DebtLoop

Browser lacks capabilities required to play.

Upgrade or switch to another browser.

Loading…

<<if setup.transOn() and $stamina gt 0 and setup.sceneSeen("SceneChaseMeet") and not setup.runBlockReason("Prostitution")>> <<set $chaserVisits += 1>> <<run setup.nightCost(25)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(180, false, false)>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png" alt="The usual corner booth"></div> He has already ordered two coffees. The first time, he kept both hands around his cup. Tonight he moves it over so you can put your coat on the bench. <<if $chaserDeal?.status is "declined">> “Same booth next time?” he asks. The folder is gone. He waits for your answer before he reaches for his phone. <<else>> “I forgot to ask what you take in it,” he says. “You can still ask.” <</if>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Company · $<<print _chaserReceipt.base>></div> * [[Head home|Tally]] <<else>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<if $stamina gt 0 and setup.chaser.canTakeBooking() and not setup.runBlockReason("Prostitution")>> <<run setup.nightCost(40)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(300, false)>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png" alt="The usual corner booth"></div> He has started leaving the receipt face down between the cups. You can talk for an hour before either of you turns it over. He still gets the coffee wrong if he orders before you arrive. <div class="dl-bureau-note">Standing booking · $<<print _chaserReceipt.base>><<if _chaserReceipt.premium>> + $<<print _chaserReceipt.premium>> sponsor premium<</if>></div> * [[Head home|Tally]] <<else>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<if $chaserDeal?.status is "held">> He slides the envelope back into the folder so it will travel flat. “You can take that home,” he says. “The clinic needs your signature. I only put mine on the payment.” You put it in your bag. He asks whether you want another coffee. <<elseif $chaserDeal?.status is "declined">> You slide the folder back. He squares it with the edge of the table. “I can still book the booth, if you want.” He waits until you have finished your coffee to ask which night. <</if>> * [[Head home|Tally]]

<<if setup.chaser.canFix()>> <h2>The permanent file</h2> Smith has put the old return form beside the new one. Chaser's name is on both. “Three hundred in advance,” Smith says. “The standing arrangement continues. If you sign, this is the last time the clinic will offer you the way back.” You check the old form. The return is still paid for. It will still be there if you go home with both copies unsigned. * <<link "Sign permanently · take the $300 advance" "ChaserPermanentSigned">><<run setup.chaser.fix()>><</link>> * [[Keep the paid right of return|Clinic]] <<else>> * [[Back|Clinic]] <</if>>

<<if $chaserDeal?.status is "fixed">> Smith puts the advance through before he takes the paper away. You check the receipt. The booking is where it always was. The return line is gone. <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

