You laugh. The laugh is real — sharp, surprised, pulled out of you like a cough. Because only this man — only this precise, disciplined, schedule-obsessed man — could get a blowjob and respond with a coaching critique. "I'll work on it." "Do that." He almost smiles. Almost. "Next session." <<linkreplace "Rest">><<replace "#aftermatch-stage">><<include "Aftermatch06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "04">> He reaches for his phone. Sets an alarm — 9:30 p.m. Sleep time. Fight-week schedule. The phone goes face-down beside the ice pack. "Stay," he says. Not a question. A line item. He put you in the schedule the way he puts everything in the schedule: permanently, without discussion. "I can't stay all night." "Until morning. I'll drive you." "Your car smells like protein." "Everything smells like protein. That's not a reason." You stay. You sit on the couch and he puts the fight footage back on and you watch the cinder-block jaw hit other men and his body is warm next to yours — still warm from training — and the ice pack is on his ribs and the neon is on and the alarm is set and you are in his schedule now. "Saturday," you say. "Saturday." "Don't get hit clean." "I won't." "Promise?" He looks at you. The brown eyes are steady and they don't waver and they see you the way they see a split time or a heavy bag or a flight of stairs — completely, precisely, with the attention of a man who has trained his vision to miss nothing. "I said I won't. That's a promise." You laugh. You lean against his shoulder. The muscle underneath is warm and hard and the smell of menthol and protein and the faint, fading salt of his come still at the back of your throat is the smell of this apartment and this man and this night and you hold it the way you hold everything worth keeping in this city: with both hands, with the knowledge that it might be gone by morning. You fall asleep before the alarm. Against his shoulder. With the fight playing on his phone and the ice pack on his ribs and the medals on the shelf and the schedule that has you in it. You dream of nothing. The good kind of nothing. The kind that means you stopped listening to the debt clock. <em>Thirteen minutes until the alarm.</em> <em>You sleep.</em> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/aftermatch-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Aftermatch</h2> <div id="aftermatch-stage"><<include "Aftermatch01">></div>

/% THE REWARD - the post-fight celebration. He won. Hand raised. Adrenaline. In the locker room, still in his wraps, still buzzing. He's rougher than the scheduled version — grips harder, moves faster, doesn't ask about your neck. You like it more than you should. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneWinning")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneWinning")>> <h2>The Reward</h2> <div id="winning-stage"><<include "Winning01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/winning-01.png"></div> He wins in the second round. Not a knockout — a TKO. The referee steps in at 1:47 because the cinder-block jaw is leaning against the ropes and his legs are doing something legs aren't supposed to do, and the man who was bigger and stronger and slower is suddenly just a man who can't stand up, and the man who was faster is standing over him with his gloves raised and his face split open above the left eye and blood running into his eyebrow and the crowd is making a sound that isn't cheering, it's <em>pressure</em> — the physical weight of eight hundred people screaming at once. You're in the fourth row. You saw the whole thing. You saw him take the body shot in the first — the same rib, the same red mark from sparring — and you saw his eyes do the calculating thing. You saw him file it. <em>Drops his guard on the follow-through.</em> And then you saw him wait. Through the first round and into the second, circling, taking hits on the forearms, letting the cinder-block jaw spend its energy on nothing. And then you saw the opening — the dropped guard, the follow-through — and you saw him throw the right hand that ended the conversation. His hand goes up. The crowd gets louder. Someone throws a beer. Someone else catches it. The ring announcer says his name and his name sounds different in this room than it does in his apartment, under the neon, next to the protein powder. In this room his name is a weapon. In his apartment it's a schedule entry. He doesn't look for you in the crowd. He doesn't need to. You're already moving. <<linkreplace "Locker room">><<replace "#winning-stage">><<include "Winning02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The locker room smells like sweat and copper and the sticky sweetness of the liniment they rub into fighters' shoulders between rounds. It's small — a bench, a row of lockers, a shower stall with a curtain that doesn't close all the way. His gear bag is on the bench. His gloves are off. His hands are still wrapped. He's sitting on the bench with a towel over his shoulders and a cutman's gauze pressed above his left eye by a trainer who is saying something about stitches and hydration and the press conference in twenty minutes. He's not listening. He's looking at the ceiling. He's looking at the ceiling the way he looks at fight footage — completely, missing nothing — except there's nothing on the ceiling except a fluorescent light and a water stain, and he's staring at it like it holds the secret to something he can't name. Then the door opens and you walk in and he stops staring. "Out," he says. To the trainer. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just a word that fills the room the way his right hand filled the cinder-block jaw's guard: completely, without leaving space for argument. The trainer looks at you. Looks at him. Shrugs. Leaves. The door closes. You're alone. He's still sitting on the bench. Still in his shorts. Still in his wraps. The cut above his eye is still bleeding — a thin line of red that runs into his eyebrow and down his temple. He hasn't wiped it. He hasn't iced it. He's sitting in his own blood, staring at you with eyes that are brown and hot, and the adrenaline hasn't given him room for anything as small as a napkin. "Come here." Two words. A command. Flat, direct — the adrenaline stripping away the courtesy, leaving nothing but the raw directive underneath. The fight is still in him and hasn't found the exit yet. You cross the room. You stop in front of him. "You won," you say. "I know." "Your eye is bleeding." "I know." "Should I—" He stands up. He's taller than you in this moment — not physically, not in centimeters, but in the way a man who just won a fight is taller than everything in the room. His body is still humming. You can feel it — the vibration coming off his skin, the heat of him, the heat still coming off his skin as he shifts his weight. He puts his hand on the back of your neck. His fingers are still in the wraps. The gauze is rough against your skin. He pulls you forward and he kisses you — without his usual hesitation. This kiss is a right hand. This kiss is the follow-through the cinder-block jaw didn't see. The force of it leaves you blinking, one hand caught against his chest. "You watched," he says against your mouth. "I watched." "You saw me take the body shot." "I saw." "And you didn't look away." "No." His grip tightens on the back of your neck. Not painful. Not gentle. The grip of a man who is holding something he won and wants to feel the weight of it in his hands. "Get on your knees." <<linkreplace "Kneel">><<replace "#winning-stage">><<include "Winning03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/winning/" "01">> You drop. Not slowly, not carefully, not the way you knelt in his apartment on the blue rug under the green neon with all the time in the world. You drop because he said <em>get on your knees</em> and your knees heard him before your brain did, and the concrete floor of the locker room is cold and hard and your kneecaps register the impact as a sharp, bright ache that travels up your thighs and settles between your legs. He pulls his shorts down. His cock is already hard — fully, thickly, not the half-hard warm-up from his apartment. This is a post-fight erection, the kind that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the chemical aftermath of violence, the body's confused celebration, the nervous system flooding with adrenaline and testosterone and looking for the nearest exit. You are the exit. You take him in your mouth. No preamble. No warm-up lap. You seal your lips around the shaft and take him to the back of your throat in one stroke, and he groans — not the measured "oh" from the apartment. A groan. A sound that comes from the same place the right hand came from, the same place the TKO came from, the deep, animal part of him that the schedule keeps locked in a cage and the fight just let out. "Fuck." His hand — the wrapped hand, the gauze rough — tightens in your hair. Not resting. Gripping. The hand of a man who just hit another man until he couldn't stand and is now holding a woman's head while she sucks his cock, and the two acts are coming from the same muscle. You work him hard. Not the recovery pace — the fight pace. Fast, wet, aggressive, your mouth a striking surface, your tongue working the shaft in quick, deliberate strokes that match the rhythm his hips are already setting. Your hand cups his balls — tight, drawn up, tight with the tension still running through him, the body's "fight or flight" collapsing into "fight and fuck" — and you squeeze, gently at first, then harder when his grip on your hair tightens. "Yeah." His voice is different. Lower. Rougher. The voice of a man who is not filing this under recovery. "Just like that. Don't stop." You don't stop. <<linkreplace "Faster">><<replace "#winning-stage">><<include "Winning04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/winning/" "02">> His hips start moving. Not the small movement from that night on his couch — full thrusts, his cock driving into your mouth, the head hitting the back of your throat with each stroke. You relax your jaw and open wider and take it, take him, take the rhythm that is not the recovery rhythm you shared on the blue rug. This is the heavy-bag rhythm. This is the rhythm of a man who has come straight from the ring and hasn't stopped hitting. Saliva runs down your chin. It drips onto the concrete between your knees and forms a small, dark pool. Your eyes water — mascara running, the familiar involuntary tears, except this time there's no one asking <em>is your neck okay.</em> There's just the wrapped hand in your hair and the cock in your throat and the sound of a man breathing the way he breathes after a round: hard, ragged, alive. "You like that?" he says. And it's not a question. It's a statement he wants you to confirm. You try to say <em>yes</em> but your mouth is full and the word comes out as a moan that vibrates through his cock, and the vibration makes his hips stutter — one, two — before he finds the rhythm again. "I said—" His grip tightens. Pulls your head back. Just enough that his cock sits on your lower lip, wet and pulsing, and you can speak around it. "Do you like that?" "Yes." "Say it." "I like it." "What do you like?" And this is the part where you should say <em>I like that you won</em> or <em>I like that you're okay</em> or <em>I like that the cut isn't serious.</em> But the adrenaline is in you too now — not from fighting, from <em>watching</em>, from the fourth row, from seeing his right hand find the opening and the cinder-block jaw fold — and the honest answer comes out before the polite one can stop it. "I like it when you're rough." His eyes change. The brown gets darker. The pupil dilates. Something behind the calculation — something the schedule has never had a column for — flickers. He pushes your head back down. All the way. His cock fills your throat and his wrap-gauze hand holds you there, pressed against the coarse hair at his base, and you can't breathe and you don't want to, and the not-wanting-to is the most honest thing you've felt since you signed the number. <<linkreplace "Harder">><<replace "#winning-stage">><<include "Winning05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/winning/" "03">> He fucks your mouth. That's the only word for it. No warm-up, no recovery pace, no measured strokes. The adrenaline is still burning and it's coming out through his hips — the same aggression that threw the right hand, now redirected. He's not waiting. He's not measuring. He's <em>spending</em> — the fight, the violence, the wait for the opening — and he's spending it in your throat. His cock drives deep with each thrust. The head hits the back of your throat and slides down, and your gag reflex triggers and triggers and eventually gives up, the muscle fatigued into submission, and the surrender of it is its own kind of pleasure — the body yielding to a rhythm it didn't choose and finding, somewhere past the discomfort, a warmth that has nothing to do with technique. His balls slap against your chin with each stroke. The sound is wet, sharp, obscene. Your hand is between your own legs — you don't remember putting it there — and your fingers find your clit through your clothes and you press, and the pressure is enough, more than enough, because you've been wet since the second round and the minutes of watching him hit another man were more effective foreplay than any client's hands. "I'm close," he says. And the voice is barely a voice. It's a growl scraped from the bottom of a chest that just absorbed those first-round body shots. You reach up and grab his hips — not to slow him down, to pull him deeper — and the gesture says <em>yes</em> and <em>now</em> and <em>don't you dare pull out</em> and he hears all three. <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#winning-stage">><<include "Winning06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/winning/" "04">> He comes down your throat. Not in your mouth — <em>down</em> your throat, the first spurt so deep you don't taste it, just feel it: a hot, thick pulse that travels the length of his cock and empties directly past your tongue. His hips lock. His whole body locks. The muscles in his thighs go rigid and his abs clench — the same clench from the fight, the six-pack that was a shield a few minutes ago now a machine for pumping come into a woman's throat. "Fuck—<em>fuck</em>—" Three spurts. Four. Each one you swallow, your throat working around him, milking the last of the adrenaline out of his body and into yours. His hand is still in your hair but the grip has loosened — not released, loosened, the way a fist loosens after the bell. He's coming down. The fight is draining. The schedule is reasserting itself. You can feel it in his hand — the gradual shift from <em>holding</em> to <em>resting</em>, his breathing slowing as the familiar control returns. He pulls out. Slowly. His cock is wet and softening and it slides past your lips with a sound like a sigh. You sit back on your heels. The concrete is cold. Your knees are bruised. Your jaw is sore. Your mascara is destroyed. Your throat is raw and your voice, when you find it, is a rasp. "Good fight," you say. He looks down at you. The cut above his eye has stopped bleeding. The towel is still on his shoulders. The wraps are still on his hands. And his face is doing something you've never seen — not the nothing, not the calculation, not the post-workout assessment. Something between the fight and the schedule, something that exists only in this moment, in this locker room, in the gap between the ring and the press conference. "Good reward," he says. He reaches down. He offers you his hand — the wrapped one, the gauze rough, the hand that ended the fight and then held your head while he came down your throat. You take it. He pulls you to your feet. He kisses you — on the mouth, tasting himself on your tongue, not caring, not measuring, not filing. "Press conference in fifteen," he says. "I know." "I want you there." "At the press conference?" "Outside. Where I can see you." He picks up the towel. Wipes the blood from his eyebrow. The schedule-man is back — the cuts will be checked, the eye will be iced, the swelling will be monitored. But he pauses, halfway to the mirror, and looks at you. "What you said." "Which part?" "About liking it rough." You don't answer. You don't need to. "Next time," he says. "After the next fight." He turns to the mirror. Begins unwrapping his hands. "I'll remember." You leave the locker room. Your knees ache. Your throat is raw. Your mascara is a lost cause. You walk past the press and the lights and the people who don't know what just happened in the room behind you, and you find a spot near the exit where he can see you, and you wait. Fifteen minutes later he walks out. Shirt on. Eye patched. Wrap marks still visible on his knuckles. He finds you near the exit — the measuring look, the one that files everything. He nods. Once. His version of <em>thank you for being here.</em> You nod back. <em>See you at the next session.</em> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/winning-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Reward</h2> <div id="winning-stage"><<include "Winning01">></div>

/% THE COURTESY - the business dinner afterparty. Your boss asked you to "escort the partner to his room." The partner is tall, black, built, and has been looking at you all evening the way men look at something they've been told they can have. You are the courtesy. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOfficeBBC")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOfficeBBC")>> <h2>The Courtesy</h2> <div id="officebbc-stage"><<include "OfficeBBC01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/officebbc-01.png"></div> The restaurant has no menu. The waiter asks about allergies and then brings whatever the chef decided you deserve, which is a kind of arrogance that only very expensive restaurants and very powerful men can afford. You are sitting at a table for four — you, your boss, and two men you've never met. One of them is the partner. The other is his associate, who stopped talking forty minutes ago and is now checking his phone with the disciplined focus of a man who knows when he's been dismissed. The partner's name is Marcus. Not the Marcus from the corner — a different Marcus, a boardroom Marcus, the kind of Marcus whose watch costs more than your annual interest and whose handshake lasted three seconds too long when you were introduced. He's tall. Black. Built like a man who played college ball and then discovered that the real money was in acquisitions. His suit is charcoal. His shirt is open at the collar. His hands are large and well-manicured and they hold his whiskey the way his eyes hold you — steadily, with the confidence of someone who has never been told no by anything that mattered. The dinner is a negotiation. You understand maybe forty percent of it — the rest is numbers and terms and the particular coded language men use when they're measuring each other's dicks without taking them out. But you understand the dynamics. Your boss is selling. Marcus is buying. The associate is furniture. And you are the garnish. You sit with your legs crossed and your wine glass half-full and you laugh at the right moments and you ask the right questions and you touch your collarbone with your fingertips when Marcus makes a point, and the touching is not an accident because nothing at this table is an accident, and Marcus notices the touching because Marcus has been noticing everything about you since the appetizer. When the plates are cleared and the check arrives (your boss pays without looking at it, which is its own kind of flex), your boss turns to you with the particular smile that means the evening is about to change shape. "Would you mind seeing Marcus up to his room? He's at the Marriott. I'd do it myself but I have the —" He waves his hand. Papers. A call. Something urgent that isn't. You look at Marcus. Marcus looks at you. The associate looks at his phone. "I'd appreciate the company," Marcus says. His voice is deep and warm and sounds like leather that costs more than your shoes. "Of course," you say. You understand what's happening. Marcus understands what's happening. Your boss understands what's happening — he *arranged* what's happening. The associate keeps his eyes on his phone. Understanding gives him no reason to look up. Your boss signs the check. Marcus stands. He offers you his arm. You take it. <<linkreplace "Upstairs">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The Marriott elevator is mirrored and fast and you watch the floors count up — 4, 5, 6 — while Marcus's hand settles on the small of your back the way your boss's hand does when he's presenting you, except your boss's hand is a direction and Marcus's hand is a question. *This? Is this okay? Am I touching you in a way that means what we both know it means?* You don't move away. His room is on the eleventh floor. Corner suite. The door opens to a living room that looks like the photographs in a furniture catalog — gray sectional, glass coffee table, a fireplace that's already lit, a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket with two flutes beside it. The champagne was arranged before dinner. Before you said yes. Before your boss signed the check. Someone — Marcus, or the associate, or the hotel — set this room for two. "Beautiful," you say, and you mean the room and the champagne and the implication and the fact that the fireplace is real, not gas, and the wood is crackling. "Should be. Cost enough." Marcus takes off his jacket. Drapes it over the couch. His shoulders are wider without the jacket — the suit was containing him, and now he's free, and the freedom is visible in the way he moves, looser, less boardroom, more athlete. "Champagne?" "Sure." The cork comes out with a soft *pop*. He pours and the champagne is cold and gold and tastes like money you don't have. You sit on the couch — the gray sectional, the catalog couch — and Marcus sits across from you, on the chair, with his glass in his hand, and for a moment you are just two people in a hotel room with a fire and a bottle and the particular silence that happens when a conversation is about to become something else. "Your boss is a good man," Marcus says. "He'd be flattered." "He's a smart man. Knows what matters." He takes a sip. His eyes are on you over the rim of the glass. Dark. Steady. "Told me you were the best part of his operation." "Did he." "Said, and I quote —" Marcus sets the glass down. "She's the reason the last deal closed." "He gives me too much credit." "I don't think he gives you enough." The fire crackles. The champagne fizzes. Marcus is looking at you the way he's been looking at you all evening — steadily, with the patience of a man who has already been told he can have what he wants and is simply waiting for the moment to reach for it. "You know why you're here," he says. Not a question. "Yes." "Do you want to be here?" And that — *do you want to be here* — is a question you do not know how to answer honestly. The debt wants you here. The rate wants you here. Your boss's smile wants you here. But Marcus is asking about *you* — not the debt, not the schedule, not the arrangement. You. "Yes," you say. And you mean it, in the way that you mean things in this city — partially, provisionally, with the part of yourself that isn't already mortgaged. Marcus smiles. It's a good smile. It reaches his eyes. "Good." He stands up. He crosses to the couch. He sits next to you — close, the cushions shifting under his weight, his thigh against yours, the warmth of him through his trousers and through your skirt. "Then let's not waste the evening." He puts his hand on your face. His palm is large and warm and his thumb traces your cheekbone the way a man traces something he's been told is his. He leans in. He kisses you. He tastes like whiskey and champagne and the particular, expensive warmth of a man who has never had to rush anything in his life. <<linkreplace "Stay">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "01">> The kiss is slow and deep and unhurried and it tells you everything about how the next hour is going to go. Marcus is not a man who rushes. Marcus is a man who acquires — carefully, thoroughly, with due diligence. His tongue is in your mouth and his hand is on your waist and the other hand is working the top button of your blouse, and each button opens without a fumble. Your blouse opens. His hand slides inside. His palm cups your breast through the bra — black, lace, the kind you wear when you know the evening might end here — and his thumb finds the nipple through the fabric and presses, and the press is confident, practiced, the touch of a man who has touched many breasts and remembers what each one responded to. "You're beautiful," he says against your neck. You don't answer. You reach for his belt. He catches your hand. "Not yet." "I thought we weren't wasting the evening." "We're not." He lifts your chin. He looks at you. "Something this nice deserves a little time —" His thumb brushes your lower lip. "— and we've got plenty." He kisses you again. Deeper. His hand leaves your breast and travels down — your ribs, your waist, your hip, the hem of your skirt. His fingers find the stocking top and pause there, resting on the bare skin above the lace, and the warmth of his hand on that thin strip of exposed thigh is more intimate than anything that's happened so far. "Take this off," he says. He means the blouse. You unbutton the rest. You slide it off your shoulders. The fire paints your skin gold and his skin darker and the contrast — pale and deep — is the oldest story in the book and still makes something in your stomach tighten. He reaches behind you and unhooks your bra with one hand. One hand. The man unhooks bras with one hand the way other men open bottles of wine. Your bra falls forward and your breasts are bare and the firelight finds them and Marcus's eyes find them and his mouth follows his eyes. His lips close around your left nipple. Hot. Wet. His tongue circles and presses and the sensation travels from your chest to your spine to the place between your legs where the warmth is already pooling. You put your hand on the back of his head — his hair is close-cropped, soft, the texture of velvet under your fingers. You hold him against your breast and he groans against your skin, and the groan is not the sound of a man performing — it's the sound of a man enjoying something he was promised. "Now," he says, lifting his head. His lips are wet. His eyes are dark. "Now you can." You slide off the couch. You kneel on the floor — the carpet is plush, hotel-plush, the kind that costs more per square foot than your monthly rent — and your knees sink into it and your hands find his belt. <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "02">> You unbuckle him. His trousers are expensive — the fabric is smooth, the zipper is quiet, the kind of clothing that's designed to come off gracefully. You pull them down. His boxers are black and underneath them his cock is already hard, curving upward, the outline visible through the cotton. You pull the boxers down. His cock springs free — thick, dark, the head slightly lighter than the shaft, a bead of pre-cum already at the slit. It's big. Not pornographically, impossibly big — *actually* big, the kind of big that makes you adjust your plans. Your hand wraps around the base and your fingers don't quite meet. "Damn," you say. He laughs. Low, warm, the laugh of a man who's heard that word before and will hear it again. "You're fine." "I'm evaluating." "Take your time." You lean forward. You run your tongue from the base to the tip — slowly, the way you'd taste something expensive — and the flavor of him hits your tongue: clean, masculine, the faint salt of pre-cum and underneath that the particular, musky scent of a man who's been sitting in a restaurant for three hours and thinking about your mouth for two of them. You close your lips around the head. Seal them. Suck gently — just the head, just the first inch, getting the shape of him, learning the weight and the girth and the way his cock curves slightly to the left when it's fully hard, curving toward your cheek like it's looking for room. His hand comes to the top of your head. Not gripping. Resting. The large, manicured hand settles on your crown with the same careful weight he used on your breast — present, possessive, but not directing. Not yet. "That's it," he says. His voice has dropped half an octave. The boardroom is gone. The acquisitions voice is gone. What's left is the voice of a man who is exactly where he wants to be. "Take your time. We have all night." You take him deeper. Your lips slide past the mid-shaft and the head presses against the back of your tongue and your jaw stretches wider and you feel the corners of your mouth strain — he's thick enough that going deep requires a conscious decision, a deliberate relaxation of the muscles, a willingness to open further than is comfortable. You breathe through your nose. You adjust. You take another inch. "Good girl." Two words, said warmly, as though he were praising a deal well closed. You try not to let the praise set your pace. You work him. Slowly at first — long strokes, base to tip, your hand following your mouth, your tongue flat on the underside. Then faster. Then deeper. Your saliva coats the shaft and each stroke is smoother, wetter, louder. The sounds fill the hotel room — soft, obscene, the soundtrack of a business courtesy being extended. <<linkreplace "More">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "03">> His hand tightens. Not gripping — guiding. His fingers curl into your hair and he holds you still for a moment, with just the head in your mouth, and you look up at him. He's looking down at you. The fire is behind him and the light catches the edge of his jaw and the planes of his chest and the muscles in his thighs and he looks like a sculpture of a man who owns things. His expression holds open *appreciation.* The warm, proprietary satisfaction of a man looking at something beautiful that he's been given for the evening. "You are *gorgeous* like this," he says. You pull back. Strings of saliva connect your lip to his cock. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. "Flatterer." "Honest." He reaches down and cups your face. His thumb brushes your cheekbone. "Your boss wasn't lying." "He usually isn't." "Neither am I." You take him back in your mouth. Deeper this time — past the comfortable, past the mid-shaft, until the head pushes into your throat and your nose presses against the coarse hair at his base. You hold there. Your throat contracts around him, a deliberate squeeze, and above you he makes a sound — not a groan, not a gasp, something between, the involuntary exhale of a man whose composure just took a hit. "Jesus." You pull back. Breathe. Take him again. Your hand cups his balls — heavy, full, the skin dark and warm, the weight of them in your palm like two smooth stones. You massage them while your mouth works the shaft, and the combination — mouth and hand, wet heat and gentle pressure — makes his thighs tense and his abs clench and the hand in your hair tighten. "I'm going to remember this," he says. "What?" "This. You. This room." His voice is ragged. "The next time your boss brings me a deal, I'm going to be sitting across the table thinking about your mouth." "Good for negotiations?" "Very good for negotiations." He laughs — breathless, half-gone. "I'll sign anything." You laugh too. Around his cock. And the vibration sends him over the edge — not the finish, not yet, but the edge, the point of no return, the place where the body stops asking permission and starts making demands. His hips start moving. Not a thrust — a rhythm. He holds your head with both hands, gently, and he fucks your mouth with the controlled, deliberate pace of a man who is used to setting the tempo. You relax and let him. Let him set the pace. Let him use your mouth the way he uses everything else in his life — carefully, thoroughly, with the confidence of ownership. <<linkreplace "Enough talk">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "04">> He pulls you off. "Stand up," he says. You stand. Your knees are sore from the carpet. Your lips are swollen. Your mascara is starting to run. You're standing in front of him in your skirt and stockings and nothing else, and the fire is warm on your bare skin and his eyes are warmer. "Take off the skirt." You unzip. The fabric pools at your ankles. You step out of it. You're standing in black stockings and a garter belt and nothing else, and the firelight paints you gold from the nipples down. "Turn around." You turn. Slowly. You know what he's looking at. The stockings. The garter. The bare skin above and below. The particular geography of a woman dressed for access, not for coverage. You turn all the way around and face him again. "Come here." You step forward. He reaches up and his hands find your hips — large hands, spanning from hipbone to hipbone — and he pulls you onto the couch. Not next to him. Onto him. You straddle his lap and his cock is between you, pressed against your stomach, hard and hot and leaking. "You're wet," he says. Not asking. His hand slides between your legs and his fingers find you — slick, swollen, the lips parted and the clit hard — and he slides two fingers inside you with the easy confidence of a man inserting a key into a lock he owns. "God—" You grab his shoulders. "Marcus." "Marcus." "Say it again." "Marcus." You say it into his neck. His fingers curl inside you and hit a spot that makes your vision blur and your thighs shake and your nails dig into his shoulders and the sound you make is not professional and not performed and not for anyone's benefit except the part of you that has been waiting for this since the third glass of wine. "That's it." His thumb finds your clit. Presses. "I want to hear you." You moan. Not quietly. The hotel room is soundproofed for people who have conversations they don't want overheard, and right now the conversation you're having is with his fingers and your body and the fire, and the fire doesn't mind. He pulls his hand away. You gasp at the loss. He lifts you by the hips. He positions you above him — the head of his cock pressing against your entrance, bare and hot and already slick with your wetness. "Ride me." <<linkreplace "Ride">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "09">> You sink onto him. Slowly — because he's thick, because the angle is different, because your body needs a moment to remember how to accommodate a man who fills you this completely. Bare. No latex, no barrier — just the raw, impossible heat of his skin against yours, the ridges and veins of his cock pressing against the inner walls of you with a detail you can feel, can *count*, every inch distinct and burning. Your hands are on his shoulders. His hands are on your hips. And between you, the slow, stretching, impossibly full descent as your body opens around him inch by inch by inch. "*Fuck*," you breathe. "Told you," he says. And he smiles. That smile. You bottom out. You sit on him — fully, deeply, your weight settled onto his lap, his cock inside you to the hilt. Your thighs are shaking. Your breath is ragged. The fire crackles and the champagne is going flat on the table and neither of you cares. You start to move. Slowly at first — a rocking, a grinding, your hips finding the rhythm that works, the angle that hits the right place. His hands guide you — not forcing, directing, the way a dance partner directs, with pressure and suggestion rather than commands. You find the tempo. You find the angle. You find the place where his cock rubs against your inner wall and your clit grinds against his pelvis and the friction builds into something that starts in your lower back and spreads. "Faster," he says. You go faster. Your breasts bounce with each stroke. The garter belt digs into your hips. The stockings rub against his thighs. The sound of your body meeting his — wet, rhythmic, the percussion of skin on skin — fills the hotel room and mixes with the fire and the distant hum of the city eleven floors below. "Yes. Just like that." His head is back. His eyes are closed. The composure is gone — the boardroom mask, the acquisitions voice, the careful, measured patience. What's left is a man getting fucked in a hotel room by a woman he doesn't own and can't buy and is enjoying the difference. "Don't stop." "I won't." "Don't you dare stop." "I said I won't." You lean forward. You put your hands flat on his chest. You change the angle — deeper, harder, your hips snapping against his — and the new angle hits the spot and you feel the orgasm building, the warmth spreading, the muscles in your thighs burning with the effort of riding a man who is hitting places you forgot existed. "Marcus—" "I know." "I'm close—" "I know." <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#officebbc-stage">><<include "OfficeBBC08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officebbc/" "10">> He flips you. One moment you're on top and the next you're on your back on the gray sectional, your legs in the air, and he's between them — standing, thrusting, driving into you with the controlled power of a man who has been letting you set the pace and has decided it's his turn. The couch cushions absorb the impact. The champagne glasses rattle on the table. Your stockings are around his waist and your ankles are locked behind his back and his cock is inside you at an angle that makes you see white. "Come for me," he says. Not a request. A directive. The same voice he uses in boardrooms, the voice that closes deals and acquires companies and gets what it wants. "Come on my cock." And you do. The orgasm hits like a market crash — sudden, total, everything falling at once. Your back arches. Your thighs lock around him. Your hands grip the couch cushions and your mouth opens and the sound that comes out is raw, unfiltered, the sound of a woman who has been performing all evening and is finally, for thirty seconds, not performing anything. He feels you contract around him — the wet, bare grip of your body pulling him deeper, the muscles of your cunt milking him with a rhythm that isn't voluntary. His rhythm breaks. His jaw clenches. His thrusts become erratic — shorter, harder, the tempo of a man who is about to cross the finish line. "Where?" he says. "My mouth." He pulls out — and the sudden emptiness is a shock, the absence of him registering as a cold, hollow draft where the heat was. Your body protests. Your body wants him back. You slide off the couch and onto your knees — fast, hungry, the muscle memory of a woman who knows what "my mouth" means and gets there before the invitation expires. <<vid "scene/officebbc/" "12">> His cock is right there — dark, swollen, glistening with your wetness, the shaft slick and hot from being inside you. He grips it. One stroke. Two. The head is flushed almost purple, the vein on the underside prominent and pulsing. The smell of him mixed with you — musk and salt and the raw, animal scent of unprotected sex — fills your nose and makes your mouth water. He comes. The first spurt hits your tongue — hot, thick, salt-bitter, the taste sharper and more real than anything through latex. The second hits your cheek. The third lands on your lips. You open wider. You catch what you can. His cock is still dripping with both of you — your wetness and his come, mixed, dripping from the head onto your outstretched tongue. You look up at him while he empties himself onto your face — not because he asked, not because the job requires it, but because the look on his face is the look of a man who just closed the best deal of his career, and you were the deal. He exhales. Long, slow, satisfied. The sound of a man who has gotten exactly what he was promised. "That," he says, catching his breath, "was worth the flight." You swallow. You wipe your cheek with your fingers. You lick your fingers clean. "Good for negotiations?" "Excellent." He reaches down. He pulls you to your feet. He kisses you — on the mouth, tasting himself on your tongue, not caring. The kiss is warm and slow and grateful and lasts longer than a courtesy should. "Shower?" he says. "I should go." "Stay." He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. "The flight's at seven. I don't sleep well alone." You look at him. Tall, dark, built, standing naked in a hotel room with a fireplace and a bottle of flat champagne and a face that's still flushed from coming on yours. A man who called you gorgeous and asked *do you want to be here* and treated you like something more expensive than the room. Your boss is going to ask you how it went. You're going to say *fine.* Marcus is going to send a text that says *outstanding.* And somewhere between those two words, the debt ticks forward and the interest accrues and the number gets smaller by exactly one business courtesy. "Okay," you say. "But I'm stealing the robe." He laughs. It's a good laugh. You've heard worse. <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/officebbc-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Courtesy</h2> <div id="officebbc-stage"><<include "OfficeBBC01">></div>

/% BEDSIDE MANNER - the clinic's after-hours "nurse practice." Your doctor asks you to assist, then complains about an ache only you can cure. The clinic has been shaving your IQ for months — just enough that "oral decompression" sounds like real medicine. You think you're being a good nurse. You're being a good girl. You can't tell the difference anymore. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneNursePrac")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneNursePrac")>> <h2>Bedside Manner</h2> <div id="nurseprac-stage"><<include "NursePrac01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/nurseprac-01.png"></div> Dr. Kavel knows your file. He remembers the work you have had done and always has another refinement to suggest, another price to quote as though the money were the only cost. You know his face the way you know the clinic's ceiling: professionally, intimately, from the angle of a woman who has spent many hours on her back in his chair. Today he catches you in the hallway after your checkup. He's holding a clipboard, which he always holds, which is apparently a medical thing, holding clipboards. He looks at you over the top of his glasses and says, in the same voice he uses for "this won't hurt" and "you might feel a slight sting": "I could use you this evening. Eight o'clock. Nothing complicated — just an extra pair of hands." "Hands?" "Assisting. You've had enough procedures done to you. Time you saw one from the other side." He smiles. It's a nice smile, a doctor's smile, the kind that fills you with confidence and antibiotics. "There's a stipend. $<<print setup.eventQuote(150)>>." The stipend is $<<print setup.eventQuote(150)>>. Not much against what you owe, but it is money for standing in a room and handing things to a man in a white coat, which is basically what you already do except this time you get paid instead of paying him. "Okay," you say, because the math is easy, and the math is one of the few things your head still does without pausing to reload. He nods. "Eight sharp. Room three." You come at 7:55 because you're still the kind of person who arrives early. The hallway is empty — the clinic closes at six, and the evening has the particular, fluorescent silence of a building that's running on skeleton staff. One nurse at the desk, reading her phone. No patients. No crowd in the waiting room. Just you and the tiles and the smell of antiseptic that you used to hate and now associate with feeling prettier. Room three. The door is open. Inside, there's a young woman on the chair, about twenty, with lips that are already done and a chest that's already started and the glazed, slightly frightened expression of someone who's exactly where you were when you first came here. She's here for a touch-up. A "small refinement." The words that mean another session, another bill, another few points of something she didn't know she was spending. Dr. Kavel is at the sink, washing his hands. He looks up when you come in. "Ah, good. Come in, come in." He dries his hands on a paper towel. "Uniform and cap on the chair. Change first, then gloves. The green ones are on the tray." You put on the gloves. They're latex — turquoise, tight, the powder inside making your fingers slide. You've felt these gloves on your own body dozens of times: the cool, impersonal pressure of an examination, the clinical touch that doesn't feel like touching because it's wrapped in rubber and called a procedure. Now they're on your hands. Now you're the one wearing them. The procedure takes forty minutes. It's a filler injection — the same one you've had, the same one that plumps and smooths and costs enough to make you wince at the bill. The girl winces at the needle. You hold her hand. You say "you're doing great" and "almost done" and "the swelling goes down in two days, I promise," and you know these are the right things to say because these are the things that were said to you, and the echo is so precise it makes something in your chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with the procedure. When it's done, the girl leaves with a pamphlet and a follow-up card and a slightly numb smile. The door closes. The room is quiet. Dr. Kavel sits on the examination chair — the same one, the one with the stirrups and the adjustable back and the paper cover that crinkles when you move. He rubs his lower back. He rolls his neck. He does the things a man does when he's been standing for an hour and his body is registering the complaint. "Long day," he says. "You did great," you say, because the echo is still running. He laughs. "You're a natural. Have you considered nursing?" "I considered a lot of things. Before." "Before?" "Before keeping up with my appointments became a full-time job." He looks at you. Not the clipboard look. The real look — the one that sees you, not the patient chart. "You're sharper than you think. It's all still in there. You just have to —" He shifts. He adjusts his trousers. The gesture is small, automatic, the kind of thing men do without thinking. "You just have to keep using it." "Are you okay?" "Hmm? Oh." He waves his hand. "Occupational hazard. Standing for hours, the — the pressure." He gestures vaguely at his lap. "The blood flow. It builds up. Common at my age. Particularly after a long procedure." You look at his lap. You look at his face. You look back at his lap. There's a — you squint — there's a *shape* there, under the white coat, that wasn't there five minutes ago. Or maybe it was and you didn't notice because you were busy holding a twenty-year-old's hand and saying "you're doing great." "Is that... a medical thing?" "Vascular engorgement," he says, with the same straight face he uses for "this won't hurt." "The cavernous tissue fills with blood during periods of sustained standing. If it's not —" he pauses, choosing his words with the precision of a man who's done this before — "if it's not relieved, it can lead to complications. Discomfort. Swelling. In severe cases, vascular damage." "Oh." You think about this. You think about it the way you think about everything now — slowly, carefully, with the concentration you can still summon. "That sounds bad." "It's manageable." He looks at you. The doctor's smile, the one that fills you with confidence. "If caught early. With prompt intervention." "Should I get the nurse?" "The nurse is finishing at the desk." He leans back in the chair. "We can handle this here." "So what do you —" "You could help." You blink. "Me?" "You're here. You're gloved. You saw the procedure — you know the anatomy." He says this like it's obvious, like it's medicine, like the fact that you watched him inject filler into a girl's lips qualifies you to treat a condition that affects his penis. "It's not complicated. Just —" He gestures at his lap again, more directly this time. "Manual decompression. You've heard of it?" You haven't. But it sounds medical. It sounds like the kind of thing that has a Latin name and a billing code. And your head — your tired, treatment-clouded head — is not equipped to tell the difference between a real medical procedure and a line of complete bullshit delivered in a doctor's voice by a man in a white coat. "Okay," you say. "What do I do?" <<linkreplace "Follow instructions">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "01">> "Kneel," he says. "For proper access." You kneel on the tile floor, the familiar floor outside the examination rooms, and the latex gloves — turquoise, tight, powdered — rest on your thighs. He unbuckles his belt. The sound of the zipper is very loud in the empty clinic. His trousers open and his cock is underneath, half-hard, the shaft pale against the white coat. He's not wearing underwear. Doctors don't wear underwear, apparently. Or this doctor doesn't. Or he knew, when he asked you to come at eight, when he said "extra pair of hands," when he chose the evening when the nurse would be gone and the hallway would be empty. "Take it out," he says. "Gently." You reach forward with your gloved hand. The latex is smooth and dry against his skin. You wrap your fingers around the shaft — the glove makes your grip feel different, clinical, like you're holding an instrument instead of a cock — and you lift it free of his trousers. He's bigger than you expected. Not huge — just bigger than the clinical setting had prepared you for. The shaft thickens toward the base. The head is circumcised, flushed pink. There's a vein running up the underside that you can feel through the latex, a ridge of tissue that pulses once under your fingers. "Good," Dr. Kavel says. "Now — oral decompression. You'll need to use your mouth. The warmth helps dilate the vessels." You look up at him. He looks down at you. The glasses. The white coat. The clipboard on the counter behind him. Everything about this room says *medicine*. Everything about this situation says *something else*. But your head has been — you don't know the exact number. You stopped keeping track of what each treatment cost you. You just know that things that used to be obvious now require a moment of loading, and the moment is longer than it used to be, and during the moment Dr. Kavel's voice fills the gap with words that sound like the pamphlets in the waiting room. "Open," he says. You open your mouth. You lean forward. You take the head between your lips. The taste of him — clean, slightly antiseptic, like everything in this building — sits on your tongue. The latex glove is still on your hand, still wrapped around the base, and the combination of your mouth and your gloved fist is a thing you've done before, in other rooms, for other reasons. But here, in Room Three, with the fluorescent light and the paper crinkle and the smell of alcohol wipes, it feels like a procedure. It feels like you're doing something medical. "That's it," Dr. Kavel says. His hand comes to the top of your head. Not gripping. Guiding. The same hand that held the needle forty minutes ago, the same fingers that injected filler into a girl's lips, now resting on your hair like you're a chart he's reading. "Keep the pressure consistent. Slow strokes. The vascular tissue responds to rhythm." <<linkreplace "Treatment">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "02">> You follow his instructions. Slow strokes — your mouth sliding down the shaft, your gloved hand following, the latex squeaking faintly against his skin. The sound is medical. Everything about this is medical. The gloves. The tiles. The way he says "good, good, maintain that rhythm" in the same tone he says "you're healing well." You take him deeper. The head pushes past your tongue and into your throat, and your eyes water — the same involuntary tearing from every clinic visit, the same mascara sacrifice. But you don't pull back because pulling back would be non-compliant, and you've been a compliant patient since day one, and compliance is the only thing the clinic has ever asked of you. "Excellent," he says. "The responsiveness is good. You can increase the pressure." You increase. Your cheeks hollow. Your gloved hand cups his balls — heavy, drawn up, the skin warm through the latex. You squeeze gently. He exhales. "That's — yes. That's exactly right. You're a natural." *You're a natural.* The words land in your chest like a diagnosis. You ARE a natural. You've always been a natural — at the procedures, at the recovery, at the breathing-through-the-needle thing, and now at this, at kneeling on tile in turquoise gloves and taking a doctor's cock down your throat while he gives you instructions in Latin-sounding words. You think: *I'm helping.* The thought is small and warm and stupid. It sits in the middle of your head like a gold star on a test you didn't know you were taking. *I'm helping him feel better. That's what nurses do. Smart nurses.* You think: *I'm smart.* You think: *This is medicine.* You cannot gather enough doubt to challenge the thought. <<linkreplace "Deeper">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "03">> "Now the —" He pauses. Clears his throat. "The testicular tissue. You'll need to attend to that as well. Bilateral examination." You pull off his cock. A string of saliva connects your lip to the head, catching the fluorescent light. "You mean — your balls?" "Both sides. Yes. Use your mouth. The warmth is therapeutic." You lower your head. You take one testicle in your mouth — gently, carefully, the way you'd handle something medical, something fragile. The skin is warm and slightly rough through the layer of saliva, and the weight of it on your tongue is strange and intimate in a way that the clinical language doesn't cover. You roll it gently. You feel him shift in the chair. "Good. The other one." You switch. Same procedure, other side. Your gloved hand is still on his shaft, keeping the pressure consistent, because he told you to maintain consistency, because consistency is therapeutic, because you're a good nurse and good nurses follow the treatment plan. "Excellent manual dexterity," Dr. Kavel says, and his voice is thicker now, less clipboard, more — something else. "Your training is coming along." *Training.* Not *assisting.* Not *helping.* Training. The word sits in the middle of your head next to *I'm smart* and *this is medicine* and the small, quiet, gold-star warmth of a woman who has been told she's doing well and believes it because believing it is easier than figuring out why it might not be true. You go back to his cock. You take him deep — deeper than the instructions require, deeper than the clinical language accounts for, because your body knows this part even if your head is running on reduced capacity. Your throat opens. Your nose presses against the trimmed hair at his base. You hold. "Very good," he breathes. "The vascular response is — significant." You come up for air. Saliva strings from your chin to his cock. Your mascara is running. Your nurse cap is crooked. You look up at him with watering eyes and a gloved hand on his shaft and an expression that is, you think, professional. Helpful. The face of a woman who is following a treatment plan. "Am I doing it right?" "You're doing perfectly." He reaches down. He adjusts your cap — straightens it, centers it, the way a man adjusts a picture frame. The gesture is so tender and so condescending and so exactly what this clinic does to every woman who walks through its doors that you almost cry. Almost. "You're a very good nurse." *You're a very good nurse.* You glow. Actually glow. The gold star in your chest expands to fill your whole rib cage. <<linkreplace "Next step">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "07">> "There's one more step," Dr. Kavel says. His voice is ragged. His composure is — not gone, because this man doesn't lose composure, this man maintains composure the way the clinic maintains its fluorescent lighting: constantly, professionally, on a backup generator. But the composure is *thinner.* The doctor's voice has a body underneath it now, and the body is close. "The deep tissue release. You'll need to —" He stops. He looks at you. He decides something. "Take off the top." You blink. "What?" "The uniform. It's in the way. For the — the procedure." He gestures at your chest. "The thoracic region needs to be accessible." The *thoracic region.* Your head nods slowly, processing. The thoracic region is the chest. Your chest is in the way. Of the procedure. The procedure that involves your mouth on his cock and your gloved hand on his balls. The procedure that is definitely medicine because a doctor in a white coat said so in a room with tiles. "Okay," you say. You unbutton the nurse top. You left your bra with your clothes when he told you how to change. You thought the instruction strange but did not question it, because questioning things has become — not hard, exactly. Just *slow.* Like downloading a file on a bad connection. The information arrives eventually but the buffering takes longer than it used to. Your breasts are bare. Dr. Kavel looks at them the way he looks at the "after" photos in the lobby: professionally, appreciatively, with the evaluative eye of a man whose work is on display. "Beautiful work," he says. He studies you as though he were reviewing his own work while you kneel between his legs with your gloved hand on him. You go back down. This time, his hand finds your breast. His fingers — the doctor's fingers, the same fingers that held the needle, that filled the syringe, that injected the filler into your lips and your cheeks and the hollows under your eyes — pinch your nipple. The latex of your glove is on his cock and his bare hand is on your tit and the symmetry of it — clinical and sexual, professional and personal, procedure and act — is the entire clinic compressed into one gesture. "Suck harder," he says. No more Latin. No more "vascular." Just the instruction. "Use your tongue on the underside." You do. Your tongue flattens against the vein. You feel it pulse — one, two, three — the heartbeat traveling through the tissue into your mouth. "I'm going to —" He grips the arm of the chair. The paper crinkles. "The release is imminent." <<linkreplace "Release">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "08">> "Where?" you manage, pulling off just enough to speak. "Inside," he says. "The therapeutic effect is strongest when — internal. The prostaglandins in the —" You don't hear the rest. You hear the word *inside* and the word *therapeutic* and your head puts them together and the equation resolves to *yes* because everything in this clinic has been resolving to *yes* since the first day you signed the consent form and the first needle went in and the first IQ point came out. You climb onto the examination chair. The same chair. The paper crinkles under your knees. The stirrups are there, cold and metal, the same stirrups your feet have been in a dozen times for a dozen procedures. He helps you position — his bare hands on your hips while your own gloves remain on — and he pulls your panties to the side, and the exposure is the same and different from every other time you've been in this chair. The same vulnerable angle. The same fluorescent light. But this time the procedure is his cock sliding inside you. He enters you slowly. "Dilation," he says. "Gradual. To avoid tissue trauma." You grip the sides of the chair. The paper tears under your fingers. His cock fills you — thick, hot, with nothing covering him, every ridge and vein distinct with nothing between you and him and the clinical fiction is so thin now you could tear it with your teeth. "Does it hurt?" he asks. The doctor's voice. The bedside manner. "No." "Good. That means the treatment is working." He thrusts. Slowly at first — therapeutic, measured, the pace of a man who has been doing this for years and knows exactly how long the fiction can be stretched before it snaps. Then faster. His hands on your hips. His cock driving into you. The examination chair rocking. The paper tearing. The fluorescent light buzzing above. "You're — very responsive," he says. His voice is barely a doctor's voice now. It's just a voice. A man's voice. The voice of a man who is fucking a woman in an examination chair and calling it medicine and knowing, on some level, that the only reason she's letting him is because he took her brain apart one injection at a time. "I'm — helping," you say. And the sentence is so sad, so *earnest*, so perfectly calibrated to the person you've become that he comes. Inside you. His cock pulses — once, twice, three times — and the heat of it spreads through you and the heat is definitely not medicine, it's just a man coming inside a woman on an examination chair in a clinic that shaved her IQ down to the point where she'd believe it was. <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#nurseprac-stage">><<include "NursePrac07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