DebtLppo 0.8

<<set $money to -10000>> <<set $interest to 5>> <<set $days to 1>> <<set $femBody to 100, $startForm to (setup.transOn() and setup.runsMeta().shop?.archetype is "androgynous" ? "androgynous" : "woman"), $marketPressure to true, $blockPenis to false, $transitionVoucher to false>> <<set $chaserDeal to null, $chaserVisits to 0>> <<set $wellRested to false>> <<set $sleptToday to false>> <<set $iqGainedToday to false>> <<set $stamina to 200>> <<set $maxStamina to 200>> <<set $supporterStart to null>> <<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 $smithOffsiteReply 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.releaseRevision>> /% 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 or passage().startsWith("Gallery")>> * [[Return to Gallery|Gallery]] <<elseif (passage() is "ContentSettingsReturn" and $contentEnding) or passage().startsWith("Ending")>> * <<link "Open the next file">><<run State.reset()>><<run Wikifier.wikifyEval(Story.get("StoryInit").text)>><<run Engine.play("Contract")>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Your content preferences are active. Continue with your current account and schedule.</div> <<set _contentTarget to (passage() is "ContentSettingsReturn" and $contentResume) || setup.contentReturn(passage())>> * <<link "Continue" _contentTarget>><</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>> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v3/freedom-02.png" alt="The protagonist leaving in a car at dawn"></div> <<else>> <<vid "endings-v3/freedom-" "01">> <</if>> <h1>ENDING: FREEDOM</h1> You make the last payment and wait while Smith checks the account. He reads it twice, then turns the screen toward you. Zero. You have been imagining this moment for so long that you don't quite trust it. You ask for a copy. He brings the receipt to your room himself. You have never seen him at your door before. "The balance is paid. You have no further obligation to me. A car is waiting downstairs. Give the driver an address." You look down at the receipt, then back at him. He hasn't finished. <<if setup.transOn() and $blockPenis>>"The clinic clause you signed remains in effect. Keep that copy for your records."<<else>>"This closes the account. Any further treatment is yours to arrange. Keep that copy for your records."<</if>> You want to ask him something. Why you were brought here, whether any of it was necessary, what he thinks he has done. He checks his watch, and you know how little an answer would mean now. You put the receipt in your bag and begin packing. There isn't much. Clothes, a few toiletries, things you bought because you needed them for work. You leave the contract on the table. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> You take the sweater you picked for yourself. The uniform is still on its hanger. You check the pockets before you fold it and leave it with the contract. <</if>> The driver gets out to open the door. He asks where you want to go and waits while you decide. No schedule to check, no payment due tomorrow. You give him an address. When he repeats it back, you nod and get into the car. <<if $firstMirrorChoice is "color">> At the first light you take the lipstick out of your bag. The dark screen of your phone makes a decent mirror. You put it on while the driver waits for the green. <<elseif $firstMirrorChoice is "bare">> At the first light you open your bag for the receipt. The lipstick from the hospital is still inside. You move it aside and read the zero again. <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: YOU ARE PROPERTY</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v2/property-01.png" alt="The transfer file"></div> The final warning gives you one more day. Before the day is over, two men come for your room key. At the office one of them checks your name against a sheet with twenty others on it. The clinic takes a photograph before it touches you. Afterward the uniform pulls across your chest. You ask for your old clothes and the attendant points to a locker with someone else's number on it. The next time you ask, she puts the headphones on you herself. The lessons run by the clock. By the end you can tell what the voice wants from the silence before it speaks. They move you to the front of the line because you no longer hold anyone up. On transfer day the clerk asks whether you recognise the person in the first photograph. You look at it for a long time. She takes your silence for an answer and turns the page. <<else>> <<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. Your name was one of many on the transfer. 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. Nobody asked which parts you wanted. 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 papers still carry your old name. Beside it, Smith has entered "converted to property." You no longer recognize the name when someone reads it aloud. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: EMPTY DOLL</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v2/empty-doll-01.png" alt="The clinic waiting room"></div> The diary starts with two columns. Money in, money out. By the last week the amounts are all on one side, and you have written the date over the same amount twice. Smith brings you a form. You get as far as your address before the line below it starts to swim. “Here?” you ask. He puts his finger on the signature box. At the clinic they fit you for a new uniform after the last appointment. You tell the attendant the old one used to sit differently. She says she'll see if it can be taken in. Customers tip you to remember their names. A man hands you a little extra because you laugh when he tells you his again. At home you write it in the diary. In the morning it looks like a word somebody else wanted you to learn. <<else>> <<vid "end/bimbo" 6>> <h1>DEFEAT: EMPTY DOLL</h1> You notice the mistakes in your diary before you notice anything else. Sums crossed out, names written three different ways, sentences abandoned halfway through. You go back a week and find an entry you don't remember writing. It takes you so long to read it that you forget why you were looking. Smith puts a sheet of paper in front of you. "Will you sign?" You know that word. The others are harder. You start the first line again, lose your place and look up at him. He points to the space at the bottom. You are relieved to have something you can do, and take the pen. The clinic finishes the work: fuller lips held in a permanent smile, exaggerated curves, the complete Doll treatment. You like the result. In the mirror you turn one way, then the other, delighted every time the light catches your lips. Someone has to remind you to put your clothes back on. Every touch makes you shiver now. You enjoy serving men, enjoy the praise and the tips, and have trouble remembering what used to bother you about it. Sometimes a customer asks whether you're all right. You smile and say yes. It is an easy question; you like those. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: FINAL DOWNFALL</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v2/final-downfall-01.png" alt="The night route"></div> The warning stays red for four evenings. On the first you still ask for the price before you get in. On the fourth you are halfway up the hotel stairs before you remember there was a price. A regular offers to put your name down for the next night. You say yes while he is still looking for the date. The same look on a stranger's face is enough now. You take the lift with him and forget to ask which floor. Your clothes start turning up in rooms you can't place. You go back for a jacket once. The man at reception asks for a room number. You know exactly what he thought when he first saw you, and absolutely nothing about the number. <<else>> <<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 someone 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; you keep smeared lipstick in your bag and look for another man before the last one has left. You like being wanted. You have stopped asking for much else. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: THE GANGSTER'S SHADOW</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v2/gangster-shadow-01.png" alt="The Gangster’s shadow"></div> He tells you to stay after the restaurant closes. Your coat is on the back of the chair. He has left the money beside it, as usual. “Be mine.” You look from the chair to the door. He waits. When you go back to him, he takes your hand and draws you close. Later he brings a change of clothes to the back room. He has had the shirt taken in after seeing how the last one hung on you. You ask who gave him your measurements. “You did,” he says. “Every time you came back.” You put it on. From the dining room comes the sound of the chairs being set out for tomorrow. <<else>> <<vid "end/subblack" 4>> <h1>DEFEAT: THE GANGSTER'S SHADOW</h1> You learned to watch him before speaking. A pause could mean you had disappointed him; a hand at your neck meant you should stay where you were. When he wanted something different, he expected you to work it out. You began measuring a good evening by how little he needed to correct. One evening, after you have finished, he tells you to stay. "Be mine." The money is on the table and the door is open, as always. You look toward it. Then you put your bag down and come back to him. He draws you close without another word. You arrange the transformations you had been putting off. You know what he likes by now. You let your intelligence deteriorate because he prefers you less questioning, and the approval you get for it makes you try harder. When he calls you his dumb doll, you smile and wait for him to touch you. There is no envelope for you anymore. He pays for what you need and tells you when to be ready. After the restaurant closes, you sit beside him; when he has guests, you let him show you off. His hand rests on the back of your neck. You have learned to stay there until he moves it. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: FREE USE</h1> <<vid "place/night-client-street-" "02">> You kept going to the seminars because they paid. The man who first asked if you were free for the night had a glass of wine ready. By the time they put your name on the sign-up sheet, people were already treating a blank space as permission. Some of them know exactly who they booked. Others see you in the doorway and hesitate. You used to wait through that pause in case they wanted to leave. Now you step aside and let them through. The key used to hang beside the door. One evening somebody takes it with him. You look for it on the nail for days. Then you get used to hearing the door open whenever someone comes up the stairs. <<else>> <<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. You kept going back: 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. Afterward, you tried to remember why you had wanted to refuse. Soon you agree before you have thought about the request: 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. At first you were ashamed afterward. In time, you stopped thinking about that too. 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> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: HOUSE PET</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v2/house-pet-01.png" alt="The estate"></div> He visits before signing the transfer. You recognise the coat he used to wear to breakfast. He asks you to turn around, then asks Smith where to initial. There is no further discussion of the price. At the estate the tailor fits your clothes in the room where you will sleep. The owner asks him to leave the shoulders as they are. He likes how the jacket looks when you sit beside his chair and the guests try to work out what to call you. You wear it to dinner. When he dismisses you, you follow the lights along the hall to your room. The receipt says the debt is paid. You know that much even on the evenings when the tablets make it hard to read. <<else>> <<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> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: QUEEN OF THE HIGHWAY</h1> <<vid "place/highway-roadside-" "02">> You know the trucks before you can see the faces. The first one brings coffee. The one that slows twice likes you to keep your jacket on. When a new driver asks what to call you, the regular at the pump says, “That's the queen. Ask where you can park.” The money is cash, and you count it yourself. There is a spare sweater in your bag and a clean thermos when you remember to wash it. The account still opens to the same warning. A driver offers to take you as far as the coast. You ask which night he's coming back. By the time he answers, you have already worked out who will be waiting at the guardrail. <<else>> <<vid "car/sex" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: QUEEN OF THE HIGHWAY</h1> You know the drivers' schedules now. The early trucker who wants to talk first, the regular who never turns off his engine, the man who slows down twice before stopping. You wait at the same guardrail every night. Smith's debt is still there, but you rarely open the account. There is always another set of headlights coming round the bend. The regulars call you the queen of this stretch. They ask which pull-offs are safe and who is worth waiting for. You can tell them. No pimp takes your earnings and no rich man keeps you inside, but you haven't spent an evening anywhere else in so long that you can't think where you would go. When the sun comes up, you head home to sleep. You'll be back before dark. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: JUST A WORKING GIRL</h1> <<vid "place/night-client-street-" "03">> Vince sends the address with a note about what the client asked for. Sometimes the note gives the wrong impression. You have a sentence ready when the door opens and another one in case they want to argue about the price. You used to write the amount you put toward Smith beside each address. Now you put a checkmark beside the ones you've been to. There are enough checks that you recognise a room by the carpet before you get to the bed. At home you leave your bag by the door with everything still in it. You hear Vince's text before you hear the alarm. <<else>> <<vid "slut/gang" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: JUST A WORKING GIRL</h1> Vince sends an address, and you go. You know what to bring, what to charge for, when to call him if a customer makes trouble. In the beginning you kept track of how much nearer each job brought you to paying Smith. Now you check the address and the time. The balance is something you look at when Smith asks. You keep your bag ready by the door. Most evenings are busy; on quiet ones, you find yourself checking the phone. Sometimes you think about getting different work, but by morning there's another booking and you need the money. You answer Vince, get dressed and make sure you're on time. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: VINCE'S BEST GIRL</h1> <<vid "place/bar-" "03">> Vince used to ask whether you were free. Now he hands you his phone so you can see where he has put your name. One night a client asks for the person in an older picture. Vince opens your file, shows him a recent one and quotes a higher rate. Then he hangs up and calls you his best girl. You recognise the voice he uses when he's already made the sale. You start to ask how much of the extra is yours. Vince is already calling the next address. He tips his head toward the chair beside him, and you sit. <<else>> <<vid "slut/double" 1>> <h1>DEFEAT: VINCE'S BEST GIRL</h1> You used to tell Vince you were only doing this until the debt was paid. He never argued. He found you more customers, took his cut and called when he wanted you ready. After a while, you stopped telling him about your plans. You wanted him to know he could rely on you. He has made more from your nights than Smith has from the interest. You rarely ask about your own share now. You work when Vince tells you to work, and when he calls you his best girl, the pleasure crowds out whatever you meant to ask. He chooses the next customer while you wait beside him, grateful not to have to decide. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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">> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>ENDING: ALMOST NORMAL</h1> You show him the balance after dinner. He pulls his chair around to your side of the table and leaves the page where you can both see it. “Right. Let's count it again.” He takes over the agreement. Smith puts the lower rate in writing and drops the revisions. The debt is still yours to repay. The gym has hours you can live on now, and the first week you get home before him twice. The printer at work puts the wrong name on your badge. At breakfast he finds you working the old label off with a thumbnail. He asks what you want it to say, writes it the way you tell him and puts the badge beside your keys. On Sunday you work out when the last instalment will be due. By the time you put the calculator away, he has eaten his toast and half of yours. <<else>> <h1>ENDING: ALMOST NORMAL</h1> You finally show him the whole account. The debt, the rate, the revisions you kept hoping you wouldn't have to explain. He reads it in silence, then pulls a chair up beside yours. "Right. Let's count it again." He takes over the agreement. The rate comes down, the deadlines are cancelled and Smith confirms there will be no more revisions. There is still money to repay, but the monthly figure is one you can earn. With his help, you find work as a gym instructor. You have a badge, regular hours and a home to return to after your shift. You still want him. In the evenings you go to him willingly, sometimes twice, and he takes his time with you. You don't keep asking yourself whether it is gratitude or habit or simply desire. He knows what you like by now. You are learning what he likes when he isn't trying to look after you. Some nights the two of you stay up over the bills. He gets angry about the interest, you remind him you have already checked it, and eventually one of you puts the kettle on. It isn't quite freedom yet. It is a life you can make plans for. "We're doing all right," he says. You look at the figures once more, then close the book. "We are." <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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>> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>ENDING: THE PERMANENT ASSISTANT</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/aide-" "01">> The morning your balance reaches zero, Smith offers you the assistant's desk. You read the hours first. When you ask about pay, he tells you the figure once and then writes it down. Personnel wants to reuse the picture from your old file. You ask for a new one. The photographer lets you wear your own jacket. When the badge arrives, you check the name before you clip it on. A month later, Smith sends a new debtor to your desk. She says she can make up the missed rent by Friday. You ask what she earns on a Friday and wait while she works it out. At six, Smith asks you to stay for the rest of the appointments. You hang your coat back up. <<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." Your debt is paid. The car outside could take you away this morning, but you already know what the job involves. You've been handling more of the office work for weeks. You ask him about the salary, and he gives you time to read the offer. A month later, he leaves you to interview a new debtor. She sits opposite you, twisting her hands while she explains the rent, the lost work, the bad week she expects to recover from. You remember making the same promises. You write down her income and begin working out whether she can afford the payments. That Friday, Smith asks you to stay late without mentioning overtime. You put your coat back on its hook. The pay is reliable, the hours long, the coffee terrible. You know which clients will pay and which will need another call. Sometimes you hear yourself using one of Smith's phrases and pause over the next sentence. Then the telephone rings, or he asks for a file, and you get on with the work. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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>> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>ENDING: A PLACE IN THE SUN</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/place-in-the-sun-" "01">> A permanent badge appears on the reception desk the morning after you clear the debt. It comes in a packet with the same dress code as before. You look through it for the line that used to say what to wear on nights. The new packet ends at the office hours. You take the accounts the others keep sending back. You know how to ask for a figure without making the person across the desk apologise before they give it. When a firm that owes six months finally pays, management calls you upstairs to discuss a transfer. The new salary will cover a better room. The window at the new desk opens a few inches. On your first day there someone asks for an extension. You pull out a chair and ask them to show you what they have. <<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. You find you are good at the difficult accounts. You recognize the excuses because you've used them, and can tell when someone is frightened rather than lying. You know how much time a debtor needs and how much the company will allow. Colleagues start bringing those files to your desk. 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. When the transfer is finally approved, you read the salary twice. You can afford better rooms, save something, stop checking the price of every meal. On your first day in the new department, a client asks for an extension. You hear Smith's answer forming in your mouth, stop, and ask to see the figures first. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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>> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>ENDING: HER OWN TABLE</h1> <<vid "endings-v2/her-table-" "01">> Smith counts your last payment in coins. You know which mornings they came from. The old man who orders chamomile leaves exactly the same amount every time, even when it takes him all shift to drink the tea. The café's owner agrees to sell in instalments. You take the lease home and mark two clauses to ask about. A week later you sign it. The first thing you do with your own key is let the baker in early. A year later the old man asks whether you're still making tea too strong. You take his money and tell him he can make it himself anytime. He laughs, then moves his cup so you can set down your own. <<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. You kept coming back to the cafe even when other work paid more. You knew the morning orders, the customers who wanted to chat and the old man who left his chamomile tea too long. There were mornings when you could get through a whole shift without thinking about Smith. You want more of those. The owner agrees to sell you the place in installments. You read every clause and ask about the ones you don't understand. Then you go through the costs again: stock, repairs, wages, how many quiet mornings you can afford. The sums work. You sign and keep your own copy. A year later, you are behind the counter when the old man comes in for his tea. He asks how business is. You complain about the espresso machine, and he offers advice you have heard before. While it brews, you count his change into your register. The bell rings again before you can sit down. <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: PRIORITY ADJUSTMENT</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/endings-v3/priority-adjustment-01.png" alt="The assistant at the Priority Accounts desk"></div> Smith moves your account from collections to Priority. The next morning a clinic appointment is already on your calendar. There is a second one in a fortnight and no space on either invitation to decline. After the sessions you get a new jacket and a desk outside his office. You can still read his handwriting. You can still tell which of his callers will ask you to stay after work. On the employee page, the photograph and the name are different from the ones you signed in with. One morning a debtor calls to ask whether Smith ever lets anyone leave. You start to answer. Through the glass he raises a finger, and you put her on hold. <<else>> <h1>DEFEAT: PRIORITY ADJUSTMENT</h1> Smith stops discussing repayment and begins arranging appointments. The clinic, the room with the patterns on the walls, the whispered instructions through headphones. He gives each treatment time to work before booking the next. By the end, you no longer ask what any of it is for. <<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: you stopped questioning the instructions during 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 clean up afterward and check whether he needs anything else. <<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 did everything he asked: 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. You show her where to put her things. Over coffee, you tell her which lipstick lasts and how to keep her feet from hurting. She listens so carefully. You like having someone to talk to. <<vid "end/priorityadjustment/" 5>> <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: STAFF CARE</h1> <<vid "place/office-reception-" "03">> The new payment schedule comes on company paper. Accounting explains that the firm has bought the debt and can make the deductions directly. The line you have to initial is beside your pay. They give you a new badge for Staff Care and send you along to meetings. Your manager corrects guests who get your name wrong. Afterward he checks the weekly quota and asks why you left early. At the next review he shows you the accommodation form. The room is upstairs. The rent can go through payroll, just like the fines. He asks when you would like someone to bring up your things. <<else>> <h1>DEFEAT: STAFF CARE</h1> Smith transfers your debt to the firm on a Tuesday. You learn about it when accounting sends you the new payment schedule. 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. Every charge is covered by a clause you have already signed. <<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. Your supervisor checks the quota at the end of every week. <<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 - you hear about the meetings only afterward. You don't know what they will invent. You only suspect you won't like it. <<vid "end/staffcare/" 5>> <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: UNDER THE TABLE</h1> <<vid "place/cafe-" "03">> Your old café can't buy the contract. The buyer runs a place with a mirrored floor and a costume list pinned beside the till. The uniform he gives you has to go back to the seamstress before your first shift. A regular keeps asking for your table. The manager says the tips are better if you stay when the order is finished. You learn how to sit beside a guest, then how to stay below the cloth while the table goes on talking above you. In the second room they install a runner over the mirror. It makes the floor easier on your knees. There is a folded towel at your place when you arrive. Your name is still on the board by the till. On the new rota it only has table numbers beside it. <<else>> <h1>DEFEAT: UNDER THE TABLE</h1> Your cafe does not buy you - it has no budget for you. Smith finds a buyer through an acquaintance and transfers your contract. 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." As the place grows busier, 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. He tells you to keep doing it. <<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> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: THE RESULT</h1> <<vid "place/clinic-reception-" "03">> The administrator shows you the photographs after the final procedure. The first was taken before the fittings, in the clothes you came in wearing. For the new one they asked you to turn your head a little further toward the light. She has a proof of the brochure in her folder. Your face is next to a list of procedures. The clinic financed them, then bought the rest of your debt from Smith. The monthly figure at the bottom is for new patients. Yours is on a different sheet. They give you a room and bring visitors to meet you between consultations. One day somebody looks up from the brochure and asks you how you chose. You have time to answer, but the administrator answers first. <<else>> <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. The administrator shows it to you when she books your next visit. 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. They give you a room at the clinic and white clothes to wear during the day. 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 for the visitors. Your lips hold much the same shape when you stop. <<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>> Between appointments, you sit in your room and look through the brochures. You remember the day you first came here, and what you hoped the treatment would do. At the next knock, you put the brochure down and get up to meet the visitors. <<vid "end/theresult/" 5>> <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>DEFEAT: COMMON PROPERTY</h1> <<vid "place/home-bedroom-" "03">> Smith sells your account for a dollar. The notices stop. In the first week you keep checking the letterbox because you can't believe it can stay empty. The concierge starts a notebook after two neighbours turn up at the same time. He uses your name on the first page. On later pages he only writes the floor and the hour. When the neighbouring buildings start asking, he makes a copy of the key. At the annual meeting you sit where you can see the door. They vote to keep the flat open, and someone brings the notebook around to record it. There is space to note an objection. The pen is already on its way to the next person. <<else>> <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. Everyone wanted you compliant for the visit. Nobody arranged what would happen to you afterward. 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." He does not expect another payment. 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. For the first time since you arrived, no payment notice comes. <<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 waits for your consent. You are already saying yes, as you have learned to do. <<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. The concierge explains that this means leaving the door unlocked. You nod. After the meeting, he takes you home and makes sure you have done it. <<vid "end/commonproperty/" 5>> <br><br> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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> You compare the latest statement with the one from ten days ago. You have worked every day between them. The balance is almost the same. You check the payments, looking for one that hasn't been entered. They're all there. <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 1>> Smith sees no reason to close the account. You are still making payments. The revisions arrive on schedule, and each one eases the terms by just enough for the sum to stay precisely what it is. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/office-workfloor-" "02">> <<else>> <<vid "end/eternaldebt/" 2>> <</if>> 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 earn enough to keep going, never enough to finish. You know all the regulars now, and the regulars know the shape of your week. New starters ask how long it takes. You do the sum in your head out of habit. “I’m still paying,” you tell them. <<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 put another payment in the book. You have nearly filled this book. Next week, you'll need another. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. The owner puts your signed copy beside the register. You are due back for the evening shift. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/bar-" "01">> <<else>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 1>> <</if>> The regulars are never told about the agreement. 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 2>> <</if>> For tips you show <<bodyText 'your tits' 'your chest'>>; 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 3>> <</if>> The contract lies in the cash box under the delivery invoices: five years, with your hours and vacation dates set out on the second page. You read it again during a quiet moment and try to imagine your last shift. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 4>> <</if>> The new hires behind the oak bar ask if you work here. The bartender tells them to leave your chair where it is. By the end of the week they set your glass down without asking. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 5>> <</if>> When the owner calls you back to the counter, you put the contract away. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/onthehouse/" 6>> <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/church-nave-" "02">> <<else>> <<vid "end/thevow/" 1>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/thevow/" 2>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/thevow/" 3>> <</if>> 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? <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/thevow/" 4>> <</if>> 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 same rhythm your body has already learned. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/thevow/" 5>> <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. He files your contract with the accounts you used to check. 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 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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/office-reception-" "02">> <<else>> <<vid "end/overtime/" 1>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/overtime/" 2>> <</if>> 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. One partner tells you to stay quiet in his hotel room; he fucks you for an hour, without speaking. 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 you continue as you have been instructed. In the morning you're at your desk by nine, hair done, printouts ready. You're on staff, the bonuses flow, taxes paid. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/overtime/" 3>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/overtime/" 4>> <</if>> 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 people with no experience. They put you in charge. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>>On the first morning you show the new hires where their own copies of the forms are kept.<</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/overtime/" 5>> <</if>> 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. You now have seniority, a larger salary and new staff to train. When next year's schedule arrives, you check your name and start arranging the training sessions. <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. Nobody mentions porn while you sign. The release covers it anyway. 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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/model-studio-" "02">> <<else>> <<vid "end/specialorder/" 1>> <</if>> 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. You are paid at the end of the session and given a date for the next one. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/specialorder/" 2>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/specialorder/" 3>> <</if>> 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. The director checks the footage before he lets you dress. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/specialorder/" 4>> <</if>> You try to remember which job you should have refused. Each new request came with a better rate and a reminder of what you'd already done. The release stays on file; the agency does not need another signature. 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/specialorder/" 5>> <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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." <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/webcam-room-" "03">> <<else>> <<vid "end/trending/" 1>> <</if>> 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 compares the recordings: two poses, two vibration levels, conversion decides. When the figures improve, he extends the session. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/trending/" 2>> <</if>> 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. Most viewers buy something cheaper. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/trending/" 3>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/trending/" 4>> <</if>> 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 chat starts raising money toward the new target. 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. The camera stays on while the minute runs out. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/trending/" 5>> <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. Smith settles their invoice against the transfer. You wait outside while they go through the figures. 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: you are given few gaps between appointments. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/library-tutor-room-" "01">> <<else>> <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 1>> <</if>> 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, across your chest and onto the quiz; for a third, from behind, cheek on the open problem book. Come onto the corrected homework - and receive a check mark. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 2>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 3>> <</if>> 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. You need the lessons if you are to keep up with the work. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 4>> <</if>> 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 hold the notebook against your chest, pleased that he has marked the work satisfactory. In the reading room, perfect silence. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/privatelessons/" 5>> <</if>> <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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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>> <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <h1>ENDING: LAST CALL</h1> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/body/femboy/end/lastcall/4.png" alt="The lights go out at the bar"></div> The last payment smells of beer. Smith counts it and stamps your copy. You fold it small enough to fit in the pocket where you keep the bar key. At the last shift you show the new hire which tap sticks and where to put the cash when a customer starts counting it for you. They ask why you're leaving. The room is loud enough that you have to lean in. “I'm paid up.” You wipe the counter, leave the key where you said you would and turn off the light by the back door. From the alley you can still hear the jukebox. You stand there long enough to hear the end of the song, then go home. <<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. Some of the regulars ask after you. The new girl says you left, then gets on with the orders. By the weekend, most have stopped asking. <<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> <</if>> <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/church-nave-" "03">> <<else>> <<vid "end/caretaker/" 1>> <</if>> 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. You waited for him to answer, afraid he would tell you to go back. 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 time you ask for it yourself. You tell yourself afterward that you feel cleaner. <<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. You still have days when it is difficult to come inside. Somebody always makes room for you. When a stranger hesitates at the door, you try to do the same. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. You check the account again on your break. It still says paid. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/office-workfloor-" "03">> <<else>> <<vid "end/furniture/" 1>> <</if>> 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>> Burns still calls to ask whether you found the missing file. One morning the badge printer drops a letter from your name. He notices because he has been spelling it the same way for years. 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. Your desk has been moved twice to make room for permanent staff. You ask where the new socket is and carry your things over. On Monday, a new temp comes looking for a form. You know which drawer to open without looking. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/model-studio-" "01">> <<else>> <<vid "end/face/" 1>> <</if>> 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 the one." You never did understand what exactly he saw. Then you stopped asking. <<vid "end/face/" 2>> The agency sends you a sample of the campaign. They've cropped it close enough that all you can see is your face. It looks like you on a day you got enough sleep. 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 keep the first campaign photographs in your portfolio. At the next casting, you put them on top. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 first thumbnails sold a look. On a good night the tips covered the week's groceries. Getting the same people to come back was harder. You stuck to a solo stream, even when the platform offered a better slot for a guest show. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/webcam-room-" "01">> <<else>> <<vid "end/channel/" 1>> <</if>> You tried a gaming setup and a few costumes. Then one night the game wouldn't load and you spent forty minutes talking to the chat. The next evening someone asked whether you'd finished the book you mentioned while you waited. They kept coming back for that kind of thing. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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. <<if not setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "place/library-stacks-" "02">> <<else>> <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 1>> <</if>> 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 2>> <</if>> In the library the only thing they ask when you arrive is whether you have the key to the returns cupboard. You can finish a chapter before anyone needs you. 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. <<if setup.sceneBodyIsWoman()>> <<vid "end/quietfloor/" 3>> <</if>> You may want something different eventually. For now, you have a salary, enough time to read and no one calling to ask why you aren't working tonight. You finish shelving the returns, choose a book and take it home. <<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">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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 STUDY CONTINUES</h1> The form is waiting on the chair. He puts a pen in your hand and shows you the box. Above your signature it says PARTICIPANT NO. 7 — TERMINAL PHASE — CONTINUED. <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/scientist-02.png" alt="The study"></div> There is a drawer with your name on it now. He keeps a blanket there, folded to the width of the chair. He knows when to bring it without asking. "Reduced hours," he explains, to the part of you that still files things. "The data is stable. You're a plateau now. Plateaus are rare and I take care of my rare things." <<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-02.png") is "img/client-approach/scientist-02.png">> <<vid "scene/scifail/" "08">> <</if>> Some days you try to remember who paid the debt. The lamp over the chair gives everything a pink tint. You hope whoever paid got a receipt. You hope it was pink. <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Your unlocks and account progress carry over.</div> * <<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.canFinishTransition()>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">The clinic can close your file after the final course, once your balance is clear and the permanent terms are in effect.</div> * [[Back|Clinic]] <<else>> <<vid "mirror/t1-" "a">> <h1>ENDING: FINISHED</h1> At the last review the nurse puts two sheets on the desk. The first records the final procedure. The second shows a balance of zero. You look for another appointment card in the folder. There is none. In the dark glass above the nurse's desk you see a woman with her coat on and nowhere else she has to be. <<if setup.transOn() and $startForm is "androgynous">>At the hospital you turned your head to look for the face you remembered. This time you watch the nurse get up to open the door.<<else>>You can almost remember the last time that was true.<</if>> Smith reviews the file one last time and closes it with the small, precise click of a man shutting a drawer. "The account is settled," he says. "One last thing. The clinic would like a photograph for its brochure." You ask for your copy of the statement. He offers the photograph release with it. You take the statement and leave the other sheet on his desk. At home you put the statement by the mirror. For the first time since the hospital, nobody has asked you to be anywhere tomorrow. You put your copy of the permanent terms away in the drawer. <<if $firstMirrorChoice is "color">> You find the lipstick from the hospital. You put it on and leave the tube out for tomorrow. <<elseif $firstMirrorChoice is "bare">> You wash your face and put the lipstick in the drawer. <</if>> It is the quietest morning of your life. <<run setup.markSeenInPlay(passage())>> <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to Gallery">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <div class="dl-file-close">Your story ends here. Start a new run to follow another route; your unlocks and account progress carry over.</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") or setup.sceneSeen("SceneRichReject")>> <<if not setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> * [[Rich Man|RichReject]] <<else>> * [[Rich Man|RichMan]] <</if>><<if $metRich>> (Smith's introduction)<</if>><<else>>Rich Man (Requires Promiscuity 50+ and Debt > 10k)<</if>> <<if setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> <<arcOffer "rich" "RICH MAN / PRIVATE INVITATION" "Hear the invitation">> <</if>> <<if setup.transOn() and setup.sceneSeen("SceneChaseMeet")>> * [[Meet Chaser for coffee|ChaserCompany]] <</if>> <<if setup.chaser.canTakeBooking()>> * [[Take Chaser’s standing booking|ChaserStandingBooking]] <</if>> <<if setup.chaser.canUseAgency()>> * [[Escort agency - specialty bookings|TgEscort]] (night work, premium rate) <</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 setup.transOn()>> <<set _arcPop to setup.sceneRollArc("chaser")>> <<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></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Hear the invitation">><<if setup.sceneDefs.find(d => d.id === _arcPop).ok(State.variables)>><<goto _aev.target>><<else>><<goto "Prostitution">><</if>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_arcPop)>><<replace "#arc-call">><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <</if>> <<arcOffer "smithBusiness" "SMITH / ASSIGNMENTS" "Read the assignment">> <<arcOffer "smithTraining" "SMITH / TRAINING" "Read the invitation">> <<arcOffer "smithCorrection" "SMITH / CORRECTION" "Read the notice">> <<arcOffer "smithOffsite" "SMITH / OFFSITE" "Read the address">> * <<if $iq >= 120 or $promiscuity >= 60 or $metScientist>>[[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. You could have earned more, but you need to be fit for tomorrow's shift. 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. You'd rather stop while you can still keep track of the time. <<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. You'll earn more tomorrow if you get some rest tonight. 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. You don't want to think any further than that tonight. The apartment is quiet. You put the payment away and set the alarm before you lie down. <</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 setup.internTier()>> <<set _price to setup.nightQuote(setup.internBase(_tier))>> <<set _reply to setup.storyFlow.reply("intern")>> <<if _reply>><<print _reply>><<else>> <<if _tier is 1>> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lte 2>> "I, um... I won't ask for anything complicated." The intern shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. He glances at your collar and back at the envelope. "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." He swallows. "I'm not — I mean, I don't usually. With, um. With someone who's..." He gives up on the sentence. You both let it die. "With someone who's what?" "With someone who's pretty," he finishes, going scarlet. He looks relieved to have found a word he can say aloud. <<else>> "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." <</if>> <<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." "I meant both of us," he says, going red. "Unless you've got plans?" <<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 setup.internTier(), _fee to setup.internBase(_tier)>> <<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>> <<if $intVisits is 1 and $firstMirrorChoice>> <<set $firstLookBookingDay to $days>> <<if $firstMirrorChoice is "color">> "I like that color," he says as you put your bag down. Then he looks at the envelope, embarrassed to have said anything. "So do I," you tell him. <<else>> He catches you looking at the hall mirror. "Do you want a minute to get ready?" "I'm ready." You put your bag down. He sets the envelope beside it. <</if>> <</if>> <<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 seen. 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 could get used to this 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. You wait for him to finish, then check he has left the agreed amount. <<elseif _v == 1>> You keep the striptease mild, stopping short of anything that would make him 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(_fee)>> <<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>> He has the envelope ready before you knock. You like Fridays: his warm room, the kettle, the way he thanks you after you use your mouth. He still gets embarrassed about how much he enjoys it. You tell him he doesn't need to, which makes him blush again. <<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: he puts the kettle on while you put the envelope away. He keeps thanking you, then apologizes for saying it so often. 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(_fee)>> <<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>> You stay for the whole evening now. He is pleased that you've stopped asking what the plan is. His mother's blanket is still on the bed, and afterward he tells you something he has learned about what you like. You like that he remembers. <<elseif _v == 1>> He calls it plain sex, looking pleased with himself. Face to face first so he can check how you feel, then the other positions you both like. Afterward he gets water and the clean towel. If there are eggs in the fridge, you stay for breakfast. <<else>> Sometimes he says stay while you're still together, and you say it back. It is easier than trying to explain. The bed frame squeaks when either of you moves; you both pause, then laugh and carry on. <</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 know what works for him now, and he hands over the agreed fee plus a tip. <<elseif _v == 1>> No costume nights sell better than costume nights, statistically, which he finds frankly offensive to his curriculum. Without the costume, the two of you spend less time being careful about what comes next. 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. By the time you change position again, you've forgotten to watch the clock. <<else>> He calls it a plain evening, sounding proud: no costumes, no requests he has had to rehearse. In bed afterward, you listen to his breathing slow down. You put your arm round him before falling asleep. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>><<set $intSexCount to ($intSexCount || 0) + 1>><<run setup.payNight(_fee)>> <<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>> You meet for dinner now, then put on a film that neither of you leaves alone. 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. <<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>> Groceries, dinner, a film you keep interrupting, then bed. The envelope is still on the table, counted exactly. You leave it there until morning. He needs the routine more than you do. <<elseif _v == 1>> You have a toothbrush and a charger at his place now. Tonight he makes pasta, and you share a bottle of cheap red over half a film. When he asks whether you're staying, you remind him where the toothbrush is. <<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 like your eggs. You hadn't realized he'd bought breakfast for both of you. <<else>> He holds your hand all the way to the bus. You let one go while you are still talking, then have to hurry for the next. He waits with you until it arrives. <</if>> <</if>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 1)>><<set $intMeets to ($intMeets || 0) + 1>><<run setup.payNight(_fee)>> <</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 - the words come out simpler each time 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)>> <<if setup.transOn() and ($days ?? 1) - ($lastAthBodyDay ?? 0) >= 3>><<set $lastAthBodyDay to $days>><<set $femBody to Math.max(0, $femBody - 5)>><</if>> <<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. The session goes well, and you collect the money without needing to worry about anything else. <<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. You know which angles flatter you and use them when he glances toward the mirror. <<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 something 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>> <<elseif not setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> * [[Meet the Rich Man for breakfast|RichReject]] * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> <div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/rich-man.png" alt="The Rich Man"></div> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneRichReject") and not $richReopened>> <<set $richReopened to true>> He brings the coffee out himself. “I remember what I said at the door. If you came to discuss a booking this time, we can do that over breakfast.” <</if>> <<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>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason("RichMan")>> * [[Back|Night]] <<elseif not setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> * [[Meet the Rich Man for breakfast|RichReject]] <<else>> <<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 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. You know why you keep coming back, and put the next fee beside the next payment in your head. <<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 struggle to remember parts of the evening. The envelope is still in your bag; you check it again. <<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 drinking it. 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>>