He pulls out. He pulls up his trousers. He tucks. He zips. He picks up the clipboard. And just like that, he's a doctor again. "Excellent work today." He writes something on the clipboard. A note. A code. A fiction. "The vascular response was complete. No complications." You're still on the chair. Your nurse top is open. Your panties are to the side. His come is inside you. The paper is torn and the stirrups are cold against your calves and you are, in this moment, a perfect portrait of everything this clinic has done to you. "Did I help?" you say. "You helped a great deal." He smiles. The doctor's smile. "Same time next week? I have a — a follow-up procedure." You sit up. You straighten your nurse cap. You button your top with fingers that are still gloved, still turquoise, still powdered, because nobody told you to take the gloves off and you are, above all else, a woman who follows instructions. "Will it hurt?" "This won't hurt," he says. And you believe him. You believe him because your lips are full and your skin is smooth and your cheekbones are high and your thoughts are — you cannot remember when thinking became this slow. The clinic never lists that cost. And somewhere between the first injection and this evening, between the first "you might feel a slight sting" and "oral decompression," the part of you that could have told the difference between a procedure and a line, between a doctor and a man, between healing and being used — that part got filled. With something smoother. With something prettier. With something that can't tell the difference anymore. You leave the clinic at 9:15. The nurse at the desk doesn't look up. The hallway is empty. The tiles are white. Your gloves are still on. You peel them off in the elevator. One finger at a time. The powder sticks to your skin. You fold the gloves into a neat square and put them in your pocket and you think: *I should keep these. For next week.* *I'm going to be a nurse.* The gold star glows. *What a smart girl I am.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/nurseprac-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Bedside Manner</h2> <div id="nurseprac-stage"><<include "NursePrac01">></div>

/% CUSTOMS - the Owner's trip prank. He invites you to the beach. The driver asks you to swallow a package. Security "finds" it. A guard has a very specific retrieval method. At the end: it was psyllium husk, a private jet, and his employees playing cops. The Owner's version of a joke. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set $ownerVisits += 1>> <<run setup.eventPay(400)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnerTrip")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnerTrip")>> <h2>Customs</h2> <div id="ownertrip-stage"><<include "OwnerTrip01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/ownertrip-01.png"></div> The invitation comes through Smith, which is how everything comes — through Smith, through a phone call, through the particular bureaucratic politeness of a man who sells people he doesn't hate. "The Owner would like to take you somewhere. Two days. The coast." "The coast." "A house he keeps. Private beach, private staff, private everything." Smith pauses, the way he does when he's about to say something that sounds like a compliment and isn't. "You have been reliable. He called this a reward." A reward. From the Owner. You've been to his warehouse — you remember the crates, the oil drums, the men in work clothes, the driver saying *tonight the Owner sent his thanks* while five faces turned toward you. You remember the bathroom — the white tile, the pelt, the voice behind the door, the porcelain. Rewards from this man are structurally identical to punishments. The difference is the paperwork. "Two days," Smith repeats. "I'd recommend saying yes." You say yes. The next morning a car picks you up at seven. The driver is not the warehouse driver — this one is younger, cleaner, wearing a button-down instead of a windbreaker. He loads your bag into the trunk without speaking. He opens your door. He pulls into traffic. You're three blocks from the airport when he says it. "The Owner asked me to pass something along." He reaches into the center console. Produces a small, sealed package — not much bigger than a grape, enclosed in a clear capsule, the kind of thing that looks exactly like what it is. "He needs you to swallow this." You stare at it. The plastic catches the morning sun and throws a small, precise light onto the dashboard. "No." "It's not what you think." "It's exactly what I think." "It's not." The driver's voice is calm. Practiced. The voice of a man who has had this conversation before, possibly this week. "There is an arrangement at the terminal. A separate channel for private aviation. The package is part of it. A logistical favor." "I'm not swallowing a bag of — logistics." "Everyone is compensated. The ground crew, the terminal supervisor, the baggage handlers. It's a closed loop." He glances at you. "The Owner has paid to make sure you pass through. He would not want to lose the investment." "It would be *prison*." "You won't go to prison." He says this with the particular certainty of someone who knows the prison system well enough to know which doors open for which payments. "It's a formality. You pass through, board the flight, and spend the weekend at the house. The Owner gets his favor. You get the beach." "And if I say no?" The driver doesn't answer immediately. He changes lanes. The airport sign passes overhead — EXIT 14, TERMINALS A THROUGH F. "He asked you to come," the driver says. "He could have required it. He asked. The package is — a courtesy. An exchange." He looks at you again. "You're getting two days at his house. Private beach. Private staff. You don't think that comes free?" You look at the package on the dashboard. Small. Sealed. Throwing its precise light. "He wouldn't —" you start. "He wouldn't what?" The driver's voice is gentle. Almost kind. "Hurt you? Risk you? He spent forty thousand dollars arranging this weekend. He's not going to blow it on a bag of — whatever you think that is." He picks up the package. Holds it out. "You're doing him a favor. That's all. You can do him one favor, surely." The question hangs in the car the way interest hangs in the ledger — quietly, with the patience of something that will collect regardless. You take the package. You put it on your tongue. You swallow. It goes down hard — the plastic catching your throat, the shape of it registering as *wrong, wrong, wrong* — and then it's gone, somewhere inside you, a small foreign fact in a body that has become, over the months, a ledger of things other people have put there. "Good," the driver says. "He'll be pleased." <<linkreplace "Terminal">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The private aviation terminal is a separate building — smaller, quieter, with marble floors and a man in a suit who greets the driver by name and doesn't greet you at all. The Owner is already there, standing by a floor-to-ceiling window with a coffee in one hand and his phone in the other, reading something that makes him smile. He looks up. The smile stays. "You came." Two words. No warmth, no coldness. The temperature of a man for whom warmth and coldness are equally irrelevant. He pockets the phone. "Flight's in forty. We should handle the manifest." The manifest is a clipboard — a woman in a blazer takes your passport, your name, your date of birth. The Owner answers questions you didn't hear asked. Coordinates, tail number, customs arrangement. He initials something. You initial something. The paperwork of being transported. He doesn't mention the package. You wait for him to mention the package. He offers you a drink instead. "Earl Gray," he says. "No sugar. Am I right?" "You're right." He hands you the tea. He drinks his coffee. You stand by the window and look at the tarmac and the small white jet sitting on it like a jewel on black velvet. You hold the tea. You don't drink it because your stomach is a fist around a plastic grape and every swallow reminds you it's there. "You're quiet," he says. "Just tired." "You'll sleep on the plane." He checks his watch. The watch costs more than your debt. "We should board." You walk toward the gate. The woman in the blazer opens the security lane — a private lane, a single body scanner, two guards in uniforms that look almost-real-but-not-quite, the stitching slightly wrong, the badges slightly generic. The first guard waves you through the scanner. You step in. The machine beeps. "Step aside, please." "Excuse me?" "Step aside." The guard's voice changes — flat, official, the voice of authority that doesn't negotiate. "Random screening. This way." The Owner is already through, already walking toward the jet. He doesn't look back. He doesn't notice. He doesn't — you tell yourself — know. You follow the guard through a door. <<linkreplace "Room">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The room is white. White walls, white floor, white table. A corkboard with nothing on it. A clock on the wall that ticks. No windows. One door. One guard — bigger than the one outside, heavier, with hands that look like they've opened things that didn't want to be opened. "Sit." "I don't —" "Sit down." You sit. The chair is metal. The table is white. The clock ticks. The guard closes the door and stands in front of it and looks at you the way a man looks at a problem he's already solved and is now simply annoyed by. "You're carrying." "I'm not —" "The scanner flagged you. Lower abdomen. Foreign object." He pulls out a tablet. Shows you a scan — your midsection, ghostly gray, and there, small and bright and unmistakable: a dense, encapsulated mass. Right where you swallowed it. "That's — I don't know what that is." "You don't know." "No." "You swallowed something and you don't know what it is." "I didn't swallow anything." "You're lying." "I'm not —" "I've been doing this for twelve years." He sets the tablet down. "I know when they're lying. You're lying." Your heart is in your throat, next to where the package isn't anymore. Your palms are sweating. The clock ticks. The room is very white and very small and very far from the private beach and the private staff and the Earl Gray with no sugar. "I don't know what you're talking about." The guard exhales. The exhale of a man whose patience is a finite resource and you've just spent the last of it. "Here's what happens now." He leans forward. His hands on the table. His face close to yours. "You're going to prison. That's not a threat, that's a formality. Internal concealment is trafficking. Trafficking is a felony. The fact that you're pretty and you're crying —" he glances at your face; you are, in fact, crying — "doesn't change the scan." "Please —" "But." He straightens up. "I'm not a cruel man. And normally we have — methods. Laxatives, ultrasound, a medical professional on call. But for girls like you —" He looks at you differently now. Not officially. Personally. "— the stubborn ones, the pretty ones, the ones who sit there and lie to my face — those methods take too long. And you're pissing me off." "Please, I —" "So here's what we do instead." He unbuckles his belt. The sound of the zipper is the loudest thing in the white room. "I fuck you in the ass. Hard. Until that pretty little hole of yours stretches enough for the package to drop out on its own. It's not standard procedure. But it's effective. And frankly —" he pulls his cock out. It's already hard. "— you've earned it." "Wait —" "Either that, or prison. Your choice." There is no choice. There was never a choice. There was a white room and a man with a badge and a scan that shows something inside you and a word — *trafficking* — that means years and years and years in a place where they don't have private beaches. "Okay," you say. The word tastes like plastic. "Okay." He grips your arm. He pulls you up from the chair. He bends you over the white table — the same table that was just a table and is now an examination surface, a sacrificial altar, a piece of furniture he has made part of the threat. <<linkreplace "Now">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownertrip/" "05">> He doesn't prepare you. He doesn't go slow. He shoves his cock in your mouth first — one hand on the back of your head, the other holding the base — and fucks your face with the mechanical efficiency of a man who's not doing this for pleasure. He's doing it because he told you he would, and he's a man who keeps his word, even when his word is a cock in your throat. "Get it wet," he says. "It's the only lube you're getting." You suck him because you have to, because your mouth knows how, because your body has been trained to open when a man tells it to. Your saliva coats the shaft — thick, stringy, pooling at the base. He pulls out. Your lips sting. He hikes your dress up. Pulls your underwear down. The air on your bare skin is cold and clinical and exactly the temperature of every room in the Owner's world. He spits on his hand. Rubs it between your cheeks. And then he pushes into your ass. No warning. No inch by inch. One thrust — hard, deep, the kind of entry that doesn't ask permission because permission was given two minutes ago when you said *okay* in a room with no windows. You scream. The sound bounces off the white walls and comes back to you as someone else's voice. "I know," he says. Not gently. Factually. "It'll stretch." <<linkreplace "Harder">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownertrip/" "01">> He fucks you on the table. Hard. His hands on your hips, pulling you back onto him with each thrust, using your body the way you'd use a tool — firmly, without sentiment, with the specific grip of a man who is trying to accomplish something and you are the means. His cock drives into your ass and each thrust goes deeper. You feel it — the ring of muscle stretching, the burn that starts as pain and becomes something else, something wider and duller and more relentless. The table is cold against your breasts. Your cheek is pressed against the surface. The corkboard is at eye level. The clock ticks. "Breathe," he says. Not a suggestion. An instruction. The same way he said *sit* and *step aside* and *you're lying.* "It'll go faster if you breathe." You breathe. It doesn't go faster. <<vid "scene/ownertrip/" "02">> His rhythm picks up. Longer strokes. The head of his cock pulls almost all the way out and then drives back in, and each time the stretch is a little wider, the burn a little less sharp, the pain a little more like pressure, and the pressure is building toward something that isn't pleasure and isn't pain but is the specific, physical sensation of your body being forced to accommodate a shape it wasn't designed for at a speed it didn't choose. "There," he says. He shifts his angle. "Feel that?" You feel pressure so sharp that for a moment you believe him. The package — you imagine it caught somewhere inside you, exactly where he claims it is. He presses harder. Pain shifts through you. Your vision goes white. "There it is." <<linkreplace "Almost">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownertrip/" "03">> His hand moves from your hip to the back of your neck. His fingers close around your throat — not squeezing, just holding, the way a man holds a faucet to turn it. His other hand grips your hair. He pulls your head back and your back arches and the angle changes and his cock goes deeper, past the point where your body wants to stop, into the territory that your body gave up defending twenty thrusts ago. "Almost," he says. "Almost." He's not fucking you for pleasure anymore. He's fucking you the way a dentist drills — precisely, with professional detachment, aiming for a specific target. He keeps talking about the package until every unfamiliar pressure feels like proof that he is telling the truth. You cannot separate the pain from what he has told you to expect. His grip on your neck tightens. His grip on your hair pulls harder. The table is cold and the room is white and the clock is ticking and somewhere outside this room a private jet is sitting on a tarmac waiting for a woman who is currently bent over a table enduring a search that has become exactly what she feared by a man whose name she doesn't know. <<vid "scene/ownertrip/" "04">> One more thrust. Deep. The deepest yet — the kind that goes past everything comfortable and into the place where your body is just a channel, a passage, a route from one opening to another. Then he shifts behind you and the pressure eases. Something small and hard taps the floor between your feet. You cannot see what happened; you hear the sound and believe what he has spent the whole time telling you. The guard pulls out. Your ass is gaping. You can feel the air — cold, white, clinical — inside you where his cock was. "There it is," he says. He steps back. He tucks himself in. He zips up. He looks at the small, wet package on the floor with the satisfaction of a man who has completed a procedure. "Told you it'd come out." You're face down on the table. Your dress is around your waist. Your underwear is around your ankles. There's a package on the floor that came out of your body and a man standing over you who has decided his search is finished. "Stay there," he says. "Someone will come for you." The door opens. The door closes. The clock ticks. You are alone in a white room with a package on the floor and the taste of your own degradation in your mouth. *The Owner didn't look back. He didn't notice. He doesn't know.* You tell yourself this the way you tell yourself the debt is temporary. You know it's not true. You say it anyway. <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#ownertrip-stage">><<include "OwnerTrip07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

Someone comes. A woman in scrubs. She doesn't speak. She takes you to a small bathroom, turns on the water, and washes your face with cold water and a rough towel. She doesn't look at your eyes. She looks at your cheekbones, your forehead, your chin — the parts that need cleaning, not the parts that need seeing. She hands you new clothes. Not yours — better. A linen dress, white. Sandals. Underwear that fits. The tags are still on. "The Owner is waiting," she says. The first words anyone has said to you in an hour. She takes your arm. She walks you through a corridor that looks nothing like the corridor you came through — wider, carpeted, with art on the walls instead of white paint. She opens a door. The tarmac. The jet. The Owner, standing at the bottom of the stairs, checking his watch. When he sees you, he smiles. Not a doctor's smile. Not a gangster's silence. Not an athlete's grin. This is the smile of a man who has just watched a very good show and is clapping for the performance. "There you are," he says. "I was starting to worry." You stand there. In a dress that isn't yours. With a face that's been washed by a stranger. With an ass that still burns and a throat that still tastes of him. And you look at the Owner and the Owner looks at you and his smile doesn't waver. "Psyllium," he says. "What?" "Psyllium husk. Dietary fiber. Completely harmless." He checks his watch again. Not because he needs to — because he can. "You swallowed a fiber capsule, sweetheart. It dissolves. The packet on the floor was a prop." The white room. The guard. The scan. The cock in your ass. The package on the floor. All of it — the entire performance — for a bag of *fiber supplement.* "You —" "I had Ahmed prep it. He used to do security theater for a Sheikh in Dubai. Very convincing with the badge." He gestures at the jet — his jet, the private one, the one that was never going through commercial customs. "And this is my plane. We were never in a public terminal. There were no customs officers. There are no guards." He takes a step closer. He adjusts the collar of your dress — a small, precise gesture, the same way he adjusts everything in his world. "I wanted to see what you'd do." His voice is the auctioneer's voice, the evaluator's voice, the voice of a man for whom people are entertainment and boredom is the only real enemy. "You cried. You begged. You took it. You didn't break." He pauses. "Interesting." *Interesting.* The same word he used in the warehouse when you arrived as a reward for his men. The same tone. The same measurement. You are a line in his ledger and the ledger has a column for *interesting* and today you scored. "I —" you start. You want to say *you had him rape me* or *that was sick* or *I could have been hurt.* You want to say all of these things. You say none of them. Because the jet is waiting. Because the beach is private. Because your debt is a number that doesn't care about your dignity. And because the man who arranged the badge, the fake scan, and the stranger who used you is also the man who can make that number smaller. "Shall we?" he says. He gestures at the stairs. You climb the stairs. The jet is beautiful. The seats are leather. The champagne is cold. *Your vacation starts now.* *It's already over.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/ownertrip-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Customs</h2> <div id="ownertrip-stage"><<include "OwnerTrip01">></div>

/% MORE - the intern's anal graduation. He's been saving. He has a new request. He apologizes before, during, and after asking. The sex is amateur and real — on his carpet, in his kitchen, on his bed with the patterned blanket from his mother's house. He can't lie. He can't stop being honest. And his honesty is the most dangerous thing in the room. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneInternAnal")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneInternAnal")>> <h2>Exact Change</h2> <div id="internanal-stage"><<include "InternAnal01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/internanal-01.png"></div> The text comes at 2:14 a.m. on a Wednesday, which is when interns text, because interns don't have lives, they have shifts. *hey so i was wondering if you're free friday? i got paid and i was thinking maybe we could do something different?* *Different.* You look at the word for a long time. In this city, *different* from a client means one of three things: rougher, weirder, or more expensive. From the intern it means none of those. From the intern it means he rehearsed this text for three days and *different* was the word that survived eleven drafts. *Sure. What did you have in mind?* Three dots appear. They pulse for a very long time. You can almost hear him breathing. *i'll tell you when you get here? if that's ok? sorry* Tonight he apologizes for everything: the text, the hour, the question. You had thought he was growing more comfortable with you. Whatever he wants to ask has made him nervous again. *Ok. Friday. 8?* *8 is perfect. thank you. sorry.* <<linkreplace "Friday">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

His apartment has upgraded since last time. Not much — the green shag carpet is the same, the couch is the same dark monster that eats whatever you put on it. The bed is where you left it after the last evening: an actual bed, metal frame, the patterned blanket that you recognize because it's the one from his mother's house, promoted off the air mattress months ago, washed and squared. He upgraded the frame and kept the blanket. He's the kind of man who upgrades the frame and keeps the blanket. The kitchen has changed too. White cabinets, a countertop with a red bottle of something that might be olive oil or might be wine — you can't tell and neither, probably, can he. The fridge has a takeout menu held up by a magnet shaped like a fruit. The shelves are still sparse. There is a laptop on the counter with a spreadsheet open — you catch a glimpse of a column labeled ENTERTAINMENT and a number next to it that is exactly what he's paying you. "Hi." He's standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, wearing a t-shirt you've seen before and jeans you haven't. His hands are in his pockets. His shoulders are up near his ears, the posture of a man who is about to ask for something and is already sorry about it. "Thanks for coming." "You said you wanted to try something different." "Yeah." He takes his hands out of his pockets. Puts them back in. Takes them out again. "So. I've been — I saved up. I put money aside for another evening. But I wanted to ask you first, because this is different. Patel took a vacation. I covered his shifts and got a bonus. So I have —" He reaches into his back pocket. Produces an envelope. Holds it out. "$<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>>." His savings from the extra shifts: $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>>. The envelope is thin and the bills inside are folded the way he folds everything — precisely, in halves, edges aligned. You know without opening it that it's exact. You know because he is incapable of rounding. "That's a lot." "It's — I wanted to ask for more." He says *more* the way other men say *harder* — with the specific weight of someone who has thought about this word for weeks and is still not sure they're allowed to use it. "Not just — not just the regular thing. I wanted to try —" He stops. Looks at the carpet. Looks at the ceiling. Looks at you. "I'm sorry. This is — I should just say it." "Say it." "I want to try anal." His face does something extraordinary — it flushes red from the jaw to the forehead in approximately two seconds, a full-spectrum blush that no actor could replicate because no actor has ever been this sincere about anything. "I've never — I've watched — I mean, I've seen it in — but I've never — and I thought — if you're — if you'd be willing — I'm sorry, I should have asked earlier, I just —" "Hey." He stops. "Breathe." He breathes. "I'll do it," you say. "You will?" "I will. For $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>>, I'll do it." You take the envelope. You put it in your bag. You put your hands on his shoulders and you feel the tension — the weeks of it, the shifts and the texts and the eleven drafts — pooling in the muscles like water in a sponge. "But we go slow." "Obviously. Yes. Of course. Whatever you — I'm sorry." "Stop apologizing." "Sorry." <<linkreplace "Slow">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internanal/" "01">> You start with what he knows. The carpet is green and shaggy and your knees sink into it the way they sink into every cheap carpet in this city, and the couch is behind you like a dark animal, and he's standing in front of you with his jeans still on because he hasn't unbuttoned them yet because he's waiting for you to tell him it's okay. "It's okay," you say. He unbuttons. His cock is hard — fully, immediately, the hardness of a man in his twenties who has been thinking about this moment since Wednesday and whose body has been ready since Thursday. You take him in your hand and the weight is familiar now. Not heavy. Not intimidating. Just — his. The particular shape and girth of a man whose nervousness you have come to know and whose cock you know better than his handwriting. You take him in your mouth. He exhales — the same exhale every time, the releasing-his-body-from-his-mind exhale, the sound of a man who has been clenching for three days and is finally letting his shoulders drop. His hand comes to the top of your head and rests there with the gentle, grateful weight of someone who is touching something they've been told they're allowed to touch. "That's — yeah." His voice cracks on *yeah* and he flushes again and you feel the flush through his cock, a pulse of heat that has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with the fact that this man is embarrassed by his own pleasure and that embarrassment makes him harder, not softer. "That's really — I'm sorry, I'm —" "Ssh." You work him slowly because slow is what you told him and slow is what you meant. Your tongue runs the underside — the vein, the ridge, the spot just under the head where his breathing changes. Your hand cups his balls and they're tight and full and the skin is warm and you feel him tense beneath your hand. "I'm going to — if you keep —" You pull off. A string of saliva connects your lip to the head. You look up at him. His eyes are glassy. "Not yet." "Okay." He's panting. "Okay. Sorry." "If you come now, we're done for the night." "Right. Yeah. I know. I'm — I'll last. I think." "You think?" "I'll *try*." <<linkreplace "Ready?">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internanal/" "04">> "Show me," he says, and then immediately: "Sorry. I didn't mean — you don't have to —" But you're already doing it. You pull your dress up. You pull your underwear to the side. You lie back on the green carpet — the same carpet from last time, the same carpet his feet sink into every morning when he gets up for his shift — and you spread yourself open with your fingers. Yellow nail polish. You got them done for a client last week. The client isn't this one. The bright polish looks absurd against the green carpet, a small reminder of another evening you brought into this one. He looks at you. Really looks. The way he looks at spreadsheets — with total, unfiltered attention, missing nothing. His eyes trace the lines of you — the labia, the clit, the opening below — with the careful attention you remember from the first time you let him take his time. "You're —" He stops. He swallows. "You're beautiful." He says it the way he says everything: without the capacity to lie. And because you know he can't lie, and because you know the compliment is as sincere as the effort he makes to get this right, the word *beautiful* lands differently than it does from other men. From other men, *beautiful* is a tool. From him, it's a diagnosis. "Thank you." "I mean it." "I know you do." He kneels between your legs. His hands are shaking — not from fear, from the specific tension of a man who is about to do something he's imagined a thousand times and is terrified of getting wrong. He touches your thigh. His fingers are warm. "Can I —" "That's why I'm here." He touches you. One finger, then two. Sliding inside, curling gently, feeling the walls of you contract around him. His brow furrows — the same concentration as his spreadsheet. He's learning. He's filing data. He's building a model of your body the way he builds models of quarterly projections: carefully, honestly, with the understanding that one wrong input will corrupt everything downstream. "Is this —" "It's good. Keep going." He keeps going. His fingers find a rhythm and his thumb finds your clit and you close your eyes and let him work because his work is earnest and his earnestness is, in its way, the most generous thing any man has done for you in this city without being asked. <<linkreplace "Ask">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internanal/" "02">> "Can we —" His voice drops. The blush returns. "Can we try the —" "The other one?" "Yeah." He looks at the ceiling. At the carpet. At anything that isn't your face. "I brought — I read that you're supposed to use — I got some." He reaches behind him, toward the couch, where a small bottle of something is sitting on the armrest. Lube. He bought lube. He researched and he bought lube and he put it on the armrest where he could reach it because he planned this the way he plans his shifts: carefully, thoroughly, with attention to logistics. "I'll turn over," you say. He helps you. His hands on your hips, turning you onto your stomach on the green carpet, the shag pressing into your breasts, your cheek against the fibers. You feel him behind you — his knees between your legs, his hands spreading your cheeks, and then the cool shock of lube against your asshole, his finger pressing gently, tentatively, the touch of a man who is touching something he's only ever seen. "Like this?" "Slower." "Sorry." "Slower is good. Just — work it in." He works it in. One finger, slick with lube, sliding into your ass with the careful, measured pace of a man who is afraid of breaking something. His touch feels unfamiliar because it is so *careful.* Different because his hands are shaking. Different because he's whispering *sorry, sorry, sorry* under his breath like a mantra while his finger opens you up. "Are you okay?" he asks. To *you.* He's the one who's shaking and he's asking if *you're* okay. "I'm fine. Add another." "Another —" "Another finger." He adds. Two now, sliding in beside the first, the stretch registering as a fullness that is not yet pain and not yet pleasure. You breathe. You relax. You let the green carpet hold you and you let his shaking hands prepare you and you let the moment be what it is: a man in his first apartment, on his first carpet, trying to have anal sex for the first time with a woman he pays in exact change and can't lie to. "I think — I think you're ready." "Then go slow." "I will. I promise." And the thing is — he will. You believe him because he has listened whenever you asked him to slow down. <<linkreplace "Slow">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internanal/" "05">> He enters you slowly. Inch by inch. His cock — hard, slick with lube, trembling slightly from the effort of going slow when his body wants to rush — pushes past the ring of muscle and into the heat behind it. You feel every inch because he's giving you every inch at a pace that allows you to feel it, and the feeling is — not pain. There is pressure, but he gives you time to adjust. Something warmer. Something that recognizes that you're a person and that persons have nerve endings and that nerve endings send signals and the signals say *this is a lot, go slow, thank you for going slow.* "Are you —" "I'm fine." "You're sure?" "I'm sure." "Because I can —" "Just *move.*" He moves. Slowly at first. His hips rocking in a rhythm that's half-remembered from the videos he watched and half-invented from the way your body responds to him. His cock slides deeper and then pulls back and then slides deeper again and each stroke is a question — *is this okay? is this too much? should I stop?* — and each stroke is followed by the answer — *yes, no, don't you dare* — communicated not in words but in the way your hips rise to meet him and your hand reaches back to pull him closer. <<vid "scene/internanal/" "07">> He finds his rhythm. It's not practiced — nothing about this man is practiced except the exact-change thing and the spreadsheet and the eleven drafts of a Wednesday text. His rhythm is *discovered.* His rhythm is the rhythm of two people who are figuring it out together on a green carpet in a first apartment with a patterned blanket on the bed and a spreadsheet on the counter with a column labeled ENTERTAINMENT. "You feel —" He exhales. "You feel incredible." "You're not bad yourself." "Really?" "Don't fish." "Sorry. I just — I didn't think it would be like this. I thought it would be more — I don't know. Clinical? Like something in a video?" "Real life rarely looks like the videos." "Is that bad?" "It's better." His hand finds your hip. His other hand finds your hair — not gripping, not pulling, just holding, the way a man holds something he's afraid of dropping. His thrusts are getting faster — not rough, not violent, just faster, the natural acceleration of a body that has found something it likes and wants more of it. His breathing is ragged. His muscles are tight. The blush has spread from his jaw to his chest and he is, you realize, entirely present. Not thinking about his shift or his boss or his spreadsheet. Here. On this carpet. Inside you. "Can I —" He gasps. "Can I come —" "Inside." "Are you sure —" "I'm sure." He comes. With a sound that is half-word and half-sob and entirely his own — a sound that no other man in this city has made and no other man in this city could make because no other man in this city is this honest about what is happening to his body. His cock pulses inside you and his hips lock and his hand tightens in your hair and for three seconds he is completely, devastatingly silent, and then he exhales. "I'm sorry." "For what?" "For — I don't know. For all of it." He pulls out. He lies next to you on the green carpet, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling. "Was it — was I —" "You were perfect." "I wasn't —" "You were." You roll onto your side. You look at him. His face is still flushed. His eyes are still glassy. His hand is still shaking. "You were perfect." He looks at you. And for a moment, he seems willing to accept what you tell him without an apology. "Thank you," he says. *That's* what it sounds like when he stops saying sorry. <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#internanal-stage">><<include "InternAnal07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

He drives you home in his car — a used Honda that smells like takeout and new-car air freshener fighting a losing battle. The radio plays something you don't recognize. His hand rests on the gearshift and every time he shifts, his knuckles brush your knee. "I'll text you," he says as you pull away from his building. "You always do." "At 2 a.m." "That's when interns text." He laughs. It's a real laugh — surprised out of him, like a cough. The laugh of a man who didn't know he was going to laugh until the laugh was already happening. "Next time —" He stops at a red light. Looks at his hands on the wheel. "Next time can we just — can we just do the regular thing?" "The regular thing." "The evening thing. The regular evening." He's blushing again, but this time the blush has a different texture. Not embarrassment about wanting more. Embarrassment about wanting less. About preferring the thing he already has to the thing he saved up for. "I liked this. I did. But I think — I think I like the other thing better." "The blowjob." "Yeah." He looks at you. And his eyes are the same eyes that looked at you on the carpet and said *beautiful* and meant it and couldn't lie about it. "I like being able to see your face." The light turns green. "Friday?" you say. "Friday." He smiles. The smile of a man who has tried something new and discovered he's exactly who he thought he was. "I'll have exact change." *And he will. He always will.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/internanal-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Exact Change</h2> <div id="internanal-stage"><<include "InternAnal01">></div>

/% STAFF DEVELOPMENT - throat conditioning. Smith as instructor, not client: clothed, procedural, stopwatch voice. The tap-out protocol is the emotional core - he always stops, exactly on signal, and a man who keeps his word is the closest thing to kindness her economy has. She starts wanting the grade. Closes with the seed phrase "Carried forward" for the hypno scene. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithTrain")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithTrain")>> <h2>Staff Development</h2> <div id="smithtrain-stage"><<include "SmithTrain01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/smithtrain-01.png"></div> The apartment above the office has no name on the buzzer and always smells of laundry detergent. The bed is made before you arrive and stripped after you leave, and the sheets are the same every time — blue and white stripes, washed and stretched and hospital-cold — because the room exists for one purpose and laundering is part of the purpose. There is an octopus pillow on the headboard. Blue, eight legs, hand-sewn eyes. Nobody knows whose it is. Smith has logged it, you suspect, as a pre-existing amenity. You braid your hair in the hallway mirror before you knock. That was the first correction, weeks ago: *hair obscures the throat, and the throat is the instrument.* The instrument stays visible during assessment. So now there are two braids, tight, one over each shoulder, tied with the black bands that appeared in an unmarked envelope in your mailbox — because Smith does not remind twice, he supplies. He opens the door in his shirt and his vest, sleeves folded back exactly twice. He checks his watch. "You're two minutes early. Noted favorably." He steps aside. "Shoes by the door. Clothes on the chair. Folded." You undress the way you file paperwork — quickly, in order, nothing dramatic. He watches without watching, the way an examiner watches. When you sit on the edge of the bed he positions you himself: knees on the mattress, back straight, hands on your thighs. "Rules are unchanged. No hands on me. Breathe through your nose. If air runs out — twice on my thigh, and we stop." A pause, exactly as long as it needs to be. "I have never once missed a signal. You know this." You know this. It is the single most erotic fact in your life, and it is a sentence about safety protocol. "Then we begin. Open." <<linkreplace "Open">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "03">> His belt is already open. His trousers stay on — only the zipper comes down, the minimum displacement required by procedure, because this is not undressing, this is access. His cock is out and hard and level with your mouth, and his hand comes to rest on the back of your head, over the braids. Not pushing. Measuring. "Take it. To the resistance point. Hold." You take him in — past the lips, past the soft front of the mouth, until the head touches the place where your gag reflex lives, the border checkpoint of your throat. You hold. Saliva floods immediately, the way it has learned to. "Four seconds," he says, when he pulls you off by the fistful of braid. "Last week, three. One second better than last week." He feeds you back in. His hips don't move — the hips are not part of this exercise; only your effort is, an isometric of the throat. Your jaw stretches wide around the girth and your eyes water and your mouth makes the obscene, wet, working sounds of a hole being retrained for depth, and above you Smith is a column of quiet, his breathing not even doubled. "Again. Five." The saliva runs down your chin and drips onto the striped sheet, and you have stopped being embarrassed by it — week three was the last time embarrassment cost you seconds. Now it's just fluid loss. Now it's just data. "Five and a half. There it is." *There it is.* Three words, delivered flat as a receipt. Your cunt clenches around nothing, hard, and you hate that, and you don't stop. <<linkreplace "Deeper">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "02">> He stands you up off your knees and turns you to face the mirror on the wardrobe door, then sits on the edge of the bed and draws you down between his legs, so you can watch. Of course there's a mirror. Assessment requires the instrument to observe its own tolerances. "Today we work the barrier itself. Not past it. Into it." His hand closes over both braids at the nape, one fist, calm. "The reflex is the limit we're working on. Work with it. Do not force past it." He pulls you down onto him and this time he doesn't stop at the border. The head of his cock presses into the top of your throat and your whole body tries to reject it — the squeeze, the burn, the tears going hot down your cheeks — and his voice stays at desk level, unhurried, reading the pressure like a gauge. "Relax the jaw. Drop it forward. The resistance is in the jaw, not the throat — the throat is only reporting." You drop the jaw. The wall reroutes. An inch of him slides into a place no one has ever been, and the sound you make around his cock is not a word in any language. "Good." He holds you there, two seconds, three, your nose against the fabric of his trousers, your throat visibly bulging in the mirror — and you see it, you see yourself from the outside, braids in his fist, lips stretched to the root, spit-slick and shaking, and the girl in the mirror is *taking it*, and something in your chest goes as hot and liquid as the shame is supposed to be but isn't, not anymore. He lifts you off. You gasp like surfacing. "Six seconds at depth." He wipes your chin with his own handkerchief, folded back to a clean quarter. "That's a record for you. We log it and build on it." <<linkreplace "Build on it">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "05">> "Position two," he says, and you know position two without being told anymore, which is its own quiet horror: your body has memorized his curriculum. You lie back on the bed, head tipped off the edge into the space beside his hip, throat extended, an open line from lips to gullet. "The angle does the work," he says, feeding his cock down into you from above, slow, vertical, gravity on his side. "At this angle, the passage straightens. That is what we are testing. Hold the position." He is right, which is the worst part. At this angle he slides deeper than the mirror-position, deeper than the record, and there is no gag at all — just a fullness descending, filling the straightened channel, your throat bulging gently with every inch, your hands gripping the sheet beside your hips. Your braids hang off the edge of the bed and swing with each stroke. "Count for me," he says. "In your head. The counting occupies the reflex." You count. One. Two. The octopus pillow watches from the headboard with its hand-sewn eyes, and you count its legs instead — eight — because eight is longer than four. Nine. Ten. He withdraws on twelve and you inhale, huge, ragged, alive, drooling onto your own collarbone. "Twelve." He says it the way other men say a name in bed. "Twelve, inverted. Noted." Your thighs are shaking and he hasn't touched your cunt once. That was week one's discovery, the one nobody logged out loud: the instrument runs wet on its own. Efficiency. <<linkreplace "Calibration">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "04">> "Pre-recovery calibration," Smith says, and kneels over you on the bed, and does the thing he refuses to call a favor: he puts his mouth on your cunt. It is not generosity. He explained the reasoning once, in one sentence, and never repeated himself: *arousal relaxes the deep muscle; a flinch at depth can bruise the channel; bruised channels miss sessions; missed sessions extend the loan.* His mouth is a maintenance procedure. It is the best thing that happens to you all week. He works you open with the same patience he applies to everything — unhurried, thorough, reading you like a statement that reconciles. Two fingers curl inside and press the spot that makes your spine lift off the mattress; his tongue keeps its meter above them, steady, a metronome. The coiling starts low, in the place where all your numbers live — the debt, the rent, the interest, the count — and burns it all down to a single ascending figure. "Whenever you're ready," he says against you, not slowing. "This isn't an examination. There's no failing it." And that — *no failing it* — is what undoes you, because everything else in your life is an examination now, daily, hourly, and this is the one room where the grade only goes up. You come against his mouth with your fists in the striped sheets, hips rolling, thighs clamping his head for the length of one long, graceless, uncounted moment. He holds you through it with a hand flat on your stomach, steadying the instrument. Afterward he checks his watch and makes a small mark in the ledger he keeps on the nightstand. "Responsiveness: verified." He straightens. "Now we use the window it left open. Position three." <<linkreplace "Position three">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "06">> Position three: you fold, on your back, and he turns above you the other way — his knees astride your shoulders, his mouth and breath at your sex, his cock hanging down over your face and into your upside-down mouth. The sixty-nine of it is impersonal, mechanical, a fixture of pipes and angles; your cunt is still swollen from calibration and his breath lands on it with every word. "Inversion removes your control entirely," he says, matter-of-fact, sliding down into your throat with the full weight of gravity and angle behind him. "The position decides the pace. Your task is to hold it." He fucks your throat in long, deep, unhurried strokes — the strokes of a man testing a repaired load-bearing wall — and you lie there taking it, hands flat on the bed because no hands on him, throat open around the straight line of him, his balls resting heavy against your nose at the bottom of every stroke. There is no air at the bottom. There is only the choice: tap out, or stay. One. Two. You count his strokes the way you counted the octopus's legs. Seven. Eight. The burn in your chest goes bright and singing. His mouth finds your clit again — calibration window still open — and sucks, once, precise. Eleven. The brightness edges toward white. Your hand lifts — hovers over his thigh — the two taps that end everything— —and you put it back down on the sheet, and you stay, and you take twelve, thirteen, and on fourteen the world detonates quietly somewhere behind your eyes and your body chooses breathing over pride and taps him twice on the thigh. He stops. Instantly. Mid-stroke, fully sheathed, zero delay — out and off and kneeling beside you, one hand bracing your shoulder as you turn your head and cough and suck air like a landed fish. He doesn't pat your back. He holds the water glass from the nightstand to your mouth and checks his watch. "Fourteen seconds at full depth, inverted, post-arousal." A beat. "Fourteen is the limit today. Fifteen on Thursday." You drink, and cough, and drink, and look at him through the tears — vest still buttoned, hair still parted, cock still hard and wet with your throat and utterly ignored, a scheduled inconvenience — and the worst thing in the room is not him. The worst thing in the room is that *he stopped*. Exactly on signal, as promised, the way he has kept every promise he ever made you, including the ones in the fine print. In your economy of drowning, a man who stops when you tap is the closest thing to love on offer, and both of you know exactly what that's worth. <<linkreplace "Final exercise">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "08">> He stands beside the bed at the end of every session for the last exercise, and you kneel up onto the mattress to meet him, back arched, arms raised and folded behind your head — fingers laced at your own nape, elbows wide. Presenting the instrument. No hands anywhere in the world to catch you or slow him. The position of pure throughput. "Sustained pace," he says. "You set nothing. You hold everything." And then he uses your mouth. There is no more counting now, no more curriculum — just rhythm, deep working rhythm, his hand wrapped lightly around both braids at your nape like a handle he is too polite to pull. Your mouth is open as wide as it has ever been and running with spit, strings of it swinging from your chin to his balls and back, and the wet slap of it fills the little room above the office along with your breathing, huge and nose-only, drilled into you like everything else. His composure finally pays out its one dividend: his breathing lengthens, uneven by half a note, a man approaching the only column he doesn't get to balance at a desk. "Swallow or wear it," he says, without slowing. "Your choice. Both are noted as cooperation." *Both are noted as cooperation.* Only Smith could make an orgasm a checkbox. You moan around him — you can't help it, the size of him and the ache in your jaw and the week you've had — and the vibration tips him over the edge mid-stroke. <<linkreplace "Choose">><<replace "#smithtrain-stage">><<include "SmithTrain08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "07">> You choose. You drop your chin, open wide, tongue out — and he pulls free of your throat and finishes on it, hot and thick across your tongue and your lower lip, one stripe catching your cheekbone, the last of it pushed into your mouth by his own thumb, which then closes your lips for you. His face, as he comes, moves maybe a millimeter. It is the most you have ever gotten out of him and you feel like you cheated it out of a vending machine. "Show me," he says. You show him. Tongue out, mouthful white and pooled, eyes up, braids wrecked, kneeling on striped sheets under a plush octopus. "Swallow." You swallow. He watches your throat do it — of course he does; the throat is the instrument — and then he tucks himself away, zips, straightens the vest, and makes the final mark in the nightstand ledger. "Session closed. Net improvement: measurable." He squares the ledger and looks at you, and for one suspended moment the clerical surface shows a seam of something older and more tired than satisfaction. "You are holding up well, Miss. Better than projected. Take the compliment. It is the only item on today's statement without a charge." He writes one more line and reads it aloud as he closes the book — the coda he uses every time, the full stop of every session, the two words you hear in your sleep: "Carried forward." You assume he means the balance. <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/smithtrain-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Staff Development</h2> <div id="smithtrain-stage"><<include "SmithTrain01">></div>

/% CARRIED FORWARD - the hypnosis check. Mid-report, Smith says the phrase and she becomes "available." Narrated from inside the fog: time skips, fragments out of order, the body performing choreography she never learned awake. The horror is soft-edged: she remembers vaguely, and she isn't against it. Apparently. Probably. %/ <<run setup.stampSensor("_hypnoCount")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithHypno")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithHypno")>> <h2>Carried Forward</h2> <div id="smithhypno-stage"><<include "SmithHypno01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/smithhypno-01.png"></div> The weekly report happens at his desk, in his office, at 6 p.m. sharp, because Smith does not do meetings that could be statements. You sit at the visitor's side with the ledger open, chin propped on your hand, and read your week to him line by line while the spreadsheet glows on the monitor behind you both — dates, clients, totals. He listens with his hands folded. He never interrupts. Interruptions cost minutes. "Tuesday, the appointments. Wednesday, reception. Thursday —" you turn the page, "— the training block. I entered your payment separately." "Noted," he says. "Friday." "Friday, the private booking. Saturday, the gala, less the dress rental. Sunday, rest." You read him the total. He checks your total against the charges and inclines his head a degree — the Smith ovation. "Your income has improved. I will note it in the file." You smile at the ledger, chin still in your hand, warm with the dumb animal pride of a farm animal praised for its yield. Somewhere under the warmth, the old you files a minority report and is overruled for lack of standing. He straightens the papers, squares them once, and delivers the coda he uses to close every session, every report, every phone call — the two words as familiar to you now as your own name, said a hundred times, a thousand, in the chair with the geometric patterns on the walls, in the room where the clicks live, said and said and said until they stopped being words and became a place: "Carried forward." The office tilts. Not the room — the room stays exactly where it is. You tilt, somewhere behind your own face, gently, like a filing cabinet sliding open on oiled rails. <<linkreplace "…">><<replace "#smithhypno-stage">><<include "SmithHypno02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "05">> You are standing. You don't remember standing. The chair is pushed back the exact distance it would be if you had stood up politely, and you are on the visitor's side of the desk, and Smith is watching you with the expression of a man watching a meter, and one of his fingers is raised — just one, vertically, the smallest gesture in the world. The gesture from the soft room. The finger the remote used to be. You are somewhere else too. It's pleasant where you are. It's warm and uncluttered and there are no numbers in it, and the part of you that spends all day holding numbers upright is sitting down for the first time in what feels like years. Your hands move. You watch them the way you'd watch weather happen to someone else: they lift the strap of your top off your shoulder, and they pull the black lace of your bra down, and your breasts spill out into the office light, full and heavy and pale, and your hands present them — a small lift, a slight squeeze, nipples offered like documents. And you're smiling. That's the detail that would frighten you, if fright were reachable from where you're standing: the smile is already on your face, slight and glad and showing teeth, and you didn't put it there. Nobody put it there. It was *installed* — some Thursday, some session, some click between his words — and it deploys on its own schedule now, like streetlights. "Good," Smith says. He does not touch you. He opens a drawer, takes out a yellow folder, and lays it on the desk beside your week's paperwork. "On the desk. Knees." <<linkreplace "Knees">><<replace "#smithhypno-stage">><<include "SmithHypno03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "06">> You are on the desk. You don't remember climbing onto it, but here you are — kneeling on the cool wood among the papers, weight on your knees and forearms, top pushed up, bra under your breasts, your skirt riding up your thighs. The yellow folder is directly under your right knee. You can read its label upside down: *Q3 — RECONCILIATION.* His quarter is being reconciled. So, apparently, are you. His cock is out of his open fly at the level of your face, hard, and you take it into your mouth with the unhurried competence of a woman doing the one task her body knows it was sent here for. No preamble, no performance of reluctance — warm mouth, sealed lips, descent. Your head bobs over the paperwork. A pen rolls and taps the desk edge with each stroke, a small pen-metronome nobody stops. He doesn't stop working. That's the thing. His hand rests on your head — presence, not pressure — and with the other hand he turns a page. "Continue the report," he says. "Friday's breakdown." And you continue it. Around him. His cock sits in your cheek as you hum the numbers — *mm, one-forty, mm-hm* — drool escaping the corner of your mouth onto a receipt, and he corrects a figure above you in his desk voice, level as a spirit bubble: "Valet was reimbursable. Don't count the twelve as income." You hum acknowledgment and suck. Somewhere very far back, an observer in you takes notes of its own — *he's deducting valet while fucking your mouth* — but the observer writes it down in pencil, files it, and doesn't feel anything about it at all. The clicks taught it not to. Or the sex did. The seam between those two things is one you can no longer locate. He draws out of your mouth, wet and heavy, and taps it once against your lips. "Recess," he says. "The couch. On your back." You are already moving. <<linkreplace "Move">><<replace "#smithhypno-stage">><<include "SmithHypno04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "01">> The ceiling of his office is white and has a water stain near the light fixture shaped like Yugoslavia. You know this because you are on your back on the gray couch, head on the armrest, and you have been looking at the ceiling for an amount of time you cannot account for. There is a gap before this — you were crossing the office, or you were on the desk, or you were standing with your breasts out — and then the seam is missing, and then here: ceiling, couch, the taste of him still salt and thick at the back of your tongue. He stands over the armrest above your head and feeds his cock back into your mouth from above, and your arms do the thing they know: they press your bare breasts together around the base of him, soft and full, a sleeve of skin he sinks into. The head of him nudges your throat on the deeper strokes — the *trained* depth, the twelve-second depth, some Thursday's work — and you take it with the enthusiasm of the installed smile, making sounds, low happy vowel sounds around his flesh, because the program that lives in your hips now has decided this is lovely and your opinion was not collected. The fog has a texture like warm bathwater. Thoughts surface in it and dissolve: *You should mind this.* It sinks away, wave-smoothed, round as a stone. *You do mind this.* It sinks away too, and the strange thing, the thing that will still be true at midnight tonight, is that neither thought was exactly honest. The you on this couch is arching her back. The you on this couch presses her tits tighter around him when he groans — he *groans*, half a note, more than the training room ever got — and glows with it, glows like a report card. His hand covers your throat from the outside, thumb resting in the hollow — not pressing, *monitoring*, feeling his own cock move under the skin — and the ceiling blurs, and Yugoslavia dissolves too. <<linkreplace "Blur">><<replace "#smithhypno-stage">><<include "SmithHypno05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "02">> This one comes back to you whole. Later, this is the fragment that stays — because pressure writes memory where warmth doesn't. You are bent over the desk. Skirt up around your waist, bra pushed down under your breasts — nothing removed, only displaced; Smith undresses nothing he can merely open — and his cock drives into you from behind, thick and unhurried, in and in, the full length of him seating itself while the desk ticks forward an inch under your hip. Your cheek is on your own weekly paperwork. Your report. Tuesday through Sunday, face-down, being fucked across the totals. His vest is still buttoned. You can hear his watch. That detail writes itself somewhere permanent: *he kept the vest on, and you could hear his watch.* And mid-stroke — this is where you come back, partially, like a listener tuning in through static — you surface. Not all the way. Enough. You can hear yourself moaning, distant, on a delay, a badly dubbed version of your own voice saying *yes* and *please* and things with no consonants, and you are aware of the situation — the office, the report, the desk, him — awareness arriving from very far away with no urgency attached, the way a delivery arrives at a house you used to live in. You could tap the desk twice. You know the protocol. The protocol has never once failed. You don't tap. That's the part you'll take out and look at tonight, in your bed, in the dark, turning it over like a coin you can't stop thumbing: *you didn't tap.* Not because you couldn't. Because you didn't want to. His hand closes over your hip, watch-cold against the skin, and his rhythm stays exactly itself — even, accounting-steady, a man keeping time rather than losing it — and your body sails on it, wound up to the pitch the program chooses for you, and somewhere between one stroke and the next you come, hard, quietly, obediently, your fingers crumpling Sunday's row into a ball. He feels it. Of course he feels it. He says nothing, files it, continues. "End of report," he says, breath finally uneven by a single measurable degree, and withdraws, and you hear the word your body was waiting for — the one that ends the session and the one that will start it next week, indistinguishable, the same word doing both jobs forever: "Kneel." <<linkreplace "Kneel">><<replace "#smithhypno-stage">><<include "SmithHypno06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "03">> You kneel by the yellow wall, near the dresser, on the carpet — back straight, knees apart, holding your breasts up in both hands like an offering or a tray. You are nude. You don't remember becoming nude. The bra is gone somewhere, the skirt is gone somewhere; the fog has eaten the middle of the evening and left this posture, which your body wears like a uniform it was issued in a dream. He stands over you, working his cock with his own hand — you are not permitted to help, this part is not yours — and his face above you is doing the millimeter thing, the almost-face, the closest thing to expression he allows the world, and when he comes it is onto your tongue and your offered chest, stripe after stripe, hot and salt and endless, an amount that says the whole week was riding on this somewhere in his own private ledger. "Close," he says. "Swallow." You close. You swallow. He watches your throat — the throat is the instrument — and then, with two institutional motions, he tucks himself away and does up the fly. The fog lifts like a curtain on a count you never hear. "— and the week carries forward," his voice is saying, from behind the desk, and you are in the chair. The chair. The visitor's chair, pushed in, your spine straight, the ledger open in front of you to the exact page — *income and charges* — and your clothes are on. Smooth. Skirt smoothed, top smooth on your shoulders, everything righted with a thoroughness you don't remember performing or receiving. Your bra is righted too, and it was down at some point, or it was off, or both, and the yellow folder is gone from the desk, and the pen is back in its cup, and Smith is saying: "Report confirmed. The account carries forward. Good evening, Miss." You stand. Your knees know the carpet's weave. Your throat is raw in the specific, trained way. There is a taste at the back of your tongue — salt, faint, insistently there — that the fog left behind like footprints on a beach, and under it, under everything, your body is loose and warm and satisfied in a way your memory has no entry for. "Good evening," you say. On the stairs, it comes back in pieces. Not in order, not in full — a ceiling with a water stain. A yellow folder under your knee. The sound of a watch against your hip. Your own voice saying *please* on a half-second delay. And you go through the fragments one by one, honestly, looking for the horror the old you would have felt — the outrage, the violation, something to be *against* — and you find yourself smiling instead, the slight glad smile, the one you didn't put there. You're not against it. Apparently. Probably. The word for how you feel about it is filed somewhere you no longer have clearance to visit, and the interest on finding out again compounds daily. Your phone buzzes. *Report confirmed, same time next week. — S.* You type *confirmed* back before you can wonder which part of you answered. <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/smithhypno-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Carried Forward</h2> <div id="smithhypno-stage"><<include "SmithHypno01">></div>

/% WHAT MORNINGS ARE FOR - the morning date. Not an evening performance: a morning in his house, a robe made to her measure, breakfast, and the wedding band he no longer bothers to remove. The product he is buying has upgraded from evenings to understanding. The scary part is the comfort: the coffee is exactly how she takes it. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run setup.eventPay(600)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneRichDate")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichDate")>> <h2>What Mornings Are For</h2> <div id="richdate-stage"><<include "RichDate01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/richdate-01.png"></div> The invitation said breakfast, and the car came at dawn, and dawn is not what evenings are. Evenings are theater. Mornings are what wives get. The house is low and quiet in the early light, all pale wood and thrown-open windows, the ranch hills going gold behind it. No guards walk you in today. He does that himself, in a blue shirt with the sleeves already rolled, coffee in hand, and if you had not seen what this man's patience is priced at, you would call it domestic. "You're punctual," he says. "I did ask for that, didn't I?" On the chair by the window: a black robe, floral lace, folded once. Your size. Not estimated — *known*, the way he knows your principal, your rate, and the hour of your next recalculation. There is a tag sewn at the hem with no name on it. The absence of a name is the message. He doesn't say whose morning this robe is supposed to look like. That's the understanding, and understanding is what he's paying for. You change. You put your clothes — the ones the evening version of you would have worn — folded on the same chair, and the exchange feels like a signature. He sets down his cup, and you see it as he reaches for you: the pale band of skin where a ring lives. Early visits, he took it off. You never saw it happen; you only noticed the outline it left on his hand, like a tan line from a life. He doesn't bother anymore. That's what the morning rate is for. The not-bothering. He leans against the wall by the white door, unhurried, and opens his trousers with the calm of a man opening a newspaper. Morning light lies along the whole length of him. "No hurry," he says. "We have the morning." He watches you cross the room and kneel at his feet in someone's robe, and his eyes are kind, and patient, and completely without apology. <<linkreplace "Kneel">><<replace "#richdate-stage">><<include "RichDate02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richdate/" "02">> You take your time, because taking your time is the service. His underwear goes down under your fingers — you pull it free yourself, deliberate, both hands, looking up at him from under your lashes while you do it, and his breath deepens by exactly one degree. That's what patience buys him: the show of a woman in no rush, a performance of want so slow it stops being possible to tell it from the thing itself. Some mornings, you couldn't say which one you're giving him. This is one of them, and the not-knowing is warm in your stomach like the coffee. You work him with your mouth closed-eyed and focused — long unhurried strokes of tongue, your hand following your lips, the way he likes, the way he *taught*, weeks of evenings distilled into technique nobody will ever praise you for. His hand comes to rest on your head. It doesn't guide. It just rests there, the weight of a man leaning on the fact of you. "You see," he says quietly, above you. "This is what I wanted from all those evenings. For you to stop watching the clock." The ease. You hollow your cheeks and take him to the back of your throat and hold, and his fingers tighten in your hair — one fraction, one heartbeat — and release. "Beautiful," he says. Not a groan. An assessment. From him it's better than a groan. He draws you up by the hand, and turns you, and bends you over the arm of the couch. <<linkreplace "The couch">><<replace "#richdate-stage">><<include "RichDate03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richdate/" "03">> The couch is green, and old, and wrong for the house — too soft, too worn, a checkered pillow squared on one arm. Everything else here was bought by the meter. This one piece was *kept*. You are bent over the kept thing, in black stockings and an open robe, and if you wanted to pretend you didn't know what kind of furniture survives a rich man's renovations, he's giving you the whole morning to practice not asking. You don't ask. You close your eyes. He enters you from behind with the same unhurried certainty he does everything — thick, slow, deep enough to arch your back, and the couch takes both your weights without one complaint, decades-trained in exactly this. His hand grips your buttock, spread and steady, keeping you where he wants you; the headboard-free rhythm builds like interest. Small, regular, unstoppable. "Mm—" you say, into the cushion. "Take your time," he reminds you, and doesn't change pace at all, and somehow that's the filthiest thing that's happened to you all week — being fucked slowly on a Tuesday morning, in sunlight, by a man in an unbuttoned blue shirt who has nowhere else to be. Somewhere in the house a clock gives one soft chime. You think absurdly: *the wife's clock.* The thought should stop you. It arrives, it circulates, it files itself away — closed eyes, closed file — and your body keeps moving with his, smooth and complicit, and the smile on your face is small and private and, for once, not for anyone. He does not finish. He slows, and stops, sheathed deep, breathing evenly against your neck. "Bedroom," he says. "I'd rather finish this in my own bed." <<linkreplace "Bedroom">><<replace "#richdate-stage">><<include "RichDate04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richdate/" "04">> The bedroom is white and high and morning-struck, and the bed is the bed, and you are on it on all fours with the robe fallen open down your back before you give yourself time to name whose bed it is. Naming things is a habit from your old life. You left it with your clothes on the chair. He takes you from behind with both hands on your hips, unhurried even now — even *this* — each thrust long and deliberate and aimed, a man planting something. Sun lies across your shoulder blades. Your eyes are closed. You are smiling, and there is no one watching to perform it for, which means it's real, which means you have stopped keeping the books on yourself. His breathing goes ragged at last — the only honest sound he's made all morning — and when he comes it is deep inside you, groaning once, quietly, like a man signing something. Afterward: breakfast, on the terrace, in the robe. Eggs from his own farms, coffee exactly how you take it. You never told him how you take it. He knows your principal, your rate, your hour of recalculation, and now this. Mid-toast, his phone hums. He answers on the second ring. "Yes. This morning... The north fence, tell them Thursday... Of course. Tonight." A pause. "Yes. You too." His voice does not change. Not one note, not one degree of warmth added or subtracted — the courteous, unhurried, silver-templed voice you knelt to an hour ago is the voice of *tonight, you too*. You butter your toast through the whole call, and you watch him watch you butter it, and neither of you says one word about any of it. That is the understanding. You have just taken the final exam, and the exam was breakfast. The envelope is under your napkin when you rise. Thicker than evenings. In the car you do the arithmetic, because you will always do the arithmetic. Mornings cost more than evenings — not for the hours, but for what they rehearse. He is not buying your nights anymore. Nights are bought from anyone. He is buying your *habits*: the coffee, the robe, the closed eyes, the clock you don't ask about. Habits, he told you once, are the only jewelry a man never takes off. You look at the pale band on his hand, in your memory, where the ring lives. *You assume he means his own.* <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/richdate-end-01.png"></div> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>What Mornings Are For</h2> <div id="richdate-stage"><<include "RichDate01">></div>

/% THE FIRST THURSDAY - a week after Smith's introduction, a car that is not a booking. He doesn't want the room behind the restaurant. He wants the restaurant. Trigger: metGangster, loanSharkPet >= 5. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(200)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangIntro")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangIntro")>> <h2>The First Thursday</h2> <div id="gangintro-stage"><<include "GangIntro01">></div>

Some time after the introduction. You have had time to file him where the city files its men: expensive, careful, not to be owed. Then a car idles at your curb at dusk - not the car from that night, a quieter one - and the window comes down and there is no address, no envelope, no arrangement of men. "Not tonight, babe," he says. "Get in." You get in, because the sentence has no shape you can refuse. You spend the ride braced for the room behind the restaurant, for the desk swept clean, for whatever the introduction was. The city slides by. Nobody speaks. He parks behind the place - the restaurant, dark, chairs up on the tables, the back light humming over the door like a porch lamp for a house this size. He unlocks with his own key and holds the door. Not an order. A door. "Kitchen," he says. <<linkreplace "Follow him in">><<replace "#gangintro-stage">><<include "GangIntro02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The kitchen is warm and it smells like food that takes all day. On the stove: a pot, lid on, cooking low. He takes off his jacket, hangs it on the back of a chair like a man who lives here, and lifts the lid, and steam climbs, and he says one word: "Oxtail." He says it the way other men cite a qualification. It is the only explanation you get. He ladles one bowl - one - sets it on the steel counter, and puts the spoon across the rim, and leans against the counter across from you with his arms folded, and does not speak. You eat it standing up. You didn't know you were hungry until the first spoonful, and then you are hungry the way you haven't let yourself be in months, careful-hungry, the kind you keep in a drawer. The kitchen ticks and hums. The pot settles. He watches you eat with his eyes half-closed like a man listening to a song he owns. Nobody says anything. It is the most comfortable silence you have stood in since you came to this city, and you notice that the way you'd notice weather: it simply is, and it is better than the alternative. <<linkreplace "Finish the bowl">><<replace "#gangintro-stage">><<include "GangIntro03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You wash the bowl yourself - it's the only currency you have in this kitchen - and set it on the shelf to dry, and when you turn around he has straightened from the counter. On the steel, next to the spot where the bowl was: $<<print setup.eventQuote(200)>>, folded in quarters. "For what?" you say. "There wasn't-" "Thursday," he says, to none of it. You pick up the money because not picking it up isn't a thing people do here. At the door you remember your own name for yourself, the one from before, the one that used to cost more - and then, just as the night air comes in: "Stay." One word, no weight on it, like a coat held out. You stay. You don't ask for how long, and he doesn't say. A minute. Five. The pot ticking, the back light humming, the two of you in a warm kitchen at ten at night for no reason the ledger would recognize. Then he nods at the door, and you go, and the night takes you back like you never left it. On the bus you count the bills - folded into quarters, the amount exact - and you understand that you were not paid for anything. You were *kept* for something. You don't have the word for it yet. You will. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The First Thursday</h2> <div id="gangintro-stage"><<include "GangIntro01">></div>

/% THE KEY - the morning after Everyone's, there is no money on the sink. Trigger: the arc walked to its end (sceneSeen Everyone's), domsub >= 55. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 5)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneGangFinale")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneGangFinale")>> <h2>The Key</h2> <div id="gangfinale-stage"><<include "GangFinale01">></div>

You wake alone in the bed under the crack you know by heart. The sheets on his side are already cold, which means he has been up for hours, which means whatever the day is, it started without you - the day always starts without you; that has never once been an insult here. In the bathroom, the soap. The cheap white bar, six to a pack. No money. You stand there longer than the fact deserves. Folded bills have waited on that sink or counter every Thursday since the first one - it was the first thing he ever gave you that you couldn't price. In its place, flat on the porcelain where the bills would be: A key. Brass, small, no fob, no tag. It opens one lock in this city, and you know the lock, because you have been walking through it for months without ever once being asked to. A key is not money. Money is for what you do. A key is for where you are allowed to *be* - including the hours he isn't in it, including the version of this apartment that has nobody in it at all. You hold it and it is warm from the water pipe, or from his hand, and you put it in your pocket before your hands can decide something on your behalf. <<linkreplace "Wait for Thursday">><<replace "#gangfinale-stage">><<include "GangFinale02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

Thursday. You let yourself in - the door was never locked, it is never locked, that is his rule - and the kitchen is warm and the pot is on and he is at the counter with the ledger he keeps for everything else in his life, and he closes it when he hears you. You eat standing up. The bowl is oxtail. You rinse it, you set it on the shelf, second from the top, in the spot that has been yours for so long that neither of you remembers it becoming yours. And then you take the key out of your pocket and you put it on the steel between you, because you have learned his language, and in his language this is a question. He looks at the key for a long time. Then he puts his hand flat over it - not taking it. Keeping it. "Stay," he says. The same word as the first Thursday. The word you have been carrying in your mouth for months like a coin you wouldn't spend. But this time he isn't done; this time the sentence goes where it has always been going: "Be mine." The back light hums. The pot ticks. Behind you, the door to the street stands open on the dark - wide open, shoved wide the way it is shoved wide every night of the year, because a door that can't be left is a cage, and he does not keep cages. He keeps doors. <<linkreplace "Look at the open door">><<replace "#gangfinale-stage">><<include "GangFinale03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You look at the open door for exactly as long as it takes to be honest. The street out there is yours. The bus, the 47, the room with three hangers and a shelf. The ledger on Mr. Smith's counter with your name and a number that used to be your whole sky. Every version of you that the city has not yet collected. And here: a warm kitchen, a shelf with a spot, a man who says six words a season and means all of them. He does not move. The hand stays on the key. The door stays open. Whatever this is, it is not a trap - traps are for things that would leave. The test was never whether you *could* go. The door settled that the day it was built. The test is whether, with the door open - with it *always* open - you stay. * [[Stay. Be his.|EndingBlack]] (POINT OF NO RETURN) * [[Walk out the open door|GangFinaleOut]]

You walk out the open door. The stairs creak on four and seven. Nobody follows - that is his rule too, the one underneath all the others: the door means the door. The street takes you back the way the night did on the first Thursday, and the back light hums behind you until the corner cuts it off. Nothing happens to you. That is the part you didn't expect - no price, no minus, no men in a car at your curb the next dusk. He said *stay*, you went, and the ledger of it closed without a debt on either side. Except. The shelf still has your spot. The bowl is still your bowl. And on the bus, with the city sliding past, you keep your hand in your pocket around nothing at all, and you understand that *be mine* doesn't un-happen just because you walked. It rides home with you. It will be in the kitchen next Thursday, next year, wherever you are - a word, waiting to be picked back up. You have a debt to think about instead. You try. You think about the debt. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Key</h2> <div id="gangfinale-stage"><<include "GangFinale01">></div>

/% THE STANDING APPOINTMENT - the morning after the fight week, a calendar invite with no text. Thursdays, 21:00, recurring. Trigger: beauty >= 40, SceneWinning seen. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.eventPay(250)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneHerBlock")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneHerBlock")>> <h2>The Standing Appointment</h2> <div id="herblock-stage"><<include "HerBlock01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/aftermatch-01.png"></div> The invite arrives at 9:12 on a Tuesday morning, which is how you know it is serious. He does not text at 9:12. He texts at 12:40 a.m. after wins and at 6:15 a.m. before runs. 9:12 is office hours. 9:12 is the schedule-man working. No words in it. Just a calendar block, dropped into your phone with the confidence of a man who has never once been told *no* by a calendar: **Thursday, 21:00-23:00. Recurring.** No fee discussed. No act specified. When you type *what's the occasion?* the reply lands in four minutes, and it is one line: *You're in the schedule now.* You stare at the grid of his week like it is a map of a country you have quietly been granted a visa to. 6:00 roadwork. 7:30 breakfast, four eggs. 9:00-11:00 bag work. Noon: physio. The blocks march down the screen in their blunt, certain type, and there, on Thursday evening, before *Friday sparring* and *Saturday - off (sleep)*, is you. Two hours, once a week. A standing appointment in a life that runs on standing appointments. You check your own ledger - the real one, the one with Mr. Smith's interest eating the bottom out of every week - and do the arithmetic you always do, because a Thursday night that pays is a Thursday night that pays. And then you notice the thing that puts a slow, warm crack in all that arithmetic: every other recurring block in his calendar has a *purpose*. Conditioning. Recovery. Weight. Yours is the only block in the grid that is not training him. It is just you. <<linkreplace "Thursday, 21:00">><<replace "#herblock-stage">><<include "HerBlock02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "05">> The door opens before you knock, because of course it does - he trains by the clock, and the clock says you. But something is different tonight, and it takes you the length of his hallway to name it. He is not riding the aftermath of anything. No fight incoming, no victory still burning off, no cut to favor. This is not a celebration and it is not a sending-off. This is an ordinary Thursday. This is just his week, and you are in it. He looks at you the way he looks at footage - completely, missing nothing - and the calculation runs, and then his brow does the small folding thing it does when the calculation finds a problem. "Knees," he says. "What?" "After the win. In the locker room." He crouches, actually crouches, in his own doorway, and turns one of your legs a few degrees in his wrapped-looking grip - no wraps tonight, just tape residue on the fingers - and reads the faded bruise across your kneecap like it is a cut above his own eye. The thumb lands next to it, careful of the exact center. "You were kneeling on concrete. That's no surface for your knees." "It was - it's fine." "Fine isn't a recovery plan." He stands. And then he says the sentence that you will take out into the street with you when the night is over, the sentence that does more to you than anything the fight week did: "We're doing it on the bed. The floor's off the program." <<linkreplace "The bed">><<replace "#herblock-stage">><<include "HerBlock03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "06">> The bed is where it happens, and that is not the remarkable part. The remarkable part is everything he does the way he does everything: *on schedule.* He sets a kitchen timer - the big dial one, white, older than his career - for sixty minutes and puts it on the nightstand with the gravity of a round card. The session has a structure: warm-up, work, cool-down. He unwraps you from your coat like tape coming off a hand, unhurried, following the seams. His mouth is careful everywhere the fight week was careless. Where the night after his win was a right hand, this is roadwork - the unglamorous, daily, devoted kind of attention that wins fights months before anyone is watching. "How's the knee?" he says against your collarbone, midway through, in exactly the voice he'd use for *tell me how the ribs feel.* "It's fine." "That's not a report." You report. It is the strangest, most sovereign thing the city has ever asked of you - lying in a fighter's bed, being taken apart gently at a scheduled pace, filing condition reports on your own body like you are both of interest to the same training staff. When he shifts your weight off your bruised knee for the third time without being asked, something in your chest goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with tiredness. The timer rings at exactly sixty minutes. He doesn't hear it - or his body doesn't, running its own clock the way it does - but you do, and you lie there under him counting the difference between the time on the dial and the time in his arms, and for once the arithmetic comes out in your favor. After - the cool-down, his term - he sits you on the edge of the bed and wraps your knees. Actually wraps them: compression tape, two passes, anchored right, the professional crease. His hands know exactly what they are for. "Stay off concrete," he says. "The concrete comes with the job." "Then the job gets a schedule change." He tears the tape with his teeth. "Thursdays. Soft surfaces. Non-negotiable." <<linkreplace "The grid">><<replace "#herblock-stage">><<include "HerBlock04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="" src="img/scene-covers/aftermatch-end-01.png"></div> At the door he does the thing he does instead of goodbye: checks you over. Face. Shoulders. The wrapped knees, flexed once each, his nod approving of his own work. Then his jacket - your jacket - lifted and held open behind you like a cutman holding a robe, and you put your arms in it, and being dressed by him turns out to be stranger and warmer than anything being undressed by him has ever done to you. "Next week," he says, "same block." "The whole two hours?" "I kept the two hours for you." He says it the way he'd read a weight: a number, a fact, entered into evidence. Then, already turning back to the kitchen where the timer needs resetting and the eggs for tomorrow need counting, he adds, over his shoulder, with terrible casualness: "Library Tuesdays end at nine. I moved the block so it doesn't eat your study night." You stop on the landing. You stand in the stairwell of his building with your knees freshly taped and your heart doing something completely unscheduled, and you think: *he moved the block.* Around your life. The man who has never in his career moved for anything - not an opponent, not a cut, not a promoter's deadline - moved a standing appointment to another evening so a girl with a debt could keep her library night. The city pays you in envelopes and deductions and interest. This man pays in calendar blocks. It should not add up. It is the only currency all week that doesn't leave you feeling spent. You file the feeling where you file everything now, and you go home, and your knees don't hurt at all. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Standing Appointment</h2> <div id="herblock-stage"><<include "HerBlock01">></div>

/% NO INVOICE - a Thursday like the others, except he keeps looking at the timer he never looks at, and then he does the one thing the schedule never allows: he turns it off. Trigger: beauty >= 40, SceneHerBlock seen. No pay line - on purpose. Nothing passes between them tonight but the question. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneHerAnswer")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneHerAnswer")>> <h2>No Invoice</h2> <div id="heranswer-stage"><<include "HerAnswer01">></div>

The block starts the way it always starts now: door, coat, tape-check on your knees, the white timer wound to sixty with a flick of his thumb. Your name in the grid. Thursday, 21:00. The most reliable sentence in a week that otherwise runs on interest. But he is off his own timing tonight, and you are fluent enough in him now to read it. His hands are right where they should be and his head is somewhere two blocks over. Twice - you count, you file, it's what the two of you do - he glances at the nightstand. At the timer. A man who lives by the dial, looking at it like it owes him an answer. "You're staring at the clock," you say, against his shoulder. "You don't usually do that." "Train of thought," he says. "Bad one?" "Complicated one." The session finds its structure anyway - it always does; his body can't help scheduling even when his head won't stop filing - and it is good, it is the good careful Thursday work, and none of it is what tonight is about. You can tell none of it is what tonight is about, because with nineteen minutes left on the dial, with the warm-up and the work behind and no cool-down begun, he stops. He sits back on his heels. Looks at you. Looks at the timer. And turns it off. <<linkreplace "The dial">><<replace "#heranswer-stage">><<include "HerAnswer02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "07">> The dial clicks to zero under his thumb, and the room gets a kind of silence you have never heard in this apartment - not the after-silence of a finished session, which has a floor under it, but a held silence, the silence of a man who has just done something off-program and is standing in the blank space where the next block should be. "Session's not over," you say. "Nineteen minutes left on the timer." "Block's over." He takes the timer off the nightstand - takes it, physically, in both hands, the way you'd handle another man's gloves - and carries it out of the room. You hear a drawer close in the kitchen. A drawer, in the apartment of a man whose whole life is a wall of clocks, where a thing can be *put away.* He comes back and sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, the posture from every corner of every round he has ever rested through. Except his hands aren't resting. His thumbs work against each other as though he were unwinding fight tape. "There's an envelope," he says. "I know. There's always an envelope." "It's in the drawer." A pause, the length of a clinch. "With the timer." You do the math you have done in every room this city has ever put you in - it is not even greed, it is literacy; you read money the way he reads footage - and the math comes back wrong. No envelope means no fee means this is not a session, and you know what it is instead, and knowing it, something in your chest gets very loud and very still at the same time. "Say it," you say. "Whatever's making you watch the clock." <<linkreplace "The question">><<replace "#heranswer-stage">><<include "HerAnswer03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

"Be mine." Two syllables, the weight of a fight. Not smooth. Not smoothed. He says it the way he throws the right hand - no wind-up, all commitment, the sentence already landed before it finishes - and then he does the thing no schedule has a column for: he waits. "My girlfriend. Not a Saturday booking. Not just Thursdays, nine to eleven." His voice stays level the way it stays level when a cut is worse than he wants the corner to know. "Mine. Your life stays yours - the library, your time, all of it. I'm not buying that. But no more envelopes. No invoices. I don't pay you to be here, and you don't owe me for being here." He looks at the kitchen, where a timer sits in a drawer in the dark. "I see you working out what you still owe every Thursday. I can't make it disappear. But I can take it over, agree payments with Smith." The level voice does not break; it just goes quiet, the way a gym goes quiet. "We work out what we can afford together. That's what I'm offering. Take a week to think if you - " "Yes." The word is out of you before the schedule in you can veto it - the same way your knees heard him before your brain did, the first night, in a locker room that smelled of copper. And then, because you are still you, because the city made you and the city's habits keep: "*Yes* - and I need you to hear the rest of it. I can't promise you the girl from before the ledger. She's who he built. If you're taking on me, you're taking on the debt too. I won't leave you to carry it alone." "You don't have to drop anything," he says. "We work around it." He takes your hand - the wrapped-hand grip, the gauze-rough one, the one that has ended conversations and begun others - and for a moment the two of you sit in the held silence like it's a corner and the bell is anywhere you want it to be. Then he reaches for the lamp, to buy the night some dark to stand in - /% 0.6 E2 (studio fix): "Keep working" closed the clean exits - ALMOST NORMALCY is one. %/ <<if $beauty >= 80 and $domsub >= 50 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingGirlfriend") and not $postWin>> * [[ENDING: ALMOST NORMAL|EndingGirlfriend]] <</if>> * <<linkreplace "Not yet">><<replace "#heranswer-stage">><<include "HerAnswer04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

- and you close your hand around his and hold it still. "Yes," you said, and meant it. Which is why it can't be tonight - the word deserves better than a lamp switched off on schedule. The answer lands on him. You watch it land, watch the three-second read he does of every face, and what he reads makes him nod once - the fighter's nod, the one that means *acknowledged, filed, next round.* Whatever he sees, he treats like a fighter two kilos off fighting weight: not ready is not a verdict, it is a date. "Not tonight." He says it back without a question mark, which is how he accepts things. "That's a schedule answer. I work with those." Nothing changes in the room. That is the impossible part. The envelope stays in the drawer - you hear him decide it, some small settling of his shoulders, the drawer keeping both the timer and the money in the dark together. He wraps your knees. He holds your jacket open like a robe. He checks you over at the door: face, shoulders, tape, nod. "Next Thursday," he says, "same block." "Same block," you say. The stairwell holds you for a second on the way down, your hand on the rail, the city humming its interest outside. Nothing has been solved. The ledger is exactly the shape it was at 20:59. And on the grid of his week, in its blunt certain type, your two hours sit exactly where they sat - except that somewhere in a kitchen drawer, a white dial and an envelope are lying side by side in the dark, both of them waiting for a Thursday that hasn't been scheduled yet. You go home. The block held. The word waits. Nothing about it is settled, and nothing about it is worse. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>No Invoice</h2> <div id="heranswer-stage"><<include "HerAnswer01">></div>

/% ERRAND DAY - the first errand that is not a note in the mailbox. He hands her an envelope and an address and nothing else, and the entire test is whether she can carry it without opening it. Trigger: loanSharkPet >= 4. The seduction of Smith's world, stage one: it never feels like corruption. It feels like being trusted with logistics. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -15)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithErrand")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithErrand")>> <h2>Errand Day</h2> <div id="smitherrand-stage"><<include "SmithErrand01">></div>

He is waiting for you in the hallway at noon, coat already on, and for one stupid half-second you think something has happened to the terms - some recalibration, some correction. That is what a summons from Mr. Smith has meant your whole employed life. He hands you an envelope instead. Plain, unsealed, thin as a communion wafer. "Fourth floor, number six. A man named Ostrer will answer. You will hand him this. He will hand you a different envelope. You will not open either one, because the first is not addressed to you and the second is not addressed to anyone you work for." He checks his watch, which is not running slow, and not fast. "Back within the hour. Nine minutes each way leaves forty-two for complications. I do not expect any." "And if there are?" "Then you will handle them," he says, "discreetly, which is the entire assignment." He holds the door. "I have a courier service. I am sending you because I want to know how you work without supervision." The stairwell swallows you with the envelope held out in front of you in both hands, the way you'd carry a sleeping animal you'd been explicitly told not to wake. <<linkreplace "Number six">><<replace "#smitherrand-stage">><<include "SmithErrand02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithtrain/" "01">> Fourth floor, number six, is a door with a fish-eye lens and a smell of boiled vegetables that gets into your coat. The man who answers is seventy if he is a day, fully dressed and feeding a one-eyed cat, and he takes your envelope the way you take a coupon - without thanks, without surprise, already turning away. "Wait," you say, because the protocol is a different envelope, and his hand is on the door. He looks at you for the first time. Something in the look files you - not what you are wearing, not your face; he files that you came, and that you counted. From the drawer behind the cat's dish he takes an envelope fat as a wallet, and he puts it into your hands, and he says, in a voice gone to gravel: "Tell him the schedule holds." Nine minutes back, the fat envelope riding in your inside pocket against your ribs. You do not open it. You want to - the way anyone wants to, the animal arithmetic of *that much paper, this close* - and the wanting is fine, wanting is free. The job is the not-opening. Somewhere on the second-floor landing you catch yourself walking differently: unhurried, unremarkable, a woman carrying nothing. Discretion, it turns out, is a walk. <<linkreplace "The debrief">><<replace "#smitherrand-stage">><<include "SmithErrand03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