<<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> <<set _arcPop to setup.sceneRollArc("owner")>> <<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></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link "Hear the instruction">><<goto _aev.target>><</link>><<link "Not tonight">><<replace "#arc-call">><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</if>> <<storyReaction "owner">> <<if setup.canOfferReturnClause()>> * [[Read the Owner’s addendum|OwnerReturnClause]] <</if>> <<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>>

<<if setup.canOfferReturnClause()>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/owner-02.png" alt="The Owner waits by the door"></div> <h2>The Right of Return</h2> The Owner waits until you have your coat on before he takes the second envelope out of the drawer. “The clinic has an option on your file,” he says. “You can go back. <<if $femBody lt 100>>I can pay for your next course if you let them close that option.<<else>>If you let them close that option, they'll let you close the file once the account is settled.<</if>>” <<if $femBody lt 100>>You read the price first. Twelve hundred, already authorised. Then you find the line that says the clinic will refuse a reversal, even if you come back with the money yourself.<<else>>You read the discharge form twice. The line that allows you to come back for a reversal has been crossed out. It takes your signature to make the deletion stick.<</if>> “You want me to decide here?” “No. I want you to read it while I'm here to answer.” He leaves the pen on his side of the desk. You can reach it without standing. <<set _signText to $femBody lt 100 ? "Sign · one course covered, reversal permanently closed" : "Sign · release authorised, reversal permanently closed">> * <<link _signText>> <<if setup.canOfferReturnClause()>> <<set $blockPenis to true, $transitionVoucher to $femBody lt 100>> <<goto "OwnerReturnSigned">> <<else>><<goto "Owner">><</if>> <</link>> * [[Keep the right of return|Owner]] <<else>> * [[Return to the Owner|Owner]] <</if>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/owner-02.png" alt="The Owner’s office"></div> The Owner signs his half and gives you both copies. <<if $transitionVoucher>>On the lift down you put the clinic voucher in one pocket and the addendum in the other.<<else>>On the lift down you check the envelope. The clinic has already stamped the release. The space for the settlement date is still blank.<</if>> * [[Back to the evening schedule|Prostitution]]

<<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 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. You are still pleased about the compliment when he shows you the figures. <</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. Something is gone. 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 check the fee and the revised rate, then sign. You still need the reduction. <</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>> <<arcOffer "sci" "STUDY No. 7" "Attend the session">> <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>>

<<set $_sciCount to (($_sciCount ?? 0) + 1)>> <<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 you himself, touching more of you than he needs to. 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>> You zip your jacket up and go out. The street smells of rain and fries, and the signs look lovely reflected in the puddles. You step over one, then another, making a game of staying dry. You have no appointment to hurry to. <<else>> You look into the lit shop windows as you walk. Shoes first, then cakes, then a tiny television that is still playing though the shop is closed. You keep meaning to turn back, but there's always something else to look at. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkIntroC', [], 2)>> <<if _v == 0>> You leave your phone and heels at home. There is no appointment waiting, but you still check the corners and choose the better-lit side of the street. Habit. You try to slow down enough to enjoy the walk. <<else>> You walk past the closed bank and the convenience store. A taxi slows, sees you shake your head and drives on. You keep going until the street is quiet, then turn for home. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtWalkIntro', [], 3)>> <<if _v == 0>> You pull a jacket over your shoulders and slip out into the cold. At the corner you wait for the crossing to change. You let it change twice. For once there's nobody waiting for you on the other side. <<elseif _v == 1>> You stay out longer than you intended. The room was stuffy, and it feels good to walk without carrying a bag or trying to catch a bus. At the next corner you finally turn toward home. <<else>> For several blocks, nobody bothers you. You can look at the buildings without checking who is looking back. You hadn't realized how rarely you get to do that. <</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. You wave at a cat. It blinks and turns its back, which seems fair. <<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. You pass the bank, the dry cleaner's and the one bar still open, then take the longer route home. You are in no hurry to get back to the room. <<else>> You walk all the way to the bridge without being stopped. On the way back you buy nothing, speak to nobody, and arrive home a little less wound up. <</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 nearly empty night bus passes, its passengers asleep against the glass. You walk beside it for a block before it pulls away. You could keep going a little longer, but you are starting to feel ready for bed. <<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>>

<<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("trassa")>> <<run setup.nightCost(40)>> <<set $trassaUnlocked to true>> <<set $trasaCount += 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> /% Which service - ladder by promiscuity: handjob(shy) -> blowjob(normal) -> sex(kink) %/ <<set _roll to random(1, 100)>> <<if ($promiscuity lt 30 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 80>><<set _act to "handjob">><<else>><<set _act to "blowjob">><</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity lt 55 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 40>><<set _act to "handjob">><<elseif _roll lte 85>><<set _act to "blowjob">><<else>><<set _act to "sex">><</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity lt 80 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll lte 10>><<set _act to "handjob">><<elseif _roll lte 50>><<set _act to "blowjob">><<else>><<set _act to "sex">><</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll lte 25>><<set _act to "blowjob">><<else>><<set _act to "sex">><</if>> <</if>> /% Pay scales from promiscuity, modified by service; image pool per service %/ <<set _base to 150 + ($promiscuity * 4)>> <<if _act is "handjob">> <<set _pay to Math.floor(_base * 0.7)>><<set _pool to 22>> <<elseif _act is "blowjob">> <<set _pay to _base>><<set _pool to 27>> <<else>> <<set _pay to Math.floor(_base * 1.4)>><<set _pool to 32>> <</if>> <<set _paid to setup.payNight(_pay)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, _pool, _key)>> <<set _key to "car/" + _act>> <<vid _key _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _act is "handjob">> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaHandB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Easy one! Just hands, and hands are your favorite - you're SO good at them, it's over quick, everybody's happy. You do the thing and make the pretty sounds and he goes all shivery, which always makes you giggle. He presses the money into your palm, crinkly and warm, and you wave bye-bye at his taillights. Somewhere far under the fizzy pink feeling there's a tiny cold spot that used to have opinions about this. You can't quite reach it. You don't really try. <<elseif _v == 1>> He pulls over, names a price, and you brighten because this is one of the easy jobs. Your hand remembers everything even when your head keeps drifting toward the glowing buttons on the radio. When he shudders, you praise him as if he has done something clever. The praise earns an extra bill. You wipe your fingers, count the money twice, lose count twice, and finally fold the whole little stack into your bra. He drives away while you are still waving. The night feels friendly when nobody asks you to think. <<elseif _v == 2>> The driver's seat is pushed back and the window is cracked for air. You lean close, smiling whenever he looks at you, and work by rhythm rather than thought. His breathing tells you when to speed up; his hand on your thigh tells you he is pleased. Afterward he calls you a natural. You giggle at the compliment and tuck the payment away. Natural means you were made for it, probably. That sounds nice enough not to examine. <<else>> He is nervous, so you chatter while your hand stays busy: pretty nonsense about the weather, his car, the song on the radio. Soon he stops being nervous. Men relax so quickly when you give them the right thing. He leaves the bills in your palm and squeezes your fingers around them. You stand under the streetlamp feeling useful, warm, and pleasantly empty until the next headlights slow. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaHandC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You have this one down to a craft: the angle, the pace, the little sounds that shave a minute off the whole transaction. You watch his face in the wash of the streetlight, clocking when he's close so you're done and paid before he thinks to ask for extras. Tissues ready in your left hand, price agreed up front, no surprises. He tips, because you're good, and you tuck it away without counting - you count at home. The next set of headlights is already slowing at the corner. <<elseif _v == 1>> You settle the price before touching him and keep the car door within reach. The rest is timing: a steady pace, two rehearsed sounds, a brief smile at exactly the right moment. He mistakes efficiency for enthusiasm. That misunderstanding is part of the service. Seven minutes later you are back at the guardrail with clean hands and folded cash. Low risk, low effort, acceptable margin. <<elseif _v == 2>> He tries to bargain after unzipping. You stop, meet his eyes, and repeat the number without heat. The full amount appears immediately. Only then do you resume, letting his breath and posture tell you more than his clumsy instructions. He finishes quickly and apologizes. You tell him not to; quick customers improve the hourly rate. He laughs as though it is a joke and adds a tip. <<else>> You recognize him from last week: same sedan, same wedding ring turned inward, same request. Familiarity makes the exchange almost frictionless. He knows the price and you know the exact pressure that keeps him quiet. The money changes hands before either of you uses the other's name. Repeat business without intimacy - the cleanest arrangement available out here. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaHand', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You keep your eyes on the dashboard lights while your hand does what he paid for, quick and clumsy and unreal. He smells of cigarettes and someone else's perfume. You tell yourself it's only a hand, only a few minutes, only money - and the words hold right up until he groans and you're fumbling for the tissues in the door pocket. He drives off before you've finished wiping your fingers. The cold catches you as soon as you step out. You stand at the curb, wiping your hand again. <<elseif _v == 1>> You repeat the price because your voice shakes the first time. Inside the car, the dashboard clock changes by six minutes while you stare at it and move your hand. Six minutes should not be enough to change anything important. Then you are outside with money in your pocket and his smell on your fingers. The clock was right. The thought does not help. <<elseif _v == 2>> He talks as if this is ordinary, asking where you are from while guiding your wrist. You answer with lies because the truth feels too exposed. Your body completes the small ugly task while your mind follows the white lane markings into the dark. When he leaves, you scrub your hand with a dry tissue until the skin burns. The bills remain crisp and untouched in your other fist. <<else>> The car is warm enough that the windshield fogs when you lean inside. He jokes about it; you make yourself laugh. Keeping him comfortable seems safer than letting the silence show how frightened you are. It ends without violence, which already feels like a kind of success. You hate that this is now the standard by which you measure a night. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _act is "blowjob">> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaBlowB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You slide down eager, because this is what mouths are FOR, silly, and his hand in your hair feels like being petted. You hum and he laughs, surprised, and calls you a good girl - the two best words, they light you up like a slot machine. Time goes soft and warm and blurry the way it does now. Afterward he gives you extra and says something you forget while he's still saying it. You blow a kiss at the closing door. Your head is a snow globe somebody shook. Pretty flakes. No thoughts. <<elseif _v == 1>> You kneel between the seat and the open door, pleased that he chose something you know so well. His fingers comb your hair and every little word of approval makes you try harder. Soon the whole car is breath, radio static, and the easy rhythm your body remembers for you. He pays extra for the enthusiasm. You beam at the bills as if they are a report card full of gold stars. <<elseif _v == 2>> He asks whether you are sure. The question is funny - of course you are sure; you already climbed in. You answer by lowering your head and let the happy blankness arrive with his hand at your crown. Later, on the curb, you cannot remember his face. You remember that he called you sweet. Sweet is better anyway. <<else>> The gearshift presses your shoulder, but you turn the awkward space into a game, adjusting until he laughs and relaxes. You like making men happy. Happy men praise you, and praise makes everything inside your head soft and pink. The door clicks shut behind you. You lick your lips, wave at the taillights, and briefly wonder why the cold makes you feel lonely. Then another car approaches and the wonder disappears. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaBlowC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Condom on before he can argue - your rule, non-negotiable, and it's cost you exactly zero repeat customers. You work efficiently, one hand doing half the labor, your mind somewhere else entirely: rent, interest, the shift tomorrow. He thinks the sounds are for him; they're metronome marks, keeping tempo, moving this along. He finishes on schedule and pays what was agreed, plus a little, because competence is rare out here. You're already reaching for the door as he zips up. <<elseif _v == 1>> You inspect the package, set a fifteen-minute limit, and position yourself where you can open the door. Every precaution has become automatic. So has the performance: eye contact, measured enthusiasm, one hand controlling depth and pace. He finishes before the limit. You accept the cash, discard the condom, and mark the booking profitable. <<elseif _v == 2>> He wants to remove the condom halfway through. You stop so completely that the silence frightens him more than anger would. The rule survives. When you continue, you give him exactly what he purchased and nothing resembling forgiveness. He pays without another argument. Boundary enforced, transaction closed. <<else>> The customer keeps praising your technique, apparently unaware that technique is simply repetition with the feelings removed. You change pace when his knees tense and bring the appointment to an efficient end. On the roadside you rinse your mouth, check the notes against the streetlight, and calculate how many more jobs the week requires. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaBlow', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You lean across the gearshift and it digs into your ribs, and that small stupid pain is the realest thing in the car. He holds the back of your head - not rough, just certain, like he's done this with a hundred girls on a hundred nights like this. You breathe through it, count backwards, hold the cold chrome of the door handle like an anchor to a world where you don't do this. When it's over you spit into a napkin and take the folded bills without meeting his eyes. Your mouth tastes of latex and defeat. The money is real, at least. The money is always real. <<elseif _v == 1>> You kneel because standing outside would mean admitting you changed your mind. The car smells of pine freshener and stale smoke. You focus on the artificial little tree swinging from the mirror and let it count the seconds for you. Outside, you rinse your mouth with water gone warm in your bag. The payment covers groceries. You repeat that until it sounds almost like a reason. <<elseif _v == 2>> He cups the back of your head with casual ownership. You freeze, then force yourself to continue before he notices. Each movement feels detached, something seen through glass rather than done by you. The money comes folded around a phone number. You tear the number away, keep the bills, and hate the precision of that choice. <<else>> Halfway through, headlights sweep across the car and panic locks your chest. He tells you nobody can see. His reassurance only makes the situation clearer: there is something here that must be hidden. When it ends, your knees ache on the asphalt. You walk several blocks before realizing you left your dignity in a stranger's passenger seat - and then realize you cannot go back for it. <</if>> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaSexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> He wants the whole thing, and OF COURSE he does, everybody does, because you're for this now and being for-this feels like floating. You let him arrange you however he likes - bendy and giggly and endlessly agreeable - and you make all the happy noises, and they're mostly real, which is the funny part. Being used up feels like being useful feels like being loved: the same warm soup in your empty little head. He overpays. They always overpay the ones who've stopped keeping score. You drift back to the curb glowing and sticky and humming, and couldn't tell a soul your own last name if they asked. <<elseif _v == 1>> The back seats fold flat and you clap at the extra room. He laughs, calls you adorable, and turns you where he wants you. You follow every adjustment happily; deciding is difficult, but being arranged is wonderfully easy. Afterward he counts the money into your hand. You lose track after the fifth bill and kiss his cheek in thanks. The number matters less than having been a good girl. <<elseif _v == 2>> He asks what you like. You tell him whatever he likes, and mean it with the bright sincerity of an empty page. His approval warms you more than the cramped car ever could. By the time he is done, your thoughts have dissolved into small pleasant sounds. You step back into the cold smiling, body sore, mind mercifully light. <<else>> There is music playing low while he uses you across the back seat. You hum along whenever you remember the tune and giggle when the car rocks. Nothing feels serious if you make it cute enough. He leaves a generous stack and calls you unforgettable. Five minutes later you have forgotten him completely. It feels like a talent. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaSexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Backseat, twenty minutes; you've mapped this exact economy down to the dollar. You give him the girlfriend illusion because that's what the premium buys - the sounds, the eye contact, the little gasp on cue - and you upsell nothing you can't cleanly deliver. Part of you stands off to one side the whole time, arms folded, running the numbers, noting he's the third tonight and the best-paying. When it's finished you dress with unhurried competence and pocket a fat fold of bills. Craft, not surrender. You stopped confusing the two a long time ago. <<elseif _v == 1>> You check the lock, the condom, and the agreed time before climbing into the back. Then you provide the illusion efficiently: warmth in your voice, responsiveness in your body, attention that never becomes trust. Twenty-two minutes later you are dressed and paid. The customer believes he bought intimacy. You know he rented choreography. <<elseif _v == 2>> He requests something outside the agreement. You quote the surcharge. Faced with a price, his impulse becomes a decision, and he declines. That is why every boundary should have a number attached. The rest proceeds according to plan. You leave with no surprises and a margin large enough to justify the upholstery burns. <<else>> Rain drums on the roof while you manage his pace, his confidence, and the narrow limits of the car. Your body performs closeness; your mind inventories exits and calculates the remaining debt. He thanks you afterward with embarrassing sincerity. You thank him, put the money away and wait until you're outside to count it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtTrassaSex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> He's got the seats folded down in the back and you climb in, because you already said yes and the number was too big to walk away from. It's cramped and fogged and it hurts a little, so you fix your eyes on a crack in the vinyl and leave the rest of yourself elsewhere. His weight, his breath, the seat sticking to your skin. You let it happen to a body that stopped feeling strictly like yours a while ago. When he's done, he cannot quite meet your eyes. You take the money and the cold air and try to remember which direction home is. <<elseif _v == 1>> You almost refuse when he names the service. Then he doubles the offer, and the debt answers before you do. In the folded-down back seat, you fix your attention on a scratch in the ceiling and let the body beneath it become someone else's problem. He is gentle. You wish he were not; gentleness leaves you nowhere to put the blame. <<elseif _v == 2>> The windows fog quickly, sealing the two of you inside a private world you never wanted. You count each passing truck by the wash of light across the ceiling. Nine trucks, one stranger, enough money for another few days. When you step out, your legs tremble. You pretend it is the cold until the car is gone. <<else>> He asks your name while fastening the condom. You give him a false one, and he whispers it as though this were tenderness. The lie protects the real name, but hearing any name in his mouth still feels like theft. Afterward, you dress in silence and take the payment from the cup holder. Survival has begun to look frighteningly like routine. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> Earned tonight: <<print _paid>>$ <<if $trasaCount gte 12 and not setup.hasSeenInPlay("EndingQueenHighway")>> * [[There is no morning after this|EndingQueenHighway]] <<elseif $trasaCount gte 4 and not $pimped and not $pimpDeclined>> <br>This one doesn't drive off. In the rearview mirror you catch him watching you count your money, and the stillness of him lifts the hair on your neck. * [[Hear him out|PimpOffer]] <<else>> * [[Back into the dark|Tally]] <</if>> <</if>>