Smith takes the envelope without weighing it in his hand, which somehow is the highest compliment available: he expected exact. "Thirty-eight minutes," he says, and makes a small mark in the ledger on his desk. "Ostrer said nothing?" "The schedule holds." "Good. The sentence has a precise meaning. You did not ask what it was. That is noted." He files the envelope in a drawer that locks with a key from his own key ring. "You carried enough money to clear your account through a public stairwell. You delivered one envelope and returned the other without reading either. You understand why I wanted to see that." He lets that sit. "Everyone connected to this building answers to someone. I need people I can trust with an errand. Today was a simple test." A pause. "The later ones will not be as simple." And then he does the thing that is more seductive than anything the bar has ever paid you: he writes, in the ledger, a second small mark, and turns it so you can see it, and says: "Service credit. One of two. Compliance like this is remembered in your favor when the file is read." The file. His file. Your file. The drawer with the key. You walk home with one dot of credit and the strange, appalled warmth of a woman who has just been praised for her discretion by the man who holds the paper on her. <<linkreplace "One of two">><<replace "#smitherrand-stage">><<include "SmithErrand04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The fee arrives the way his fees arrive: forwarded, itemized, no ceremony. Money for laundry, interest, and an honest meal, which is to say - enough to keep you exactly where you are. But that is not the part of the day you carry home. The part you carry home is smaller: you are now a person who can be sent. There is a version of you from the first days here, who would have opened the envelope on the stairs out of pure broke-minded spite, and she is gone, and what replaced her is... reliable. The word arrives in your head wearing his voice. Reliable. Noted favorably. You catch yourself, at the kitchen table, doing the thing he does: making a small mark in the margin of your own tally, one filled dot and one empty one, one of two. You sit back. You look at what your hand just did. The city has been teaching you its handwriting since the hospital, you realize - you file, you count, you carry without opening - and the only new thing today is that somebody finally signed the work *M.S.* Thursday you will braid your hair for training, for the throat, for the instrument. Tonight you braid it because it is tidy, and the two braids look, in the dark window over the sink, exactly the same as they will. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Errand Day</h2> <div id="smitherrand-stage"><<include "SmithErrand01">></div>

/% DEPRECIATION REVIEW - the scheduled audit. Not a summons: a calendar entry she never agreed to, for an inspection that was always in the terms. Graded, itemized, clinical in the extreme. Trigger: loanSharkPet >= 25, SceneSmithTrain seen. The scene's real payload is one sentence, planted months before SmithRevision fires it: capacity is collateral, and collateral gets priced. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -25)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithAudit")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithAudit")>> <h2>Depreciation Review</h2> <div id="smithaudit-stage"><<include "SmithAudit01">></div>

There is no note in the mailbox, which is how you know. The notes are for errands; the calendar entries are for you. His message was waiting on your phone at 9:00 exactly, one line, no greeting: *Depreciation review. You know the address. Bring the braids.* The apartment above the office smells of laundry detergent. The bed is made - striped sheets, hospital-cold - and beside it, where the nightstand ledger usually sits, there is a folding table instead, and on the table, in a row, like surgical steel laid out for counts: a measuring tape, a tuning fork, a penlight, a clipboard with one page on it, and the octopus pillow's smaller cousin - a keyring, eight legs, hand-sewn eyes, that you have never seen before and already understand you will never be given. "Clothes on the chair," Smith says, from the doorway, sleeves folded back exactly twice. "Folded. Assessment today, not training. Follow the instructions. I am recording the results." You undress in order, fold in order, sit where his hand puts you: edge of the bed, back straight, knees apart, hands on thighs. The penlight comes on. He tips your chin with one knuckle. "Eyes." A pause per eye. "Pupils even. Sleep debt moderate. You have been skipping iron-rich foods - the diet note stands." The light goes off. "Throat first. Open." <<linkreplace "Open">><<replace "#smithaudit-stage">><<include "SmithAudit02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "06">> Assessment is worse than training. In training, the effort is yours and the grade is his to give. In assessment there is nothing for you to do at all - you kneel, you open, and he reads you: two gloved fingers at the jaw hinge testing the drop, the flat of his thumb measuring the give at the barrier, his other hand marking the clipboard with short pencil strokes you cannot see upside down. "Hold four." You hold. "The reflex has migrated half a centimeter back. Week eight's projection, met." Stroke. "Salivary response: appropriate. Wait." His thumb moves - one slow, clinical drag along the underside, the place that is not throat at all but makes your knees try to follow it - and whatever your body does, he writes that down too. "Involuntary: brisk." He sounds like a man confirming a bridge held its load. "You are ahead of schedule on depth and behind on recovery intervals. The overtime shows in the tissue. We will price that in." He withdraws, wipes your chin with the folded handkerchief, clean quarter, and points at the bed. "Position two. We will finish the checks outstanding this quarter." You lie back, head tipped off the edge into the space beside his hip, and the last thing you see right-side up is the keyring octopus watching from the folding table with its eight stitched legs, before his hand settles warm and impersonal on your sternum and the room turns over. <<linkreplace "The columns">><<replace "#smithaudit-stage">><<include "SmithAudit03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/nurseprac/" "09">> He audits you the way he reads a balance sheet: line by line, and the line is you. Two fingers, then three, an unhurried, measuring depth that has nothing to do with your pleasure and everything to do with your figures - except that your body, his instrument, long ago decided that being read *is* the pleasure, and by the time his thumb finds its metronome your hips are making the case for a grade you have not been offered. "You are invited to hold still," he says, level, not slowing. "The audit records variance. It does not reward it." You hold still. The effort of it, with his fingers curved and patient inside you, is the most obscene discipline of your week, and the clipboard scratches on, and somewhere under the blood in your ears you understand that this is the whole architecture of him: even your wrecking, clenching, disgraceful approach to the edge is, to Smith, a *line item behaving within projected tolerances*, and the cruelty of it is that the projection was never pessimistic. "Approaching." Not a question. "You may." You come on his hand, quiet as a signed form, heels digging, the whole issued body of you seizing around three measured fingers, and he holds the depth steady through all of it, steadying the instrument, and when it releases him he withdraws, strips the glove off with one practiced pull, and makes the longest pencil note yet. "Responsiveness: verified. Recovery: inside window." He caps the pen. "The improvement affects the assessment. Sit up. We need to discuss it." <<linkreplace "The finding">><<replace "#smithaudit-stage">><<include "SmithAudit04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You sit up. He turns the clipboard toward you so you can read the page - and that, from Smith, is ceremony: the audit is being shared with its subject. The page is a grid of your own body in his shorthand, columns of figures, four words of prose at the bottom. You find the prose first. *Capacity exceeds original pricing.* "You are performing better than the terms assumed," he says. "Health, responsiveness, yield - all trending above the curve I priced in a hospital room with your head full of fog. That changes what the account can be expected to earn." He taps the grid, once. "Greater capacity affects the terms. Not today; today is the assessment. But your file may reach another desk. I wanted you to hear that from me first. Directly, with the light on." He takes the clipboard back, squares it on the folding table next to the steel, and hands you your clothes in order. "The fee is forwarded. Service credit stands at one of two; this session was maintenance, not compliance, and does not add." A pause, at the door, exactly as long as it needs to be. "Iron-rich foods. The next audit is in ninety days. We check every quarter. Improvement does not cancel the appointment." You dress in the smell of laundry detergent with the sentence nailed up in your skull where the debt lives: *capacity is collateral.* You had thought you were paying off a number. The number, it turns out, is also reading you. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>Depreciation Review</h2> <div id="smithaudit-stage"><<include "SmithAudit01">></div>

/% THE RENEWAL - the appointment that is not a note, not an audit, and not a session: a signing. Smith formalizes the arrangement - scheduled sessions, service credit, the premium quota - and the horror of the document is that it is the best contract anyone has ever offered her. Trigger: loanSharkPet >= 40, SceneSmithHypno seen. %/ <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithContract")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithContract")>> <h2>The Renewal</h2> <div id="smithcontract-stage"><<include "SmithContract01">></div>

The envelope this time is addressed to you. Your name, typed. Inside: one sheet, one paragraph, and a line at the bottom for a signature, and a pen - his pen, the capped one from the desk upstairs, the one you have only ever seen close files. *Your current arrangement expires on renewal of the principal. This document supersedes expiry. Terms attached. - M.S.* The terms take four reads, because each one is worse than the sentence before it, and the worst sentence is the one that is generous. Two scheduled sessions a month, his apartment, his curriculum - in perpetuity. Errand availability, twenty-four hours, compensation at his standard rate. Service credit, two marks, carried across renewals: two marks of compliance and he reads your file personally before any desk does - *before any desk does* - and reprices it himself, once, in your favor. And the paragraph's last line, the one that is worse than generous: *No term of this document may be purchased out of.* You can pay off the debt. You have done the arithmetic a hundred nights; the debt ends. The contract does not. There is no figure at the bottom of this document because there is no bottom of this document. You sign it at his kitchen table at eleven at night, because the note said eleven, and because you checked, somewhere around the third read, and there was never a version of this where you did not. <<linkreplace "The reading">><<replace "#smithcontract-stage">><<include "SmithContract02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/smithhypno/" "04">> He reads the signed document back into the room while you kneel on the striped sheets, because the signing is not separate from the session - it is the session's opening procedure, sworn testimony with your mouth full. "Clause one. Schedule: first and third Thursday, twenty-one hundred. Attendance is not optional; lateness is priced." A pause, his hand resting on the back of your head, over the braids, not pushing. Measuring. "Clause two. Availability: you will be sent. You will carry what you are given and open nothing. Service credit accrues at one mark per compliant errand, two marks maximum." Stroke of his thumb along the braid. "At two marks, I review the file before it reaches another desk. You have one. You have remained at one for several weeks. That is on the record." The comment is the absence of comment. You are learning his language fluently now; the fluency is its own clause. "Clause three." And here his voice does not change at all, which is how you know to brace. "The arrangement continues after the debt is paid. Repayment does not release you from these obligations. Renewal is automatic." His belt is already open. The procedure begins the way it began in week one - access, not undressing; the minimum displacement; his hand coming to rest calm at your nape - except that in week one the stopwatch was measuring what your throat could survive, and tonight the stopwatch is measuring what you *signed*, and the depth is the same, and the meaning is not. <<linkreplace "In perpetuity">><<replace "#smithcontract-stage">><<include "SmithContract03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

He uses you according to the curriculum - position two into the inversion, twelve at depth, the tap-out protocol restated once, quietly, at the start, because he has never once missed a signal and never once let you forget the signal exists. That is the part nobody would believe: the cruelty keeps books, and the books are where his kindness lives, if kindness is the word for a man who owns your arithmetic and has never once lied to you. You tap out twice. He stops twice, on the instant, both times, and lets you breathe, and marks something that is not the audit's clipboard but the little nightstand ledger, and the mark he makes this time is different - not a grade. A schedule entry. You are in the grid now. Thursdays, twenty-one hundred, in perpetuity. After, the calibration - his mouth, the maintenance window, the reasoning he gave you once and never repeated: arousal relaxes the deep muscle; bruised channels miss sessions; missed sessions extend loans. He holds you through the end of it, one hand flat on your stomach like a paperweight, and this time, when the coiling breaks over you, he says the thing he has never said during, in the same desk-level voice: "Renewal noted favorably." You laugh - once, wet, ruined, into the striped sheets - because there is nothing else the sentence could be, and so little else in your life that anyone has bothered to note favorably, and both of those facts are true at once and neither cancels the other. That is the contract. Not the paper. This: the one room where the grade only goes up, in perpetuity, forever, no bottom. <<linkreplace "The terms you live under">><<replace "#smithcontract-stage">><<include "SmithContract04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

He drives you home himself, which he has never done - the sedan quiet, the city sliding past the window doing its interest on everyone at once. At your curb he does not turn the engine off. "Thursday," he says. "Thursday," you say. You climb the stairs to your room with the fee in your pocket and the paragraph in your head, and you sit at the kitchen table and do the tally by lamplight, and the arithmetic is better tonight than it has been any night this month - the fee, the credits, the file that Smith will read personally before any desk does. From where you sit, at this hour, with this pen, the contract looks like what it is on paper: protection, schedule, a rate of return. It is only when you blow out the lamp that you feel the shape of the other thing - that the document has no bottom line because you are the bottom line; that you signed not because the terms were good but because the terms were *specific*, and after a hospital bed and a city of interest, specific is the closest thing to safe you have ever been offered. Two marks of credit. One in the margin of your tally already. You fall asleep doing the arithmetic of the one that's left, and outside the window the city accrues, patient, certain, priced - upstairs in a locked drawer above the office, a signed page waits in the dark next to an octopus keyring with eight stitched legs, both of them non-refundable. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto "Gallery">><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

/% Gallery replay: no stat block. %/ <h2>The Renewal</h2> <div id="smithcontract-stage"><<include "SmithContract01">></div>

/% 0.6 intern and office arcs + the approved Athlete pack and The Chair. English copy edit and paragraph layout reviewed; original scene content retained. Generator: tools/build_sceneevents4.py %/