<<set _vinceCar to either("01", "02", "03")>> <<vid "place/vince-car-" _vinceCar>> "You're good," the man says at last, looking from you to the road. "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>> <<set _paid to setup.payNight(_pay)>> <<set _key to "slut/" + _act>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, _pool, _key)>> <<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 and thanks you. You tell him he can book again through Vince. 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. You keep them taking turns so you can manage both without being hurried. 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 count the money, set aside Vince's share and leave before anyone asks for more. <<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 receive $<<print _paid>>. Vince’s cut was $<<print _cut>>. * [[Head home|Tally]] <</if>> <</if>> /% 0.8a: tgirl escort framework (GDD GenderContent/01-GDD §3-5). Opt-in via Trans content + the Chaser's gift; two bookings - passive (she receives) and active (she tops), pools scene/tgescortpas / scene/tgescortakt from City World donors. Camera discipline: prose names no anatomy the clips don't. %/

<<if setup.chaser.canUseAgency()>> The agency's card arrived with the clinic's second brochure: a number, a slogan - *SPECIALTY BOOKINGS, DISCREET, PREMIUM* - and the city's oldest promise, that somewhere there is a market for everything a body can be. <<if setup.chaser.canTakeSpecialty("deep")>> * [[Passive booking - deep throat specialist|TgEscortDeep]] ($40 above standard before night modifiers) <<else>> * <span class="dl-bureau-note">Deep throat specialist · requires Promiscuity 50+ and two completed passive bookings (<<print Math.min(2, $escortPassiveBookings || 0)>>/2).</span> <</if>> * [[Passive booking - you receive|TgEscortPas]] * [[Active booking - you top|TgEscortAkt]] <<if setup.chaser.canTakeSpecialty("contour")>> * [[Tit fucking booking|TgEscortTit]] (requires body contouring) <</if>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <</if>>

<<if not setup.chaser.canUseAgency()>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> <<run setup.nightCost(setup.chaser.passiveStaminaCost())>> <<set $tgEscortCount to ($tgEscortCount || 0) + 1>> <<set $escortPassiveBookings to ($escortPassiveBookings || 0) + 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _gross to 300 + ($promiscuity * 6) + ($domsub * 2)>> <<run setup.payNight(_gross)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 8, "tgescortpas/pas")>> <<vid "scene/tgescortpas/" _id>> The booking is a hotel, because specialty bookings are always hotels: the kind with a lobby that forgets faces by arrangement. The client has paid the premium for the specialty, which means he has read the terms twice and wants exactly what the terms say. He is polite in the way premium men are polite - he asks before he takes, and what he takes is the passive hour: you, receiving, the room's good lighting on both of you, his gratitude arriving in real time. The new body prices this differently than the old one did - the market for it is thinner and the rate is fatter, the city being what it is. After, he books Thursday. Everyone books Thursday eventually. * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<if not setup.chaser.canUseAgency()>> * [[Back|Prostitution]] <<else>> <<run setup.nightCost(40)>> <<set $tgEscortCount to ($tgEscortCount || 0) + 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', -2)>> <<set _gross to 350 + ($promiscuity * 6) + ($domsub)>> <<run setup.payNight(_gross)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 8, "tgescortakt/akt")>> <<vid "scene/tgescortakt/" _id>> The active booking pays best, the dispatcher admits, because so few on the roster can take it: an evening where you do the taking - the client underneath, or bent over his own good furniture, paying by the hour to be, in his words, "handled." The trade runs in a direction the ledger never priced, and the clients - nervous, precise, over-tipped men, a type you now recognize on sight - are grateful in a register the passive bookings never reach. You learn the etiquette of it fast: their yeses come up like bubbles, and the whole art is in not bursting a single one. The market for this is thin, fat, and endlessly polite. Thursday gets booked on the way out. * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/scientist-02.png" alt="The laboratory"></div> The machine stops on the click. The scientist checks the green switch, then the readings, then finally looks at you. “You said it would stop,” you tell him. “It did.” He writes the time down without asking you to go back in. * [[Leave the laboratory|Tally]]

<<widget "arcOffer">> <<set _offerContext to _args[0]>> <<set _offerHeading to _args[1]>> <<set _offerAction to _args[2]>> <<set _offerId to setup.sceneRollArc(_offerContext)>> <<if _offerId>> <<set _offerMeta to setup.ledger.eventMeta[_offerId]>> <<set _offerAnchor to "arc-call-" + _offerContext>> <<set _offerSelector to "#" + _offerAnchor>> <<set _offerTarget to _offerMeta.target>> <<capture _offerId _offerSelector _offerTarget>> <div @id="_offerAnchor" class="dl-event-call"> <div class="dl-event-call-index"><<print _offerHeading>></div> <<if _offerMeta.cover>><img class="dl-event-call-cover" @src="setup.resolveBodyArt(_offerMeta.cover)" alt="" loading="lazy"><</if>> <div class="dl-event-call-main"> <div class="dl-event-call-top"><span>DAY $days</span><span class="dl-event-call-source"><<print _offerMeta.source>></span></div> <h3><<print _offerMeta.call>></h3> <p><<print _offerMeta.teaser>></p> <div class="dl-event-call-meta"><span><<print _offerMeta.title>></span><span><<print _offerMeta.total>> chapters</span></div> <div class="dl-event-call-actions"><<link _offerAction>><<if setup.sceneDefs.find(d => d.id === _offerId).ok(State.variables)>><<goto _offerTarget>><<else>><<replace _offerSelector>><</replace>><</if>><</link>><<link "Later">><<run setup.storyFlow.postpone(_offerId)>><<replace _offerSelector>><</replace>><</link>></div> </div> </div> <</capture>> <</if>> <</widget>>

<<if not setup.chaser.canTakeSpecialty("deep")>> * [[Back|TgEscort]] <<else>> <<run setup.nightCost(setup.chaser.passiveStaminaCost())>> <<set $tgEscortCount to ($tgEscortCount || 0) + 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _gross to 340 + ($promiscuity * 6) + ($domsub * 2)>> <<run setup.payNight(_gross)>> <<vid "night/t1-" "b">> The agency stamps the booking at forty above the standard rate. The dispatcher checks the two earlier appointments before she puts it on your schedule. The client has read your file. He knows the number — the depth count, the hold time, the whole ledger of your retraining — and he pays for it the way connoisseurs pay for anything: precisely, and with expectations. You give him the full depth, the whole instrument, and the booking runs long because he keeps checking his watch and then not stopping. * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<if not setup.chaser.canTakeSpecialty("contour")>> * [[Back|TgEscort]] <<else>> <<run setup.nightCost(35)>> <<set $tgEscortCount to ($tgEscortCount || 0) + 1>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<set _gross to 320 + ($promiscuity * 5)>> <<run setup.payNight(_gross)>> <<vid "night/t1-" "b">> The contouring has settled, the sensitivity has arrived, and the market — which prices everything — has noticed before you have. The client is polite about it in the way that costs more: he asks permission for the position, he doesn't rush, and when it's over he tips in exact change because the rate was exact and so was the service. * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<<if setup.runBlockReason("Prostitution")>> * [[Back|Night]] <<elseif setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> * [[Review the invitation|RichMan]] <<else>> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneRichReject")>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/rich-man-02.png" alt="The Rich Man's door"></div> This time he has already set two cups out. “Breakfast?” he asks. You tell him yes. The agency file stays in the hall while you finish your coffee. <<else>> <<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichReject")>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/client-approach/rich-man-02.png" alt="The Rich Man's door"></div> He opens the door himself, which he always does, and for a moment — a full second, which is longer than he takes with anything — he simply looks. Not anger. Adjustment. The way a man looks at a wine list that doesn't have what he ordered. "I think the agency sent the wrong file." He says it to the hallway, not to you, which is the courtesy. Then, recovering: "You're welcome to stay for breakfast, of course. The horses don't mind." The breakfast is real. The coffee is excellent. He asks about the city, about your week, about nothing that requires either of you to acknowledge what just happened to the evening. At the door he presses an envelope into your hand — taxi fare, not a fee — and his grip is warm and brief. "Come back," he says, and he means it, and you both know what has to change before you do. <<set $money += 50>><<set $dailyIncome += 50>> <</if>> * [[Head home|Tally]] <</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> <<if setup.transOn()>> <div class="stat-label"><span>Appearance</span><span><<print ["man","twink","femboy","tgirl","woman"][window.body()]>> · <<print $femBody>> / 100<<if $blockPenis>> 🔒<</if>></span></div> <div class="stat-bar-container"> <div class="stat-bar-fill bar-promiscuity" @style="'width: ' + Math.clamp($femBody, 0, 100) + '%'"></div> </div> <</if>> <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 $stallCount>> days of still water </div> <</if>> /% 0.6 B2/B3: the nearest outcome, then the counters the game tracked but never showed (leash, ranch appointments, high-water, Vince, still water, the highway, outcalls). One print builds both blocks - setup.outcomes derives everything from live state, gates untouched. %/ <<print setup.outcomes.sidebarHtml()>> <<print setup.ledger.accountCaption()>> </details> </div> /% Meta navigation lives outside #stats-panel: hiding the stats rail on start/author screens must never hide archive access. Sticky to the bar bottom so long stat rails cannot push it out of reach. %/ <div class="sidebar-links"> <<if setup.hasSupporterTools() and !$Gallery and passage() isnot "Gallery">> <div class="dl-tool-rail"><<link "Full Control">><<run setup.supporter.open()>><</link>></div> <</if>> <<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> <</if>> <<if setup.hasSupporterTools()>> <p class="dl-tool-status">Full Control is active. Return to your run to use it.</p> <<else>> <section class="dl-gallery-access" aria-labelledby="dl-gallery-code-title"> <h2 id="dl-gallery-code-title">Patreon access code</h2> <p>Enter a Patreon code for the event archive, starting profiles, Draft and five contract slots. An extended code also opens Full Control.</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">> <<endingReplayBody>> /% 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 and setup.contentAllowed(_id)>><<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 and setup.contentAllowed(_id)>> <<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>> <<if setup.transOn() and setup.endingVariants(_id)>> <<set _forms to setup.endingFormsReached(_id)>> <small class="dl-gallery-forms"><<if _forms.woman>>Woman reached<</if>><<if _forms.woman and _forms.androgynous>> · <</if>><<if _forms.androgynous>>Androgynous reached<</if>></small> <</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", "SMITH / OFFICE", "INTERN", "CLINIC", "VINCE", "LIBRARY", "SCIENTIST", "CHASER"]>> <<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 and setup.contentAllowed(_id)>><<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 and setup.contentAllowed(_id)>> <<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 ? setup.resolveBodyArt(_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>> <<set _offsiteShift to $smithTask and $smithTask.offsite and $smithTask.target is "cafe">> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("cafe")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<set $cafeShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "cafe">> <<if setup.transOn() and setup.firstBodyBeat("cafe")>> <<if $cafeShifts is 1>> <<bodyText "The cook hands you an apron and taps the knot behind her own back. You tie yours the same way and take the first order." "The cook brings out an apron from the staff drawer. The ties cross higher than you expected. You ask her to show you once, then take the first order.">> <<else>> The cook reaches for your usual apron. You ask for a different one and hold out your hand. She passes it across the counter. “Two coffees for table four.” <</if>> <</if>> <<if _offsiteShift>> The timer on the espresso machine clicks off. “Two coffees,” someone calls. You bring them to the window. By the time you get back, the machine is already warming the next cup. <</if>> <<if $cafeShifts gte 25 and not $teleCafe>><<set $teleCafe to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts. The regulars have stopped asking if you're new here, and the espresso machine only misbehaves for strangers now.</div> <</if>> /% Cafe stays the cheapest job in the game - it is the morning slot and only costs 30 stamina, so the rungs pay far less than the Bar's. What the ladder trades in is promiscuity: the escalation should push you further down the route you are already on, not fund it. %/ <<set _total to 150>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shy">> /% Cafe shift type logic: ordinary service -> teasing for tips -> sex with a patron -> public/group use %/ <<if ($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. <<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 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. You catch yourself doing it even while pouring the next coffee. 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 is repetitive, but you like knowing what to do next. Pour, wipe the counter, ring up the order. By the end of the rush you have a small pocketful of change and a headache from the machine. <<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. You smile at him again on the way past, amused at how hard he is trying. You rather like the morning shift now. For a few hours you can think about orders and deliveries. 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 twice, pleased with the morning's work. Once, you would have worried about what that practiced smile said about you. Now you wonder whether the same smile will work on the lunchtime crowd. <</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 has asked you for anything beyond the order. You are glad of the quiet moment before lunch. <<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. You stay in the back room until the manager calls you. <<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. You ask the couple if they want anything else. They split the cost of another pastry. <</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 remember one man's name, laugh at another's joke, and pause beside the third while he gets out his change. Their little contest fills your apron faster than the entire breakfast rush. You are not flirting with any of them, not really. You know which jokes will bring out another bill. When one asks for your number, you write the cafe's on his receipt and add a heart. He tips anyway. You leave him laughing and clear the next table. <<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. At least the men in the queue have stopped complaining about the wait. 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. You move on before he tries touching you again. <</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 your back straightens. <<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. You pick up the tray where you left it and take the next order. <<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. You tell him the fresh one is on the house. <<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. When someone asks for another coffee, it takes you a moment to remember where you left the tray. You can keep the two sets of payments separate, at least. <</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 the relief of seeing 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. You count the payments, then ask the manager how long remains until closing. <<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 count the men still waiting, trying to judge how much longer you will be here. 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. You check your percentage as the guests arrive, then leave the agreement in your bag. You put the signed terms away and concentrate on getting through the shift. <</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 and sweat. 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>> <<set _offsiteShift to $smithTask and $smithTask.offsite and $smithTask.target is "bar">> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("bar")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<set $barShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "bar">> <<if _offsiteShift>> The till clicks open. There is a queue, so you count the change out loud. The first number comes out so easily you almost forget you had another word ready. <</if>> <<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 "<<bodyText 'good girl' 'perfect'>>" 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 reaches for your fingers as he tips. You set the glass down and step away before he can catch them. 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 ignore as many as you can and keep your eyes on the glasses. 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. You leave the manager the list of things that still need fixing. <</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, the regulars stop talking when you walk in. 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 can't stop grinning. 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. You undo a button and lean over to hear the order. He forgets what he was going to say, and you wait with the smile that usually gets a tip. 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 look away and return to the next table. <<elseif _v == 2>> Working the room tonight, and you start by finding out who is paying for each table. 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. You give him the same smile you have given the others. 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. You wait for him to take his hand away before you lift the tray. <</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. By the second toast, you're perched on the groom's chair, laughing at the best man's jokes while they compete to buy your next drink. 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>> You give up trying to remember the drinks and stay where the men want you instead. 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 leave the tray on the counter and take the better-paid offers in the booths. You let them handle you in the open, keeping track of the bills even when you have stopped watching their faces. Nothing about it reaches you. You concentrate on getting through the next customer. 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. You try not to think about how you will feel when it is finished. By last call you refuse no one, not from surrender but from efficiency: you are too tired to argue over another request. 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. You count again to make sure, then put the money away before going outside. 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, the morning finds you hollowed out. <<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 someone at the Crossroads never says 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 stand, your lips are bruised and your pockets full of crumpled bills. You count them slowly, reluctant to think about how many more nights you'll need to do this. <<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. It gets harder to keep the same pace toward the end. 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. You put it away before turning back toward the stall. <<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. You don't want another customer knowing what to call you. You finish him, pocket your share, and call the next number. You hear the next man approach before the last has left. <</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 have to lean against the partition before your legs will hold you. <<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 you can't stop remembering the sounds, though you never saw a face. <<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. You keep remembering how you left and came back, even while another man is using 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")>> <<if setup.transOn()>><<set $femBody to Math.min(100, $femBody + 1)>><</if>> Earned in the bar: <<print _total>>$ * [[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("office")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<set $burnsShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "burns">> <<if $burnsShifts gte 25 and not $teleBurns>><<set $teleBurns to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five gray evenings. Burns still calls you temporary - but the archive key hangs where you left it, and the floor has stopped noticing when you arrive.</div> <</if>> <<set _base to Math.floor(30 + ($iq * 2))>> <<set _total to _base>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "work">> /% Office event logic (Burns) %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 25 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 8>> <<set _event to "harass">> <<else>> <<set _event to "work">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "work">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "work">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "work">> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 3)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _officeWorkKey to "office/work/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _officeWorkVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _officeWorkKey _officeWorkVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeWorkB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> They give you the picture spreadsheet today: green cells are good, red cells need fixing, and the little arrows tell you where things go. You hum while you turn red boxes green. It feels like a puzzle made of Christmas lights, and every correct click makes a pleasant chime inside your head. Mr. Burns checks the screen twice, surprised, then calls the result acceptable. You beam at the praise. Nobody needed you to flirt or kneel or remember a difficult word. You made the colors right all by yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> The copier gives you one page, then another, then another. You stack them into neat white towers because towers are easier than whatever the tiny numbers mean. A clerk quietly sorts the pages afterward, but he tells you the stacks helped, and helpful is a very good thing to be. By closing, your fingers are gray with toner and your desk looks beautifully organized. You cannot explain the report, but Mr. Burns signs it. The signature means money; money means you did the job. Simple. <<elseif _v == 2>> You spend the shift entering dates from paper into boxes on the screen. Day, month, year. Three little numbers at a time. When your thoughts wander, you decorate the sticky notes with hearts and begin again. Several dates end up backward, but the supervisor corrects them without shouting. You apologize with your prettiest smile and promise to be more careful. At the end, he gives you a smaller stack for tomorrow. That feels considerate, almost like being taken care of. <<else>> Numbers keep slipping away, so you read each one aloud before typing it. The office hears a soft stream of digits from your cubicle all afternoon, interrupted whenever you lose the sequence and giggle at yourself. It takes twice as long, but the final column balances. You clap once before remembering where you are. Mr. Burns stares, then stamps the page. The stamp is red and official and proves your soft, slow head can still finish something. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeWorkC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You take the cubicle shift as low-risk maintenance. Reports arrive, errors surface, and you clear them with the same detached precision you bring to more intimate work. Spreadsheets do not touch back, demand reassurance, or confuse payment with affection. Burns marks the file acceptable. No bonus, no proposition, only the agreed wage. Thin margins, negligible wear. You'd take another shift like this tomorrow. <<elseif _v == 1>> A six-figure discrepancy hides inside the quarterly consolidation. You find it after three hours of cross-referencing and trace it to a duplicated export nobody else questioned. Burns reads your summary twice before offering his driest approval. The discovery is worth more than the praise: proof that the mind still produces revenue independently of the body. You keep a copy of the summary before handing it in. <<elseif _v == 2>> Deadline pressure strips the office to its useful components: data, caffeine, and frightened clerks. You take the ugliest report, impose order on it, and ignore every glance drifting over the cubicle wall. At closing, your section is finished and the others are still negotiating with chaos. Competence attracts less cash than cleavage here, but it carries no recovery cost. You remember why you once valued that distinction. <<else>> Burns assigns you a forecast everyone expects to fail. You model three scenarios, identify the hidden exposure, and deliver the result without softening it for management vanity. The room goes quiet while he checks your figures. They hold. For one afternoon, your value is documented in cells no one can mistake for measurements of your body. You save a private copy of the file. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeWork', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The open-plan office hums beneath fluorescent light as you settle into a narrow cubicle and disappear among dozens of clerks. Endless reports demand concentration, but their monotony is almost protective. For several hours, you can concentrate on the report instead of worrying about the next payment. Mr. Burns gives a dry nod when you submit the stack. Here, at least, you are judged by the information you processed. You leave with pleasant intellectual fatigue and the modest pride of having earned money entirely with your mind. <<elseif _v == 1>> There's an error in the quarterly consolidation - small, buried, the kind that compounds into six figures if nobody catches it. You catch it. It takes most of the shift to trace, but the satisfaction of circling the source is almost physical. Burns reads your summary twice. "Acceptable," he says, which here amounts to applause. You carry the word home. Your mind is still worth clean money, and today the pay slip proves it. <<elseif _v == 2>> Deadline day runs on vending-machine coffee and low-grade panic. You put your head down and enter the airless focus where there is no debt, no Smith, no body at all - only columns resolving into order beneath your hands. Hours later, your section is finished and filed. The dark monitor reflects a tired, ordinary office worker. You hold on to that image like a photograph of someone you used to be and might still become again. <<else>> A new clerk asks for help with a formula you barely remember. Explaining it forces the logic back into place, step by step, until both of you can see where the numbers must go. She thanks you without looking below your face. The simplicity of that respect nearly hurts. You take a little more care with the work she has brought you. It feels good to be asked. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flirt">> <<set _total += 200>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<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('deckTxtOfficeFlirtB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The office is all stuffy and Mr. Burns keeps finding reasons to hover at your desk, and you've figured out the trick: if you undo a button or two and lean just so, he goes flustered and pink and nice to you all day, so you do it, because making the boss pink is fun and easy and means nobody makes you do the hard number-stuff. You give him the meaningful little smile and toss your hair and he practically trips over his own feet. At the end he calls you in and writes a big "diligence bonus" with a long look, and you take it and beam, delighted with your clever trick. You used to think trading your prettiness at work was a scary line to cross; you can't remember why. It's the easiest money there is, and Burns is so happy, and happy bosses are the best kind. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wear the blouse with the stretchy buttons because Mr. Burns becomes extra generous whenever one looks ready to pop. All afternoon, you carry papers to his desk and lean close enough for him to forget what he asked for. The actual report goes badly, but the bonus goes wonderfully. He calls you distracting as though it is a complaint. You thank him. Being distracting is much easier than spreadsheets and apparently pays better. <<elseif _v == 2>> Mr. Burns asks you to take notes, so you sit on the corner of his desk and chew the pen while he talks. He keeps losing his place. You keep crossing and uncrossing your legs because it helps him find it again, or maybe it does not. Either way, he smiles. At closing, he pays you for exceptional support. You are not sure what you supported, but the envelope is thick and his face is still pink. Another successful office thing. <<else>> You discover that every difficult question can be answered with a head tilt, a tiny pout, and "Could you show me?" Men rush to do the work for you, delighted by the chance to feel clever. By evening, your report is complete in four different handwritings. Burns praises your teamwork and watches you bend to pick up the bonus envelope. You may have forgotten the formulas, but delegation is a very important business skill. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeFlirtC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The open-plan floor is stuffy and you're working Mr. Burns the way you work any mark - top buttons undone by design, posture arranged, the whole thing calibrated to keep him circling your desk finding excuses. He leans too close, breath on your neck, hand on your chair, and you feed him exactly the languid half-smile that keeps him fed and paying without committing you to a single thing. You don't even bother doing the actual work well; the job is him, and you run it clean. He writes out a generous "diligence bonus" at close with an oily look you priced in advance. You pocket it, note that flattering a mediocre man is the lowest-effort income you've got, and feel no horror at all - you can barely remember being horrified by it. <<elseif _v == 1>> You ration attention across the management floor: eye contact for the department head, a private laugh for payroll, one carefully timed touch for Burns. Each gesture clears an obstacle the actual work would take hours to move. The final report is mediocre and the compensation is not. You leave with three favors owed and a bonus approved. You decide not to ask how much of the report Burns actually read. <<elseif _v == 2>> Burns keeps you beside him during a client call, less assistant than visual aid. You recognize the strategy and improve it, leaning into frame only when negotiations stall. The client signs before the hour ends. Burns claims the success and pays you quietly. You let him. You would rather have the payment than an argument about whose idea it was. Still, you note the percentage his vanity extracted and plan to price it next time. <<else>> A promotion is being discussed, so you let Burns believe he is discussing it with you. Your neckline, his office, the door left deliberately ajar - enough danger to excite him, not enough to create evidence. You never ask directly. He offers the bonus to prove his generosity, exactly as expected. Men in offices pay more to feel powerful than men in bars pay to feel desired. The product is nearly identical. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeFlirt', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The open-plan floor feels especially stuffy today. At your cubicle, you realize you deliberately left two buttons open and have been adjusting your posture whenever Burns approaches. Your boss suddenly finds endless reasons to visit the desk. He leans too close over the monitor, breath warming your neck, one hand resting on the chair behind you. Instead of objecting, you meet his gaze and slowly fix your hair. The office has rules no handbook records, and you are beginning to understand them. Your work no longer needs to be excellent. A little flirtation and the illusion of his superiority cover the errors. At closing, Burns writes a generous "diligence bonus" beneath a long, oily look. You pocket it and feel another fracture run through your remaining decency. You are selling attraction in the workplace - and the most frightening part is how satisfying the advantage feels. <<elseif _v == 1>> Burns praises your blouse before he notices the report. You should correct him. Instead, you shift closer, ask for help with a formula you understand perfectly well, and watch competence become optional. The bonus arrives at closing. You accept it with a smile that feels rehearsed because it is. The shame remains, but so does the discovery that admiration can be converted into money without anyone naming the exchange. <<elseif _v == 2>> You spend the morning resisting Burns's attention and the afternoon directing it. A laugh secures an extension; a hand briefly on his sleeve erases an error; one open button transforms criticism into advice. Each success makes the next compromise easier. When he signs the bonus, you feel both clever and cheaply purchased. The two feelings fit together more comfortably than they did yesterday. <<else>> During a meeting, you catch Burns watching your legs beneath the table. You cross them slowly and let him continue, then offer your proposal while his judgment is pleasantly impaired. It passes without objection. The outcome is useful, even satisfying, yet you leave wondering whether he heard a single word. You wanted your idea approved. You are less proud of learning which argument actually persuaded him. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "sex">> <<set _total += 500>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<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('deckTxtOfficeSexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No paperwork today - Burns's secretary just says the boss wants to see you about "quarterly indicators," and you already know what that means, and knowing is nice, because then you don't have to think, you just go. The frosted door shuts and he pulls you down onto the plush carpet and you let him, easy and willing, because letting the important man do what he wants is simple, and simple is your favorite. The clerks click away behind the glass while he takes you on the desk, scattering the papers you couldn't read anymore anyway, and you make the good obedient noises and feel your last little worries scatter along with them. After, you smooth your skirt at a glowing empty girl in the window glass and tuck away a plump envelope, dull and content. Corporate whatever. You're a good girl, the boss is pleased, there's money. What else is there? <<elseif _v == 1>> Burns says overtime and locks the door. You climb onto his desk before he finishes explaining, pleased that you remembered the routine. Reports slide to the floor as he pushes your legs apart, but reports are only paper and the envelope waiting beside them is real money. You count his praise instead of his thrusts: pretty, obedient, useful. Three excellent job words. When he finishes, you stamp the top page at random and giggle. Office work is much easier once everyone admits what your position is for. <<elseif _v == 2>> The secretary sends you in with coffee. Soon the tray is set aside and you are bent across Burns's desk while he dictates numbers you cannot follow. You repeat yes whenever his voice rises, and he seems delighted by your attention. Afterward, he asks whether you understood the forecast. You nod because nodding earns the envelope. The only figure you retain is the payment, and even that becomes simply a pleasing thickness in your purse. <<else>> Burns lets two executives stay for your performance review. They review your mouth, <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>, and how prettily you obey when placed over the conference table. You try to remember their names, then decide titles are enough. Each important man adds a bill to the envelope. You leave sore, smiling, and proud that the meeting produced unanimous approval. Whatever they were approving was clearly you. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeSexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No pretense of paperwork today: Burns's secretary sends you straight in to "discuss quarterly indicators," the corporate euphemism you long ago stopped hearing as anything but a booking. The frosted door closes and he skips the preludes, and you go to your knees on the expensive carpet and handle it like the private appointment it is - businesslike, unhurried, collecting the escort fee your job title exists to launder. Dozens of clerks type behind the glass while you earn the fat envelope; you keep your mind elsewhere throughout, the body braced on the desk running the routine. You leave straightening a crumpled skirt, empty and indifferent, having traded the last fiction of being an ordinary employee for cash, without once missing it. <<elseif _v == 1>> Burns books fifteen minutes between meetings. You arrive on time, lock the door, and clear the precise corner of his desk required for the appointment. Neither of you mentions reports. He uses you quickly while the calendar reminder flashes on his monitor. You collect the envelope before adjusting your clothes. You can hear the next meeting waiting outside as you straighten your skirt. <<elseif _v == 2>> A visiting director wants proof of Burns's control over his department. Burns offers you. You understand the demonstration immediately and negotiate your bonus with a glance before allowing both men to position you across the conference table. They discuss authority while using your body to illustrate it. You endure, perform, and remember the agreed number. You wait for them to finish, keeping the agreed payment in mind. <<else>> Burns has stopped inventing euphemisms. He points to the desk, places the envelope where you can see it, and continues reading while you undress. The bluntness saves time. You service him with the efficient detachment of a recurring account. When he finishes, you correct a figure on the report beneath your elbow before leaving. You point out the corrected figure before he can call you back about it. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeSex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The paperwork never begins. Burns's secretary informs you that the boss expects you for a discussion of "quarterly indicators." Once the frosted door closes, he pulls you onto the expensive carpet and forces you to your knees. You submit, recognizing that your official position has become little more than a respectable label attached to private services. Clerks type behind the glass while you earn a thick envelope with your body. Burns takes you across the desk, scattering reports, each thrust driving professional pride farther out of reach. When you leave and straighten your crumpled skirt, the title printed on your employee badge feels like a joke. The money is real. What it has replaced inside you feels increasingly distant. <<elseif _v == 1>> Burns summons you after the floor empties and places cash beside the quarterly report. Nothing is said directly. You understand when he closes the blinds and presses you over the same desk where your work waits unfinished. You stare at your own figures while he uses you, clinging to them as proof that this is not your only function. When you leave, the report remains unsigned and the envelope is in your hand. The office has made its priorities clear. <<elseif _v == 2>> A mistake in your report becomes Burns's excuse. He offers to overlook it if you remain after hours, then bends you across the conference table beneath the framed company values. The hypocrisy should make resistance easier. Instead, the promised money and familiar submission soften you before his hands do. Afterward, you correct the mistake with shaking fingers and hate that both forms of payment feel real. <<else>> The secretary no longer looks up when directing you into Burns's office. That small normalization hurts more than the locked door. Inside, he lifts your skirt, pays in advance, and treats the transaction as routine. You try to preserve outrage, but routine erodes sharp feelings. By the time you straighten your clothes, the scene already feels like another task completed. You leave frightened by how ordinary degradation becomes when scheduled. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "harass">> <<set _total += 100>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<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('deckTxtOfficeHarassB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> It's a quiet day, and a senior partner steps into the elevator with you, and in the little box his hand goes to your back and then lower for a squeeze right as the doors open, and you think, oh, a friendly pat! He presses a folded bill into your hand as he goes, and you decide that means he likes you, and being liked comes with money, which is two nice things at once. You smooth your skirt twice on the way out, humming, not quite able to hear the small cold voice that wants to have a word about it. It doesn't matter. Nice man, nice money, nice day. <<elseif _v == 1>> A manager corners you beside the copier and lets his hand rest on your bottom while explaining toner. You listen very carefully because important men like attentive girls. When he leaves a bill beneath the paper tray, you understand that you listened correctly. The copier flashes READY. You feel ready too, though you cannot quite say for what. Mostly you feel pleased that standing still counted as useful work. <<elseif _v == 2>> Someone pinches you in the archive and whispers not to tell. Secrets are exciting, so you promise immediately. He gives you money for being good at secrets. Later, you forget who it was but remember the rule: quiet girls get rewarded. You practice being quiet for the rest of the shift and wonder whether anyone else will notice how good you are. <<else>> A senior clerk traps your hand beneath his on the desk and slowly strokes your wrist. You watch, curious, until he asks whether you mind. The right answer takes too long to find, so you smile. His payment appears after he leaves. You decide the smile must have been right. Correct answers should always come with money; school would have been much easier that way. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficeHarass', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The floor is quiet today, but on your way back from the archive a senior partner "happens" to step into the elevator with you. In the cramped car his hand settles on the small of your back, then slides lower for an "accidental" squeeze just as the doors part. You hold your tongue - and find a folded bill pressed into your palm as he leaves, a quiet tax on staying silent. You tell yourself it meant nothing, even as you smooth your skirt twice on the way out. <<elseif _v == 1>> Burns brushes against you while reviewing a report, then leaves his hand at your waist long after the page is understood. You step away. He follows by half a step and asks whether there is a problem. You say no because the word arrives faster than courage. A small bonus appears on your desk later. You leave it on the desk for most of the afternoon, then put it in your bag. <<elseif _v == 2>> A director blocks the supply-room door and comments on how well your skirt fits. His fingers test the fabric without permission. You freeze, counting shelves until he loses interest. He calls you sensible and slips cash into your pocket. You keep it because returning it would require another encounter. All afternoon, the bill presses against your thigh like a second unwanted touch. <<else>> In the elevator, a partner's hand closes around your ass just as the doors shut. You remove it and he laughs, asking why you dress that way if you dislike attention. The question follows you back to the cubicle because some part of you has begun asking it too. You know the argument is dishonest. Knowing does not stop the shame from borrowing its voice. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "office")>> The printer jams twice today. Both times you fix it without thinking about it, and both times somebody says *you're a lifesaver* like they mean it. Earned in the office: <<print _total>>$ /% 0.6 D1: work-slot event - fires here, at the work, not in the morning pool. An invitation stays in the current run until accepted; postponing keeps it. %/ <<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>>