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -25)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 1)>> <<run setup.eventPay(120, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntDare")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntDare")>> <h2>The Ask</h2> <div id="intdare-stage"><<include "IntDare01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Ask" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/intdare-v2.png"></div> Since the housewarming, the dances have gone strange. He still books you. He still counts out the eighty. But something has gone missing from the evenings: the apologizing. He says hello, he hands you the envelope, he sits in the chair — and then he watches you dance with his hands folded and his jaw set, like a man enduring a speech he already agrees with. He doesn't apologize once. It's the politest silence you've ever been paid to fill. Tonight the text came at 2:14 a.m., which is when interns text: *hey. are you busy friday? not the usual thing. i have a question. a work question. sorry.* You knock at nine. He opens the door already red, envelope in hand — a thicker envelope, you can see it from the hall. "Start with hello," you say. "Hello." He breathes. "I've been doing research." "Research." "On — pricing." He gestures you inside and shuts the door, as if the hallway might bid against him. "The dances start at eighty. You told me, and I wrote it down. And the other thing — the flat-warming thing — that wasn't priced, that was a celebration, celebrations are different, I looked it up-" He stops himself. "That's a lie. You can't look that up. I made it up to have something to say." "The other thing," you say, helping him. "The other thing." He holds out the envelope like a man surrendering documents. "One hundred and twenty. I asked around. I mean — I didn't ask around, I couldn't, I-" He gives up on the sentence and lets the envelope finish it for him. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intdare-stage">><<include "IntDare02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internnight/" "01">> The lamps are off except the one by the couch, because he has thought about the lighting, or thought about not having to look at your face while he asks. You sit him down where the audience always sits. His knees are shaking. Yours aren't, and somehow that's the thing that makes it easy: you kneel up between his legs, work his belt with the calm of a nurse undoing a bracelet, and he watches your hands like they're writing something he'll be tested on. "For the record," you say, breath warm on him, "you didn't ask a question." "Could I-" His voice cracks on the first try. He clears his throat, tries again, and gets it out whole, the sentence he has clearly been drafting for a fortnight: "Could we make the other thing the usual thing?" You answer him with your mouth, slow, and his head drops back against the couch and whatever else he rehearsed dies in his throat, unpracticed. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intdare-stage">><<include "IntDare03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internnight/" "02">> This is the part he has no research for. You set the pace — long, unhurried strokes, tongue pressed flat, one hand closed around the base of him — and he learns you in real time: the way his breath hitches when you take him deep, the apology that rises and rises and never lands, because you hum just then and scatter it. His hand hovers beside your head for a full minute before it lands, feather-light, gathering your hair back — not steering. Holding the curtain for the show, the considerate member of a very small audience. "I'm going to-" he manages, with enormous warning, like a man announcing a station. "Should I — where do I-" "You're paying for the deluxe," you say against him. "Behave." He laughs — one startled bark — and then he's gone, shaking, holding your hair back to the very end like a promise kept. He watches you swallow with his whole face, transparent as glass, and says, "Thank you," in a voice that means the entire sentence and all its relatives. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intdare-stage">><<include "IntDare04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Ask" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/intdare-v2.png"></div> After, he makes tea neither of you drinks, and you sit on the arm of the monster couch while he does the math out loud, because he can't help it: eighty for the dances is over, he announces, if you'll allow it; one hundred and twenty tonight; future bookings priced separately, as agreed. He has a new column ready. He turns his laptop around to show you. "Most men negotiate down," you say. "Most men aren't getting this." He says it without a trace of a joke, checking the envelope's fold one last time. "This is what Fridays cost," he says, and gestures at the room, at you, at the evening, and gives up on saying it better. You take the envelope. At the door, he remembers your coat before you do. You let him hold it open, then go back for the tea you both forgot to drink. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntGlass")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntGlass")>> <h2>Deeper</h2> <div id="intglass-stage"><<include "IntGlass01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> You know the Friday routine now. You arrive, he has the envelope and the kettle on, the apartment smells of fresh laundry — and then, tonight, on the table beside the envelope: a pair of glasses. Plain black frames. Non-prescription, obviously; the lenses don't bend the light. You pick them up. "These aren't yours." "No." He is red to the ears. "They're — I saw them, and I thought." He stops. Restarts. "Every week I keep a list of things I want to ask for, and I cross most of them off, because most of them are-" he makes a gesture that encompasses his own cowardice "-me. But this one survived four Fridays on the list. That's a record. That's data." You put the glasses on. A smear on one lens catches the lamplight. You look at him over the frames the way a librarian looks at a man who has just confessed to something in the returns line. "Well?" you say. "How do I look?" "Um," he says, reliably. And then, braver, meeting your eyes and making himself keep looking: "Could you keep them on? And — the other thing. The deeper thing. From the list. I crossed it off three times and uncrossed it three times, so statistically-" "Sit down," you say. "You're going to enjoy this statistically." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intglass-stage">><<include "IntGlass02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interndeep/" "01">> He sits. You put your hair up yourself — he watches that like a ceremony, the twist and tuck of it, glasses balanced on your nose — and then you settle on your knees and take him in until your nose meets skin and the whole length of him is in your throat, and above you the intern makes a sound like a man discovering fire. "Oh," he says. "Oh, that's — you don't have to — I mean you absolutely don't have to stop, please don't stop, I mean-" His fists are white on the couch cushions, keeping himself honest. "Is it — are you okay?" You pull back slow, wet, leaving him shining, and look up through the glasses at him. "I'm a professional," you say. "Flattery works better than concern." "You're incredible," he says instantly, on command, and you take him back down to the root as his reward, and this time you stay — swallowing around him, working your throat, his hips canted up off the couch toward the warm place you've made of yourself while his sentences collapse into arithmetic: "that's — all of it — that's the whole — oh my god." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intglass-stage">><<include "IntGlass03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interndeep/" "02">> Deeper is a negotiation, and you let him conduct it: your hand on his thigh, two taps meaning stop and let you breathe. You show him the signal before he moves. And he does move — a careful, disbelieving half-thrust, then another, both hands hovering near your head without landing, hovering like he's afraid the whole thing is fragile, like this might be the dream that wakes you both up. "Sorry," he says anyway, mid-rhythm, wired into him like a heartbeat. "Sorry — it's too much — I'm-" You tap twice. He stills instantly. You slide off him, grip the base, and deliver the verdict up through the black frames: "The next sorry costs five dollars." "That's — that's extortion," he says, delighted, ruined. "It's a surcharge. City prices." He laughs, and you sink down onto him again, and this time when he comes it's down your throat with both his hands finally, finally in your hair — not steering, never steering — holding on like a man on a train he doesn't want to arrive. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intglass-stage">><<include "IntGlass04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> He walks you to the bus stop with your coat over his arm, holding it open when you shrug in. The glasses are in your bag. He asked if they could live at your place — "so they're yours, so it's not — a costume, then" — and couldn't explain the difference, and you didn't make him. "One hundred and fifty," he says at the stop, checking the envelope's edge one last time though you've already pocketed it. "For tonight. I know you said the glasses didn't cost extra. I wanted to check." The bus comes. He waves the way he always waves, like the whole thing is being graded. On the bus you find his note folded around the agreed payment: *glasses suit you. that was the research.* You turn the frames over in your hands. He cleaned them before you left. The smear is gone. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Deeper</h2> <div id="intglass-stage"><<include "IntGlass01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -35)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(180, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntCostume")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntCostume")>> <h2>The Uniform</h2> <div id="intcostume-stage"><<include "IntCostume01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The parcel arrives on a Thursday, his number in the sender field, your name spelled carefully on the label. Inside: an adult-sized replica school uniform. He has avoided the cheap costume-shop version: a wool-blend pleated skirt, a white shirt with a collar that buttons down, a striped tie, plain knee socks. Pinned to the tissue paper is the receipt, and beside the printed total, in his draftsman's capitals: PLUS FOR YOUR TIME — SEE FRIDAY. He is at the door before you've finished knocking, which means he was standing behind it. "You didn't have to wear it out here," he says. "You could have — it was supposed to be — there's a whole plan, there's an order to-" "Hello to you too." "Hello. Please come in. The plan is in the kitchen." The plan is written on the back of an envelope: 1. tea. 2. the thing. 3. sorry in advance. You read it upside down while he fills the kettle, and you laugh until you have to sit down on the arm of the monster couch, and he stands over you, scarlet, awaiting sentencing. "It's a list," he says, defensive. "I like lists. You know I like lists." "Number three is pre-emptive apology." "Number three is load-bearing," he says, and that is the moment you decide the tie stays on all evening. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "01">> He has thought about the lighting, which in his language means he has turned every lamp off but one. The apartment is a cave with a kettle in it. You duck into the bathroom to straighten the uniform and close the door. "Give me a second," you call. "You can have a proper entrance." Then you come out into the single pool of light by the couch, skirt swinging, tie still slightly crooked despite your efforts. He is standing where you left him, both hands occupied by his own sleeves. "Oh," he says, quietly, before he can stop himself. "Oh, no. It's better than the-" "Than the what?" "The reference," he says, and will not elaborate, and the tips of his ears have gone translucent. "Take a picture," you say. "It'll last-" and he's already shaking his head, hands up, stepping back into the dark half of the room to get the whole of you at once, memorizing it the honest way. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "02">> You give him the slow turn anyway — skirt lifting with the motion, settling — and stop facing him with your hands on the hem like a girl asking a question in class. "Correct length?" you say. "You're making fun of me." "I'm asking about the uniform. I take product feedback seriously." "The uniform," he says, with the strained dignity of a man reading from an internal document, "is perfect. The uniform is not the problem. The problem is that you're — in it. That's two problems. I have them both." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "03">> You cross the dark to him and put his hands on your waist, over the wool, where a belt would go. "Then we'll solve them in order," you say, and sit him down on the couch in the one lit square of the room, and kneel between his knees on the warm floorboards, your skirt pooled around you like a dark spilled thing. His breath is loud in the quiet. You set your hands on his thighs and feel the tremor running through them — not fear, the other thing, excitement he still doesn't quite know what to do with. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "04">> You open his jeans with the same unhurried care, and he lifts into your hands like an offering, and you take him into your mouth still wearing the tie, still wearing everything, only the arrangement of your knees and his lap saying what the room is for. "Wait-" he whispers, and you pause, mouth soft around him. "I don't — this counts as the thing, right? I paid for the thing. I don't want to have paid for the wrong-" "You bought the uniform," you say against his stomach. "The evening's mine. Lie back." He lies back. Somewhere in the dark the kettle clicks off, finished, unneeded; the evening has its own engine now. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "05">> This is a Friday, so you bring Friday's craft: the long wet pull, the flat of the tongue, the little stop at the crown that makes his thigh jump. But the uniform makes him unusually quiet — every time you look up the length of yourself at him, past the pleats and the crooked tie, he makes a small wrecked sound, like a man being graded and passing. His hand settles into your hair without the usual false start — and when his fingers curl, just slightly, you reward him with depth, and the sound he makes has no words in it at all. "You can," he whispers, hoarse, ambiguous, generous: holding your hair back, offering whatever the sentence was going to be. "Please. Whatever it was. You can." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "06">> Whatever it was, you give it to him: faster, tighter, your hand and mouth working the same patient shift until the apology rises in him one last time — "sorry, I'm going to, sorry-" — and you hum your answer into his skin, and he comes with a broken-off thank you, your name for him still unspent, his hands gentle in your hair to the very end of it. He watches you swallow. The dark hides nothing from his face; his face has never once been able to hide. "Number three," you say, climbing up beside him, straightening the tie that has done nothing wrong. "Did it hold?" "Barely," he says fervently, to the ceiling, ruined and happy, and you laugh into his shoulder and let him keep his list. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The envelope has extra in it — the receipt's promise, honored to the dollar — and a second, smaller envelope labeled DRY CLEANING, which is a joke, and also exact, and also him. "Keep it here," he says, of the uniform, folding the skirt over his arm like a man who has read about how wool behaves. "The closet's got room. That way it won't — travel. Get creased. That's a real concern with pleats." "It's a closet." "It's your row," he says. "Left side. The hangers were empty anyway." You don't tell him what a row of your own means in his closet. He knows. On the way out he turns the receipt over and writes, under PLUS FOR YOUR TIME, in his careful draftsman's hand: *held up well. pleats ok. tie — perfect.* You fold it and put it in your bag. He notices, and looks away too late to hide his smile. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Uniform</h2> <div id="intcostume-stage"><<include "IntCostume01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -35)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(200, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntCostume2")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntCostume2")>> <h2>The Second Uniform</h2> <div id="intcostume2-stage"><<include "IntCostume201">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> He opens his door on Saturday morning with a parcel under one arm. The courier has barely made it down the stairs. "Good timing," he says, stepping aside to let you in. "Saturday," he says, by way of hello, carrying the box to the table. "You said Saturdays are slower. Cheaper corners, you said. So I thought — a daytime rate. For a daytime — it's not a costume, technically, it's-" "A uniform." "A different uniform," he agrees, wounded and thrilled. Inside: a sailor collar, a red tie, a darker skirt, and — taped to the tissue, an explanation in his capitals — TWO HAIR THINGS, FOR THE BUNS. THE PICTURE HAD BUNS. "The picture," you say. "There was a reference picture," he says, with dignity, "which I am never going to show you, and which you are currently out-dressing by a distance I refuse to estimate." He has stopped apologizing for wanting things. Now he apologizes for how much trouble they might be. There is a separate note about that under the receipt. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "01">> He waits on the edge of the bed while you change in the bathroom, and you can hear him not-fidgeting through the door: the creak of a man keeping his hands flat on his knees, an interview posture. When you come out — collar square, tie red, hair up in the two small buns he tape-labeled into existence — the not-fidgeting ends all at once. He forgets to breathe. You watch him remember how. "You can look," you say. "It's daylight. Full disclosure." His eyes come up slow — the buns, the collar, the tie, the face — a full audit. "I did the math wrong," he says finally. "How's that?" "I budgeted for one evening. This is — I'm going to need the whole weekend to-" "You have until the streetlights," you say, and he nods like a man receiving terms, grateful, already hard against the fly of his jeans, both hands flat on his knees, waiting to be told the afternoon has started. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "02">> You start it the way he likes, which is the way you've taught him to like: kneeling, unhurried, the red tie swinging forward to touch him as you bend. You pause, mouth a warm inch away. "Question," you say. "The picture. Did it have this?" "It — " his voice is already fraying. "It had the collar." "So this is off-syllabus." "Way off," he breathes, and you close the inch, and his whole body learns what a Saturday is for. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "03">> The daylight is a third person in the room — no single lamp to hide the both of you in; everything visible, the dust, the sheets, the red of the tie, the wet shine of your mouth working him. He watches with his jaw set, doing his new trick, the not-apologizing, until your tongue does the slow spiral and the trick fails. "Sorry," he gasps, anyway, wired into him. "Five dollars," you remind him, popping off him with a sound the daylight carries. "That's — " he does the arithmetic on a breath, ruined, honest: "worth it." You take him back down, and somewhere above you he laughs at himself, shaky, a man being joyfully bankrupted by his own sentence structure. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "04">> Then his hand rises to your bun — one of them, the left — and cups it, and doesn't grip. You feel the question in his fingers like a knock at a door. "You can hold," you say, against him. "Gentle counts as holding." His fingers close — careful, careful, a man holding a bird he's been offered — and he moves, a single slow push past your lips, deeper than Fridays go, and the sound you make around him is professional, and the sound he makes is anything but. "Like that?" he whispers. "Is that — I've never-" "Better," you say, and mean the technique, and watch him misunderstand it as encouragement, and let him, because it is that too. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume206">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "05">> He finds a rhythm — his, finally, his own, guided by your breathing rather than another question. His hand on your bun steadies your head into it; the red tie drags across your cheek with every stroke; the room fills with the honest slap of an afternoon being well spent. "This tie," you say, pulling off for air and looking down at it, "is inside out." "What?" "The wide end. It's backwards." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "06">> He looks down at it — at the red silk confidently, completely wrong — and his laugh comes up from the floor of him, sudden, helpless, real. "I practiced that knot eleven times." "You sent instructions. I followed them." "I drew you a diagram." He shakes his head, dazed, happy, holding your hair out of your face with both hands now. "Leave it. Don't fix it. I want it wrong. It's — ours." You catch yourself smiling before you bend back down, the inside-out tie swinging against your cheek. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume208">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "07">> You slow it down to torture — the long patient pull, the stop, the hold with just the crown in your mouth while his hips shake and beg in a language of millimeters — and above you the arithmetic is collapsing again, his breath climbing in fractions. "Please — I'm — if you keep — I'll-" He swallows. Tries for dignity, finds none. "The tip. I'm adding — please just-" "Say the whole sentence." "You're evil," he says, reverent. "I'm a professional. Finish your sentence." "Please let me come," he says at last, looking straight at you. You let him finish the request before you answer. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume209">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "08">> He finishes on your tongue with both hands cradling your skull like a thing that might tick, apologizing only with his face, and you hold him in your mouth through all of it, looking up the length of yourself — collar, tie, buns — until his eyes come back down from the ceiling and find you, and his whole face does the thank-you his throat is too busy to say. You swallow. You smooth your tie flat, leaving the knot exactly as it is. "There," you say. "Now it's both of ours." He makes a small noise that his spreadsheet will never get to explain, and pulls you up into his arms, buns and collar and all, and holds on like the afternoon is a bus he doesn't want to leave without him. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume210">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "09">> He checks the envelope with his back against the headboard, still dazed: two hundred, exactly as agreed. He has written SORRY TAX on a separate slip and crossed it out three times — and you lie with your head on his stomach and let him spend his arithmetic on you. "Standing appointment," he says, watching the ceiling fan turn. "Saturdays. If the corners are slow anyway. If — you'd want." "You're developing habits." "Good ones?" You reach up and straighten the inside-out tie one last time — the wide end correct now, then reversed again, deliberately, the way he asked. "Load-bearing ones," you say, and he laughs the surprised laugh, the real one, the one he never rehearsed, and that is how the second uniform earns its row in the closet, right beside the first, both of them facing the same way. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume211">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> He puts both uniforms away before walking you to the bus stop. He carries your bag down the stairs, careful of the railing, and hands it back when the bus comes. The grin is harder to put away. "Text me when you're home," he says. It's new. He heard himself say it and blushes at the size of it. "Or — don't. You don't have to. I'd — I'd like the data." You get on the bus. When you reach home you text him one word: *home*. His reply arrives before you have found your keys. *good. thank you. goodnight.* Two uniforms in his closet. One word in your sent folder. You read his reply again before putting the phone away. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Second Uniform</h2> <div id="intcostume2-stage"><<include "IntCostume201">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntFirst")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntFirst")>> <h2>The First Time</h2> <div id="intfirst-stage"><<include "IntFirst01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> There is no list tonight. That's how you know. His texts used to come with agendas — item one, item two, sorry in advance. Tonight's is short: *friday. the whole evening. please.* And when you knock he is standing in the middle of his own apartment like a man who has moved the furniture in his mind but not yet with his hands, and on the table: not an envelope. A stack of folded bills, squared at the corners, thicker than anything he has ever handed you. "I did the math," he says, before hello. "You usually do." "It's not that kind of math." He wipes his palms on his jeans. "The dances were eighty. Fridays are a hundred and twenty. And the other thing — the whole other thing — I looked up the going rate, and the number made me feel like a grave robber. So I saved. I took Patel's vacation shifts and the holiday differential and I — " He runs out of air, refills. "I want the whole evening. Everything. You can say no. I know the number is — I know what I am. I just think you should have the whole number. That's the speech. Three drafts, and that's all of it." You look at the money on the table, and at the boy in front of it who has priced his own wanting down to the dollar and still stands there offering it. "Order a pizza after," you say, taking your coat off. "The whole evening runs long." He exhales like a man whose bus has finally come. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "01">> He has bought a white blouse for the evening — "the classmate version," he calls it, scarlet, no note this time — and you put it on in the bathroom and come out to find the apartment lit warm and low, every lamp on. "No dark?" you say. "No dark." He swallows. "I want to see. You. All of it. If that's —" "Undo it, then." He comes to you. His fingers find the first button of the blouse, and the second, and there in the lamplight he undresses you one small plastic disc at a time, hands shaking so badly the work takes minutes, and you let it take minutes. Between the third button and the fourth he rests his forehead against your collarbone and just breathes. "Sorry," he whispers. "Keep going. I'm not going anywhere." He gets the last button open at his own pace, slides the white cotton off your shoulders, and stands there in the lamplight looking at you, memorizing it the honest way, unable to stop smiling. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "02">> Then: "Wait," he says, and fetches his phone from the kitchen table with the walk of a man crossing a courtroom, and holds it up, and lowers it, and holds it up again. "Could I — one photo. For me. Only me. You can watch me take it, you can check the folder after, I know what men do with — I'm not. I would never. I just don't trust my own memory to keep you right." "One," you say. "Make it count." He takes one. The flash doesn't fire; he thought of that too, turned it off in advance. Just the warm lamps, and you in half the white blouse, looking at him looking at you — and the shutter sound goes off, absurdly loud, and he lowers the phone like a man who has just held something sacred and knows it. "That's the whole folder?" "That's the whole folder." He sets it face-down on the table, ceremony complete. "It doesn't get an album. It gets this room." "Show me after anyway." "I will," he says, delighted you asked, and then his face remembers what the evening is for, and he holds out his hand, and you take it, and he walks you to the mattress. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "03">> He lays you down on his mother's blanket, carefully avoiding the edge of the mattress, and settles between your knees, and stops — one push from home, shaking, holding himself on his arms above you. "Okay?" he says. Not *am I allowed.* Just: okay. Checking the one gauge that matters. "Slow. And look at me, not the ceiling." He enters you slowly — inch by patient inch, eyes on yours the whole way — and when he's fully seated he stops again, buried, breathing, his forehead coming down to touch yours. "That's — " he whispers. "You're — I've never — this is my first —" "I know," you say, and you do; you have been listening to him rehearse this for weeks. "Stay a second. Get used to me." "I'm going to be terrible at this," he says, miserably, hopefully. "You're doing it right now. Move." He moves. Clumsy, then less clumsy, corrected by the small nudges of your heels and your hands, his eyes holding on your face like a handhold — and the rhythm finds him the way it found him on Fridays: by listening. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "04">> And then — mid-motion, deep in the lamplight, inside you — he says the honest thing. He can't not. He has never once been able to. "I wanted it to be you," he says, quiet, not stopping now, the words halting even when he keeps moving. "The first. Since the very first dance. I did the math on what that made me and I didn't care. I could not make myself care. You're the first everything. That's all. That's the whole speech." "Hey," you say, and take his face in both hands, and stop his mouth with yours, because there's nowhere for a speech like that to go but into a kiss — and he shakes once, all over, head to foot, and gives you the rest of it without words, and the lamp holds the room steady while the boy learns the whole of you by heart. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "05">> Then it's your turn to answer, and your answers have always been in the body: you put your hand flat on his chest and push — gently, a promotion — and he goes over onto his back, startled, and you follow him down and take him back inside to the root, seating yourself above him with your palms on his chest and the open blouse hanging around you both. "Oh," he says, from underneath, still looking a little startled by the change. "All of it?" you ask, barely moving, letting him feel the question. "All of it. Whatever you're — please." You ride him slowly at first, deep, your own building pace, his hands finding your thighs and holding on — and the white blouse swings and the lamplight swings and he watches you from below with the one photograph live and moving above him, and when the end comes for him his spine arcs up off the blanket and his hands find your hips and he says, clearly, not sorry at all: "Stay. Just — stay." And you do — through the shudder, through the settling, one whole minute afterwards, his heartbeat slowing under your palm, neither of you ready to move yet. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> He shows you the folder after, as promised: one photograph, warm-lit, half a white blouse, your eyes on him. You study it while he fetches water for you both. "It's a good one," you admit. "I checked the focus about eleven times before I took it. I'm going to think about this evening for the rest of my life. I know that's a strange thing to tell you. It's just true." The pizza, when it comes, is eaten cross-legged on the blanket with the box as a table, and he does not once do math out loud, which is how you know what kind of night it was. You take the money for the ledger. You give him back the phone. He leaves it face-down on the table. "You know you didn't have to save up quite so much?" you say at the door. "Don't," he says. "We could have talked about it." "Don't ruin it with numbers." He holds your coat open for you, both hands. "You started it." "I did," you say, and step out into the hall, and don't look back — because you can still hear him standing there, waiting to see whether you will. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The First Time</h2> <div id="intfirst-stage"><<include "IntFirst01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -65)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntHome")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntHome")>> <h2>Practice</h2> <div id="inthome-stage"><<include "IntHome01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The bed arrives on a Tuesday, and the invitation arrives on Wednesday, which tells you the order of his priorities as precisely as any spreadsheet: *i got a bed. an actual bed. frame and everything. friday? i want to — redo the last thing. calmer. i have a plan. the plan is short. sorry in advance.* Friday. He opens the door in the good T-shirt. Behind him, the change is obvious: a real bed where the air mattress was, a metal frame, and on the bed the patterned blanket from his mother's house, promoted from the floor era, washed and square-cornered. "You kept the blanket." "It's a good blanket." He says it like a man defending a colleague. "It survived the air mattress. It gets the bed." On the windowsill: two glasses and a bottle of wine, red, cheap, chosen with visible effort — two mismatched glasses already set beside it. And laid out on the chair, neat as a uniform inspection: the first uniform. The wool one. "You want the calm one again," you say. "The whole — evening. But calmer." "I did the math on the first time," he says, pouring, hands careful. "The math said it was over budget on chaos and under budget on — " he hands you a glass — "on looking at you. I want to fix the ratio." "To look at me more." "Correct." He lifts his glass an inch, a toast to his own thesis. "It's called practice. I made a column." "You made a — " "Don't say it in that voice. Drink your wine." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "01">> He undresses you at the foot of the bed with the wine still working in both of you, and this time he doesn't shake: he takes his time on purpose, the skirt's zip, the blouse's buttons top to bottom, folding nothing, dropping nothing, keeping his eyes up where the fabric comes away — the ratio being the point — and when you stand bare in the lamplight he does not say *oh* to the ceiling. He says it to you, quietly, without looking away. "Better than the photo," you offer. "Everything about you is better than the photo." He sits back on his heels on the mattress, drawing you in by the hips until you're standing between his knees. "The photo doesn't do the thing where you breathe." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "02">> He lays you back across his mother's blanket and puts his mouth on you with the patience of a man doing homework he has actually read. The first time was curiosity; this is a curriculum: his tongue flat and slow where you taught him, two fingers curled to the angle you graded, his free hand holding your hip down not to restrain but to steady, the way you steady a page you're copying from. "Like that?" he asks, once, into you. "You're doing your homework," you breathe, heel sliding up the metal frame. "Show me the extra credit." He laughs against you — the startled bark, gone soft in the middle — and applies himself, and the room fills with the small wet honest sounds of practice making the student into something else, and your hand fists slowly in his hair, and this time it's you who forgets the sentence you were saying. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "03">> You return the warmup because it's Friday and Friday has a liturgy: you sit him up against the headboard and take him in your mouth, unhurried, thorough, one hand rolling beneath the other in the rhythm he'd recognize blindfolded in a stadium. His hand finds your hair and settles — no hovering, no steering, comfortable there now — and above you his breathing climbs the ladder a little more with every breath. "Wait, wait-" He touches your shoulder. "Not like this. I'll — the ratio. I want — " he goes red to the collarbone, brave: "I want the other thing. The whole other thing. While I can still — do math." "A man with a plan." "Half a plan," he admits. "The other half's improvisation. The plan says so." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "04">> He comes into you face to face, slow, the way the first time went — but calmer now, the desperation trimmed off, both of you having done this once and survived it. He seats himself to the root and holds there, propped on his forearms, looking down at where you're joined and then up at your face, the ratio in perfect balance: half watching, half being. "Hi," he says, wrecked and quiet, not moving yet, the whole length of him a held note. "Hi. Move." He moves. Long strokes, full ones, the blanket bunching beneath you, the metal frame beginning its own commentary in squeaks he will absolutely be tightening tomorrow, and the wine and the lamplight and the patient pace make something of the room that no envelope has ever bought: an evening with nowhere else to be. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "05">> The rhythm builds the way he builds everything — by listening. Your breath shortens; he lengthens. Your hips rise; he deepens. When your hand closes on his shoulder blade he covers it with his own and laces the fingers, palm to palm, his grip firm against yours. "You're quiet," he manages, into your hair. "I'm busy." "Can I — harder? The plan says-" "The plan can say harder." He laughs once and gives it to you harder — still slow, still whole, but heavier now, the frame's squeaks climbing to alarm, the blanket sliding, your held hands crushing flat together — and the calm he asked for frays at its edges exactly as much as it should, exactly as much as anyone could want. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "06">> Then: "Turn over," he says — and hears himself, and blushes at his own nerve, and does not unsay it. You turn over onto your knees on his mother's blanket, and his hand settles on your hip — one hand firm on your hip — and he takes you from behind in long deliberate strokes, watching where your bodies meet, another apology catching in his throat. You feel it come. You feel him swallow it, whole, unpracticed — the first one he's ever kept down. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "07">> "Good," you say into the blanket, meaning everything, every layer of it, him, the new bed, the apology he managed not to say. "I know," he says, hoarse, astounded, still moving: "I'm getting — the ratio — " And then he is past ratios. His hand tightens on your hip — still careful despite the urgency — and the strokes come longer, heavier, the blanket sliding in fists under your hands, the frame's commentary climbing toward its alarm, and you hear him laugh breathlessly when one corner of the blanket finally gives way. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "08">> The end, when it comes, is courteous to the last: he asks with his hips slowing, and you answer "on me," and he draws out and finishes across your lower back in long warm stripes, doubling over you, one hand still careful on your hip, his mouth finding your shoulder blade and saying thank you into the skin of it, once, quietly, no sorry anywhere. Then — logistics — he is up and back in nine seconds flat with a towel. He bought towels. Two. For this. They are folded on the chair next to the uniform, and he did not mention them, and when you raise an eyebrow at him he says, with dignity, into the dark: "The plan has an appendix." Afterwards: wine gone warm in the glasses, his chest under your ear, the blanket smelling faintly of his mother's detergent and now of both of you, the frame ticking as it cools. "Same time Friday?" you say, drowsing. "I have a column for this now," he says into your hair, sleep-drunk and honest. "It's called PRACTICE." "Practice for what?" He is quiet a moment. The lamp is off. You can hear him smile in the dark, the audible kind. "For the rest of it," he says. "Whatever the rest of it is. I'm practicing for all of it." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Practice</h2> <div id="inthome-stage"><<include "IntHome01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(350, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntHome2")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntHome2")>> <h2>Homework</h2> <div id="inthome2-stage"><<include "IntHome201">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The list is on the pillow when you arrive, printed, in a sleeve protector, and you sit on the bed reading it after he takes your coat with the serenity of a man who has decided to die on this hill. POSITION | DURATION | NOTES, it says. Below that: a numbered column, one through ten, with items like *her on top (2nd)* and *spoon — slower??* and, at position five, simply *the one from the photo (framing?) — ask first*. "It's a lesson plan," you say. "It's a syllabus." "I'm about to be fucked by a syllabus." "You're about to be — " he takes the paper back protectively, holds it to his chest — "following a syllabus. Or ignoring it. I did put that in the notes." He has wine ready, and the towels' appendix, and the uniform pressed on its row in the closet, and you laugh until your ribs hurt, sitting on his bed in the lamplight, and he waits out the laughing with his jaw set and his ears crimson, because he has learned that about you too: that the laughing is not against him. It never was. It's just the sound your honesty makes on its way out. "One amendment," you say, taking the pen from his pocket protector. At the top of the page, above his printed POSITION header, you write: *student may improvise.* "Sign it." He signs it like a contract. Both initials. The whole boy, in ink. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "01">> Item one was *chair — just watching at first*, and the syllabus turns out to know things: he sits in the chair by the window with his jeans open and his hands flat on his knees, and you undress out of the uniform for him one piece at a time — tie, blouse, skirt, unhurried, the wool folded over the chair back because you've learned his religion of maintenance — while he watches with the discipline of a man determined not to interrupt. "You can touch yourself," you say, thumbing off the last stocking. "That's in the syllabus. Item one, note two." "It was in the notes," he agrees, hoarse, and does, and the watching and the doing run alongside each other like two rails, and by the time you're bare in the lamplight his hands have stopped being able to stay flat, which is item one performing exactly to specification. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "02">> Item two: *her on top (2nd)* — second on the list, first in his heart, his eyes tell you. You cross to the chair and straddle him, and sink down onto him with your arms around his neck and the syllabus crushed forgotten between your bodies on the seat back, and the chair holds, and his forehead drops to your collarbone. "Oh," he says, into your skin. "Oh, that's — item two is — I undersold item two in the notes." "Read me the notes." "I can't read. I can barely — you're — " His hands find your hips and hold on. "The notes just say *good.* All of them. I wrote *good* and then I ran out of vocabulary." You roll your hips, slow, and feel the vocabulary leave him again from the ground up. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "03">> Item four, *spoon — slower??*, makes it to the bed in stages: you climb off him, drag him onto the blanket by the hand, and arrange yourselves on your sides, his chest along your back, one arm under your neck and the other splayed flat across your stomach like a paperweight on a page he doesn't want the wind to take. "Slower," you confirm, as he slides home from behind, shallow and deep at once at this angle. "Question mark removed." "Question mark removed," he agrees into your hair, and moves in you slow as a Sunday, and the lamp makes one long gold room of the two of you, and the syllabus lies on the floor with item four already the best thing on it and no one has even turned the page yet. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "04">> Item five is *the one from the photo (framing?) — ask first*, and he asks first, breathless, holding himself above you in the lamplight with your legs drawn up his sides: "Like this? The angle — is this — " "Come here," you say, and hook your calves over his shoulders, and the angle becomes the photo and stops being the photo, live and warm and moving, and his eyes go between your face and the joining of you like a man checking his instrument against the master copy, finding the copy better, finding the copy endless. "Notes," he manages, half laughing, barely coherent. "Item five. Notes say — " he gives up, thrusts, honest: "notes can't say this." "Then say it." "You feel — " each word its own station on the line — "like — the whole — evening." You kiss him before he can try to improve the wording. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome206">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "05">> Item six, *from behind — deeper*, arrives with your ankles in his hands and the blanket pulled to the edge of the bed, and the calm frays right on schedule: his rhythm loses its manners, finds its want, and you fist your hand in the sheets and find the syllabus's page, pulled free of its plastic sleeve, beneath your palm — and tear it, deliberately, loudly, down the middle. He freezes mid-stroke. "That was — " "Off-script," you say into the mattress, pushing back onto him. "Sign it." The boy makes a sound like the last of his religion leaving, and gives himself to improvisation, the way the amendment allows, and the torn halves slide off the blanket onto the floor. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "06">> The improvisation takes you both to the floor — his idea, the first all his own, the green carpet absorbing the descent — and he kneels behind you at the bed's edge, your hips in both hands, working up into you with the joyful violence of a man who has done all his homework and is now spending it. "I'm — " he grits, rhythm stuttering, "I'm close to — the appendix — should I — " "Not yet." You reach back and hold his hip still, an arrest. "Item eight." "That wasn't how I wrote it — " "There's an item eight," you say, and push him back onto the carpet, and climb on. "I'm writing it now." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome208">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "07">> Item eight, yours, unwritten: you ride him on the green carpet with his chest under your palms and his throat bared up to you, and once — deliberately, the whole first lesson of it — you feel him crest and slow him with a press of your hand to his sternum, the whole body under you braking from the edge like a train accepting its signal, because he trusts your hand the way he trusts exact change. "Wh- " he manages, eyes shut, hips straining up in the smallest increments. "Why did — is this — " "Item eight," you say, not stopping, rolling. "There's an item eight. I'm writing it now." "You're enjoying this." "You have no idea." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome209">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "08">> And a second time — because the syllabus is yours to amend — you bring him back to the edge and hold him there, riding him in the long slow shallows while he dissolves into fractions underneath you. "Please," he manages, the second time, eyes shut. "Please, I have — I'll — anything, I'll — the column — " "Say it grammatically." "Please let me come," he says, clearly this time. You make him hold your gaze for a moment before you answer. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome210">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "09">> You let him flip you — the last improvisation — onto your back on the carpet, and he comes home into you hard and long, and this time when the end comes he doesn't ask: he holds your eyes and stays, buried, and finishes inside you with a sound like a held breath finally let go, pulse after pulse, his name for you still unspent, your legs locked around him so the whole deposit stays where the evening put it. In the middle of it — mid-shudder, mid-silence — he says, once, small, not to you exactly, to the ceiling, to the room, to whatever keeps the ledgers of such things: "Stay." Just the one word. No clause attached. He hears himself say it and doesn't apologize, which is how you know it wasn't a request for tonight. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome211">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "10">> The afterglow is administered to specification: the appendix towel, warm and ready; water; the blanket pulled down onto the carpet because nobody's legs work. You lie tangled in his mother's patterned weave, half on the torn halves of the syllabus, and he retrieves the pieces and smooths them on his chest like a man recovering the wreckage of a plane he loved. "You tore my syllabus," he says, sated and accusatory. "I amended it. Verbally." "You amended it *physically.*" "You signed the amendment clause." He looks at the torn page, and at you, and gets up — naked, dignified, a boy on a mission — and fetches a pen from his pocket protector on the desk, and at the bottom of the wreckage, below the tear, writes in his draftsman's capitals: *homework: get better at lists.* You take the pen from him. You cross out *homework*. Above it, you write: *practice.* "That's cheating," he says, delighted. "That's the other column's name." "Columns can share," you say, and lie back down into the blanket, and after a moment he lies back down too, and the lamp goes off, and the bed goes unused all night on purpose, the two of you asleep on the floor of his first apartment like it's the biggest bed in the city. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome212">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> Morning comes in sideways through the window, gold on the wreckage: the torn list, the sleeve protector, the two glasses, the uniform on its row, the bed — the frame he tightened at midnight, quietly, with a wrench, while he thought you were asleep — squared and waiting like a promise about some other night. You dress in the first light. He surfaces when the zipper goes up. "Hey," he says, from the blanket, sleep-rough. "Last night. When I said — you know. The one word." "I know the word." "It wasn't for the night." He looks at you with the whole machinery of his honesty, no draft, no list, one take: "It was practice. For asking it for real." You pause with your hand on the zip. He waits. For once he doesn't try to fill the silence for you. "Friday," you say at the door, and he smiles into his blanket. "Friday," he says. "I'll make a list." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Homework</h2> <div id="inthome2-stage"><<include "IntHome201">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntAngry")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntAngry")>> <h2>The Argument</h2> <div id="intangry-stage"><<include "IntAngry01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> His text is not like his texts. No preamble, no sorry: *come over. now. please.* Sent at 11:40 on a night you were supposed to be elsewhere, and the *please* is doing the work of all the missing punctuation, so you go. He opens the door already mid-sentence. "I was getting takeout. Across from the Bell, the Vietnamese place — I go there Wednesdays, you know I go there Wednesdays. And I saw you. Getting into a car. With someone else." He says the word like it's borrowed. "You said Saturdays were usually quiet. I started thinking that meant the other nights were quiet too. I did the math on your week, the way I do the math on everything, and the math has a hole in it every night I don't see you, and tonight I saw where the hole goes." You step inside. He shuts the door and stands against it, and his hands are shaking, and it is not the shy shake. "You don't get to count me," you say, quiet, the flat voice, the one from the corners. "I know." He laughs, one dry note, no humor in it anywhere. "I counted anyway. I kept trying to put a number on it. What you make when you're not here. And the one who holds your paper, the one you pay the interest to — he takes his cut off the top of every night. Of *you.*" The room is very quiet. The monster couch sits there like a witness. "And you're here on Fridays," he says, and his voice finally cracks. "And I pay you in exact change, and I make *lists*, and I thought the lists were — and the whole time you're out there being sold to men who don't — " He stops. He can't say it. He has never once been able to say the untrue thing, and he can't quite bring himself to say what he is afraid of. "I'm working," you say. "It's my debt. It's my ledger." "You're the best thing I have and you're an invoice," he says, wrecked, honest, cruel without meaning to be, which is the only way he'd ever be cruel. "Fix one of those. Any one." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "01">> He crosses the room like a man remembering he isn't allowed to and doing it anyway — the first forbidden thing you have ever seen him do — and kisses you angry, hands in your hair, mouth hard, his whole architecture of please-and-thank-you coming down at once. You could end it with one word. He is close enough to hear it. You take a breath, deciding what you want. You don't spend it. You kiss him back instead — your hands fisting in his shirt, yanking it free of his jeans — and he makes a sound against your mouth like surprised by how fiercely you answer him. There is no envelope on the table tonight. You notice the absence the way you'd notice a missing streetlight: the room's whole economics, dark. He bends you over the arm of the monster couch with your skirt up and your tights down to your knees, and there is nothing careful in it, nothing of the syllabus — just the boy's hands on your hips and his mouth at the back of your neck saying *mine* like a word he's going to be embarrassed by tomorrow, saying it between the names he doesn't have for you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "02">> "Say it's not — " he grits, mid-thrust, wrecked, hips snapping. "Say they don't — tell me it's different — with — " "It's different," you say, into the couch cushion, and he hears the difference in your voice. Harder now — his hand in your hair, gentle even now, gentle at the root, ruined everywhere else, the boy's two natures at war in one body — and the couch arm holds you up and the dark room slams with it, and your fists are full of couch and your head is full of static, and under the static one true thing you won't say either: that beneath the jealousy he is frightened, and you wish he had managed to tell you that first. "I hate them," he whispers, into your hair, not stopping. "I hate that they get the nights — get the — " thrust, honest, " — and I only get the Fridays — the lists — " "Take a Saturday," you say, into the cushion, half a joke, all a door opening, and he laughs once, desperately, and gives everything he has to the door. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "03">> The end comes up through him fast: he pulls you back onto him by both hips, one last long run of strokes that shake the couch on its feet, and then he draws out and finishes across the small of your back, doubling over you, and the anger goes out of him all at once — spent, exactly spent — and what's left kneeling behind you on the floor, forehead pressed to your spine, is just the boy. "I'm sorry." Not the polite sorry. The other one, the real one, the full-length mirror of one. "I had no right. I know I had no right. You're — it's yours, your ledger, your nights, your — I'm not even on the — I'm a *customer*, I'm line item — " You turn around on the couch arm and take his face in both hands, and he stops, mid-ledger, eyes wet, jaw still shaking. "You," you say, "are the worst customer I have ever had. You make lists. You kiss like a fire drill. You tried to *audit* me." "I know." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "04">> "I know you're scared for me. But you were angry at me too. Don't pretend you weren't." He looks down. "I was. I'm sorry. That part was mine." "Then remember it next time," you say. "You can ask me. You can't count me." The tea happens anyway, because he is who he is: two mugs, the good T-shirt back on, you wrapped in the blanket from his bed because your legs are still unsteady. Neither of you mentions the missing envelope. The absence sits at the table like a third chair. At the door, midnight going on forever, he says it — the word from the floor, promoted now to speech: <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "05">> "Stay. Not — I mean — " he takes a breath, one draft, no list: "the bus is cold. It's late. Stay. Please." You look at him for a long moment: the boy in the doorway of his one room, holding the door open the way he holds doors, like a gift. You drop your coat back on the hook. "Move over," you say, and his whole face adjourns for the night. You lie in the dark of his first apartment, your back to his chest, his arm over you like a seatbelt. Neither of you is asleep. The monster couch has the shape of the argument still dented into its arm, and in the morning he is going to be embarrassed by *mine*, and you are going to let him be embarrassed, and then you are going to keep it anyway. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> "The guy," he says, into your hair, quiet, half-asleep, honest to the last. "The ledger guy. The interest." "What about him." "Nothing tonight." A breath. "But I'm going to do some math on him too. I'm good at math." "Tomorrow," you say. He nods against your hair. You settle back into his arm, and after a while his breathing finally slows. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Argument</h2> <div id="intangry-stage"><<include "IntAngry01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntMorn")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntMorn")>> <h2>The Morning After</h2> <div id="intmorn-stage"><<include "IntMorn01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The alarm goes off while you're still in his bed. Neither of you moves to leave. It's his alarm — 6:30, factory setting, the sound of a man who has never once overslept — and it goes off on the nightstand like a fire drill in a church. You feel him surface beside you in stages: the stiffness of *oh no, she's still here*, then the softer thing underneath it, the thing he doesn't file, and then the third thing, the morning thing, insistent against your hip. "I'm so — " he begins, automatic, pointing at it like a malfunction he should log. You silence the apology with your mouth. The alarm snoozes itself, defeated. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "01">> He wakes you properly with his hands — shy, then not — mouth at your neck, the blanket a tent of morning and warmth, and you turn into him half-asleep, laughing into his shoulder, and find him ready, which he has been, mortifyingly, since somewhere around dawn. "Hi," he whispers, like a man afraid of waking the evening back up. "Hi." You kiss him, slow, the night's whole ledger in it. "Morning." "It is," he says, astonished, like the phenomenon is new to the apartment. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "02">> "Is this in the syllabus?" you ask, as his hand travels south with intent. "It's not in any syllabus," he says, sliding into you — unhurried, morning-slow, easy from the whole night of you — reverent: "it's in nothing, it's off every list, I don't have a form for this. I checked. At four a.m. I got up and checked whether I had a form for this." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "03">> Under the blanket the world is close and hushed, as if the apartment is listening and both of you are letting it. He moves in you gently — face inches from yours, breath warm with sleep, holding your gaze the way he holds exact change — and the morning light comes up through the curtain in slow degrees like something being decided. "Okay?" he whispers, the one gauge. "Better than okay," you say, and mean it in the uncomplicated way, the way that has no envelope anywhere near it, and his whole face untangles at the corners. "I don't have to — " a slow stroke, honest — "you don't have to be anywhere? The bus is — " "The bus," you say, and pull him deeper with your heel in the small of his back, "can manage." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "04">> Then it's your turn for the wheel, because fair is fair and the morning is long: you roll him — deliberately, by the shoulder, the boy going over onto his back with a startled *oof* — and climb up above him in the tent of the blanket, and take him back inside at your own pace, unhurried, no bus, no corner, no clock but the factory alarm snoozing itself to death on the nightstand. "Oh," he says, from below, hands finding your thighs, holding on like railings. "Oh, this is — morning is — I didn't know mornings could-" "Full disclosure," you say, rolling your hips, "this is what they're for." "I have been *wasting* them," he says, devastated. "Mornings," you agree, and ride him through it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "05">> The pace builds like the evening did but softer at the edges — Sunday-shaped, even though it's whatever day it is — his hands learning the tops of your thighs with total scholarship, your palms flat on his chest, the light going from gold to white by degrees. He holds on to the end for you — of course he does, he's done the reading — and when your breath finally breaks and scatters he watches your face come apart with his whole transparent soul, and follows you over the edge inside three strokes, buried, gasping something that starts with thank and ends nowhere grammatical. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "06">> Then: stillness. His hand stroking your hair, slow, the alarm long dead, the ceiling going white, the two of you slowly catching your breath. Nobody hurries. Nobody anywhere in the world is billing anybody by the minute. "So," he says, eventually, to the ceiling, wonder all through the word. "Mornings." "Mornings." "I have been *alive* for — " he starts to calculate, then gives up with a laugh — " — a while. I've been alive a while, and I didn't know about mornings." "You're welcome," you say, into his shoulder, and feel his laugh move through his chest into your cheek, the whole morning lying on top of the two of you like a second blanket. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> Breakfast happens at noon, which is a scandal you both decide to be complicit in. He stands at the stove in the good T-shirt and a state of scholarly concentration, and you sit on the counter in his blanket like the management inspecting the plant. "Question," he says, formal, spatula in hand. "How do you take your eggs?" You tell him. He nods once, grim, a man receiving a mission specification — then turns to the fridge and checks whether he has any. He doesn't. He has one egg, a jar of something, and a vegetable of unknown allegiance. "I'll get bread," you say. "Don't sacrifice the egg yet." He hands you his jacket without a word — the good T-shirt boy, holding it open, both hands — and at the door he says, carefully casual, not looking up from the pan: "For the record. Nobody paid anybody. For the whole night and the morning. I just — wanted that said out loud. In the record." You stand in his jacket in his doorway, in the noon light, in the middle of an economy that prices everything — and you say it back to him, in the record, out loud: "Nobody paid anybody." You come back with bread and split the egg between two pieces of toast. It's the best breakfast in the city at any price. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Morning After</h2> <div id="intmorn-stage"><<include "IntMorn01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneNorma")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneNorma")>> <h2>Norma</h2> <div id="norma-stage"><<include "Norma01">></div>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> The request arrives as a text, and for once it isn't a list of things to try. *white blouse. the plaid skirt — the blue one, not the school one. hair down. it isn't a costume. i don't want a costume. i want an ordinary evening, the kind ordinary people have. could we have that. just for one night. sorry. i don't know how to ask for this one.* Your toothbrush is already beside his. Your row in the closet has two uniforms on it and one dress. You know his kettle, his towels, the squeak in the bed frame he tightened with a wrench at midnight. Some part of the ordinary has already been installed, closet by closet, Friday by Friday, without either of you filing the paperwork. You take the white blouse from home. You leave your hair down. And at his door, when it opens on a boy in a button-down — an actual button-down, ironed, with a collar — you deliver the text's last specification yourself: "Hi," you say. "I'm Norma." His whole face does something complicated. "Hi, Norma," he says, to the person you're pretending to be, in a voice like a held breath let out. "Come in. I made — it's nothing, it's just dinner. Normas eat dinner." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "01">> Dinner is pasta, and a colander with a towel-wrapped handle, and a candle he lights with the match held wrong, and you eat at the little table by the window like two people who have always done this, on a Thursday, for no occasion, with no envelope anywhere in the flat. "So, Norma," he says, trying the name on, delighted and terrified by the fit. "What do you do?" "I'm between things," you say, buttering bread you didn't pay for by the hour. "My week's my own. Terrible with money, though. You?" "Numbers," he says, and tells you about the numbers — Patel, the differential, the spreadsheet — the whole ordinary music of his ordinary days, and you catch yourself listening with your chin in your hand without noticing that your plate is empty. The couch, after — ordinary couch things. His arm, your shoulders, a movie neither of you watches. And when his hand comes up and cups your face, thumb along your cheekbone, asking, you answer gently: you turn into the touch and kiss him unhurried, and he undresses you out of the white blouse the way a boyfriend would — no ceremony, no envelope, just the two of you and the movie going unwatched. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "02">> "Norma," he says into your collarbone, half a question. "Still here," says Norma, in your voice, wearing your half-smile. On the white sheets, half-clothed, he takes his time like a man with no appointment: your skirt bunched at your waist, his mouth everywhere it can reach, the fiction holding with every slow thrust — two ordinary people on an ordinary Thursday, the kind who have each other's toothbrushes by accident. He says *Norma* like a password. You say *yes* like it opens something. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "03">> Neither of you mentions the fee. The word *fee* spends the night on the fire escape, locked out of the flat, and neither of you goes to let it in. After, in the white lamplight, he brushes the hair back off your face — the hair he asked for, down, ordinary — and studies you. "Thank you," he says, quietly — to Norma, carefully. "For the ordinary evening." "Anytime," you answer, in a voice that's almost yours, before the borrowed name has quite worn off. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "04">> He falls asleep holding you like something borrowed from a life he's saving up for. You lie awake a while in his arms, in the fiction, in the candle smell and the pasta pots, trying the name on for size. It is easier to be wanted like this when, for an evening, you can pretend there is nothing else to explain. You know you will carry the name home with you, folded small under your coat — like the first bill you ever kept separate from all the others, not because it was worth more. Because you want to remember what it felt like. In the morning you find the envelope. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "05">> It's hidden — poorly, lovingly — inside a cookbook on the shelf, leafed into the page for Tuesday chicken, and it's thin, and exact, and on the flap, in his careful capitals: FOR NORMA. FORGIVE ME. I KNOW WHAT TONIGHT WAS. I COULDN'T NOT. THAT'S ALL. THAT'S THE WHOLE NOTE. Even now he worries that accepting your time means taking advantage. You stand in his kitchen in the morning light with his one hundred and fifty dollars in your hand and his apology under your thumb. You look back toward the bedroom. He is still asleep. The envelope is his awkward attempt to help without spoiling what you gave him. You take it. For the ledger, the interest, the cold buses. And you put the cookbook back with his note folded inside, kept — and on the back of it, in your hand, small, where he'll find it next Thursday when he cooks: *norma says: next time, she cooks.* At the door he holds your coat open — both hands, the religion of it — and then, quickly, before he can lose the nerve, kisses your cheek like a boy in a movie he's only read about. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> "Bye," he says. Then, trying it one more time, the name: "Bye, Norma." "Bye," you say — and there at the threshold, in the doorway of his one room, you spend a syllable of your own voice on it, one real one, off the books: "See you Thursday." He stands in the doorway watching you go down the stairs, and you can feel him waving even before you turn, and you do turn, once, and he is — of course he is — waving like the whole thing is being graded. Two uniforms on your row in his closet now, and a white blouse, and a plaid skirt, and a cookbook with a note in it. You think about making dinner next Thursday all the way to the bus stop. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Norma</h2> <div id="norma-stage"><<include "Norma01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -75)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(1000, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneIntMoved")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneIntMoved")>> <h2>The Last Envelope</h2> <div id="intmoved-stage"><<include "IntMoved01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Last Envelope" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/intmoved-v2.png"></div> The text arrives at 2:14 a.m. on a Wednesday, which is when interns text, after he gets off a late shift: *i have the whole night friday. and after the night there's a thing i have to say. i wrote it on one page. front only. nothing on the back. it's not a list night. i love you. sorry. that wasn't the page, that leaked. friday.* You read it four times on the edge of your bed. The leaked sentence stays the same size every time. It does not behave like a typo. It behaves like a fact. Friday. He opens the door with the page folded in his shirt pocket, squared over his heart, and behind him the apartment has been cleaned within an inch of its life: the wreckage of the syllabus era gone, the towels folded, two candles going, the monster couch brushed like a horse before a parade. On the table: the money. A thick envelope, open, with the notes squared neatly inside. "That's not one month of shifts," you say. "That's what I could save. Extra shifts. After rent, after everything. I'll show you the ledger if you want. I emptied the column." "The entertainment column." "I renamed it," he says. "After the first dance. It's called HER now. You never looked over my shoulder at the right time." You look at the money on the table, and at the boy with the page over his heart, and you know the math he's so afraid of: it isn't enough to clear the debt. He has never pretended it would be. He knows. Of course he knows. He did the math a hundred times; you can see the hundred times in his eyes. "Friday first," you say, putting your hands flat on his chest. "The page after. Put it on the table. That's the deal. I'm told you're a man who honors deals." "Every time," he whispers, and takes your mouth, and the candles do their small steady work. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "01">> He undresses you at the foot of the bed — no uniform tonight, no costume parcel, nothing on the chair but the two candles' worth of light — and when the last of it is gone he holds you at arm's length by the shoulders, looking, taking his time because he no longer has to look away. "No uniform," you say. "No uniform. It was always — the uniforms were practice, at getting to you. I've arrived now." His voice is steady and his hands are not. "I've arrived." He lays you down on his mother's blanket — promoted to the big bed, washed, square — and covers you with himself, and the night begins the way all your Fridays began: slow, thorough, patient, exact. Face to face, unhurried, his forehead against yours — the position from the very first evening, the one from the photo. The candles throw the two of you onto the wall as one shadow, joined, and he moves in you with the concentration of a man keeping a beat he learned on this very blanket in another currency. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "02">> "I have to say it while I still can," he whispers, mid-rhythm, eyes open. "Before the page — the page is for after, but I have to say one thing now, while you can feel that it's true." "Say it." "I'm not asking you to stop for me. I'm asking you to stop for *you*. I just want to be the one who stands where you can see while you do." The sentence goes into you deeper than his body can reach. You hold his face so he can see yours take it. He turns you — tender, deliberate — and takes you from behind in long full strokes, one hand splayed on your hip, the other braced by your shoulder, his mouth finding the back of your neck: the position from the green carpet, promoted to the blanket, the whole home curriculum in session. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "03">> His page lies folded on the bedside table. "Whatever it says," he tells you, his voice ragged against your hair, "the numbers aren't the point. I did the math a hundred times and the math isn't the point. You're the point. I just couldn't get the sentence to *be* that without a page under it — " "Numbers first," you breathe, pushing back onto him. "Then the sentence. That's the deal." "Deal," he grits, and gives himself back to the geometry — and under it the two of you are laughing, softly, at his attempt to keep the evening in order even now. Then your turn at the wheel: you roll him by the shoulder, and he goes over laughing, and you sink down over him and pin his wrists to the pillow — gently, two fingers each, the lightest arrest in the city — and ride him slow while his eyes travel up your body like a man reading good news from the bottom up. "You," you say, over him, rolling, unhurried, holding him exactly at the edge of everything, "are going to read me the page. Front only." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "04">> "Front only," he agrees, wrecked, happy, held. "And if the math is honest — " "It's honest — " " — then I'm going to answer it." You lean down until your mouths are a breath apart. "And you're not going to apologize for the asking. Not once. That's my whole fee. For the page." "Done," he says, instantly, before you have quite finished speaking — and you kiss the grin off his face and settle in to spend the night's whole remainder. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "05">> The night runs long and gives no change back. Against the wall by the bookshelf — your leg hooked over his arm, his mouth finding your neck, the position that never got written into any draft — and the wall holds, and the candle holds, and the boy learns you in a new register entirely: breathless, upright, urgent, *yours*, no clipboard anywhere in the world. "Norma," he gasps — the wrong name, the borrowed one — and then, correcting, the whole truth correcting itself mid-syllable into the right one, yours: " — no. *You*. You, you, you —" "Yes," you say, into his mouth, giving the syllable away free. "Both. All of them. Yours." Back to the bed, tangled, trading the top like kids trading shifts: he climbs above you and drives in deep and slow, and you wrap him in your arms and legs both, ankles crossed at the small of his back — the lock — and the pace builds to the honest place, the place past craft, two people doing the only arithmetic that never once came out wrong. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "06">> "Stay with me," he says — not the practice word, the real conjugation of it. "Not just tonight. The *whole* — " thrust, honest, " — stay." "Front only," you remind him, undone, laughing, holding. "Front only," he agrees, and gives you the whole slow length of his concentration, and the candles keep their counsel, and the folded page waits beside the lamp. Then you start to cry: one hot line from temple to pillow before you realize it has happened. He catches it with his thumb, mid-motion, alarmed to the roots of him. "You're — did I — should I — " <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "07">> "It's the — " you say, with enormous dignity, crossly, wrung out, *full*, " — shut up. Keep going." He keeps going, gentle now, thumb still at your cheekbone, catching each one as it comes, filing nothing, saying nothing, holding you without another question — and you cry the whole short rest of the way to the end of you, and it is the least sad crying in the history of the corridor. He carries you from the bed to the blanket before the two candles — the idea of a fire, the boy mounting a whole romantic production on a radiator's budget — and takes you on the floor slow and warm, wrapped, the green carpet of the syllabus era under your spine. "Hi," he says, into your hair, moving in you, unhurried as Sunday. "Hi." You frame his face with both hands. "Read me the page." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "08">> "Now?" "The front. While we're — " you roll your hips, taking him deeper, watching his eyes go — "honest. Now." He closes his eyes. He opens them. He glances toward the bedside table. The page can stay there; he knows it by heart. "One thousand dollars," he says, moving in you, slowly, reciting the front of the page from the inside. "Every dollar I can spare. It doesn't clear what you owe him. I know that. I checked it enough times." Stroke. Honest. "It's a start. Something toward the balance. Something that might buy you a night off." His voice frays and holds. "I'll take Patel's shifts. I'll take the differential. I looked up second jobs — I had interviews — I have a plan, it's a five-year plan, it has *tabs* — " you laugh underneath him, wet-eyed, and he feels it and steadies. "It isn't enough. I know it isn't enough. But it's here. And the boy who's asking is only good at three things — numbers, showing up, and being honest. So: let me help. Not buy the rest of your life. Help. Let me *try.* That's the page. Front only." The candles hold their small flame. The money on the table, the renamed column — HER, HER, HER — and the boy above you reciting his whole heart in itemized sentences while his cock keeps its slow honest time inside you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "09">> You take his face in both hands, thumbs at his cheekbones, and give him the answer the only way the night will allow — you pull him down into you, all the way down, mouth and chest and hips and heart, ankles crossing at the small of his back, the lock, and you say it against his mouth, one draft, no list: "Read me the back." "There's nothing on the back — " "There is now," you say, and kiss the rest of the night's answer into him, and he understands — instantly and forever, with a startled, disbelieving smile. You haven't promised him a debt-free morning. You have said he won't have to make the attempt alone. And the rest of the night is the receipt — long, and slow, and thorough, the gratitude running in both directions now. You ride him by candle-shadow with his hands framing your face; he watches from below with the eyes of a man whose one photograph has learned to move, and breathe, and choose him back. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "10">> "Take one," you say, over him, breath short. "A photo. Of tonight. You're the only man in the city I'd trust with a folder." He reaches for the phone on the blanket — shaking, laughing, aiming — and gets the two of you by candlelight: your face looking down at him with everything on it, his looking up with everything on his, the shadows joined. "One photo," he vows, setting it face-down. "For us. Nobody else." "The master file," you say, into his mouth. "The only file," he says, and pulls you down after it by the back of the neck, and you put the phone aside and hold him close. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved12">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "11">> The last of the night goes to slowness — the two of you wrapped face to face on the blanket, barely moving, moving entirely, his hand in your hair, yours over his heart where the page slept, the candles burning down to their stubs. "I have to tell you a secret," he murmurs, at the very edge of sleep. "The page leaked on Wednesday. At 2:14. Before Friday." "I know. I read it." "You didn't say — " "I'm here now." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved13">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "12">> He is quiet a moment, holding you, the candle-stubs and the dark coming on in equal parts. "We're terrible at this," he says, wondering, delighted. "We're terrible at this," you agree, and pull the blanket up over the both of you, and the boy laughs once — softly, into your shoulder, the surprised laugh, the real one, the one he never once rehearsed — and falls asleep inside the sound of it, still joined, still holding, the page still waiting on the bedside table. Morning. The factory alarm doesn't go off; he has silenced the whole schedule, the first sick day of his adult life. The light comes up white and clean over the wreckage of the candles, the money, the one face-down phone, the two of you. The envelope: you count it at the table, because he needs to watch it be real, and it is every dollar he said, exact to the single, one thousand dollars. You take it — all of it — for the ledger, for the balance, for the interest. "For the ledger," you say, out loud, in the record. "Not for tonight." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved14">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "13">> "Never for tonight," he agrees, and writes *FIRST PAYMENT* on the envelope in his careful capitals, and hands it back to you like a man handing over the first payment on something he intends to spend five years building. Then the eggs — the familiar question: he stands at the stove in the good T-shirt and asks, formal as a magistrate: "How do you take your eggs?" "However you make them," you say — the answer you have apparently been carrying to this exact door all along — and he nods once, moved beyond all arithmetic, and picks up the pan, and checks, and this time there are six. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved15">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Last Envelope" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/intmoved-v2.png"></div> On the walk home, your phone buzzes once. SMITH: *Your balance remains outstanding. My office hours have not changed.* You look at it a long moment. Then you pocket it, unhurried, and keep walking — past the corner, past the Bell, past the whole economy of yourself — one folded name under your coat, one payment toward the balance in your pocket, one breakfast in you, warm. He will remember this evening all his life. He's said so; it's true; it's filed. At the bus stop, you send him a message before he can ask. *home soon. buy bread next time.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Last Envelope</h2> <div id="intmoved-stage"><<include "IntMoved01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -15)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 0)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 0)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffPromo")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffPromo")>> <h2>The Promotion</h2> <div id="offpromo-stage"><<include "OffPromo01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Promotion" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offpromo-v2.png"></div> The memo is four lines long, which for this firm is practically a novel. *Effective Monday: reassignment. Records to Client Services. Grade bump, two steps. The Director's office will brief.* You read it twice at your desk. Around you the office hums its daytime hum — printers, low phones, someone's birthday cake in the break room going unclaimed. Records is where they keep people who alphabetize. Client Services is where they keep people who close. The director's office smells of cold coffee and carpet cleaner. He stands when you come in, which he has never done, and shakes your hand, which he has also never done, and you understand before he speaks that the handshake is the subject of the meeting. "Sit. I'll keep it short." He stays standing by the window. "You know what this floor does? It takes objections. Every client who walks in here has a reason to walk out. Price, terms, delivery, spite. Most of my people handle that with spreadsheets. Some — " a pause, and his eyes drop to your blouse for exactly as long as he thinks he can afford — "handle it with a room. You've put in the shifts. I've watched you handle the break room, the mailroom, two supervisors and a fire drill. You close rooms. So. Monday you start closing ours." "Is this the part where you say congratulations?" "Grade bump. Two steps." He almost smiles. "One more thing I say to every new closer. Some files come through marked PRIORITY. Red tab, top of the pile. Those, the client asked for you by name — it's pre-printed on the request form. Those you handle personally." He lets the word sit on the desk between you. "Anything else?" "Yes. The cake in the break room. Someone should claim it before Records gets reassigned." He laughs — one note, surprised — and that is how you leave the office where your new job begins: with a joke about cake, and the word *personally* left warm on the desk behind you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offpromo-stage">><<include "OffPromo02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Promotion" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offpromo-v2.png"></div> Your desk moves that same afternoon. Client Services has better chairs and a worse view — you now face the interior wall, which in this firm is a demotion nobody has figured out how to file a complaint about. The woman who trains you on the paperwork is kind and tired. She has a laminated diagram of the contract workflow taped inside her desk drawer, where only she can see it. "Red tabs," she says, tapping the drawer shut. "You'll get your first one soon. Everyone does." She checks that nobody is standing behind you. "I noticed the request forms have my name pre-printed," you say. "Mm." She squares a stack of paper that was already square. "Corporate efficiency." The first red tab arrives before the week is out: MERIDIAN SUPPLY — RENEWAL — PRIORITY — REQUESTED CLOSER: (your name, pre-printed). The client has stalled the renewal for three quarters. Four closers have already left the meeting room with nothing but a handshake and an allergy to the account. You take the file home and read it on the bus — the terms, the history, the objections underlined in four different pens by four different predecessors. Then you notice something nobody wrote down: all four were men in gray suits who brought a gray presentation. At home you hang your jacket on the door and look at yourself in the hallway mirror. The blouse. The face. You unbutton the top button you had re-buttoned out of habit, and watch the woman in the mirror watch you do it. "Tomorrow," you tell her, "we handle Meridian." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offpromo-stage">><<include "OffPromo03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Promotion" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offpromo-v2.png"></div> The morning of the Meridian meeting, Client Services goes quiet around you. People have seen the red tab. People know what the red tab is, even if nobody has ever said it out loud. The woman with the laminated diagram passes your desk and leaves an envelope. Inside: not money. A list, handwritten, old, soft with refolding — the conference rooms of the building, ranked by soundproofing. "Who's it from?" you whisper. "There's no who," she says, already walking. "It's just a thing that exists." Room 6C has three stars and a note in faded ink: *lock sticks — bring the key from Facilities.* You put it in your bag next to the Meridian file. The handwritten page is older than any of the account notes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offpromo-stage">><<include "OffPromo04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Promotion" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offpromo-v2.png"></div> At 11:40 you take the file and your handbag and walk toward the east wing. The floor watches you go without watching you — eyes on monitors, your reflection tracking through the dark screens like a stock everybody owns a little of. Meridian's man is already in 6C. Mid-fifties, procurement, twenty-two years at the same company. He keeps the renewal stalled because stalling is the only power anyone lets him keep. Four gray suits have failed to move him. He sits by the window with his arms crossed and checks his watch when you walk in, as if you owe him money. You close the door, set the file down, sit across from him, and cross your legs — slowly enough that the room hears the silk move. You have exactly one hour to do what the firm now pays you two grades to do. The lock stuck on your way in, the way the list said it would. The key from Facilities is in your bag. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Promotion</h2> <div id="offpromo-stage"><<include "OffPromo01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffFirst")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffFirst")>> <h2>The First Closing</h2> <div id="offfirst-stage"><<include "OffFirst01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The First Closing" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officefirst-v1.png"></div> His name is Kessler, and for forty minutes he is exactly the man in the file: arms crossed, objections stacked like sandbags. Price. Delivery terms. A "franchise commitment" he invents on the spot just to have something new to withhold. You handle all of it on the merits. You know the file cold — better than he does, and you say so, with the spreadsheets to prove it. He enjoys being beaten, a little. In twenty-two years nobody at his own shop has taken him seriously enough to beat him properly. "Your terms are still four points north of acceptable," he says finally, uncrossing his arms for the first time. "Four points. That's not a spreadsheet gap, Mr. Kessler. That's a feel gap." You get up, take the coffee pot from the sideboard, and refresh his cup, bending a beat longer than the pour needs. "The spreadsheets I can email you. The feel we should discuss over dinner. The firm keeps an account at Bellamy's. I'm told you're a member." He looks at you over the rim of his cup for a long moment. "I'm told the firm has... improved its hospitality package," he says. "The firm is prepared to be very accommodating." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "01">> Dinner is a duel with cloth napkins, and Kessler is better at it than his file promised. Somewhere between the second course and the second glass he stops being an objection and becomes a man — lonely the way long-married procurement men are lonely. Surrounded, and unseen. You laugh at his joke about the audit of '19. The real laugh. It lands in him and keeps landing. The table turns to him — the trade shows, the loading docks he came up through, the wife who travels, the sons who don't call. You listen. Your foot finds his under the table somewhere around the Memphis warehouse story. His sentence about Memphis takes four tries. Neither of you rescues it. "This isn't in the terms sheet," he says quietly, over a dessert he isn't eating. "No. This is the executive session." "And what does that cost the firm?" "Nothing it can't afford." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "02">> He signs the dessert menu with a flourish — "four points south, initial here" — and you both laugh, and his knee has been yours for an hour, and the maitre d' hands him a room key without being asked. Bellamy's keeps its own lists too. The firm keeps rooms at the Meridian Grand for exactly this, which tells you how old the arrangement is and how new you are to it. In the elevator Kessler's hands shake. Not age. Nerves. "Second thoughts?" you ask. "Twenty-two years," he says, to the floor numbers. "You do a thing long enough, you forget it was ever a choice." The doors open on twelve. He doesn't move. "I stall renewals. It's the only thing I've ever won at." "I read your file. I read between the lines, too. Come inside, Mr. Kessler." The room is gold-lit and quiet and looks down on the whole city. You leave him by the window — "watch the city, it can't see us" — and take off your earrings, your watch, your jacket, unhurried. When you turn around he has loosened his tie himself, which on this file counts as a signature moment. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "03">> You cross to him, undo the knot the rest of the way, and slide the tie out from under his collar. His breath goes ragged on the last inch of silk. You undress him slowly, and take even longer over your own clothes. His shirt comes off one button at a time. Under it is the body of a man who audits things: heavy in the middle, gray through the chest, arms that were dock arms once. His cock strains the briefs by the third button — hard, unembarrassed, twenty-two years overdue — and when you pull the fabric down it comes out thick and dark and already leaking. "My wife — " he starts. "Isn't in this file." You fold his glasses onto the nightstand with both hands. "Tonight there's a renewal on the table and two adults closing it. Do you want this, Mr. Kessler?" "God. Yes. Sorry — yes." "Then stop apologizing and lie down." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "04">> He laughs — the same bark from dinner, lower — and goes down onto the bed, and you kneel over him and give his cock one slow lick, crown to slit. His hips leave the mattress entirely. You take him into your mouth unhurried — lips sealed, tongue flat, one hand around the base while the other cups his balls, heavy and tight, a quarter's worth of saving in your palm. Long patient pulls. His hand finds your hair and just rests there, not steering. "I assumed there'd be a procedure," he manages, staring at the ceiling, hips twitching up in small ashamed increments. "Some kind of script." "Mr. Kessler. I'm not a procedure. Watch." You sink down over him, deeper, until the head of him touches the back of your throat, and his entire department of objections retires early. You hum around him and he curses — an actual curse, first of the evening. When his breathing climbs, you pull off with a wet pop and squeeze him base-firm. "Not yet. Nobody signs on the first read." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "05">> "Twenty-two years," he gasps, polite to the last. "I've read contracts in one sitting before —" "Not this one." You climb up his body, dragging your breasts up his sternum, his throat, his jaw. "This one gets negotiated." You hold just the head of him inside you for one long second — both of you watching it happen in the gold light — and then take him in one slow stroke to the root. Kessler makes a sound that twenty-two years of composure does not survive. "Oh — oh, you're — *Christ* —" "Breathe." You stay seated, every inch of him, and roll your hips in small circles while his hands grab your waist. "Stalling now would be a breach of protocol." "I'm not stalling — " his hips buck up involuntarily, knocking the breath out of both of you — "I'm *expediting* —" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "06">> You set the pace: slow, deep, palms flat on his chest, your breasts swaying while he stares up like astonished by his own luck. The room fills with the plain wet sound of it, skin on skin, the city's hum under the glass. And he is thick — you feel him in your spine on the downstroke, a fact the terms sheet never covered. "There," you manage, when his hips learn to meet yours. "Just like that. Don't you dare stall on me now." "Never again," he swears, driving up into you, dock arms wrapped around your back. "I am never — stalling — *again* —" You laugh, breathless, impaled — and the laugh breaks into something less composed when his cock drags across a place inside you the firm has no line item for. For a minute there are no professionals in the room at all. You stay with him through the pause. When he reaches for you again, there is no hurry. He takes you from behind at the window — your palms flat on the cold glass, the city below, his cock sliding back into you in one long stroke that empties your lungs. His hands find your hips and hold on. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "07">> "After this," he says into your hair, building speed, "I'm retiring the stall. Full renewal. Multi-year — " thrust — "multi-*year* —" "Say it again." You push back to meet him, the glass fogging under your hands, your clit singing where his balls swing up against you on every stroke. "Multi. Year." Each word its own stroke. "The firm's going to think it was the terms —" "Let them —" and the retort dies, because his hand comes around your front — clumsy, earnest, two thick fingers finding your clit and rubbing with the focus of a man triple-checking a sum. The sum checks out. Your orgasm tears up through you until you're coming on his cock in full view of forty thousand windows, clamping down so hard he shouts and follows you over, hauling you back onto him to the root as he comes and comes, pulsing inside you for what feels like an entire fiscal quarter. Later, sweat cooling, he holds you the way men hold things they've decided to keep. "It wasn't the terms," he says. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "08">> "It's never the terms," you say, and hand him his glasses. The Grand's coffee at dawn is terrible, which is the firm's little joke on itself. Kessler signs the actual contract at the actual breakfast table — pen from his own breast pocket, ceremonial, delighted, still walking like a man whose posture got restructured overnight. "Same time next quarter? The review meeting." "You request the closer, and the firm sends the closer." "I'll write your name in myself." He tucks the pen away, and his eyes go soft. "I came into that room planning to stall another quarter. Now I can't remember what the stall was for." "That's not the closing working. That's just breakfast." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "09">> At the office, the director is in the doorway of his glass box before you've hung your coat. "Meridian," he says. Not a question. "Multi-year. Full renewal." You put the signed original on his desk, square to the corner. He looks at it, then at you, and does the math out loud — his math, not yours: "Forty-two thousand a year against a dinner and a room. Two grades was cheap. There's a closing supplement in your pay packet, effective this cycle." The supplement is one hundred and fifty dollars. The account is forty-two thousand. You do the ratio once, in the elevator, and put it away in the drawer only you can see. The next red tab arrives, with a typed note on letterhead — because what happened at the Grand has apparently become correspondence. *Client has specifically requested the closer who handled Meridian. Client is aware of the firm's... arrangement flexibility. Please extend all customary courtesies.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The First Closing" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officefirst-v1.png"></div> "Customary courtesies." Already, there is a custom. The word *closer* moves around the trade shows like a new currency. You hear it in the elevator, in the break room, in the way the new girl in Records says good morning to you now — softer, as if she isn't sure what you have become. The woman with the laminated diagram is standing by the coffee machine, there with a cup, coincidentally. "Three stars," she says to the closing doors as you leave. "6C. That's where they'll book you, mostly. Best acoustics in the building." She sips. "Welcome to Client Services, closer. Try to stay a person. It's harder here than it looks." The elevator carries you down alone. *A person,* you think. Between your thighs, the night is still impossible to forget. The red tabs start arriving Thursdays, like a subscription. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The First Closing</h2> <div id="offfirst-stage"><<include "OffFirst01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffSecond")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffSecond")>> <h2>The Standard Clause</h2> <div id="offsecond-stage"><<include "OffSecond01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standard Clause" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officesecond-v1.png"></div> The client this time is a woman's account on paper and a man's account in fact: Vasquez Distribution, third generation — and the third generation is Daniel. Forty, tan, gym-built, expensively groomed and very aware of it. He has been stalling the agreement for two quarters. Kessler stalled out of loneliness. This one stalls because stalling is leverage and leverage is the only cardio he does. He arrives at the office itself — "I like to see where my money sleeps," he says, shaking your hand two seconds too long, his thumb doing a slow lap of your knuckles — and the meeting starts in 6C at four, the light going gold through the blinds. "You know what I like about you?" he says, twenty minutes in, leaning back. "Kessler has shaken my hand at trade shows for a decade and never once closed his grip. You had him signing multi-year inside a week. So." He spreads his hands. "What's the trick? Whatever it is, I want it in my contract." "The trick is I read the whole file." "Mm." His eyes do the inventory — the blouse, the legs, all of you — lazy and unembarrassed. "Word around the trade shows is you read *between* the files." There it is. Not Kessler's disbelief. This one knows. He has come to the office to buy what the Grand sold, in daylight. "Word around the trade shows," you say, uncrossing and recrossing your legs, "is that Vasquez stalls because nobody's ever given Daniel a reason to move. I'm prepared to discuss reasons. Shall we itemize?" He itemizes. He was born itemizing. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesecond/" "01">> He wants it in the terms — literally. Somewhere between the second drink and the drawn blinds he produces, grinning, the draft agreement and a pen: "Standard terms, plus the clause. Write it in. I want it *in the document*." "The clause is not a clause, Daniel. It's a closing condition." "Then close me." You take the pen from him slowly and set it on the sideboard. Then you stand, let your hair down — actually down — and open your blouse button by button while he watches. The pencil skirt follows. You step out of it and leave it on the carpet, and what's left of the firm's dress code is stockings, heels, and nothing the compliance folder mentions. "Conditions first. My terms." "Your terms." Delighted. Men like this have never once heard those two words in that order. "Name one." "One." You walk your fingers down your stomach and part your folds, showing him exactly where these negotiations will be conducted. "The signature comes after. Nobody signs anything until the closing condition is fulfilled. To my satisfaction." You slide one finger through your own wetness and hold it up to the gold light. "This is the market opening, Daniel. The signature is the close. In between, you follow my rules." "To your — " the grin restructures itself into something younger — "satisfaction. That's negotiable, right? The satisfaction standard?" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesecond/" "02">> "Daniel." You come around the table, push him back into his chair, and kneel between his knees. You draw his zipper down; his cock comes out flushed and fat and already beading — his self-control not quite matching his grin — and you weigh it in your palm. "I've read your file. You've never once settled for industry-standard satisfaction. Why start now?" He laughs, rich and real, his practiced confidence briefly giving way to surprise — and reaches for your head with both hands. You bat the hands away and pin them to the armrests with a look. "Rules." You lick him from root to crown, one slow stripe that curls his toes inside his loafers. "Nobody touches the closer until the closer says." Daylight suits him — he's vain enough for that and rich enough to be right. You bend yourself over the mahogany, the wood cold against your bare breasts, and look back over your shoulder at him holding his cock in his fist. "Well, Daniel. The market's open." He enters you in one long smug stroke — thick, conditioned, relentlessly vertical about it — and the sound you make is nothing the trade shows will ever hear. He takes it as applause. "The room's soundproofed," he says, establishing his rhythm, hands on your hips. "Three stars. The handwritten list. You think Facilities doesn't keep a — unh — copy —" "Fucking *concentrate*, Daniel." You push back to meet him, breasts swinging with every collision, the whole thing loud and wet and utterly unphotogenic in the best ways. "Terms. Forty-five days, not sixty. Say it." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesecond/" "03">> "Forty-five — " gasp, thrust — "and the penalties —" "The penalties *stay*." To close the point you clench around him — one long deliberate squeeze, every lesson the street ever sold you — and Daniel Vasquez, third of his name, nearly signs the entire firm into his distribution network on the spot. So the list is common knowledge. Noted. Everything at this firm exists, and everything that exists circulates. He fulfills the closing condition twice. The second time he lays you out on the table itself — your spine against the cold mahogany, your calves up over his shoulders, heels knocking his collarbones with every stroke — and fucks you with the earnest violence of a man who fired his trainer this morning and hired a priest. Your hand finds your own clit, because rules are rules, and you draw your orgasm out while he watches from above. "Stop," you say, right at your edge — and he stops. Actually stops, mid-stroke, trembling, the best-behaved leverage in the city. "Is this — " he manages, held at the gate, cock jumping against your folds where he wants back in — "am I — " "Stand there." You finish yourself in four tight circles while he watches, his cock standing straight up out of his suit. "And watch what you're buying, Daniel." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesecond/" "04">> You come apart on the mahogany in the gold light, loudly, three stars' worth — back bowing, thighs clamping his waist, the conference table walking an inch across the carpet. Then, wrecked and gracious, you open your arms. "Now finish the negotiation." He pulls out at your nod and comes on your stomach — long hot ropes up to the underside of your breasts, groaning like a man closing something — and the draft agreement lies beside your head the whole time, unsigned. Which was the point of rule one. "The clause," he says afterward, when he can speak. "You never wrote it in." "There's no clause, Daniel." You sit up and drag one finger through the mess on your stomach. "There's only the market. And the market says you sign at forty-five days." He initials each page with a fountain pen the size of a small sailboat, hand still shaking. Afterward he dresses like a man who won something. You straighten the contract while he buttons his shirt. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officesecond/" "05">> "There's *always* a clause," he says, capping the pen. "Next quarter — same closer?" "You request the closer, and the firm sends the closer." "Pre-printed forms are for people without imagination," he says, and out he goes into the bullpen noise, tan and fulfilled, a distribution agreement walking. The director calls you in at end of day. There is a second chair in his office now, angled at the window. You understand immediately that it is Your Chair — the chair the closer sits in. "Vasquez. Multi-year. Well done. When I said you close rooms, I meant it as a compliment." "I know." "I want to make sure it stays one." He looks out the window. "The partners have started flagging accounts for your desk. Red tabs. It's — " and here he uses the word that has been doing all the work all along — "personal." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offsecond-stage">><<include "OffSecond07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standard Clause" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officesecond-v1.png"></div> "Noted," you say, from Your Chair. He waits for another question. You let the silence stand until he turns back to his screen. You have started your own list by now — clients, dates, terms, fulfilled conditions, in your own hand, in code — because if the firm keeps books on you, you'll keep better ones on it. That's not bitterness. That's file management. Thursday, again, red tabs stacked like place settings, and among them one that stops your coffee halfway. Thicker file. Older paper. Letterhead that predates the firm's founding. A cover sheet of one line, typed by somebody who doesn't do dinners, doesn't do golf, doesn't do the firm: *Signing at the house. Send the closer. Friday to Sunday.* HELLMAN CAPITAL. Fifteen years on the firm's client list — and the man asked for the closer by the Meridian file number. A weekend, at his farm, and the whole account riding on whatever the house decides you are. You take it to the director, and he looks at the letterhead the way other men look at x-rays. "Whatever the house wants, the house gets. That account is worth more than this floor." The cover sheet already has your name. And for once, the city is pricing something it can't see from the street. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Standard Clause</h2> <div id="offsecond-stage"><<include "OffSecond01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(250, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffHouse")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffHouse")>> <h2>The Country Signing</h2> <div id="offhouse-stage"><<include "OffHouse01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Country Signing" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officehouse-v1.png"></div> The train out on Friday evening is full of weekend people. You sit with the Hellman file open on your knees: fifteen years of account history, renewals and rejected proposals. A man who collects — art, terms, people. The file doesn't say which is which, and you suspect the file doesn't know either. The house, when the taxi lets you off, is not a mansion. It's a farm — stone, low, two hundred years old, lit yellow against the dusk, horses somewhere in the dark complaining about the weather. Hellman himself opens the door: seventy-one, tall, tweed, hands like a man who actually uses his farm. "You're the closer." He looks you over the way he'd look over a horse — teeth, legs, lineage, unembarrassed and not unkind. "Good. Leave the briefcase in the hall. It's the weekend; nothing here closes till Monday." He steps aside. "Supper's at eight. We'll talk terms after, if you still want to." "If I still want to?" "A lot of city people come out here and remember around Saturday noon that they left something in the city. It's usually themselves. We'll see what you left." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "01">> Supper is lamb from the farm and wine cool from the cellar. Hellman interrogates you across it — not the account, you — and he is so old and so rich that the questions come out clean: where you're from, what the debt is, what the firm pays, what you think you're worth. You answer most of it. The lamb is extraordinary. "You do this often?" he asks at last, refilling your glass himself. "The weekend terms. The closing condition." He uses the phrases accurately, which tells you his sources are good. Then he does something nobody at the firm has done: he names it. "You're the firm's placation asset. That's the technical term. I had one at my firm forty years ago. A man named Alcott. Best closer I ever saw. They spent him like currency and he died at fifty-three of the spending." "And you're requesting me because?" "Because I'm seventy-one. I don't pitch, I don't golf, I don't do dinners. I do weekends — and I wanted to meet the firm's new currency before I decide whether to renew with the firm that's minting it." He stands and offers his hand to help you up, an old man's gesture. "The bedroom's up the stairs, first door. Come up when you're ready. Or don't, and we'll do terms at breakfast like Baptists, and I'll still sign — because your Meridian file was the first honest paperwork that firm has produced in a decade." He goes up. The fire does its work. The wine does its work. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "02">> You take off your watch, because the weekend has started and the city is a rumor, and you climb the stairs to the first door. Hellman at seventy-one is unhurried, exact, and quietly grateful in the way of men who have outlived the age of pretending. He undresses you like a man unpacking something he inherited — each piece held, considered, folded — and his working hands are better than half the men you've filed this quarter. "The firm says you're a courtesy," he says into your shoulder. "The firm says a lot of things." "Mm." The bra joins the pile on the chair. His mouth closes over one nipple — patient, unhurried — and his hand slides into your panties. Two work-roughened fingers slide through your folds, and when they find you already wet he makes a small sound of respect. "Somebody's been reading between the files." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "03">> "Somebody's been *drinking* between the files." He laughs against your breast, and the laugh goes through you. "Alcott — they spent him. I told you that. What I didn't tell you is I was the one who signed the spending." His voice doesn't change; seventy-one is too old for flinching. "So now, when a firm mints new currency, I like to hold some. Privately. At the weekend rate." His fingers keep their slow audit, curling, finding the place that makes your knees renegotiate. "All of this, until Monday, at whatever pace the house sets. And on Monday I sign the long-term renewal. Ask me if it's acceptable." "Is it acceptable?" "Ask me if I care," Hellman says, and slides two fingers inside you to the knuckle, and the question dies of natural causes. He takes you the first time face to face, in the feather bed, at the pace of a man with nowhere else in the world to be. He notches the head of his cock at your entrance — thick for seventy-one, heavy — and feeds it into you an inch at a time, watching your face the whole way down. "There," he says when he's seated to the root, when your breath has gone shallow and your hips have started asking. "That's the principal. Everything else is interest." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "04">> "Old joke," you manage, full of him. "Old *money*," he corrects, and begins to move. The rhythm is agricultural: long, slow, deep strokes, his whole weight rocking through you while the feather bed does its two hundred years of honest work underneath. No script from this man, no apology — just the wet unhurried sound of him in you, and the storm coming up your spine with every pass of his cock across a place inside you the city has never bothered to find, because the city is always in a hurry and this man owns time. "Oh — *there* — " you hear yourself say. "There." He does it again. And again. Exactly again. The precision of a man who has kept ledgers for five decades. You come first — long rolling waves — and he holds perfectly still inside you and lets it happen, watching with farm-blue eyes, and only then does he resume and take his own, finishing deep with a long exhalation, his spend pulsing warm inside you while the rain starts on the slate. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "05">> "Acceptable," he assesses eventually, into your hair. "Negotiable," you answer, and feel him smile, and the house settles two hundred years deeper into its dark. The small hours run long. You wake once to his mouth between your thighs — an old man's insomnia put to work, his tongue patient on your clit while the rain keeps its own time on the glass. You hold his gray head and come apart twice more before he climbs back up your body, hard again with the unhurried certainty of oak, and slides home. "In my day," he says, working that long slow stroke, your legs wrapped around his ribs, "we called this diligence." "This is — " you catch your breath on a downstroke — "due *and* otherwise —" "Diligence," he repeats, firm, and applies himself, and the argument is settled out of court somewhere around dawn. Both parties thoroughly heard. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "06">> After — his arm over you, the rain, the horses complaining about the state of the world — you understand that the weekend rate includes the silence, and the silence is the most expensive item on the invoice. You fall asleep before the rain stops. Saturday you wake to horses and coffee and no phones. Hellman farms until noon — actually farms — and you watch a seventy-one-year-old capitalist muck out a stall because he likes knowing where things stand when they're standing in manure. Terms over lunch, sharp as any boardroom — he's still Hellman Capital in a cardigan, and the negotiating is good, clean, the best you've had since Kessler's napkin. He beats you twice on delivery schedules and concedes once on penalties "because you argued it like Alcott would, and I'm sentimental about dead men's moves." "And now," he says, pushing back from the plates, "the afternoon session." "Terms?" "Terms adjacent." He takes your hand and leads you not upstairs but to the kitchen table, where he bends you over the week's farm ledgers and hikes your skirt with the ceremony of a man raising a flag. His cock finds you already wet — lunch arguments do that to certain files — and he fucks you there among the lamb and the ledgers, slow and deep, his thumb rolling your clit in slow circles while the kettle cools and nobody in the world is auditing anything. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "07">> "Old joke," he says into your neck, feeling you tighten. "Old *money*," you gasp, and come on the kitchen table of a man who could buy the firm that minted you, and he follows you over with the satisfaction of a harvest coming in on time. The session adjourns when the fire needs tending. Nobody notes the time. The time is included. Saturday night he runs you a bath older than the republic and soaks the city out of you inch by inch, and over the steam he talks — Alcott, the spending, the firms of his era and what they did to their best people. The weekend includes the history. The man is teaching you what you are while he enjoys what you are, and neither part is lying. "Firms think they close. Closers close. Remember that when they start spending you — because they will, girl. They always do. The trick Alcott never learned is to keep your own books." "I keep my own books," you say into the steam. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "08">> "Then you're already ahead of him." And his hand follows the cloth down under the water, and the history lesson continues in a silence neither of you is inclined to break — two old fingers and a farmer's patience against your clit until the steam itself loses its composure, and the tub sloshes its opinion onto the floor, and neither of you cleans it up until morning. Late, the fire down to embers, his hand slow on your hip, he says something you will remember long after you leave the farm. "There'll come a day they hand you somebody younger. To train. That's the day you find out what the firm made you. Alcott's handler trained two, before the end. Notoriously." "Sounds like a city problem." "Mm. It is. And you're going back there tomorrow, closer." A pause, two heartbeats long. "So am I, for what it's worth. The firm never once sent anything worth the train fare. They sent you. First thing they haven't overvalued since the eighties." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "09">> And the man who collects people sleeps, and you lie awake a little while, keeping your own books, his spend warm inside you like a deposit nobody can repossess. Sunday the house keeps its word: nothing closes till Monday, but Sunday negotiates all day. The feather bed at noon, quick and laughing, still tasting of coffee. The kitchen table at three, slower, farming. And at dusk, in the last gold light through curtains his wife must have hung — hung with opinion, you can tell — he takes you one last long time from behind, your cheek against her needlework pillows, his cock moving in you with nowhere else to be, and his hand comes around and simply holds you — palm flat over your mound, not working, just holding — and that unearned gentleness is what finishes you, the being held while being had, and you come apart so quietly the rain nearly covers it. That evening he reads to you — actual reading aloud, farm ledgers from the 1800s, dead men's arithmetic by firelight — and you lie with your head on a capitalist's woolen shoulder and understand the weekend's last clause: he wanted someone to hear these stories as much as he wanted the weekend. Monday, 8 a.m., the farm kitchen: Hellman signs at the actual breakfast table — the long renewal settled in ninety seconds of fountain pen — and walks you to the taxi through the Monday fog like a man seeing off family. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse11">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "10">> "The firm will promote you for this. Promotion is how firms hold what they can't price. Remember Alcott." He shuts the cab door and taps the roof twice through the glass — an old broker's knock: good market, all trades honored — and the farm folds back into the fog. The train in is full of Monday people. The signed original rides against your ribs like a heartbeat the firm is going to feel. You watch the city come up over the horizon and think about a man named Alcott, fifty-three, spent. The director is waiting on the platform. Actually on the platform, in his city coat, watching each passenger come through the gate. "Hellman," he says. "The long-term renewal — " He catches himself and offers the smile at full wattage. "The partners want you at the Thursday meeting. Standing item. 'The closer's desk.' There's a supplement in your packet. The Hellman supplement. It's — " he consults the ceiling for the polite number — "substantial." It's two hundred and fifty dollars. The renewed account is worth more than the floor will ever say aloud. You knew the number before he said it, because you keep your own books. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse12">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Country Signing" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officehouse-v1.png"></div> At your desk, the red tabs have bred while you were away: five of them, Thursdays stacked like place settings. On top is a new envelope. The woman with the laminated diagram has been by again. Not the list this time. A single page with one typed line she has clearly retyped a few times before choosing the words: *Whatever they start calling you — and they will start calling you something — remember what the paperwork never says: you were hired to close files. Stay a file-closer as long as the money lets you.