<<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 they found you easy to work with. <<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. You were glad nobody asked for anything else. 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. After four hours, you step down from the block and rub your calves. The seamstress pays you while you put your shoes back on. <<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 trousers finally fit, the designer thanks you for waiting. You tell him which seam was digging in. <<else>> Today is nothing but measurements: shoulder, waist, hip, inseam, then all of them again after lunch. The tape goes round your waist again. You hold still and wait for the next measurement. 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. You ask about the extra hours. The fee is fixed, they tell you, so you get dressed and leave before they find another adjustment. <<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. The screens are blank and the folders empty. You still remember how to sit at a desk for the camera. 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 ask to see the contact sheet before you get dressed. <<elseif _v == 1>>You treat every strip of lace as product placement, repeating the angles analytics favor. The photographer likes those angles. You use them again when he asks for the next set. <<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. You check that he has recorded the extra hours. <<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. You repeat the pose until the client approves it. <<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. You check which images the contract allows him to use. <</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. You keep to the marks, repeat the take and ask how many remain. 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 camera stays on while the director tells you where to stand. 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. You stop trying to keep track of the people around you. 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 you leave feeling like the porn doll the viewers paid to watch, struggling to think beyond the next instruction. <<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. You have repeated the same scene until it is difficult to remember which sounds were yours and which you were told to make. At home, you put the payment away and sit down without turning on the lights. <<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")>> <<if setup.transOn()>><<set $femBody to Math.min(100, $femBody + 2)>><</if>> Earned in modeling: <<print _total>>$ * [[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 setup.smithTaskDone("webcam")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<set $webcamShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "webcam">> <<if $webcamShifts gte 25 and not $teleWebcam>><<set $teleWebcam to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five streams. The chat has regulars who gave your nicknames nicknames of their own, and the token menu practically writes itself.</div> <</if>> <<set _base to 50>> <<set _bonus to ($promiscuity * 5) + ($beauty * 2)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(_base + _bonus)>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shy">> /% Webcam broadcast ladder (solo, soft ceiling - no hardcore). 0.6 §5.1, corrected by measurement (see the bar note): prom ladder stays the pacing; beauty is the second key on the top rung - the top broadcast (normal) takes beauty 50. %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 25 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 85>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<else>> <<set _event to "tease">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 45 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 55>> <<set _event to "shy">> <<elseif _roll <= 90>> <<set _event to "tease">> <<else>> <<set _event to "light">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 65 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "tease">> <<elseif _roll <= 90>> <<set _event to "light">> <<elseif $beauty >= 50>> <<set _event to "normal">> <<else>> <<set _event to "light">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 45 or $beauty < 50>> <<set _event to "light">> <<else>> <<set _event to "normal">> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "shy">> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _webcamShyKey to "webcam/shy-v2/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _webcamShyVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _webcamShyKey _webcamShyVariant>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamShyB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You flick the camera on and beam at the little chat window like it's a room full of your best friends. Hi! Hiiii! You answer their questions - or the ones that sound like questions you remember - and twirl your hair and blow kisses at the numbers whenever they climb, because numbers climbing means everybody's happy and happy is your favorite thing. You're not sure what half of them are typing, but you say yes to all of it, sweetly. Tokens rain down. Someone calls you a doll and you glow so hard you almost forget to breathe. Being looked at feels like the whole internet hugging you at once, and you'd stay right here forever if the little light didn't eventually blink off and make you remember there's a somewhere else. <<elseif _v == 1>> You spend the stream greeting every username as if an old friend arrived. Some names are difficult, so you give them cute replacements and draw hearts beside them on a pad. The chat loves being renamed by you. Nobody asks for anything complicated. You smile, wave, and collect tokens for being sweet. It feels like a party where all the guests fit inside one bright little box. <<elseif _v == 2>> A regular asks how your day went. You cannot remember enough to answer, so you describe your lipstick, your top, and the sparkly drink beside the keyboard. Everyone sends hearts anyway. Apparently those were the important parts. When the viewer counter climbs, you clap. They clip the reaction and pay to make you do it again. You clap again when they ask, laughing because it seems to please them so much. <<else>> You try reading questions aloud but keep losing your place when the chat moves. Instead you pose, twirl your hair, and say hi whenever a new color appears. The room decides this confusion is adorable. At sign-off they beg you to stay. Being missed before you have even left makes you glow all the way to bed. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> You run the "shy girl next door" the way you'd run any product line: ring light at forty percent, top button done up, the practiced flicker of hesitation that reads as authenticity to men who've never met the real thing. You clock which regulars tip for eye contact and which just want to be greeted by name, and you feed each of them exactly that, one metered smile at a time. The chat thinks it's discovering a person. You're at the wheel of every second - what they see, what they don't, when the stream "accidentally" offers a glimpse worth another fistful of tokens. You log off with a clean take and a cleaner conscience than most nights: the shy act sells precisely because you never once have to mean it. <<else>> /% The lowest rung of the webcam ladder is the least explicit thing in the job and the one a cautious player repeats most, so it carries a deck. Effects identical in every variant. %/ <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamShy', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You lock yourself in your room, set up a soft light, and turn on the camera. Tonight you keep it conversational: you answer questions in the chat, play with your hair, and make eyes at your few viewers. You play the sweet girl next door, a little lonely and happy to have company. It takes effort to keep smiling, keep them talking, and keep the conversation within the limits you set. They like how natural it seems and send tokens for your shy smiles. You feel safe on this side of the screen, controlling what the audience sees. Despite the light flirting, you keep some distance, selling a few hours of company to ease your own loneliness. The shift ends on a positive note - you earned some money without sacrificing the remnants of your pride, although the attention of the anonymous crowd is gradually becoming a drug. <<elseif _v == 1>> Most of tonight is technical. The light is wrong and makes you look ill, so you spend twenty minutes rebuilding it out of a desk lamp and a pillowcase; then the microphone picks up the neighbors' television and you have to start again facing the other wall. Four people watch you do all of this. One of them keeps offering advice about the lamp. By the time it looks right you have been on air for an hour and earned almost nothing, and yet the hour has been oddly companionable - a small handful of strangers watching a woman fix a lamp, saying nothing much, going nowhere else. You sign off with a tenth of what you hoped for. It occurs to you afterwards that you laughed twice, out loud, alone in a room, which has not happened in a while. <<elseif _v == 2>> You talk for three hours and take your clothes off exactly not at all. A man in another timezone tells you about his divorce. Somebody wants to know if you have read a book you have in fact read, and you spend forty minutes arguing about the ending with a stranger whose handle is a string of numbers. The tip counter moves the whole time, in small amounts, steadily. It is the easiest money of the week and you distrust it thoroughly. You keep the conversation going until the end of the stream, reluctant to sign off. When you close the laptop the flat is very quiet. You sit in the chair a while before you get up, holding the odd new feeling that you have just spent an evening being liked rather than wanted, and that you are not sure which one is more dangerous to get used to. <<else>> A slow night. The counter stays at two viewers for nearly an hour, and one of them is almost certainly a bot. You go through the routine anyway - greet the room, fix your hair, answer the empty chat as though it had spoken - because the alternative is admitting that you are performing to nobody in an unheated room at eleven at night. Then a regular arrives, apologizes for being late as if he had an appointment, and stays until the end. He tips more than the hour was worth and says goodnight properly. You sit with the screen glow on your face after he has gone and turn the evening over: the smallness of it, the strange courtesy, the fact that you were grateful. Not for the money, particularly. For being expected. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "tease">> <<set _total += 200>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 4)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 7, "webcam/tease")>> <<vid "webcam/tease" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamTeaseB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> E-girl night! You paint your face in the fun bright colors, put on the outfit with the little ears, and bounce for the camera because bouncing makes the numbers go absolutely bananas. You dance and giggle and stick your tongue out and everyone LOVES it - they love you, the hearts and the tokens come so fast they blur into one warm sparkly waterfall you could swim in. You do the little tasks they type out - spin, wink, kiss the lens - like party games, and every single one makes you feel like the birthday girl at her very own party. Somewhere a duller, older you used to keep a tally of what she was turning into; that girl wandered off to the party and never came back, and honestly - good for her. The party's the best thing ever. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wear cat ears and let the chat teach you how a kitten should behave. Meow for a tip, stretch for another, crawl close enough that the lens fills with your smile. The rules are simple and everyone praises you for learning. By closing, you answer to the screen name faster than the name on your bills. The screen name gets more love. <<elseif _v == 2>> Tonight's game is truth or dare, except truth questions are boring and every dare earns tokens. You dance, pose, lick frosting from your fingers, and squeal whenever the total unlocks something naughtier. The audience calls you shameless. You hear popular, because popular is the word that makes the numbers grow. <<else>> You copy dances from clips until the movements blur into one bouncy routine. Whenever your top slips, the chat explodes with hearts, so you stop fixing it quite so quickly. At the end you kiss the lens for all your best friends. Thousands kiss back in little animated pictures. It feels almost real, which is plenty. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamTeaseC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The e-girl brand is your highest-margin costume and you pull it on like a uniform: bright makeup to flatten your face into something younger and dumber than you are, cropped top, a chirpy voice pitched two notes up. All engineered, all disposable. You read the room by the tokens-per-minute and adjust in real time - more bounce when it dips, a slow deliberate angle when a whale logs on, a manufactured giggle exactly where experience says it lands hardest. The chat is certain it's watching a bubbly girl lose herself to the beat. You watch which requests bring in tips and repeat what works, even when you've grown tired of the act. <<elseif _v == 1>> You open with a token menu disguised as party games. Every spin, pose, and costume adjustment has a threshold, while the chat believes it is improvising the evening. Their freedom is carefully priced. The bubbly voice lasts until the camera light dies. Then you export the take and remove the ears like any other uniform. <<elseif _v == 2>> A high-paying regular wants exclusive attention without paying for private mode. You mention his name just often enough to keep him competing with the room, converting jealousy into a public bidding war. He tips again when you say his name. You make sure the other regulars get a greeting too. <<else>> Tonight you test two costumes, three camera angles, and four levels of manufactured innocence. The analytics identify the winner before the chat does. You keep smiling while quietly retiring the weaker brand. You put the better-earning costume aside for the next stream. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamTease', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight you try the popular e-girl look. Bright makeup, a revealing anime-inspired outfit, and playful behavior instantly attract hundreds of new viewers to your chat. You dance to rhythmic music, tease the audience with revealing angles, and perform small tasks for donations. The line between reality and your digital alter ego begins to blur - on the screen, you seem bolder and more uninhibited than you feel off camera. The flow of tokens turns into a real waterfall as you let the flirting grow bolder. You enjoy your power over this faceless mass, realizing that today your appearance is a high-quality commodity. Every like and paid comment emboldens you; limits that felt firm at the start are easier to forget. You turn off the camera with glowing cheeks and a heavy wallet, feeling your personality gradually being replaced by this bright, artificial facade created for the public's amusement. <<elseif _v == 1>> You borrow an e-girl costume and discover that ears, colored lights, and a higher voice make strangers tip as if you became someone new. You dance, pose, and fulfill harmless little challenges while the chat rewards every exaggerated reaction. Logging off means removing makeup from a face that suddenly looks too serious. You are unsure which version was the disguise. <<elseif _v == 2>> A regular proposes a token game: each goal changes your pose or removes one accessory. You agree and watch the room coordinate with startling efficiency. Their shared attention feels powerful until you notice how eagerly you obey it. The final goal is reached seconds before closing. You keep the costume on longer than necessary. <<else>> You spend the stream dancing close to the lens and reading paid requests aloud in a sweet, breathless voice. Nothing explicit happens, but every angle promises that it might. The promise earns more than conversation ever did. When the music stops, silence reveals how completely the performance occupied you. The artificial girl vanishes; her confidence does not. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "light">> <<set _total += 350>> <<run window.updateStat('beauty', 3)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 5, "webcam/light")>> <<vid "webcam/light" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamLightB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Tonight the nice chat wants MORE, and you love giving them more, because giving makes everybody happy and happy is the whole entire point. You peel your clothes off slow, like unwrapping a present that also happens to be you, and every inch of skin makes the counter do its little happy dance, which makes YOU do a happy dance, and round and round the good warm feeling goes. You pose on the bed all soft and pink and pleased with yourself, blowing kisses at the numbers. Good girl, someone types, good girl, and the two words go straight to the warm empty middle of you and light it up like a nightlight. You'd show them absolutely anything they asked for. You almost hope they ask. <<elseif _v == 1>> The chat buys your outfit one piece at a time. You make a ceremony of every clasp, waving the garment goodbye before tossing it out of frame. Each reveal brings a shower of hearts and another bright little rush of approval. When nothing is left, you hug yourself and giggle as if surprised. The room pays again just to watch you blush. <<elseif _v == 2>> A viewer asks for a slow strip, so you count backward from ten and forget two numbers halfway through. Everyone finds that adorable. They send enough tokens to begin the countdown again. By the third attempt you are naked, happy, and still not entirely sure whether you reached zero. <<else>> You turn the camera toward the mirror and discover that the room can watch both sides of you at once. Double the pretty girl means double the excitement, surely, and the token counter agrees. You pose between your reflection and the lens, surrounded by people who call both versions perfect. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamLightC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You've turned the reveal into an economy, and tonight you work it cleanly: the audience pays for the descent, so you sell it in the smallest possible increments. A clasp here, a bared shoulder there, each unhooking timed to a token surge, never offering the next thing until the last one has been paid for twice over. You keep just enough back to keep them starving - the whole craft of the tease is that it never actually arrives, it only gets more expensive. You stretch out on the bed in the flattering light and let them believe they're steering. You keep an eye on the tip feed, waiting for the next goal before going further. <<elseif _v == 1>> You set a token goal for every garment and let the room compete to remove them. A regular tries to rush the sequence; you smile, raise the goal, and watch his impatience finance the rest of the show. You pause before each clasp, watching the counter until it reaches the goal. <<elseif _v == 2>> Tonight you sell close-ups and almosts: a strap lowered, a camera angle corrected just before it reveals too much, a promise attached to the next milestone. The chat calls you cruel while tipping for the cruelty. You end with one boundary intact and the night's target exceeded. <<else>> A new viewer attempts to command the room with a large tip. You thank him, explain that payment buys menu items rather than ownership, and turn the correction into flirtation. The regulars reward you for putting him in place. You thank the regulars, then go back to the menu. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamLight', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The chat has grown bolder, and tonight you decide to give them a little more. The teasing turns into a slow, deliberate striptease: you peel away layers to the rhythm of the music, lingering at every clasp, baring your shoulders, your back, finally your breasts to the hungry glow of the screen. You don't touch yourself for them - not yet - but you let the camera roam where it likes, posing on the bed in nothing but soft light and a knowing smile. The token counter spikes with every inch of skin you reveal, and the praise scrolling past makes your pulse race. You catch yourself enjoying the exhibition far more than you'd admit aloud - the heady certainty that thousands of eyes are fixed on your body and paying for the privilege. You log off flushed and a little richer, telling yourself you stopped at "just looking," even as you wonder how far you'd have gone if they'd asked nicely enough. <<elseif _v == 1>> You tie each item of clothing to a donation goal and expect the show to stall halfway. It does not. The audience purchases your hesitation layer by layer until you are posing naked beneath the ring light. You stop before touching yourself. The boundary feels reassuringly solid - and alarmingly temporary. <<elseif _v == 2>> Tonight you move the camera from the desk to the bed. That small change makes the room feel intimate and the requests bolder. You strip slowly, learning which pauses make the token counter jump. Thousands watch, yet you remain alone. The contradiction thrills you more than the nudity. <<else>> A viewer pays for a private countdown. You follow it, removing something at every number, until the screen reflects a naked woman waiting for the next instruction. The public chat erupts before it arrives. You laugh and end the stream first, claiming control by a margin of seconds. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "normal">> <<set _total += 550>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 9)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -4)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 11, "webcam/normal")>> <<vid "webcam/normal" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamNormalB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The chat tells you what to do and you do it, all of it, because being told is SO much easier than deciding and easy is your very favorite. You line the toys up like colorful little friends and use them however the messages say to, giggling and gasping and being such a good girl about all of it, and every time the numbers jump you feel it as pure sunshine behind your eyes. You lost the thread of your own show ages and ages ago - now you're just the happy shape their words move around, moaning on cue, obeying on cue, glowing on cue. When the light goes off, you sit on the bed for a while, sticky and smiling, trying to remember where you put your clothes. It has to be. It's all that's left. <<elseif _v == 1>> You arrange the toys by color because color is easier than size. The chat chooses pink, then purple, then the big blue one, cheering every time you obey. Their instructions roll down the screen faster than thoughts can form. When the show ends, you remain posed for several seconds, waiting for a command that is no longer coming. <<elseif _v == 2>> A tipper takes control of the toy through the site and makes the settings jump while the whole room watches. You surrender to the blinking light and praise, happy that someone else handles every difficult decision. He disconnects eventually. You thank him with a kiss because good girls thank people who use them nicely. <<else>> Tonight the viewers vote on everything: position, toy, pace, when you may finish. You announce each result like a game-show host, then become the prize the winning choice gets to move. The final vote tells you to smile. That is the easiest instruction, even after everything else. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamNormalC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You run the 18+ show like a floor manager: toys laid out in order of escalation, a price in your head for every act, the chat's demands filtered through what you'll cleanly deliver versus what earns a "tip to unlock." You perform the loss of control - the surrender they pay the premium for - while standing entirely outside it, timing each moan to the tip feed, upselling the next intensity before you've given them the last. It's the richest thing you sell without a second body in the room, and you are frighteningly good at it. They're certain they cracked you wide open live on camera. You close the laptop, check the earnings and go to put the kettle on. <<elseif _v == 1>> You arrange the toys by price tier and pin the menu before going live. The audience directs the sequence only within the choices you prepared. Every apparent surrender is a controlled upsell. They buy the spectacle of your lost control. You finish precisely on schedule. <<elseif _v == 2>> A tip war begins between two regulars, each paying to override the other's instruction. You stretch the rivalry across an hour, obeying whichever name is currently highest while never exceeding your private limits. Their competition doubles the take. You stop the game at the agreed time, though both want it to continue. <<else>> Technical problems interrupt the explicit show twice. You remain in character, turn each delay into a paid countdown, and restart without giving away a second for free. You keep the chat occupied while the software restarts, hoping the regulars won't leave. When the camera goes dark, you export the earnings and delete the recording from local storage. Before you close the chat, someone posts a clip from the first restart. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtCamNormal', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The viewers' requests are becoming increasingly demanding, and today you decide to meet them halfway. The broadcast moves firmly into the "18+" category. You pull out an arsenal of sex toys and start "training" right in front of the lens, commenting on your sensations in detail for the delighted audience. Shame is instantly displaced by the excitement of profit - you see the numbers in the account grow with your every moan, with every new level of vibrator intensity. You turn your intimate act into a public show, letting the biggest tippers decide what you do. The mind bogs down in the sticky fog of lust and self-admiration. You no longer feel the boundaries between private and public, becoming a living solo show for thousands of anonymous people. Somewhere along the way you stopped choosing the acts yourself - you simply obey whatever the chat demands, and obeying feels easier every time. When the broadcast ends, you feel physically and mentally drained, but the take is the heaviest yet. You earned huge money, and a little more of the line between "performer" and "product" has quietly dissolved. <<elseif _v == 1>> You prepare several toys and let donations decide which comes next. The chat escalates faster than expected, and soon your private pleasure has become a sequence of public tasks measured in tokens. The final climax feels less like release than reaching a sales target. You end exhausted, exposed, and unable to deny how effective the format is. <<elseif _v == 2>> A request board fills before the stream begins. You work down it from mild to explicit, narrating every sensation because silence slows the tips. By the middle, the audience is choosing pace and intensity for you. You could stop at any time. Instead you wait for the counter to reach one round number more. <<else>> The show begins as masturbation and turns into obedience. Each large donation adds a new instruction; each fulfilled instruction attracts another. You keep glancing toward the locked door, then back to the requests on screen. When the camera shuts off, privacy returns too late to feel natural. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "webcam")>> Earned on webcam: <<print _total>>$ * [[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 concentrate on getting food to everyone in the queue. 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. The old handwriting takes concentration. You have to go back over the first page several times before it starts getting easier. 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. The pay is poor, but at least he lets you get on with the cleaning in peace. 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. After a while you stop turning yesterday's conversations over in your head. The priest occasionally walks by, nodding encouragingly to you. You finish the last pew and put the cleaning things away before going to collect your pay. 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. On the way home, you realize you haven't thought about the payment since you arrived. <<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 lower your eyes again as you pass the elder, relieved he does not call you back. <<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. You can keep track of the strokes more easily than the prayer. 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. You make him confirm the amount before you begin. 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. He pays from the church treasury before unlocking the door. <<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. It gets harder to think clearly while you follow his instructions. 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 you have become quicker to obey the clergy, and find it harder to question what they ask of you. <</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. You cannot remember stretches of the night, and the gaps frighten you. 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. You struggle to remember the order in which anything happened, 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")>> <<if setup.transOn()>><<set $femBody to Math.max(0, $femBody - 1)>><</if>> Earned in the church: <<print _total>>$ * [[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 could get used to this shift: a chair, a bright room and people who say thank you. 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. You count the pay again and work out what other work you can fit in tomorrow. <<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. You straighten the card before you leave, though you may not be back. <</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. You put the pay away without needing to make excuses for it. <<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. You wait until he has left before putting the note away. <</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. Nobody looks up before the doors open. You put the note in your pocket and get out. <</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 put the money away while he is still watching you, then return to the desk. <<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. You know what you agreed to, though it is more than you would have allowed on your first shift. <<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>>