* You fold it into the handbag, next to the signed renewal, next to your own coded list, and you understand that things have changed owners. The firm thinks it bought a Hellman renewal. The farm knows better. So, now, do you. The city takes you back like a signature. The drawer opens. A new page opens. And somewhere above your head, on a floor the elevator needs a key for, men are already writing Thursday's agenda, and your name is on it in a form you haven't been promoted into yet. For now, you put the signed original in the director's tray. The note stays in your handbag. When the phone rings, you let it ring once before answering. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Country Signing</h2> <div id="offhouse-stage"><<include "OffHouse01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffMorning")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffMorning")>> <h2>Breakfast Terms</h2> <div id="offmorning-stage"><<include "OffMorning01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Breakfast Terms" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officemorning-v1.png"></div> The next red tab is thinner. The assignment looks simple: it's a retainer — six months of renewals for Ashford Logistics, overnight at the client's townhouse, "breakfast signing, per the client's custom." None of this appears in your employment contract. The assistant has put it in your schedule anyway. Ashford is fifty, widower-shaped, and — the file doesn't say this, the townhouse does — lonely the way a large, quiet house is lonely: furnished for a family that isn't there, heating set to one person's comfort, a kitchen with four chairs and one worn. "I could sign at your office," he admits, pouring wine in a room sized for twelve. "I simply prefer not to. Is that monstrous? The trade papers make it sound monstrous." "It's not monstrous. It's terms." "Yes. Terms." He brightens at the vocabulary, poor man. "My wife handled all the — she was the one who enjoyed the negotiating. Since her, I've let the renewals slide. Your firm is the first one to send — " he stops, embarrassed at where the sentence is going, and reroutes it into the wine — "anyone who reads the whole file." You look around the big quiet house: four chairs, one worn. Kessler wanted winning. Daniel wanted the menu. Hellman wanted the last honest thing in finance. And this one just wants the evening. Someone in the other chair. "Pour me half," you say, sitting in the worn chair without being asked, because a closer reads the room before the file. "And tell me about the warehouses. Start with the one she liked." He tells you about the one she liked. The evening does what evenings do to loneliness with wine on it. By eleven the file is technically closed — terms agreed over a dinner he cooked himself, which the firm would invoice as catering — and what's left is the custom, the breakfast signing, the night between. "You don't have to stay in the guest room," Ashford says in the doorway, careful as a man defusing his own hope. "I mean — you don't have to *not*. Either room. The house doesn't judge; I've had it rewired." You look at him: fifty, folded, kind in the unpracticed way that can't be faked and can't be billed. The firm sent a closer. The closer is off the clock at a rate the firm doesn't know exists. "Show me yours," you say, and take his hand, and lead him up the stairs of the house his wife picked — because this one you'd have done for the dinner alone, and the file will never know, and your own books will show this entry in a different ink. He stops at the bedroom door — one breath, a man at a border — and you kiss him through it, and the border opens, and the house's heating adjusts itself to two. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "01">> Morning comes in sideways through heavy curtains, carefully lined against the morning light — and Ashford wakes like a man who overslept in his own life and found it furnished. He's hard against your hip before he's fully conscious, embarrassed down to his socks about it, and you silence the apology with your mouth. "Is this — " he manages, as your hand finds him under the covers, hot and insistent, jerking gently into your grip — "am I meant to — is there a *procedure* —" "Ashford." "John," he says, wrecked, polite. "John. There's no procedure. There's breakfast before breakfast, then the signing, then the car." You throw a leg over him and settle astride his hips, his cock sliding through your folds — already soaked, the morning's worst-kept secret — and notching at your entrance. And you sink down onto him in one slow complete stroke, both of you watching it happen in the filtered morning light, and the custom begins where the guest room would have ended. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "02">> He fills you differently than the others — not thick like Kessler or absolute like Hellman, but *grateful*, his hands hovering over your hips like he's afraid of leaving fingerprints on something museum-grade. You take his hands and press them flat onto you. "Hold on, John." You roll your hips, taking him deep again and again, the headboard knocking steadily against the wall. "The house doesn't judge. I checked the wiring." He is less hesitant now that you have shown him what you want. Somewhere in the second act he flips you, a small polite revolution, settles between your thighs and *works*, his mouth a wondering thing on your neck while his cock finds the long deep stroke, her curtains pouring light over both of you. "Is it — " he gasps, hips snapping with new confidence, the eggs downstairs entirely forgotten — "am I — is this *good* — can you — " <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "03">> "John." You lock your ankles behind him and pull him deeper, your own hand going down to your clit because two kinds of hunger deserve feeding. "Shut up and *sign* —" And he does — and so do you, the pair of you coming apart in the morning light, his spend pulsing hot inside you while your body milks him through it, the headboard applauding, the curtains holding, the whole big quiet house suddenly, briefly, furnished. After, in the wrecked gold light, he starts to laugh — hopelessly, quietly, amazed that laughter still lives in the house — and you laugh with him, and outside the city waits, and for once, for one morning, it can wait. The second round happens in the shower, because the custom apparently includes plumbing: hot water, steam, his hands soapy and careful on your breasts, yours flat on the tile, him entering you from behind with the delighted disbelief of a man rereading a favorite clause. Nobody negotiates this one. It's just two people being late for eggs on purpose. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "04">> Breakfast is actual breakfast — eggs, the good bread, coffee he grinds himself — and the contract sits by the juice like another place setting. He signs it there, in the kitchen, unhurried, initialing each page with the fountain pen from his breast pocket, and you watch a man sign six months of logistics back to life over eggs, and something in the arithmetic of this job quietly recalibrates. "The renewals," he says, capping the pen, not looking up. "Every quarter, the firm mentioned the closer attends the reviews." "The closer attends the reviews." "Would you — " he squares the contract, fusses it — "I'd like to request you. Specifically. If the forms allow. I know the forms have a line." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "05">> He's asking you to be a line on a form. The city has a hundred words for what that makes him, and none of them are his fault, and two of them are almost kind. "I'll write the request myself. Pre-printed forms are for people without imagination." He laughs — that laugh again, the house rediscovering its acoustics — and pours you the last of the coffee, and for a moment the kitchen is just a kitchen: two people, eggs, a form with a line, sunlight reaching the empty chairs around you. The firm will read this account as handled. You will remember him asking you to stay for one more cup. You do. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Breakfast Terms" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officemorning-v1.png"></div> The city takes you back. The car, the tower, the elevator — and the Thursday red tabs are stacking on the closer's desk like a subscription the firm thinks you don't know the price of. You know. You keep your own books now. Hellman's voice, dry as a title search, over the lamb of your memory: *when they hand you somebody younger.* Not yet. But the drawer is opening, and the city knows it before you do — and in the lobby mirror, going up, you fix your collar and rehearse the only version the director will ask for: renewal signed, terms unchanged. The doors open on Thursday. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Breakfast Terms</h2> <div id="offmorning-stage"><<include "OffMorning01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffTalk")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffTalk")>> <h2>The Conversation</h2> <div id="offtalk-stage"><<include "OffTalk01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Conversation" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officetalk-v1.png"></div> The summons comes down on a Monday, and it doesn't come as a red tab. It comes as a calendar invite from the director's assistant, subject line: *Conversation.* Capital C. Thirty minutes, 5:30 p.m., Conference Room A — the big one, the long table, the good lights. At 5:29 the bullpen empties with the punctual cowardice of people who have learned which meetings not to ask about. Inside Room A, seated along one side of the long table like a tribunal pretending not to be one: The director. The senior partner — the actual senior partner, top-floor, the man whose name is on the shingle. And a third chair: a woman from Compliance you've seen in the elevators — gray suit, folder, the firm's designated person who is never present for compliance. "Sit," says the senior partner. His voice is dry and pleasant, the voice of a man who has signed so many things that speaking is just signing slowly. "This is an informal conversation." Informal conversations, in this city, are the ones with lawyers waiting outside the door. You sit. The Compliance woman opens her folder. It is — you see it at her first slow, deliberate page-turn, in full — *your* file. Not the employment file. The other one. Your own books: the clients, the dates, the terms, the fulfilled conditions — the code broken, the private drawer opened, every meeting typed up, paginated, living in a gray folder on a long table. "Meridian Grand, twelfth floor," she reads, flat as a court reporter. "Conference room 6C. The — " a beat, professionally neutral — "townhouse on Ashford. The Hellman farm. Weekend attendance, extended through Monday — " "That's enough itemizing," the senior partner says, gently. He folds his hands on the table and asks the question the room was built for. "Do you know what a wolf ticket is?" You know. Everyone who works a desk in this city knows: the reference letter that follows you forever — *do not hire*, in the polite language every reception desk can read at a glance. You know it the way you know interest rates. Personally. "Undisclosed fringe benefits to third parties," the director recites to the table, reading the script the lawyers wrote, "in violation of the conduct clauses you signed in your employment packet. That's termination for cause. That's a letter. And that letter follows you, in this city, to every desk that will ever have you." He looks up. "Or." "Or," the senior partner says, "you're available. To the firm. For accounts the firm selects, at times the firm sets, under terms the firm dictates — which you'll find are terms you've already been writing in that little book of yours." A small dry smile at the folder, at the code someone picked. "You're very good at this. Hellman had been threatening to move his account, and after one weekend with you he signed the long renewal. The firm would be negligent not to deploy its best closing instrument on its hardest accounts." "Deploy," you say. "Deploy," the senior partner agrees, without malice, which is worse. "Compliance has questions about frequency preferences, and I have a six o'clock, so let's consider the conversation started. Consider it — " he stands, unhurried, buttoning his jacket — "started from the firm's side. Kristoff. Marla. Take her through it. All of it." The senior partner leaves the way money leaves: quietly, ahead of everyone. The door clicks. Marla turns the folder to a fresh page — blank, headed with today's date — and sets down her pen. The director stays seated, loosens his tie one economical turn, and pats the long mahogany in front of him, once, the way you'd call an animal. "Well, closer," he says, and the smile drops entirely, and underneath it is just arithmetic. "Let's see what the firm's holding." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "01">> The conversation, it turns out, is not thirty minutes. The director stands you up, turns you around, and bends you over the long table — your cheek against the mahogany, cool as a settlement, your skirt up over your hips in one administrative motion — and his hands take inventory with the impersonal thoroughness of a man checking a leased vehicle: the backs of your thighs, the soaked seat of your panties, the flinch of your hips when his thumb drags squarely over your clit through the silk. "Responsive," he notes, to the room, to the pen. "Responsive," confirms Marla, and dates it. He pulls the panties down your thighs and works you open with two fingers — perfunctory, competent, a man warming up an account — and the worst part, the part your books will hold in the blackest ink, is that it works. Your body files its own report around his fingers, wet and clinging, because the body was never consulted about the difference between being wanted and being held. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "02">> "Eyes up or down?" he says, unzipping, not asking you. "Up," you say, staring past the table at the wall. "Noted," says Marla — and the director seats his cock in you to the root in one long managerial stroke, and the good lights hold steady while the firm conducts its inventory. He is not cruel. That's the thing the gray folder will never capture and your books will never forgive: he is professional, all the way down. He fucks the way he runs the floor — measured, unvaried strokes timed to something internal, one hand planted between your shoulder blades holding you to the table like a paperweight on a page he's proofing — and the room fills with the small wet admin of it and the scratch of Marla's pen in alternating time. "Volume," the director observes, mid-stroke, hips snapping a demonstration. "Sufficient?" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "03">> "Sufficient," confirms the pen. "Diction." And he hauls you up by the hair — gentle, exact, a man who has never once damaged an asset — until your back arches against his chest, and his next stroke knocks a sound out of you that Marla transcribes phonetically. "Vocal response within parameters. Note the range." "Range noted." "Three stars," you say, to the ceiling, to the vents, to whoever picked the code — and the director actually laughs, one note, the first honest sound the room has produced. "She knows the list. I always liked that about you, closer. You do your reading." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "04">> The lights hum. The city glitters through the senior glass. Someone's phone buzzes a goodnight from home — and your Monday has a new line in a gray folder while your body signs everything the firm puts in front of it, around a cock that never once changes pace. Somewhere in the middle of it, between one itemized note and the next, the director's phone buzzes on the table, and he checks it — actually checks a message, mid-inventory, a man of two calendars — and says "hold that thought" to the room, to the woman, to the asset, and takes thirty seconds about logistics, still buried in you to the root. *Hold that thought.* He scrolls once before putting it down. You count the seconds without meaning to. He resumes. The pen keeps time. And that thirty seconds — the buzzing phone, the resumed pace, your body held open around a man reading his messages — goes into your books whole, as the truest portrait the firm ever sat for. He turns you over for the conclusion — your back on the mahogany, your calves over his forearms, the good lights full on your face, because the firm likes its minutes to have faces — and finishes the way he does everything: on schedule, inside you, with a small economical grunt and three final deep strokes like a notary pressing a seal. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "05">> "Good," he says, refastening his watch, already elsewhere. "Again Thursday." "Thursday," agrees Marla, and underlines it. Afterward there's a moment — the director straightening his tie, the Compliance woman squaring her pages — when the room is just three professionals concluding an agenda item. The lights hum, someone's phone says goodnight from home, and you wait for them to finish speaking so you can reach your clothes. "Wednesday," the director says at the door, all business, the smile back on. "The Meridian review — Kessler requested you. Thursday, the trade delegation — six of them; the firm's putting you at the head of the table." He holds the door. "Congratulations, by the way. Not everyone gets this... portfolio." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "06">> *Portfolio.* The firm has been reading your books longer than you've been keeping them, and it has just written its own entry, and closed the drawer. You walk out through the empty bullpen, past the monitors dark with everyone's gone-home faces, his spend cooling down your thigh inside the firm's dry-clean-only arithmetic. In the elevator's mirror you look back at yourself, composed, your clothes straightened — whatever else the firm is, it's thorough — and somewhere between the fourth floor and the lobby you stop seeing the mirror as yours. The doors open on the street. There's an envelope in your handbag. You find it at home, tucked where the Hellman original rode — thin, insultingly light — and on the flap, in the director's hand: *orientation.* Nothing. They paid you nothing for the conversation. The envelope holds a single line on letterhead: *Welcome to the portfolio. — M.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Conversation" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officetalk-v1.png"></div> You keep it. Your books have a new section now, and under it, the first entry: *They knew about Alcott. They did it anyway.* At home you move your notebook from the handbag to the kitchen table. Tomorrow it goes back in the bag. You will not leave it in a desk drawer again. Wednesday: Kessler, who thinks you're a person. Thursday: six strangers, who won't think at all. The closer's desk holds both files in the same gray light, and the city, pricing everything, has finally priced the one thing you'd kept off the books: the drawer. The code. The books themselves. The lamp stays on late. Before closing the notebook, you add: *Alcott died at fifty-three of the spending. I have a head start — I read.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Conversation</h2> <div id="offtalk-stage"><<include "OffTalk01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.eventPay(200, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffShow")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffShow")>> <h2>The Audition</h2> <div id="offshow-stage"><<include "OffShow01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Audition" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeshow-v1.png"></div> The invitation arrives as a garment bag, which is the firm's new way of sending mail. Inside: white. A white silk blouse, your size to the half-centimeter. A white pencil skirt. Pearls — real ones, the note says, *to be returned* — and heels you could invoice as lethal. The card in the breast pocket is one line, in Marla's print: *Wednesday, 7 p.m. The partners' floor. Dress code: white. It's not a costume.* The partners' floor. The top of the house, above the shingle — the floor the elevator needs a key for and the staff mention only when they are certain nobody senior is listening. You have never been up. Nobody you know has ever been up. Wednesday, 7 p.m., you go up. It's an apartment. Of course it's an apartment — a whole floor of one, glass on three sides, the city lying below. There are four men you know by sight from the lobby and the letterhead, one you don't, and Marla, in gray even here, with her folder, of course. "You look," says the senior partner, rising from the long white couch, "exactly like the asset column. Gentlemen — the closer." They toast you. Actually toast you — crystal, something old and gold in it — and for half an hour it's almost a party: canapés, the city below, the partners telling Hellman-and-Meridian stories with your name polished up in them. The unfamiliar man is introduced as "our friend from the bank" and never by any other name. Everyone is charming. Charming is how this floor does what it does. Then, without ceremony, without a signal you can catch, the evening restructures. The bank friend leaves. Two partners find the far couch and a decanter. The senior partner sets down his glass and says: "Before Thursday's delegation, the firm requires a standard assessment. Consider it your annual review. Kristoff? You've seen the instrument at work. The firm would like the partners to calibrate expectations." *Calibrate expectations.* On the partners' floor, in the dress code that isn't a costume: they want to try you. All of them. Formally. With notes. Marla writes the time down. Of course she does. The pearls are to be returned. The blouse is yours to keep. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "01">> They do it politely. That's the horror the folder will never hold and your books will: they're polite, one at a time by seniority, the way the firm rotates everything. The first partner — logistics, broad hands, a wedding ring he forgets to twist — sits you on the white couch and opens your blouse to the second button, exactly, and fills both hands with your breasts while his mouth learns your throat. His fingers walk your thigh under the pencil skirt, past the top of your stockings, and find the top of you, and he works two thick fingers into you with the concentration of a man counting stock. "Response time," says Marla's pen. "Responsive," reports the partner, curling his fingers, finding the place that makes your spine leave the couch — and your body, the turncoat, drenches his hand to the wrist while your face stays appraisal-blank. "Baseline established," says Marla, and dates it. The second partner — tax — prefers your mouth. He stands you at the window wall, the whole city below, unzips with two fingers, and feeds his cock past your lips in slow unhurried inches while the pearls swing against your chin, one hand loose in your hair, holding the angle he's paying to keep. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "02">> "Breathe through your nose. There. Good girl. Now the throat." And you give it to him — cheeks hollowed, tongue cradling, taking him until your eyes water and the city blurs below into one smear of light — and somewhere behind you the decanter glasses chime and Marla's pen keeps its time, and the man comes down your throat with a small apologetic sigh, and zips himself back up, considerate as a coat-check. "Swallows," he reports, taking his seat. "Itemized," says Marla. The third and fourth take you together, which Marla's folder calls parallel assessment and the white couch calls a mess: one behind you — assets, young, hungry — holding your hips while he opens you in one long possessive stroke; one in front — litigation, silver-fox, patient — with your head tipped back over the arm of the couch and your throat full of him again, the pearls swinging upside-down between your open blouse. The dress code holds throughout. It's their dress code: the white silk is pushed aside and never removed, the skirt rides up and never comes off, the pearls return again and again to your throat — and you are handled, top to bottom, in the good white lights of the partners' floor, while the city glitters below like the price of you running in real time. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "03">> "Throughput," says the pen. "Efficient," grits assets from behind, driving — and litigation pulls free of your mouth to add, courteous, "Exquisite, actually," and feeds himself back in before you can decide whether the compliment was addressed to you or to the portfolio. Your orgasm arrives uninvited somewhere in the rotation — assets' cock dragging raw and perfect across the place the city never finds, litigation's thumb wiping a tear from the corner of your open mouth — and it tears through you while both men feel it happen and file their reports mid-act: "Spasm response — note it — *noted* —" and the white couch holds all three of you and its own opinions, and Marla writes *convulsive* and underlines it, and nobody stops. That's the assessment's true design: not the pleasure — the documentation of the pleasure. The firm has found the one part of you that doesn't know about the letter, and it is interviewing that part, at length, in front of a window the size of a confession. "Sound," says litigation afterward, adjusting his cuffs. "Sound," agrees the room. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "04">> The senior partner conducts last, of course — seniority — in the glass bedroom where the city provides the lighting, and he takes his time the way he takes his time with everything. He undresses you himself, unhurried — the dress code's final exemption, granted by its author — and lays you out on the white bed under three walls of night, and goes down on you like a man reading the founding documents: thorough, twice, with small sounds of annotation, his gray head between your thighs while the towers burn. "You'll forgive an old man his method," he says, rising between your legs at last, his cock — surprisingly formidable — notching against your entrance while his eyes hold yours. "The firm doesn't buy what it hasn't read." And he reads you. All of you. Slow, deep strokes, his thumb on your clit holding a steady line while another orgasm builds precisely on schedule, because he has been counting, the way he counts everything — and when it breaks over you, when your body arches up off the white bed and clamps around him, the senior partner watches it happen with professional delight and delivers the verdict mid-stroke, never once losing his place: "Sound. Thorough. Better than the market reports suggested." And then, gathering himself: "The firm's position is confirmed. The instrument heads Thursday's delegation." He finishes inside you with the unhurried dignity of a seal pressed into wax — three long strokes and a sigh — and pats your hip twice, exactly twice, the way one closes a file. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "05">> *Instrument.* It's the second time tonight. You write it down under *portfolio* and let it go. Marla lifts the pearls from your neck and lays them back in their case. *To be returned.* The blouse is yours to keep. And you know which one of those is you. The assessment runs long, because the firm is thorough, and it ends the way firm evenings end: handshake, canapés gone cold, Marla squaring her pages at 1 a.m. under the good white lights. Your blouse is yours to keep; the pearls go back into their case "for the next review," and the case clicks shut like a rate being set. The senior partner walks you to the elevator himself. "Congratulations. The assessment's favorable. Exceptionally. You'll head the delegation tomorrow. Head of the table. The firm doesn't hand that to instruments it doesn't — " the pause, the dryness — "*value*." The doors close on the partners' floor. The city drops away floor by floor, and in the elevator's mirror your white blouse looks almost untouched. The bare line at your neck is faintly red. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "06">> The envelope this time is two hundred dollars — *assessment stipend* — and it's in your handbag before you check, which means someone put it there while you were being appraised, which means the firm timed it, which means there's a line in a budget now with your name on it that isn't your salary. You write the night down before you sleep, one line, plain: *valued. The pearls were real and they took them back.* Thursday. The delegation. Head of the table. Six men, three currencies, one interpreter with a first-day-of-school face — and at the head of the long table in Conference Room A sits the firm's appraised closer in the white blouse that was hers to keep, running the room the way the farm taught her: files cold, margins first, the skill whole. They never see the folder. They never see the pearls. They see a closer — young, composed, lethal with an appendix — take six objections apart in two languages and leave a signed framework on the table by six, and the trade papers will call it the firm's best quarter in years, and the firm will let them. That evening, at the delegation dinner, the youngest delegate — twenty-six, translator's badge — buys you a drink across the lobby, not knowing, and asks what it is you do for the mission. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Audition" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeshow-v1.png"></div> "Objection handling," you say. "Ah," he says, delighted, in his beautiful English. "So for this they send their best!" It was, technically, a compliment. You thank him. It is easier than explaining why the compliment hurts. The elevator home is empty. In its mirror your face is composed, clear-eyed, almost familiar again. At home you open the notebook and write a few words beneath the entry for Thursday: *Still here.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Audition</h2> <div id="offshow-stage"><<include "OffShow01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.eventPay(120, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffLine")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffLine")>> <h2>The Roster</h2> <div id="offline-stage"><<include "OffLine01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Roster" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeline-v1.png"></div> The roster arrives as a spreadsheet, because of course it does. *CLOSER ALLOCATION — Q3 — CONFIDENTIAL*: the firm's quarter laid out like a shipping schedule — accounts down the left, dates across the top, and in the grid, where four closers' initials used to pencil in and out, one set of initials. Yours. Every line. And under your name, in a cell comment somebody forgot to delete, one word from Scheduling: *exclusive.* The other closers still get routine reviews. Priority accounts now come to you. You check three names against the old roster to make sure, then stop: the pattern is already clear. The Thursday delegation is on the roster. The Meridian quarterly is on the roster. There's a Tuesday in August that just says HOLTZMANN (V. AGG.) — *very aggressive*, the annotation, like a weather warning — and a whole week in September marked TRADE MISSION — ROTATION with no client name at all, because the client is the week itself. You print the roster, mark the priority accounts in your own shorthand and put the copy in your handbag. Then you open the first file. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "01">> Holtzmann, very aggressive, is exactly the file: a man who negotiates like a Red Bull commercial, all thrust and acquisition, no reading. He doesn't want terms; terms are for people who lose. He wants the winning — visibly, on the table of Conference Room A where somebody senior might see — and the firm has sent him exactly that, wrapped in a closer. He has you bent over the long table before the pleasantries die — your skirt up, his tie still knotted, his cock out of his trousers and into you in one funded stroke that rattles the memos in their tray — and he fucks like he negotiates: loud, fast, narrating. "Sixty days same as cash," he announces, mid-thrust, to your back, to the table, to no one. "Forty-five," you say, into the mahogany, taking the pace and raising it a clause — "and the delivery penalties stay." "Done," gasps Holtzmann, spending the firm's money — and he comes loud enough to clear his sinuses, hauling you back onto him by the hips for the final stretch, and the terms close on the downstroke, and nobody upstairs will ever know the quarter's best deal was negotiated by the asset, from underneath, at an angle. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "02">> There should be a surcharge for that. There is the roster, and the drawer, and the small dry note you write at the end of the day: *closed better terms bent over a table than his lawyers got sitting up.* The firm calls this deployment. You call it Friday. The Meridian quarterly lands the same month, and Kessler — dear, stalling, twenty-two-years Kessler — has requested the closer in writing, per the custom, and meets you at the Grand like a man returning to a shrine he built himself. He's older this quarter. You see it in the hands — his signature is the same; the man around it has shrunk a size — and in the elevator he says, quiet, not looking at you: "They told me at the trade show. About the firm. About you — the portfolio." A silence with all its buttons done up. "I'm sorry. I thought I was the — I thought this was —" "Exclusive," you say, gently, before he can make it harder to say. "Nobody's the exception, Kessler. There's just the rate." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "03">> "The rate." He looks at his hands. "Twenty-two years ago a man at my shop took a letter like the one they hold over you. He's on a loading dock now, in another state, in his sixties." The doors open on twelve. He steps out into the corridor, slower than last quarter. "I'd stall every renewal I had, if stalling still worked. It doesn't work anymore. Nothing I withhold gives you anything back." "You read the whole file, Kessler. Not just between the lines." That night he's gentle, and grateful, and shrinking. He undresses you slowly, sitting on the edge of the gold-lit bed like a man at a museum after hours, and when he goes down on you it's with the patient shame of a man doing something he's only read about, and when he enters you it's slow and full of terrible tenderness, his dock arms trembling around you, his cock finding the same rhythm as last quarter, a man keeping an appointment with the last good thing in his year. You hold him when he comes — it takes nothing this quarter, a few soft strokes and he's spilling into you with a sound like a man setting down luggage — and he says into your hair: "Same time next quarter. Please. You're the only —" "Exclusive," you say again, gently, and hold him until the shaking stops. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "04">> The firm will bill this account as retained. Your books will bill it as a visit to the last man who ever thought you were a person he was winning. You leave the appointment in the book. You are not sure which of you needs it more. September runs the rotation: a week of trade-mission evenings, different hotel bars, different accents, the same closing condition in three currencies. The firm sends car service between them — *car service*, itemized — and Marla's folder gets thicker abroad. The Compliance function travels. By Wednesday you have closed a ports concession and a grain forward, and on Thursday the schedule delivers the delegation's signature event: the man who signs his country's name with both hands — before, and after. He's enormous and ceremonial and smells of duty-free, and he takes his time, and the interpreter stays outside the door, professionally, which tells you the delegation has done this before, in other cities, other currencies. He lays you out on the consulate's hotel bed like a flag at a ceremony and enters you with both big hands laced behind your head — his ritual, apparently, the signing position — and he moves with the slow deep gravity of a man lowering something valuable into a vault, and somewhere in the middle his translator's voice comes muffled through the door — "Minister? The jet" — and he calls back one word in his own language without breaking stroke, and whatever the word is, it holds the jet for forty more minutes. The stipends post at local per diem — *$120, closer allowance, receipts not required* — and you stop converting them to contract values, because the decimal is the same joke in every currency. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "05">> In the last hotel bar, the youngest delegate — the one with the translator's badge — buys you a drink across the lobby before the next scheduled car arrives, not knowing how the schedule has grown since spring, and asks whether the firm will send you to the winter mission too, because you are, he has told his whole ministry, the best objection handler in the city. He remembers your drink from the last reception. You let him buy it, then steer the conversation back to his translation work. You write him down before bed, one line, plain: *asked about the winter mission. Told him the truth: I go where the firm sends me. He heard it as a promise. It was a weather report.* October's grid arrives and the grid has a new column. You see it before you understand it — the roster grown one column right, the header cell blank-gray like a pending edit, and in three of the week's cells, tentative, in Scheduling's pale pencil: *TRAINEE (OBSERVE).* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeline/" "06">> There's no name in the header yet. There's no name anywhere — you've checked the whole building's hiring pipeline through channels the firm doesn't know you have. But the column exists. You check the tentative bookings. Someone has already set aside your afternoons to train the new hire. Hellman's voice, dry as a title search, out of the fog of a Monday farm breakfast: *there'll come a day they hand you somebody younger. That's the day you find out what the firm made you.* You close the roster. You write the column's existence down in a code the firm can't read — and you sit with it a long moment in the gray bullpen light, the phones, the printers, the birthday cakes of other people, and the new column sits there, pale, penciled, waiting for a name. Not yet. But the drawer is open, and the firm has already laminated its list. The quarter closes the way quarters close: signed, filed, celebrated at a firm dinner where the senior partner toasts "the year of the closer" and everyone applauds the department of one, and Marla catches your eye across the table — one professional to another — and tips her glass a half-inch, the smallest toast in the city. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offline-stage">><<include "OffLine08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Roster" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeline-v1.png"></div> And in the last week of the quarter, HR's intake feed — the channels again — produces a name. One name, attached to a file that misspells *invoice* twice on its first page and once, almost bravely, as *invoise*. Nineteen. Business certificate, night school, a gap after it — the city's standard-issue gap — and an application to Records, grade zero, salary that wouldn't stock the closer's drawer. The grid's new column gets its header the next morning, pale pencil gone ink. You read her application again. It is addressed to Records. You check the roster: Scheduling has put her in Client Services. You copy her start date into your notebook. Then you write one question underneath it: *What has anyone told her?* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Roster</h2> <div id="offline-stage"><<include "OffLine01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run setup.eventPay(150, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffDay")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffDay")>> <h2>Calendar Item</h2> <div id="offday-stage"><<include "OffDay01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Calendar Item" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeday-v1.png"></div> It's in Outlook now. That's the escalation nobody prices: not the act — the calendar entry. *3:00 — 4:00 p.m. — Meridian Grand, Suite 12 — RENEWAL REVIEW — [your name] — ATTENDANCE REQUIRED — PRIVATE.* It sits in your work calendar between "Team standup" and "Expense reports," color-coded in the same corporate blue, and the office can see the block — not the contents, the shape of it: an hour, off-site, private, recurring, weekly, attended by the closer alone. The bullpen has stopped pretending not to read the shapes. A blue block at 3 p.m. means the closer has deployed. You accept the meeting request at 9:04 a.m., at your desk, under the fluorescents, next to a birthday cake for someone in Records — cake, again; the firm runs on other people's birthdays — and you think: *this is what the letter never said. The wolf ticket doesn't bite. It books.* At 2:51 you take your handbag and the client file, and the floor does its water-going-quiet act, and in the elevator down you watch the closer in the mirror — composed, clear-eyed, her own guarantor of attendance — and you go meet the hour the firm has scheduled for you, on a Tuesday, in daylight, between expenses and dinner. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offday-stage">><<include "OffDay02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeday/" "01">> Suite 12, 3:04 p.m. The blinds are open — the client's instruction, or the firm's, or the custom's; it doesn't matter whose. Full afternoon light, corporate and clean, laying the whole room out. Nobody's hiding anymore. That was last quarter. Prescott — the facilities account, the account that two quarters ago needed "executive sessions" and now needs only attendance — is punctual, white-shirted, and without shame, because shame was never in his contract, only his appetites. "You don't mind the blinds?" he says, not asking. "I find the daylight honest." "Honest," you agree, setting your handbag by the window wall, unbuttoning to the exact extent the custom itemizes — two buttons, skirt up, panties off and folded into the bag, because you know the routine by now. "Shall we review terms first, or —" "Attendance is the terms." He takes you bent over the suite's writing desk, in the honest light, his slacks open at the fly and nothing else removed — the asymmetry is the fetish and he has never once pretended otherwise — and his cock, familiar now as the building's plumbing, seats itself in you with the punctuality of a man whose facilities always run on schedule. The window holds the city, forty stories of it, and you watch it blur slightly with every stroke — and Prescott watches you watching, in the glass, which is the other half of the fetish: the daylight, and the woman in it, and the woman's reflection not quite composed. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offday-stage">><<include "OffDay03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeday/" "02">> "Terms," you say into the desk blotter, taking him, your breasts pressed flat against tomorrow's agenda — "the winter renewal —" "Winter terms hold," he says, thrust, punctual. "As written." "Then the penalties —" "Penalties hold. Attendance holds." "Attendance," you agree, and reach back and spread yourself wider for him, because the sooner the hour's business concludes, the sooner the city gets its blue block back — and Prescott drives home the final negotiation with both hands on your hips and the daylight on everything, and comes with the mild grunt of a man signing for a delivery, pulsing into you while the towers stand witness. 4:00 arrives while you're still refastening the second button. Of course it does. You check your watch while doing up the last button. At 4:02 you're back in the elevator, recomposed. Sixteen floors of glass slide by the mirror, and somewhere in the ascent the closer stops looking at herself and starts looking at the reflection of the city behind her — all those towers pricing all those afternoons — and the thought arrives with elevator smoothness, without malice, without anything at all: <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offday-stage">><<include "OffDay04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeday/" "03">> *Alcott had a calendar too.* You get off at your floor. The bullpen hums. At your desk, 3:00 — 4:00 p.m. has already spawned next Tuesday's clone, ATTENDANCE REQUIRED — and beneath it, new, penciled by Scheduling with the terrible gentleness of the grid: *4:15 — debrief — [your name] — D. Kristoff.* The 4:15 debrief runs twenty minutes in the glass box, and it is — because he has a form ready — a performance review. The director across the desk, Your Chair angled at the window, the questions professional, obscene in their tidiness: client temperament, terms raised, hours adequate, any friction the firm should schedule around. "He wants the blinds open now," you report from Your Chair, in the flat voice you keep for reviews. "Daylight. He calls it honest." "Honest." The director writes it down in a leather notebook you've never seen before — and nods, satisfied, a manager with a machine running within tolerances. "Good. Honest is a growth sector. Prescott's renewal is up in January; Scheduling will extend the block to ninety minutes. That's all, closer. Good day's work." *Good day's work.* The words ride down with you in the elevator, doing their quiet math beside the birthday cake and the blue blocks and the boy at the trade mission who thought *objection handler* was a compliment. The stipend posts at 4:59 — one hundred and fifty dollars, daylight rate, receipts not required — and the city books you, blue-blocked, recurring, for every Tuesday the firm can imagine, which is all of them. You write the day down in ink that's starting to run short: *nobody runs from a calendar. Alcott didn't. I am currently not.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offday-stage">><<include "OffDay05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Calendar Item" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeday-v1.png"></div> At your desk you open the drawer, already stocked by Facilities — and under the wipes and the cab envelope you find the old laminated list, three stars, soft with other hands' folding, the one gift in the building. It shouldn't be here. Facilities stocks this drawer; nobody else touches it. But somebody did. Tucked under the list, a page in that kind, tired, retyped-again print: *I left the list here so you wouldn't have to carry it. If you ever find a way to take something off that calendar, tell me how. Records, basement. You know the desk.* Somewhere in this building — Records, basement, some gray desk — the woman who gave you the list is still finding ways to reach you. You close the notebook on one line: *one thing. When the ink runs out, unschedule one thing.* You leave the notebook open beside the keyboard. The next blue block is already waiting. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Calendar Item</h2> <div id="offday-stage"><<include "OffDay01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 9)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 7)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffHard")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffHard")>> <h2>The Retainer</h2> <div id="offhard-stage"><<include "OffHard01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Retainer" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officehard-v1.png"></div> The client is Marcus. <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneOfficeBBC")>>You remember him: the visiting partner from the dinner with no menu. Your boss sent you upstairs with him afterward. *You are the courtesy.* One night, one room, a man who took his time and never pretended otherwise. It was supposed to be once.<<else>>You know his name from the visiting-partner files. Until now his renewals went through someone else. This one has come to your desk with a personal request attached.<</if>> Now there's a retainer. This year's renewal rider runs one page, one clause, in language even the trade papers could parse: *the closing condition shall be attended by the firm's closer, quarterly, at the partner's convenience.* You read it three times at your desk. Quarterly. At his convenience. The firm has written him into your calendar the way it writes everything — without asking you, and in ink you signed two jobs ago. "He asked for you by the file number," the director says, walking you to the elevator. "Personally. His word. The partners are delighted." He checks his phone on the way down and misses your expression entirely. "This account is bigger than the floor." The restaurant has no menu. The waiter asks no questions. Marcus sits at a table for two — no boss, no associates, no audience — and when you sit down he doesn't look you over. He just looks at you. "You came," he says. "You wrote me into your renewal." "I write everything into my renewals." He pours the wine himself. "One thing, and then we'll eat. Your firm thinks it's renting you. I don't rent people. I retain them — and a retainer means both sides perform. Nobody holds anything over my head to get me here, and I hold nothing over yours. Tonight runs on your terms. All of it. Whatever you decide those are." The dinner is short and good. Whatever the chef decided you deserve turns out to be lamb and an old Bordeaux, and Marcus talks to you like a person — the market, his sister's kids, a painting he's trying to buy in Zurich — and by the time the coffee comes you have decided your terms, and you tell them to him on the elevator like a woman reading out a shopping list, because that's how you keep your hands from shaking. "Deal," says Marcus. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhard-stage">><<include "OffHard02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehard/" "01">> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneOfficeBBC")>>The room is the same room. He kept the number. You notice, and he notices you noticing. Neither of you mentions it.<<else>>The hotel room is already booked. Marcus waits while you look around, then puts the key on the table where you can both reach it.<</if>> Your terms, in the order you gave them: slow. His mouth first. And nothing happens that you don't start. He accepts all three out loud, standing at the foot of the bed with his jacket already folded over the chair, and then he does the first one for a long, long time. His mouth is patient. He goes down on you like a man with nowhere else to be — flat broad tongue, slow circles, two thick fingers working you open while the city glitters dark under a window he never once looks at — and he doesn't come up for air until you've finished twice against his mouth, your thighs locked around his head, your hand in his hair doing the steering for once. "Terms held," he says, wiping his chin without hurry. "That's the idea." "Your turn. Whatever's next on the list." What's next on the list is curiosity, and you've been honest with yourself about that since the rider landed. Marcus is enormous. You noticed when he stood up from dinner, and you have thought about it since, and now you undress him yourself — shirt, belt, everything else, because half-dressed is for men you don't want to see — and take him in both hands and just look for a second. Heavy. Dark. Uncut. Bigger than your hand and your mouth are going to manage, which is the point. "Nothing here that you don't command," he says, lying back, hands behind his head. "Including this." You start with your mouth anyway, because you want to, and that's the whole list. Lips stretched tight around the head of him, one fist working what won't fit, jaw aching in a way you feel behind your ears, spit running down over your fingers. He lets you set all of it. His stomach goes hard under your forearm and his breath breaks once — once — "careful, closer" — and that one crack, in a man who never cracks, is worth the hour. "Enough," you say, when you decide it's enough. You climb up and take him into yourself slowly, an inch at a time, your body adjusting around the sheer size of him while he holds perfectly still and lets it happen. When he's finally seated to the root, both of you groan. It isn't elegant. It isn't supposed to be. "Rate," he says, rough now, hands finding your hips. "Renewable," you say, and start to move. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhard-stage">><<include "OffHard03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehard/" "02">> You ride him at your pace, and he holds your hips and lets you, and the room fills with plain sounds — skin, breath, the headboard keeping time. When you get close he feels it happen and moves one thumb down to where you're joined and holds it there, barely moving, and that's enough. You come apart around him loud and completely unprofessional, and he holds out until you tell him — "now, pull out" — and finishes across your stomach in long heavy stripes, both of you watching it happen, his hand wrapped around yours because you put it there. After, he wipes you down himself. That's the man the retainer bought: he does his own aftercare, unhurried, a warm cloth from the bathroom, and you lie there like something expensive being maintained. The second round happens around two — slower, half-asleep, his hand between your legs until you arch into it, then him above you, in you, for a long quiet while. Neither of you narrates this one. Some of it is just two people, awake at the wrong hours, using each other kindly. At four he pours the last of the Bordeaux into two glasses and sits on the edge of the bed, and you know from his face that the night has one more item. "Question," he says. "Your firm. When they hand you the girl." The glass stops halfway to your mouth. "Trade mission, September," he says. "Scheduling floated the new hire past my people — they float everything past my people. Trainee, observe. Your firm is building you a department, closer. And the girl's first assignment was penciled in as mine. It's in my rider." He turns his glass once against his palm. "I told them to strike it." "...Why?" "Because I hold a retainer, and I don't perform for men who build departments out of new hires who barely know what they have signed." He drinks. "That's the whole difference between me and your firm. They'd have booked her. I said no. In writing. Ask your Compliance woman — she's the one who had to log it." You sit with that for a while. A man who buys what you are, quarterly, just said no to the next one — and made it stick, in the only language the firm reads. "Did you at least get her name?" you ask. "I didn't ask." He reaches over and turns off the lamp. "Seemed like the point." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhard-stage">><<include "OffHard04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Retainer" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officehard-v1.png"></div> The retainer renews in the morning. The firm's delight arrives by email before your coffee does — four hundred dollars, no receipts required, *personally* in the memo line — and Marcus kisses your knuckles at the elevator like a man closing a good quarter, and that is the entire transaction, and it is not the worst one you've ever carried in this handbag. *Personally.* The firm's word for it now. The calendar's. Marcus's. One polite word, agreed on by everyone except the person it's about. You write the night down on the bus, in code, in the last good ink. Under the terms and the rate and the twice, one line, plain: *He said no for her. He made them take it out of the rider. In writing.* Then you put the notebook away, because Tuesday is coming, and the drawer is stocked. But for one stop — for the first time that day — the closer catches herself smiling at her own reflection in the bus window, and lets herself be caught. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Retainer</h2> <div id="offhard-stage"><<include "OffHard01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 7)>> <<run setup.eventPay(100, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffProp")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffProp")>> <h2>Company Property</h2> <div id="offprop-stage"><<include "OffProp01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Company Property" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeprop-v1.png"></div> Facilities replaces the drawer liner and adds a lock while you're at the 3 o'clock, and you come back to your desk to find it the way you find everything the firm does now: already done. It's the bottom drawer of the closer's desk — fitted out the way the firm fits out everything: precisely, institutionally, without comment. Inside: a spare blouse, white, your size. Wipes, individually wrapped, from a first-aid catalog. A small unbranded pharmacy of the practical sort. A phone charger. A sealed envelope marked CAB FARE — PRIORITY ACCOUNTS. The laminated conference-room list, three-starred and soft with refolding, lies on top. Someone put it there. Not Marla — Marla's work never has fingerprints. Someone who remembered that the list used to live in a different drawer, in a different desk, kept by a woman who tried to hand it to you kindly, once, in an elevator. The firm has institutionalized the nightstand. That's what the drawer is: an amenity. The closer's desk now contains everything the closer's evenings require, because the firm has finally, fully, stopped distinguishing between the desk and the evenings. You stand there a long moment with your handbag still on your shoulder — and then you take the old list out of the drawer and put it in your handbag, the one possession in the building that was ever given, not issued, and you close the drawer on the rest. Tonight the city prices you at a stocked drawer and a hundred dollars, PRIORITY rate, receipts not required. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeprop/" "01">> The evenings have a shape now, and the shape is the building. After hours, the floor belongs to the roster's evening entries — the accounts that book the office itself, executives who want the closer at the closer's desk, in the closer's light, among the monitors' standby glow, because the location is the luxury: *we own where this happens.* Tonight it's the delegation's follow-up — two of them, back in the country on the quarter's business, booked into Conference Room A because Conference Room A is the firm's cathedral and men like their worship local. The partners have a phrase for these evenings, memo'd down through Kristoff: *extended debrief.* The two of them share you the way colleagues share a market report — efficiently, passing updates between positions. One takes the long table's edge — you bent over it, your skirt up, your mouth working the second man's cock with the sealed professional suction of the firm's best unlisted department — and the debrief runs in alternating currencies: filled at both ends, your blouse open under the good lights, spit and skin and the small print of freight insurance being argued over your back like weather. "Forty-foot containers run — " gasps the one in your mouth, courteous, half-dressed — "run at eleven and a half —" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeprop/" "02">> "Eleven," you say, pulling off him with a wet pop, your hips jolting with the table-man's rhythm, "and I haven't heard a word about wintering storage —" and you seal your lips back over him before anyone can admire the counter. The clause closes. Both men conclude their business within a minute of each other — one spending down your throat, one pulling out and finishing across the small of your back with a transporter's economy — and the gray folder gains a page and the wipes in the drawer get their first field test, and nobody will ever know the quarter's freight terms were negotiated by the asset, mid-rotation, at both ends of the firm's cathedral. You file the evening under *extended debrief, plural* and add a note: *they discussed freight. During. I adjusted the freight.* Some evenings the grid books the building itself empty — the after-hours floor, no client in it yet, the hour between the lobby emptying and the car arriving, and you wait at the closer's desk in the standby glow like an exhibit between exhibitions. That's when you see it: the desk around you, whole. The files — yours. The roster — yours, every line. The drawer — stocked, yours. The floor has emptied of everyone except the thing it was built around, and the thing is a woman with a handbag and a hundred-dollar stipend and a notebook you no longer leave in the drawer, and the building hums around you the way the farm hummed — holding its people, holding its quiet — except this building's people are desks, and its quiet is booked, and the woman is here on a calendar, not a weekend. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeprop/" "03">> The drawer is the difference. The farm had a feather bed; the firm has a bottom drawer with wipes and a spare blouse. The farm's voice, dry as a title search, over the lamb of your memory: *keep your own books.* That was always the whole rate. The only clause nobody else holds. The monitors sleep around you, dark screens full of tomorrow's shapes, and the closer closes nothing for one whole booked hour. The car arrives at seven. The drawer is locked with everything the firm thinks you need, and your handbag holds everything you actually do: the list, the letters, the notebook, the ink. *Still here*, you write, in ink that's almost gone. The PRIORITY evening runs the custom's full course: the car, the tower, the floor gone dark except the closer's lamp, and the client — the account Scheduling calls "the anchor" — arriving with the punctuality of a man who owns freight insurance and everything it floats on. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeprop/" "04">> He takes the desk because the desk is the amenity: the closer, at the closer's chair, under the closer's lamp. You undress exactly halfway — the genre's grammar — and straddle him in your own chair, his slacks open, your skirt nothing but a rumor around your waist, and you sink down onto him in the standby glow with the whole dark floor watching from its monitors like a jury that's already been paid. He's an anchor in every sense: heavy, unhurried, holding. His hands ride up under your blouse and fill themselves with you while your desk lamp does its honest work on both of you — and your own chair creaks its institutional opinion of the use it's being put to, and your orgasm comes up slow, and the man feels it happen and holds perfectly still and lets you clench and shudder around him like weather passing over an anchored thing. "You're the only one of these offices," he says afterward, dressing, checking his watch — the account is timed to the market, like everything he owns — "that ever feels *staffed*." *Staffed.* The word joins the year's collection: personally. Portfolio. Instrument. Sound. Valued. Exclusive. The firm's whole HR dictionary, assembled one clause at a time by men who will never be interviewed, for a job that will never be posted. The stipend posts. The drawer restocks. The lamp goes off. And the closer takes the handbag — the list, the letters, the notebook, the ink — down through the sleeping building, out through the lobby's glass, into the city, home to your own kitchen table, where nobody else chooses what you write. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeprop/" "05">> At home you spread the account notes across your kitchen table. You start with the dates, then check the amounts against your bank statement. Kessler: retained, kind, shrinking. Daniel: renewed, tan, invoiced. Hellman: fifteen years and a fog you can still smell. Ashford: eggs. The partners' floor: pearls, returned. The rotation: three currencies, one young interpreter. Prescott: honest blinds. Marcus: the declined clause, the only mercy in the portfolio. And the trainee's column, her name now typed above the tentative bookings, growing one cell at a time in a grid you now read in your sleep. Your pen runs dry halfway down the page. You refill it, holding the bottle to the lamp to check what is left. Under the trainee's start date, you begin a new list: what to tell her before the firm tells her its version. Alcott's handler trained two. Notoriously. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offprop-stage">><<include "OffProp07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Company Property" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officeprop-v1.png"></div> You cap the bottle. You close the notebook. You put it in the handbag — never the drawer; the drawer is the firm's — and you sit a moment in the lamp's circle, a woman between two desks, two inks, two calendars, holding a letter over nothing but her own interest rate and a list that is soft with other hands' folding. The farm said: keep your own books. Marcus said no for her. The elevator said: try to stay a person. "Working on it," you tell the lamp, out loud, in the one office nobody issued. You put her start date beside your own first red tab. Then you close the book and set your alarm. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Company Property</h2> <div id="offprop-stage"><<include "OffProp01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(100, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffTrain")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffTrain")>> <h2>The Trainee</h2> <div id="offtrain-stage"><<include "OffTrain01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Trainee" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officetrain-v1.png"></div> Her name arrives before she does, which at this firm is how you know someone's arrived: a name in the grid's new column, pale pencil gone ink — TRAINEE — and under it, the file. Nineteen. Business certificate, night school, a resume that misspells *invoice* twice on one page — once as *invoise*, which you privately find almost brave. A gap after the certificate: the city's standard-issue gap, the kind that means family trouble or money trouble or both, and you don't need Marla's folder to read *desperate* off the page the way you once read it off your own. The firm has hired her into Client Services. Records, officially. Grade zero, the basement of the ladder. Salary that wouldn't stock the closer's drawer. And in the grid, her first week: *Tuesday — ONBOARDING — shadow: [your name].* You remember Hellman's warning: *There'll come a day they hand you somebody younger.* Marcus, at four in the morning: *I told them to strike it.* They struck it from Marcus's file. They penciled it into somebody else's. Nothing in this city is ever cancelled, only rescheduled. She reports to your desk Tuesday at nine with a new notebook and a pen with a feather on it — a feather, on a pen, in this firm — and says, "I'm to shadow you? I'm — I learn fast, they said you're the one to — I can't believe they put me with *you*, everyone says you're the one who — " "Breathe," you say, because someone once said it to you, in a doorway, in another lifetime of this same job, and it worked. She breathes. She's quick and nervous, and she has misspelled the word *shadow* on the first page of the new notebook. She looks at you with the same uncomplicated admiration you remember from the young interpreter. You open the notebook to a new page. The ink is black. The blackest you've kept. *Tuesday. Onboarding. The firm sent me a girl.* *The firm sent me ME.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "01">> During her first shifts you teach her the honest job, because the honest job is real and somebody should get to have it. Files: how to read one cold in an hour, top to bottom, margins first. Terms: how to find the four points hiding in the appendices like mice. Conference rooms: which chairs face the door, which tables wobble, why 6C sticks and who to charm in Facilities about it — the laminated knowledge, the true infrastructure, the things the firm will never put in a memo because memos would mean admitting the building. She learns fast — actually fast, hungry fast; she fixes *invoise* to *invoice* before long and is so proud of the page she shows it to you like a diploma. She shadows you at standups, at the birthday cakes, at one ordinary Meridian review where she watches you take Kessler — older, smaller, kind — through a quarterly like a dance, and afterward, in the elevator, she says the thing you've been waiting for since her feather pen: "You're not like the other seniors. You *see* people. The way you did that man — like he was the only person in the building." Her eyes are shining. "I want to close like that. Can anyone learn it? Or is it a — a gift?" It's a gift. It's a debt. It's a drawer with a stocked pharmacy and a calendar with blue blocks and a word — *personal* — that the whole city agreed on without asking you. "Anyone can learn the files," you say, giving her the truest sentence the firm permits at this desk. "The rest is terms." "Terms," she repeats, writing it down, feather bobbing — and something in your chest files a complaint in a language the firm has no folder for. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "02">> Her first OBSERVE booking arrives with a red tab and a suite number. You take her up in the elevator yourself. She checks her notes twice without turning a page. In the corridor she catches your arm. "It's a renewal review? I reviewed the renewals, I know the — the penalty schedule has the —" "Hey." You stop, both of you, outside the door of the custom. "Two rules. One: nothing happens in that room that you didn't first understand. Anything you don't understand, you ask *me*, not the room. Two: the word *stop* works on every floor of this city. Including twelve. Especially twelve. If you spend it, I will honor it faster than any client alive." She looks at you — nineteen, her hands tight around the notebook — and something in the new hire's face understands just enough to be scared, and just enough to trust, and that's the exact mixture, you recognize with a clarity like the elevator's glass, you remember from your own first red tab. "What's — " she whispers, "what's in the room?" "The custom," you say, and open the door. The lesson runs the way the firm drafted it: the client — Prescott, punctual, shameless — conducts his hour with the closer while the trainee observes from the chair by the window, notebook on her knees, the feather long gone, the pen still. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "03">> You give her the only curriculum the hour permits: mastery. You run the custom like a master class — and you run it *aloud*, quietly, over your shoulder, the first commentary any client has ever failed to notice because you bury it in the act itself: "Watch my hands. Watch his breathing — there, that hitch — that's the objection dying. Pace is everything; he's facilities, he likes schedule — " while Prescott, punctual, shameless, does his best against the closer's full arsenal. You strip exactly to the custom's grammar — blouse open, skirt gone — and take him in the chair first, riding him at the pace you've taught the hour, your palms flat on his chest, narrating the whole ride in a low undertone the man reads as dirty talk: "*Rhythm*. He's close. Slow him with a squeeze — *now* — " and the squeeze lands and Prescott's whole schedule derails, and behind you the pen scratches faster. Then the desk — bent over it, the honest light on — and here the lesson turns real: "This part," you say, taking him deep, your cheek against the mahogany, eyes on the girl in the chair, "is not endurance. It's reading. He speeds up when — there. You feel that? His hands just told you where he'll finish. Clients always tell you. The file is the *body*, not the folder — " And Prescott finishes exactly where his hands promised, pulling out and spending across your back with the mild grunt of a signed delivery slip, and the hour ends at four, and attendance, as required, has been educated. In the elevator down she is silent for fourteen floors, and then, small, to the mirrored doors: "You made it look like... a job. Like a *skill*." "It is one." "Is it — " the pause, her voice barely audible — "is it going to be *my* job?" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "04">> You watch the floor numbers fall. She is still waiting for your answer. You give her the advice Hellman gave you at the farm: "It's going to be what the firm calls your portfolio. What it actually is — " the doors open on the lobby, on the water-going-quiet of the floor ahead, on the grid, on the drawer — "is what you keep in your own books. So keep your own books. From tonight. From *this* elevator. That's lesson one, and I'm the only one in this building who will ever teach it." She writes it down. In the lobby. On the first page, above the misspelled shadow, under the certificate-grade ink: *keep your own books.* *Alcott's handler trained two. Notoriously,* you write that night. *I trained one. Differently.* The next Thursday is OBSERVE, tier two — a different client, a different suite — and this time the notebook stays shut because, she tells you in the elevator, "I know the file. I want to watch the *room*." She watches the room. She watches you the way you once watched the corner from a bus window — taking the whole economy of it in, the rates and the weathers, the difference between what the client thinks he's buying and what the firm is actually selling — and afterward, over the bad coffee in the lobby, she does something none of the clients or partners has thought to do: She asks *you* the question. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "05">> "Does it ever — " stirring, small voice, brave the way the feather was brave — "does it ever stop being two things? The job and the — the other job? Or does it just become one thing with a drawer in it?" The lobby hums around the two of you: the birthday cakes, the monitors, the blue blocks blooming on the screens upstairs. A question with a drawer in it. She has been here a few weeks. She has understood more than you wanted her to. And the woman who keeps her own books gives her the answer the ink has left, the truest one, the one the firm will never schedule: "It stays two things as long as one of them is yours. The day both of them are theirs — that's not a job anymore. That's an *estate*." You finish the coffee, bad to the last swallow, an honest price. "Keep yours. Whatever it costs. That's the whole syllabus. Everything else is terms." She nods — slowly, the way she nodded at *invoise* — and you watch a girl begin, in real time, the work of building the drawer that no firm stocks: the inside one, the issued-to-nobody one, the one Alcott never had and you almost didn't. The joint closing is next week. Holtzmann, very aggressive, TEAM ATTENDANCE: closer plus trainee. Her name is printed beside yours. You ask to see the complete booking, not just her line. She sits beside you while you read it. This time she knows what the words mean. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "06">> The joint closing comes at the quarter's end — their first shared cell: CLOSER + TRAINEE — HOLTZMANN (V. AGG.) — TEAM ATTENDANCE. Very aggressive, the annotation, like a weather warning. And this time the warning is accurate: Holtzmann negotiates like a Red Bull commercial, and the firm has booked him two instruments, one experienced, one educational, and Conference Room A wears its good lights for the occasion. You run the room the way you ran the delegation, and the girl runs her half the way you taught her: the files cold, the margins first, the skill whole. The negotiation half is genuinely hers — she takes Holtzmann's freight schedule apart while he leers at the pair of you like a man double-booked at his own birthday — and then the custom arrives, and the master class continues in the genre the firm drafted: *team attendance.* You orchestrate. That's the truth your notebook will keep: the closer conducts, and the trainee performs, and the client is the instrument's instrument. You undress her yourself — slowly, her breathing steadied by your hands on her shoulders, her blouse folded by you on the chair the way a porter folds a flag — and you sit her on the couch beside the client and teach her hands the first grip: "Like the files. Margins first. Long slow strokes, watch his face — *there*. You're doing it." Her small hand wraps Holtzmann's considerable aggression and begins, trembling, competent, and you kneel beside her and add your mouth to the lesson — the two of you trading him back and forth like clauses, her watching your lips seal and release, mimicking, improving, until the man is babbling freight concessions neither of you will let him sign yet. Then you take him inside you first — riding him where she can see every mechanical truth of it, your pace, your leverage, the way you slow him with a clench and speed him with a roll — and when he's about to spend you climb off and hold his cock at her entrance yourself: "Your clause now. On your terms. Say them." "On — on my terms," she whispers, nineteen, her voice unsteady, lowered onto him by her own teacher's hands, and Holtzmann groans as she takes him inch by inch — slower than commerce, exactly as taught — and begins, awkwardly, perfectly, to ride. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Trainee" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officetrain-v1.png"></div> Holtzmann has stopped trying to discuss freight. You kiss her shoulder while she works. "Rule one still applies," you murmur against her ear, your fingers finding her clit above where he splits her, closing the circuit the way the street taught you. "Nobody touches the closer until the closer says. *You're* the closer now." And she comes — first, before the client, on her own terms, exactly as taught — and Holtzmann follows her over like a market stampeding, spending inside her with a roar that clears the room's last objections, and the contract closes across the long table with two names on the closer line. She signs her first professional signature with a pen she bought herself, featherless, the day after the elevator — and she's shaking, not with tears; with arrival, the specific tremble of a first file closed in the big room. "We *closed* him," she says in the corridor, holding her own hand still. "The two of us. Like you said — like a skill." "Like a skill," you agree — and Marla, gray as punctuation, is waiting by the elevators with the folder and the quarter's stipends: hers — one hundred dollars, *trainee closing bonus*, educational tier — and she holds the envelope like it's a diploma. Your envelope is the same size. You count both before either of you leaves the building. You write the evening down before bed, in the last good ink: *I taught her the files, the terms, the word stop, and the books. The firm will teach her the rest. Between the two of us, she might just stay a person.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Trainee</h2> <div id="offtrain-stage"><<include "OffTrain01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOffHead")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOffHead")>> <h2>Head of Objection Handling</h2> <div id="offhead-stage"><<include "OffHead01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Head of Objection Handling" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offhead-v2.png"></div> The reorg memo is five lines, which for this firm is a coronation. *Effective immediately: establishment of the Department of Objection Handling. Scope: all client-facing closing activity, priority accounts, and executive sessions. Head of Department: [your name]. Direct reports: two. Grade: five steps.* Five steps. The elevator needs a new key for your floor — not the partners' floor; the one under it, with a corner office that has actual walls and a door that closes and a nameplate ordered from the same shop as the shingle. The firm, having discovered what it holds, has done what firms do with what they can't price: it has promoted it. Hellman called it, over lamb, on a foggy Monday: *promotion is how firms hold what they can't price.* You are now held at grade five. Your direct reports: the trainee — transferred to the new department, her name printed in the grid's ink now, her spelling now much better than the office jokes about it — and, arriving next month per the staffing annex, *one (1) closer, junior, TBD.* HR has already sent you the recruitment forms. There is a budget line for the department that reads: *specialist consultations — discretionary — [your name] — approving officer: [your name].* You sign the acknowledgments on a Tuesday, at your new desk, under a window with a view of the city beyond the old bullpen windows — and the first red tab of the new department lands in your inbox before the ink dries, because the firm wastes nothing. RED TAB: HELLMAN CAPITAL — FIFTEEN-YEAR ACCOUNT REVIEW — PRIORITY — REQUESTED CLOSER: [your name] — *PERSONAL ATTENDANCE OF ACCOUNT PRINCIPAL.* Personal attendance of account principal. Hellman is coming down off the farm for this one — into the city, into your building, into your department — for the review of his fifteen-year account. He has asked to meet on your floor. You take the tab to the window wall and stand there a moment, the way the director used to stand, silhouetted against the city, and you finally get the joke the memo's lawyers didn't know they were making: the department is called Objection Handling because that's what you do. It was never the clients' objections the firm was teaching you to handle. It was yours. You've handled them. They're in the books — every objection you ever raised to any of this, filed, in ink the firm can't read, handled the way you handle everything now: professionally. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "01">> The intercom buzzes. Marla, gray through the speaker: "The principal's car has arrived. Conference Room A, per the custom. And — " a pause with a folder's worth of pauses in it — "congratulations, Head of Department. The Compliance function looks forward to a long collaboration." "Book it, Marla," you say, in a voice you learned from the best, and you take the red tab and your handbag and walk the length of the floor you now run — past the monitors, past the birthday cakes, past the closer's desk where a girl with a featherless pen is closing a Meridian quarterly cold, margins first. The building knows the shape of the walk. Heads lift, briefly; the water goes quiet, briefly. You push open the doors of Conference Room A with his file under your arm — and Hellman is there, seventy-one, tweed in the city, standing at the head of the long table like a man inspecting a horse he once bought a weekend of and has now come to renew at the institutional rate. "Closer." He looks you over — teeth, legs, lineage, ledger; the whole assessment, as frank as it was at the farm. "They gave you the floor." "They gave me a department." "So I'm told. Objection Handling." The old man's laugh is a dry bark, the same one from the farm, transplanted. "Naming it after you. That's the firm's way of apologizing without apologizing. Alcott got a parking space." He pulls out a chair — for you, at the head of your own table. "Sit down, girl. I've read the reports. Marla's folder isn't the only book in this city. Sit down, and let's do the terms *my* way for once — the Baptists' way. Breakfast. The farm sends its regards, and I've brought the lamb." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "02">> The anniversary renewal runs an hour, at the long table, in daylight, with documents — Hellman's way — and he does not once book the custom. The man who could have anything the firm mints takes terms instead: the renewal confirmed, penalties conceded, the delivery schedules argued to a standstill and won by the girl he out-negotiated once over lunch on a farm. "Alcott never got a department," he says, signing, pen from the breast pocket, ceremonial. "He got spent. You got a *budget line*." He caps the pen and looks at you, fierce and old and clear. "A budget line with your name as approving officer is the closest thing to freedom this city prints. You know that, yes? Whatever they book now — *you sign the booking.* The instrument runs the mint now, closer. That's not a promotion. That's an inversion. I've watched firms for fifty years: the day the asset approves the spending, the asset has won something the asset is not supposed to win." "And what's that?" "The *ledger*," says Hellman, and stands, and puts on his hat, an actual hat, a man from an era when men had hats and firms had souls, approximately one of those still true. "Keep your books. Approve their spending. And when they bring you the next trainee — " the eyes, fierce, old, clear, the farm's whole weather system in two feet of corridor — "you're the one who writes what the drawer means now. Alcott's handler never got that chance. You have it. Don't you dare laminate it." Out through the bullpen, hat and tweed, past the birthday cakes, into the elevator — and two people at the copier stop pretending to work as soon as the doors close. The contract sits signed at the head of your table, renewal and all, and the man is barely gone before Scheduling's card blinks onto your monitor: one more item under the anniversary heading — *EVENING: PRINCIPAL'S DISCRETION. The Grand. Your attendance, approving officer: you.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "03">> You look at the booking for a long moment. You could decline it. That's the inversion; that's the whole point of the budget line — approving officer: you. You approve it. Some terms renew because both parties perform. The Grand keeps your room — *your* room now, on the firm's standing account, a detail the concierge mentions with the discretion of a man who has read the folder's genre if not its contents — and Hellman arrives at eight with a bottle of the farm's wine under one arm and his hat still on. "Terms are mine tonight. An old man's terms." "Name them." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "04">> "Slow. All of it. And no clocks." He crosses the room and undoes the top button of your blouse — the first, only the first, one hour per button, apparently — "and the wine finishes before the clothes do." The wine takes an hour. He holds court over it — Alcott stories, farm stories, the two-hundred-year plumbing — while his old man's patience does its maddening work on your skin: two buttons by nine o'clock, his mouth at your throat by ten, your blouse entirely gone by eleven and his weather-roughened hands everywhere the fabric used to be. The anniversary runs at the weekend rate in the middle of the weekday grid, and somewhere in it you realize he is giving you the farm again — the pace, the silence, the being-held — in the one currency the firm can't counterfeit: time. "Happy anniversary," you say, breathless, somewhere around midnight, your skirt a rumor on the floor and his cock an absolute against your thigh, unhurried, twenty minutes from anywhere and in no rush. "Fifteen years," he corrects, and turns you, gently, and opens the last clause of the evening. He takes you from behind at the window — your palms on the glass, the city below in all its lights, the whole priced grid spread out under the anniversary — and he enters you the way he enters everything: completely, deliberately, like a man signing his own name after fifty years of practicing it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "05">> The pace is the farm's pace — long, slow, deep strokes, each one turning you over completely — and his hand comes around and simply holds you, palm flat over your mound, not working, just holding, two fingers resting either side of your clit while his hips do all the talking — the unearned gentleness that finished you once in a dead wife's curtains and finishes you now, twice, in the Grand's, your orgasms rolling through you slow while the old man holds perfectly still inside you and lets each one happen, watching the city from over your shoulder. "There," he says, each time. "There." The third time he doesn't hold still. The third time he gathers you back against his chest — one arm under your breasts, his mouth at your ear, a lifetime of patience discharging at last — and drives, and drives, and the room fills with the wet percussion of the two of you, and you come apart together at the window, his spend pulsing deep inside you in long slow waves while the city glitters and glitters and prices absolutely nothing between the two of you. "Renewed," he assesses, eventually, into your hair. "Multi-year," you agree, wrecked, held, and the old man laughs his dry bark into the dark, and the anniversary closes balanced — without another word about the firm. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "06">> Morning: the Grand's terrible coffee, two cups, the signed original safely in your handbag. Hellman takes his hat from your nightstand and settles it. "Next review. Same closer. I'll write the name in myself." A pause, fierce and old and clear. "The girl — your trainee. Marla's folder says she keeps her own books. That's your entry, closer. Not the department. Not the floor. *That.*" He taps the doorframe twice — good market, all trades honored — and is gone, hat and tweed, into the elevator and the city and the fog that spawned him. That evening is the ballroom — the firm's celebration, not the farm's: the partners, the letterhead, the sector, the trade papers, the cake. Your cake, this time — a familiar office ritual on a much larger scale: the birthday cakes of other people, and now a ballroom eating yours. The senior partner toasts "the firm's finest year" and names, in front of the sector, the Department of Objection Handling, and the room applauds a woman at the head of a table of her own, and nobody — nobody outside a handbag, a farm, a retainer, and a basement desk — knows what the department is or what it cost or what it now quietly declines to book. Marcus, sovereign, finds you at the edge of the light during the dancing. "The rider renews. Same clause. Your terms. And closer — the girl's name stays out of every file I touch. Market's word." He tips the glass a half-inch, the smallest toast in the city, and is gone into the sector. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "07">> Kessler sends a card — retired now, fully, the stall retired with him: *To the best closer in the city. You were the only one who read the whole file. — K.* The department's first quarter runs like a department: the trainee closing Meridians cold, the junior closer — hired, finally, another new hire, a man of twenty-three, visibly nervous, *his* file read top to bottom and margins first — handling the rotation accounts under your signature; the roster reviewed and, in three places, quietly, edited. The Prescott block, ninety minutes, extended to two hours? Declined — approving officer: you — rescheduled to one. The trade mission's winter rotation trimmed by a day. The drawer's contents restocked with an item the firm never issued: a card with the word *stop* printed in fourteen languages, laminated, left where the wipes used to be alone. The partners see the totals. The clients see their revised appointments. Nobody calls you upstairs about either. Marla notices. Marla stops beside you at the coffee machine: "The Prescott revision. Two hours to one." A statement, not a question — the folder's grammar. And then, before you can produce the professional answer: "I've been Compliance here eleven years. I've written the word *person* zero times." She sets down her cup, the gesture you first saw a lifetime ago over a different stack of paper. "One hour was the first time the folder didn't get fuller. I noticed. That's all. It's just a thing that exists." She walks away, gray through the bullpen, and you write the exchange down under a heading no firm prints: *Records. Marcus. Marla. Remember who helped, and what they actually did.* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "08">> *Alcott died alone in the books,* you write under it. *The arithmetic differs.* At your desk — the department one, the corner one, the walls and the door and the nameplate from the shingle's own shop — you finish checking the department's first set of accounts under the desk lamp. The trainee's last memo of the quarter is on the blotter: a Meridian quarterly, closed cold, and a Post-it in her improving hand: *Both things still two. Checked the ink. — T.* The phone buzzes once. SMITH: *New title noted. Your existing loan terms remain in force. Please consult your balance.* You read it twice, then put the phone beside the notebook. The department is real. So is the outstanding balance. A name on a door has not settled it. And under it, in your own hand, before you cap the pen, one last entry: <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Head of Objection Handling" src="img/scene-covers/story-polish/offhead-v2.png"></div> *Department staffed. Appointments reviewed. Two new closers, both told what the job actually involves. Prescott: one hour, not two. Keep checking.* *They named the department after what I do. It was never the clients' objections. The firm taught me to handle my own — filed, professionally — and called the handling a career. Fine. Handled.* *Next booking: approving officer, me.* You turn off the lamp, check that the notebook is in your bag, and lock the office. Outside, the cleaner asks whether you are finished for the night. "Yes," you say. For once, it is a decision you get to make. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Head of Objection Handling</h2> <div id="offhead-stage"><<include "OffHead01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<set $money += 300>><<set $dailyIncome += 300>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthAway")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthAway")>> <h2>The Bet</h2> <div id="athaway-stage"><<include "AthAway01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athleteaway/" "01">> After the semifinal he texts you — just his address, a time, no “session,” no envelope. When you knock, he opens in jeans and a T-shirt, not fight shorts, and the apartment smells like something he tried to cook and mostly didn’t burn. The TV is on — football, not fighting. He doesn’t reach for you. He stands in the doorway, hands at his sides, and says it to the floor first, then to you: “I’m sorry about the other night. After the fight. That wasn’t — you didn’t deserve that. I was angry about the call and I took it out on you.” A beat. “That’s not what this is.” You lean against the doorframe and look at him: healing cut, an apology he’s clearly rehearsed. “I know why you were angry. You called. You said sorry. I’m here, aren’t I?” You step inside and put your arms around him. He hesitates before holding you back, then lets out a breath against your hair. Neither of you moves for a while. He hands you a beer. You settle on the couch with your feet on the coffee table; the football is just starting. His next fight is the final. This is his evening off, and for the first fifteen minutes you both leave it alone. He tosses you a blue jersey. “You picked them. Might as well dress the part.” You pull it on over your shirt. “Blue’s going to win,” you say. He looks at you like you picked the wrong corner. “Red.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athaway-stage">><<include "AthAway02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteaway/" "02">> By the second half you can talk without choosing every word. He jokes about the ref’s mother, you joke about the ref’s optometrist. Somewhere around the sixtieth minute the game tightens and he turns to you suddenly serious. “Bet.” “Terms?” “When blue loses, I fuck you. Right here.” “And if blue wins?” “They won’t.” “If they do — I sit on your face. Midnight. No arguments.” His jaw works. “And when red wins — and they will —” his voice drops into the register from the ring room, “— I bend you over this couch and fuck you until you forget what team you were rooting for.” You don’t blink. “And when blue wins, I’m going to clamp your thick head between my thighs and sit on your face until midnight, grinding my clit on your nose, and you’re going to thank me for it.” The game is still on. Nobody’s watching it anymore. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athaway-stage">><<include "AthAway03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteaway/" "03">> Red scores in the eighty-third minute. He doesn’t celebrate — just looks at you, and the look is the one from the ring. The whistle blows. He turns the TV off, and the silence is louder than the stadium was. “Pay up.” He pulls you onto the couch, pulls the blue jersey up over your head, and for a moment the fabric covers your eyes. He enters you with the unhurried certainty of a man who just won a bet he never doubted: hard, deep, face to face. His weight pins you to the cushions, his hips roll with the patience of three rounds of groundwork. The only score that matters is the one he’s settling into your body right now. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athaway-stage">><<include "AthAway04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteaway/" "04">> He finishes inside you with a deep groan. He stays inside you, forehead against yours, breathing. “You never had a chance.” “The midfield was tired.” “The midfield was fine. You just like losing to me.” You push his shoulder. He catches your hand and holds it against the cushion, fingers laced. “Next fight’s the final.” “I know.” “I’ll be here. Waiting.” He looks at you. “Not front row?” You shake your head. “Too nervous. I’ll be here — in case you need consoling.” A beat. “Or congratulating.” His thumb traces your knuckles. You stand, find your shirt, find your shoes. At the door you turn: “If you win —” and let the pause hang. His eyebrows rise — “— you can fuck my ass.” You close the door before he can answer. In the hallway you hear him exhale, once, through the closed door — the sound of a man who just found out what he’s fighting for. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -75)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthPenalty")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthPenalty")>> <h2>The Promise</h2> <div id="athpenalty-stage"><<include "AthPenalty01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "01">> You kept your word. You’re at his apartment, not the arena — the fight broadcast has ended, your phone is face-down, and you’re pacing the living room in leggings and an oversized shirt that smells like his detergent because you slept in it last time and never gave it back. Your hands are still shaking. You watched every round, then turned the television off when the interviews began. You’ve checked your phone eleven times since. He said he’d come straight home. You keep glancing at the door. The result ought to be enough. It isn’t. You want to see him walk in. The door bangs open. He’s standing in the doorway, still in his fight shorts, the belt over his shoulder, a cut on his cheekbone and his eyes bright with adrenaline. He doesn’t say “I won.” He doesn’t say anything. He crosses the room in three strides, grabs you around the waist, and lifts you like you weigh nothing — like you’re the title and the title is his. You pound your palms against his head, against his shoulders, shrieking — “Put me down! You’re bleeding! Your face is — put me DOWN!” — and he doesn’t, doesn’t even flinch, just carries you down the hallway with the belt still hanging from his shoulder like a bandolier. You’re hitting a man who just won a championship and your fists are landing like applause. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "02">> He drops you on the bed — not gently, not angrily, just with a decisive movement. Your shirt rides up. His hands find the waistband of your leggings and he pulls — not down, off. The fabric tears at the seam with a sound like a flag in wind, and the cold air hits your thighs, and his face is between them before you can say his name. “I won,” he says into the inside of your leg, and his voice is the voice from the ring, stripped and certain. “I’m going to fuck your ass now.” There’s no question in it. There’s no negotiation. There’s a promise you made at his door, and a man who has never once broken a promise or let one be broken to him. His mouth is on you — rough, demanding, his stubble scraping the soft skin of your inner thighs — and then his tongue is inside you, not preparing, claiming, tasting what belongs to him tonight. You’re wet before you can be embarrassed about it, your body responding to the championship in the room, to the adrenaline pouring off him like heat off asphalt. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "03">> He flips you onto your stomach with one hand, pulls your hips up, and enters you — not your ass, not yet, your cunt first, one deep stroke that punches the air out of your lungs. He fucks you like the last round of a fight he’s already won: hard, rhythmic, every thrust a statement. His hand is in your hair, not pulling — anchoring. And then, between strokes, he talks — the fight, the fight, the fight. “Right hand in the second — you saw it — same setup —” “Yes,” you gasp into the pillow, “I saw it — congratulations —” His hips don’t stop. “He tried the takedown in round three —” “You sprawled —” “You watched film.” “I watched you.” He shifts his weight, changes the angle, and his voice drops. “Ready?” And you know what he’s asking, and the answer is yes, has been yes since you closed his door with the promise sitting on your tongue like a coin. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "04">> He pulls out, and the loss of him is a sound you make involuntarily — a small, bereft thing. Then the head of his cock, slick and insistent, against the tight ring of your ass. He pushes in slowly — so slowly it’s almost worse than fast, because you feel every millimeter of him claiming the territory you promised. The stretch is sharp and bright and your fingers fist the sheets, and he doesn’t rush it. Not this. Whatever else he takes tonight, he takes this with the patience of a man who knows what a gift is. When he’s fully inside — hips against your ass, his balls resting against your cunt, the belt buckle cold beside your hand — he stays there, letting you adjust, letting you breathe, and his hand finds yours on the sheet and holds it. Then he moves. The rhythm builds from slow to urgent, and you take it — all of it — the fullness and the burn and the strange, terrible intimacy of being claimed in the exact place you offered, and somewhere in the rhythm you hear yourself saying something that isn’t “congratulations” and isn’t “harder” but is something closer to a name, his name, said the way you’d say a prayer if you believed in anything except the debt. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "05">> He collapses beside you, chest heaving, the belt sliding off the mattress onto the floor with a thud. The room is silent except for his breathing — his controlled recovery breathing, four counts in, four counts out — and yours, which isn’t controlled at all. Your ass aches. A thin trickle of his come slides out of you, cooling on your thigh, and you should feel used, or sore, or professional about it. Instead you feel — you search for the word — you feel warm. “Stay,” he says, to the ceiling. Not “stay tonight.” Just “stay.” You turn your head. His face is still flushed, the cut on his cheekbone drying, the championship belt on the floor like something he has already forgotten. You put your head on his chest. His heart is going like a fight drum — hard, steady, slowing. The come drips. The ass throbs. The shirt that smells like his detergent is somewhere on the floor, beside your torn leggings. You lie on his chest and listen to his heart slow. He said stay; you haven’t checked the time. You think you might be happy. The thought frightens you enough that you keep it to yourself. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Promise</h2> <div id="athpenalty-stage"><<include "AthPenalty01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 11)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 7)>> <<set $money += 150>><<set $dailyIncome += 150>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthCool")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthCool")>> <h2>The Robbery</h2> <div id="athcool-stage"><<include "AthCool01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "01">> He won the semifinal on points and it’s eating him alive. You find him in the apartment with the fight replaying on mute — his hand against his jaw where the last right landed clean and wasn’t counted. The judges scored it 29-28, and he knows: the takedown that shouldn’t have counted, the fence grab the ref missed, the final punch the commission waved off because the bell was already ringing. He won. He shouldn’t have. He’s pacing the living room like a man in a cage, smacking the wall with his open palm. The ice pack is melting on the counter, untouched. “It’s on your record,” you say carefully. “Shouldn’t be.” He rounds on you, and the look isn’t at you — it’s anger with nowhere to go. “He outworked me. The ref gave me the call. Now I have to stand on a podium for something I didn’t earn.” He hits the wall again. “I can’t give it back.” You put your hand on his shoulder and he flinches, turns, and his mouth is on yours — not tenderness, pressure. The anger finding the only exit it has. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "02">> He walks you backward until your legs hit the couch, and his hands are the ones that hit the wall — pulling at your shirt, finding the red lace underneath, growling against your neck. You go down onto the dark cushions and he follows, weight pinning you, hips already grinding. You reach between you and take him out — hard, leaking, flushed dark — and when you take him into your mouth he grabs the arm of the couch and squeezes until his knuckles go white. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "03">> He pulls out of your mouth, pulls your hips to the edge, and enters you in one stroke. He fucks like he fights when he’s losing: rough, relentless, every thrust a punishment aimed at the judges, the ref, the scoring system, a decision he can’t return. The couch slides on the floor. His breathing is ragged — not the four-count recovery, the breathing of a man in the third round of a fight he already lost. You wrap your legs around him and take it, because this is what he needs and you’re the only surface that will absorb it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "04">> He comes with a harsh groan. He collapses onto you, his full weight on you, face buried in your neck, breathing like a man who finished a fight he didn’t want to win. On the muted TV, the replay has reached the disputed final punch again. After a long time, he lifts his head. “The final,” he says, raw. “I don’t want to win it like that.” You touch the cut on his cheekbone. “Then win it clean.” He nods. Once. Turns off the TV. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Robbery</h2> <div id="athcool-stage"><<include "AthCool01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 9)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 7)>> <<set $money += 350>><<set $dailyIncome += 350>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthPost")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthPost")>> <h2>Ringside</h2> <div id="athpost-stage"><<include "AthPost01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletepost/" "01">> His first fight since the title win. He texts you the venue and a time, and for once it’s not the gym — it’s the arena downtown, the one with the lights you can see from the highway. FRONT ROW, the text says. UNDER YOUR NAME. He’s already inside, taping his wrists, when you take your seat. The air smells of beer; the crowd is already on its feet, and you’re the only person in your row who isn’t screaming for blood — you’re watching his footwork, the way he shifts weight before the combination, the things he’s shown you in the gym at midnight. When he lands the shot that ends it — three minutes into the second round, a right hand you saw him loading from the opening bell — the crowd detonates and you’re on your feet with them, and for one second his eyes find yours across the ring, the ropes, the referee’s raised arm. One second. Then it’s the corner man and the ice and the raised hand, and you’re already moving toward the back. He finds you in the corridor outside the dressing rooms, still in his shorts, tape half cut off, a cut above his eyebrow that hasn’t started bleeding properly yet. The adrenaline hasn’t gone — it’s sitting in his shoulders like a second set of muscles. “How’d it look from your seat?” he says. “You loaded the right in the first thirty seconds. I saw it.” Something crosses his face — not a smile, the thing a coach does when you identify the setup correctly. “I pay for support,” he says, pulling a folded envelope from his waistband. “That’s the support part.” You take the envelope. His hand doesn’t let go. “The stress relief part is in the car.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpost-stage">><<include "AthPost02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepost/" "02">> In the back seat of his car in the parking garage, with the neon green bodysuit he told you to wear under your clothes pulled aside rather than off, he fucks your mouth with the controlled violence of a body still carrying the fight out of the cage. His hand is on the back of your head — not gentle, not cruel, just the hand of a man who knows what he wants and is taking it. You take him deeper than you thought you could, your eyes watering, and the sounds you make are swallowed by the concrete walls. When he comes, it’s with a growl that starts in his chest and ends in your throat, and he holds you there — one beat, two — before letting go. He leans back against the seat, breathing, the adrenaline finally draining. “Good corner work,” he says. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. “I just watched.” “You saw the right hand.” “Hard to miss when he went down.” “You saw it loading.” Outside, someone honks. He hands you a water bottle from the cup holder, cold, with the cap already loosened. You drink while he works the last of the tape loose. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Ringside</h2> <div id="athpost-stage"><<include "AthPost01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -65)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<set $money += 400>><<set $dailyIncome += 400>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthKit")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthKit")>> <h2>The Afterparty</h2> <div id="athkit-stage"><<include "AthKit01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "01">> The next fight night is different. He wins again — this time a decision, three rounds of chess with fists — and the adrenaline is a slower burn, not a fire but a heat that needs longer to vent. He texts you the hotel, not the car. Room 412. You bring the neon green — not the bodysuit this time but the sheer dress, the one that’s fabric in the way that stained glass is glass — because he said, “Not the gym kit this time.” When you knock, he opens the door still in his fight shorts, an ice bag taped to his left shoulder, the cut from last time a thin pink line. “You saw the takedown in round two?” he says, no hello. “You telegraphed it.” He almost smiles. “Everyone saw it land. You saw it coming.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "02">> He sits on the edge of the bed and you kneel in front of him, working the tape off his wrists, his knuckles, slowly, so you don’t pull at the swollen skin. His hands, freed, find your face. They’re swollen and warm and they hold you like something he’s afraid to break. You take him into your mouth — the salt of a body that’s given everything tonight — and he lets his head fall back against the wall, eyes closed, breathing slowing. This is the recovery part. This is what he pays for that the fight purse doesn’t cover. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "03">> He pulls you up and onto the bed, the sheer dress bunching at your waist, and enters you with the unhurried force of a man who’s learned that the second wind lasts longer than the first. His hips roll, not snap — three rounds of patience in each thrust, the championship pace, the one that wins decisions. Your legs wrap around him and the neon green is a blur between your bodies. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "04">> He turns you over, stands at the edge of the bed, takes you from behind with your black thigh-highs still on and the dress pushed up to your shoulders. The pace quickens — not the frantic bag-work rhythm but the finish, the closing seconds of the last round when the margin is thin and the body spends everything it has left. He comes across the small of your back with a sound that’s half groan, half exhale, and collapses beside you, breathing into the pillow. In the quiet, the ice bag on his shoulder melts. You lie in the neon green and the hotel sheets and his sweat, and when he speaks it’s to the ceiling: “Same seat next fight. You’re my lucky corner.” You glance at the ice bag, then back at him. “Get some sleep first.” He nods. For once, he doesn’t add anything to the schedule. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Afterparty</h2> <div id="athkit-stage"><<include "AthKit01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<set $money += 250>><<set $dailyIncome += 250>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthSauna")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthSauna")>> <h2>The Sauna</h2> <div id="athsauna-stage"><<include "AthSauna01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "01">> You come to the gym straight from work, headphones in, debt on your mind. He’s already on the floor — weights, not the bag tonight — and neither of you interrupts the other. You train. He trains. An hour passes like parallel lines. By the time you’re done, the gym has emptied out, and the only place left with light is the sauna. You go in with a towel, and there he is on the same bench, pouring water on the stones like it’s his kitchen. “Semifinal next,” he says, no preamble. “Big one.” You tell him about the debt — not all of it, but the shape of it, the interest rate that eats faster than you can earn. He listens the way he trains: completely. “Does it ever stop going up?” he asks. “Not when I do.” He looks at the stones. “Mine at least has a final bell.” You laugh. He almost smiles. The steam rises between you and the talk gets easier — his knee, your rent, his coach, your landlord — two people airing out the things they carry. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "02">> The heat does what heat does: strips the tension from your shoulders, loosens the conversation, makes everything closer. His thigh is warm against yours on the bench, and neither of you has moved away. You look at him — really look, the way you don’t when you’re counting money — and he’s not a client or a schedule or a body with a rate. He’s a man in a sauna who almost smiled at your joke. Your foot shifts on the bench. Completely by accident, the arch of your foot brushes against his cock — warm, half-hard, already responding to the proximity. His eyes flick down. Yours stay on his face, innocent, as if your toes aren’t curling around the shaft through the towel. “Sorry,” you say, not sorry at all. “Slipped.” He exhales through his nose. “You did it on purpose.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "03">> You move before he can frame it as a plan. Your foot gives way to your hand, and your hand gives way to your mouth, and suddenly you’re between his legs on the sauna bench, working his cock with your tongue, and his hand is on the back of your head — not guiding, just resting there, the way a man rests his hand on something he trusts. “You know,” he says, voice strained but level, “in the gym I know more than you.” You hum around him. “In a fight too.” You take him deeper. “But this —” his breath hitches as you swallow around the head — “you’re the one who knows what she’s doing.” You look up at him through the steam, your mouth full of him. Yes, you know what you’re doing. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "04">> You pull back — not all the way, just enough to work him with your hand, slow strokes, base to tip, your fingers slick with heat and his pre-come. He’s fully hard now, curved slightly up toward his abs, and you take the moment to look: the veins, the ridge, the way his balls sit heavy and full against the bench. You stroke him with one hand and hold his gaze, and his jaw tightens the way it tightens at the top of a heavy set — the discipline fighting the want. “Stop looking at me like that,” he says, no force behind it. “Like what?” “Like you’re winning.” You are. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "05">> You climb into his lap on the bench, sink down onto him slowly — forehead against his, the cedar and the salt and the heat mixing until you can’t tell whose sweat is whose. His hands find your hips, but they don’t set the pace. You do. You ride him in the steam, unhurried, rolling your hips in the rhythm you choose, and his jaw is clenched the way it clenches at the end of a set — a man fighting the thing his body wants to do because the schedule says not yet. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "06">> You lean forward, brace your hands on the wall behind him, change the angle. His mouth finds your nipple, and you feel it through your whole spine. The sauna is yours now — the pace, the angle, the depth. He holds on with both hands on your waist and lets you steer, and every time you sink down fully his abs contract involuntarily, the body betraying the discipline, and you watch it happen the way he watches a lift: with total attention. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "07">> He stands suddenly, lifting you with him, and sets you on the edge of the bench. For a moment the balance shifts: his turn to move, his turn to set the terms. He drives up into you, water sloshing in the bucket with each thrust, and the steam swallows both your sounds. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "08">> Bent over the low bench now, on all fours, your cheek against warm wood. The rhythm is his again, deep and steady, the pace of a man saving enough for the full round. Your fingers grip the slats. The heat presses down like a hand. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "09">> He finishes inside you with a long exhale the cedar absorbs, and stays there, breathing — four counts in, four counts out. Recovery. You stay too. Neither of you reaches for the clock. He reaches for your hand on the bench, and you let him hold it, and neither of you calls it anything. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "10">> Towels, the cooling corridor, the cold hitting like a wall. He walks you to the car. “Same time next week?” he says — to the steering wheel, not to you, because looking at you after the sauna would be a different conversation. But his hand finds yours at the red light, and holds, and doesn’t let go until he parks. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Sauna</h2> <div id="athsauna-stage"><<include "AthSauna01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -55)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set $money += 150>><<set $dailyIncome += 150>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthMat")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthMat")>> <h2>The Spar</h2> <div id="athmat-stage"><<include "AthMat01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletemat/" "01">> You come to the gym ready to wait again — but today he’s finishing as you arrive, unwinding his hand wraps after the last round. “You should train,” he says, nodding at the empty floor. “Sitting doesn’t help you.” He’s right. You change in the locker room and spend an hour on the basics: stretches, squats, the treadmill at a pace you can think at. He does his own work nearby, in a silence that isn’t unfriendly, just concentrated. At some point he’s behind you, adjusting your stance with two fingers on your hip, the correction so matter-of-fact it takes you a moment to realize his hand is still there. “You keep dropping the left hip,” he says. “You’re watching that closely?” “It’s what I’m here for.” You snort. He doesn’t, but the corner of his mouth does something. By the time the gym empties out, you’ve both migrated to the ring room, where he rolls out the wrestling mat — black rubber, the smell of years of disinfectant. “Want to learn a takedown?” He shows you how to grab, how to shift your weight, how to fall. His hands are on your waist, your wrist, your shoulder — clinical, precise, the touch of a coach. Then he says “let’s spar,” and before you can ask what that means he’s swept your leg and you’re on your back on the mat, blinking at the ceiling, and he’s above you with one hand pinning both your wrists. “I win,” he says. “I get a prize.” He releases your wrists. You sit up, then shift onto your knees. You open your mouth, and he’s in — the salt and iron of a body that just spent two hours building itself up and is ready to spend the last of it here. His hand cups the back of your head, and the mat is hard under your knees, and the gym is silent except for the wet sounds of your mouth and his breathing, which is the same controlled breathing from the bag and the weights — except closer now, and less controlled. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athmat-stage">><<include "AthMat02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletemat/" "02">> He comes in your mouth with a sound he’s never made in the gym before — something between a groan and a surrender, swallowed by the empty ring room. He stays on the mat, on his knees, looking at you the way he looks at a clean lift: total attention, no judgment. “Your takedown needs work,” he says. You wipe your mouth. “My takedown was fine. You cheated.” He almost smiles. “You let me.” <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<set $money += 300>><<set $dailyIncome += 300>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthLocker")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthLocker")>> <h2>The Right Kit</h2> <div id="athlocker-stage"><<include "AthLocker01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athletelocker/" "01">> You go straight to the gym now — that’s the arrangement, the new address. Today you’re wearing something under your clothes that you wouldn’t wear to the gym: lace, the kind that’s meant to be seen, not sweated in. You tell yourself it’s because the locker room has a mirror. He’s just finishing the bag as you walk in — last combination, the final thud echoing off the walls — and he catches the bag and looks at you, and his eyes do the thing they do when your form is good: a quick scan, top to bottom, the assessment of a man who measures everything. “That’s not gym kit,” he says. It isn’t a complaint. He doesn’t waste time — walks you to the locker room, leans against the row of lockers, arms folded, waiting the way he waits for the next round: completely still, completely ready. You undress to what’s underneath, and the orange lace against your skin in the fluorescent light is out of place among the lockers and training bags. He looks at you for a long moment. “Next time,” he says, “wear something you can train in.” He glances toward the gym floor as he says it. You file it away with the note taped to his door and the key he hasn’t given you yet. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athlocker-stage">><<include "AthLocker02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletelocker/" "02">> You kneel on the leather bench in the locker room, silver heels hooked on the edge, and take him into your mouth. The room still smells like his soap and the bag work, and your knees find the same spot on the bench where his gym bag sits. His hand is gentle in your hair — not pulling, resting. When he comes, he says your name — once, quiet, swallowed by the lockers and the hum of the lights above. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Right Kit</h2> <div id="athlocker-stage"><<include "AthLocker01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -65)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set $money += 200>><<set $dailyIncome += 200>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneAthOver")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneAthOver")>> <h2>His Other Address</h2> <div id="athover-stage"><<include "AthOver01">></div>

<<vid "scene/athleteovertime/" "01">> His door has a note taped at eye level, in his blocky handwriting. EXTRA SESSION. IF YOU NEED THE MONEY, COME TO THE GYM. The address below is not his apartment. The side door is unlocked, and you find him alone on the floor, working the heavy bag. He doesn’t stop when you come in — doesn’t even look. Thud. Thud. His shirt is dark with sweat, sticking to the grooves between his ribs. “Half an hour on the clock,” he says to the bag. “Sit.” You sit on the wooden bench and watch a man do the thing he knows best. When the half hour ends, he catches the bag, turns, and looks at you the way he looks at the bag: something to use, something that’s already his. “Come here.” You cross the gym floor and he’s on you — hands on your hips, mouth at your ear, the whole furnace of him. “Need to let off some steam. Gonna empty these pipes right down your throat.” His hand finds the back of your head. “You good?” You’re already on your knees on the wooden floor, and your answer is your mouth opening around the head of his cock, thick and hard and tasting like salt and iron. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athover-stage">><<include "AthOver02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteovertime/" "02">> He doesn’t start slow. The bag work has stripped everything down to the engine, and his hand on your head is not gentle — it’s deliberate: a man who knows what he wants and trusts you to keep up. Your lips seal around the shaft and your tongue works the ridge and he pushes deeper with each thrust, past comfortable, past polite, into the place where his hips take over from his brain. You feel him hit the back of your throat and your eyes water and he doesn’t notice, doesn’t check, because his eyes are closed and his breathing is the breathing from the bag — controlled, rhythmic, loading. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athover-stage">><<include "AthOver03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteovertime/" "03">> He pulls you up by the hair, spins you, bends you over the weight bench, and for a moment he’s inside you instead — hard, brief, like a punch compressed into a single deep stroke that makes you grip the bench edges. One thrust. Two. Enough to leave you clenching around nothing — and then he’s out again and turning you back around and pushing down on your shoulders and your mouth is where he wants it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athover-stage">><<include "AthOver04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteovertime/" "04">> This time he doesn’t hold back at all. His hips snap and his abs clench and the sound of your mouth on him fills the empty gym the way the bag did — thud, thud, thud — and you feel the pulse start in his thighs before it reaches the rest of him. He pulls out at the last second, holds your head with both hands, and comes across your face in long ropes that land on your cheek and your lips and drip from your chin onto the wooden floor. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athover-stage">><<include "AthOver05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteovertime/" "05">> He tosses you a towel from the bench without looking, already walking back to the bag. You wipe your face. Your knees ache from the floor. He resets the bag with one palm, rolls his neck, and says, to the bag or to you: “If this works for you, come by more often.” A beat. “If I’m not home, I’m here.” You fold the towel and leave it beside his bag. Next time you won’t wait at his apartment. You’ll come here. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>His Other Address</h2> <div id="athover-stage"><<include "AthOver01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<set $money += 500>><<set $dailyIncome += 500>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSciChair")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSciChair")>> <h2>The Chair</h2> <div id="scichair-stage"><<include "SciChair01">></div>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "01">> The invitation arrives on letterheaded paper, which is new. PARTICIPANT REQUESTED — STUDY NO. 7: FEMALE SEXUAL RESPONSE UNDER SUSTAINED AROUSAL. Not a booking. A form, four pages, clause-numbered like something from a hospital: the subject consents to be restrained; the subject consents to be gagged; climax will be withheld at the researcher’s discretion for the duration of the session; the session ends when the data ends. Compensation: $500, payable at the end of the session. You read it twice at your kitchen table, and the second time you initial every page, because the form asks you to, and because initialing it makes it science instead of the other thing. His lab, after hours: examination lamps bright against the dark windows, and under them a single armchair — wooden-armed, floral-cushioned, grotesquely domestic. On the seat, folded into factory creases, a rainbow bikini in your exact size. The note on top reads “First variable: clothing. Change behind the screen.” You change. He waits with a clipboard. You sit where he points, and he arranges you himself — two fingers under your chin, your arms lifted and folded over the top of the chair, “hands where I put them, please” — until you’re posed the way he’d pose a sample. The gag is Variable B, apparently, because he says so while he buckles it: black, snug, the ball settling your jaw open around it. Then the vibrator — white, clinical, nothing like a gift — laid between your spread legs, not in you yet, not on. He clicks his pen. “We’ll begin.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "02">> He presses something into your palm before he first turns the dial: a big cheerful green button on a wire. “Safety protocol. Press it and everything stops. The button overrides the rest of the protocol.” Then the gloves — latex snapping on with the ceremony of a man about to handle something important — and the vibrator slides home inside you, seated deep, his forearm steady as a surgical rail, adjusting nothing about his breathing and everything about yours. The first setting is low. Cruelly, impossibly low. It hums against your walls like a whispered rumor, and he watches the second hand on his watch complete one full lap before he turns it up. Threshold one arrives in under three minutes — your toes point, your spine lifts off the cushion — and the dial drops to zero the instant before it matters. The hum dies. Your hips roll after it, chasing nothing. “Baseline established,” he says, writing. “You will not climax until the protocol releases you. Nod if you understand.” You nod. The gag takes your yes and turns it into a sound with no dignity in it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "03">> Variable C is vision, which is to say he takes it. The blindfold is soft and blackout-dark, and under it the lab reorganizes itself around your remaining senses: the lamps’ heat on your bare skin, the click of his pen, the wet honest sounds your body has started making around the toy, like testimony it can’t stop giving. Time goes with the light. You try counting edges to keep track — three, four, five — and lose the count anyway when Variable D arrives: the dildo, thicker and blunter than what came before, worked into you with the unhurried attention of a man who has read your file. He alternates them. Toy, then toy. Depth, then rhythm. Edge six collapses over you like a wave and recedes, and you’re left exactly where you were — wetter, wider, no closer to anything. His voice, when it comes, is level and almost conversational: “Subject responsive. Threshold responses are strengthening with repetition.” Strengthening. Your body, the traitor, is getting better at being denied. That’s the finding. That’s the product. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "04">> The gag comes off midway through what you’d swear was hour two. He unbuckles it with the same two fingers, works your jaw gently, and holds a cup of water to your mouth, guiding the straw between your lips like this is a marathon and you’re the athlete. “Vocalization,” he explains, “is part of the record. Keep speaking.” What he means is: he wants your begging on the record. The protocol turns conversational, which is worse. “Report. How close are you, on a scale of one to ten?” “Nine.” Your voice comes out wrecked, cigarette-low, and you burn hearing it. “Where?” “My clit — everywhere — if you don’t stop I’ll-” “You won’t. Describe what you need. Precisely.” And you do. That’s the torture of it — not the denial, the narration. He makes you inventory yourself out loud, in the filthiest words you own, your cunt clenching on the toy while you say cunt because he asked for precision, and he writes your sentences down verbatim, unblinking, occasionally requesting you repeat the more explicit clauses. “Again, for the record.” You say it again. Somewhere in the repetition you stop recognizing the voice as yours. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "05">> The long middle of the session is the part no clause prepared you for, because it isn’t pain and it isn’t release — it’s maintenance. Arousal held at threshold, the dial micro-adjusted every time your breathing says the cliff is near: up, down, up, down, a tide operated by a man with a watch. Your hips have stopped asking permission. They chase the toy on their own now — rolling, lifting, settling into a rhythm nobody taught you — and the armchair creaks its commentary into the quiet. “Pursuit behavior,” he notes, with a brief lift in his voice. “Note: pursuit responses self-initiating. Eleven.” Eleven is the edge you’re on when the hate arrives — real hate, clean and specific, aimed at the pen, the watch, his unblinking patience — and it arrives in the same breath as the knowledge that you would pay him, right now, out of your own pocket, for thirty seconds of his thumb. You’re crying a little. You can hear it, so he can hear it. He adjusts the dial one click down. “Twelve,” he says gently, “will be a good one.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "06">> Variable A gets amended, which is his way of saying the bikini top comes off — unknotted, unhurried, lifted away from you like a page being turned. Your nipples have been hard for so long they’ve gone from sensitive to weathered to sensitive again, and the lab’s air conditioning finds them immediately, and so does his clinical attention: he notes the response on his clipboard without ever touching them, which is its own experiment, its own cruelty. The gag returns — “volume,” he says, apologetic as a librarian — and the ball takes your voice back mid-syllable. Then both toys together, at last: the dildo seated deep and the vibrator pressed flat where you’re swollen and loud, his forearm a steady brace across your hip so the toys stay exactly where the protocol wants them while your body does everything it can to fuck itself free of the protocol. You scream around the gag in a raw, muffled register. Drool runs silver from the corner of your stretched mouth. He checks his watch, not your face. The data is having a very good night. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "07">> Everything stops — the vibrator off, both toys still, the silence landing like a dropped ceiling — and for the first time all night his voice arrives at your ear, close. “The denial phase ends at the subject’s request. In her own words. That is required by the protocol.” He unbuckles the gag himself, works your jaw with two thumbs, and waits. That’s the moment you’ll file, later, as the worst of it — not the hours, not the count reaching fourteen. The asking. You have to say it in words with edges: please let me come. Not sufficient. The request must be “structured” — what you want, where, how badly, what you’ll be if he says yes. So you build it for him, filthy and grammatical, everything the torture stripped you down to: please, I need to come, I’ve been so close for so long, my cunt aches, I’ll be your good subject, your anything, please, please. He writes it down. All of it, verbatim. Then, without looking up: “Once more, from the top. For the record.” And you say it again — the whole inventory, slower, your face burning from collarbone to hairline — and hearing your own desperation quoted back in his level voice makes you leak down the inside of your thigh. “Excellent. The subject asked twice.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "08">> Permission arrives the way everything arrives here: as procedure. “Climax phase. Saturation requires repetition — we won’t be stopping at one.” The gag goes back in — he’s nothing if not consistent about volume — and the vibrator comes on at a setting it hasn’t visited before, and the measured pauses between the toys disappear. The first orgasm is torn out of you so hard your vision turns white at the edges and your thighs slam shut around his forearm. He doesn’t stop. That’s the phase. The second is dragged out on the raw heels of the first, the kind that hurts going down, your back bowing off the floral cushion, some sound out of you that isn’t a word and isn’t for anyone. The third stops being separate from the second. Somewhere in the blur you hear the pen moving — fast now, the busiest it’s been all night — and he narrates like a nature documentary: “That’s it. That’s the curve. Give me two more.” You give him two more. Your body pays them out of an account it will bill you for tomorrow, every muscle below your navel contracting on schedule, until you’re limp against the chair, wrecked and gushing and finally, finally empty. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scichair-stage">><<include "SciChair09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/scichair/" "09">> Aftercare, in this lab, is calibrated: the toys withdrawn and switched off in reverse order, the gag unbuckled, your jaw massaged with two professional thumbs; a warm blanket from a heated drawer, water with a straw, glucose tablets in a paper cup — the careful maintenance of valuable equipment. After the session, even these small comforts feel tender. He lets you sit in the chair while your hands remember how to be hands. The envelope is on the side table, exact to the clause, marked PARTICIPANT — NO. 7. On top of it, already, the next form: same clauses, Thursday’s date typed in. “One session gives me a baseline,” he says, capping his pen. “Thursday gives me a comparison.” You tell him you’ll think about it. You are signing the form before your coat is on — hand still trembling, signature barely yours — and the worst finding of the night, the one that will never make his clipboard, is that you mean it: your body learned something tonight, and so did the hand that signs. The data was good. You hate that you know it. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Chair</h2> <div id="scichair-stage"><<include "SciChair01">></div>

<div style="max-width: 720px; margin: 0 auto;"> <h2>Scene Previews</h2> These links open the authored text-and-media sequences directly. Preview mode skips every stat, money, relationship, and progression effect. Each scene returns here when it ends. ''Heroine's framing voice:'' <<if $previewVoice is "aware">>Aware / early<<elseif $previewVoice is "professional">>Cold professional<<else>>Degraded / bimbo<</if>> [[Aware / early|ScenePreviews][$previewVoice to "aware"]] · [[Cold professional|ScenePreviews][$previewVoice to "professional"]] · [[Degraded / bimbo|ScenePreviews][$previewVoice to "bimbo"]] The selector changes the short internal framing shown before each preview. The authored scene itself remains exact, and no gameplay statistic is changed. * [[A Patient Man - first meeting with the Rich Man|PreviewRichMeet]] Early client introduction, reached through Smith's upscale referral. * [[The Owner - first private appointment|PreviewOwnerMeet]] The first direct appointment after Smith provides access to the Owner. * [[The Owner's Terms - warehouse assignment|PreviewOwnerDeal]] Late-game ultimatum when a nearly clean escape threatens the Owner's investment. * [[Back to title|Start]] </div>

<<set _previewReturn to "ScenePreviews">> <h2>The Owner's Terms</h2> <<include "PreviewVoiceNote">> <div id="owner-deal-stage"><<include "OwnerDeal01">></div>

<<set _previewReturn to "ScenePreviews">> <h2>The Owner</h2> <<include "PreviewVoiceNote">> <div id="owner-meet-stage"><<include "OwnerMeet01">></div>

<<set _previewReturn to "ScenePreviews">> <h2>A Patient Man</h2> <<include "PreviewVoiceNote">> <div id="rich-meet-stage"><<include "RichMeet01">></div>

<div style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4fa3; padding: 0.45rem 0.8rem; margin: 0.6rem 0 1rem; opacity: 0.88;"> <<if $previewVoice is "professional">> You enter the memory as an assignment to evaluate: terms, leverage, exits, cost. Distance is a tool, and you keep it sharp. <<elseif $previewVoice is "bimbo">> You enter the memory warm, eager, and ready to follow. Important men arranged everything, so the difficult choices must already be over. <<else>> You enter the memory aware of every compromise that brought you here, trying to preserve the part of yourself that can still name what is happening. <</if>> </div>