<<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("library")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> /% QUIET FLOOR-A "A Quiet Day": a library shift arms today's interest freeze when the 8-day cooldown is spent; Main_Loop consumes it at the tally (first $600 covered - measured cap, docs/BALANCE-WAVE2-2026-09-11). %/ <<if setup.buff('EndingQuietFloor.a') and $quietCd lte 0>><<set $quietFreeze to true>><</if>> <<set $libraryShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "library">> <<if $libraryShifts gte 25 and not $teleLibrary>><<set $teleLibrary to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five sessions. His "again" has become punctuation to you, and the notebook fills with check marks in his hand.</div> <</if>> <<set _base to 80>> <<set _bonus to ($iq * 1.5) + ($beauty * 1)>> <<set _total to Math.floor(_base + _bonus)>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "shelve">> /% Library shift type logic (by promiscuity) %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 30 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 85>> <<set _event to "shelve">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flash">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 55>> <<set _event to "shelve">> <<elseif _roll <= 90>> <<set _event to "flash">> <<else>> <<set _event to "patron">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 30>> <<set _event to "flash">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "patron">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 40>> <<set _event to "patron">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <</if>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _event == "shelve">> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', -1)>> <<if ($promiscuity < 0 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>><<set $promiscuity to 0>><</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "libjob/shelve")>> <<vid "libjob/shelve" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShelveB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Shelving day! They hand you a cart stacked with books and point you at the tall quiet rows, and you love it, because pushing the squeaky cart and putting each book in its cozy little slot is exactly the right amount of thinking - not too much. The numbers on the spines are hard and you get some backwards, but a kind old lady in a cardigan helps you sort them, patting your hand. You help a nervous student find his book and he goes so red and thanks you three times, and you beam, because being nice to people who are shy is the easiest, warmest job there is. The pay is little but the library is soft and hushed and smells like old paper, and nobody wants anything from you here except quiet. You could purr. <<elseif _v == 1>> You sort books by the colored stickers because the numbers wriggle when you stare too long. Blue with blue, yellow with yellow - simple, peaceful, and nearly always right. The librarian quietly fixes the mistakes and still calls you helpful. Helpful is enough. You push the squeaky cart through the warm paper smell and hum below the level anyone can shush. <<elseif _v == 2>> A child asks where dragons live. You lead him to fantasy because dragons should live there, and his delighted face proves the answer was correct. For the rest of the shift you choose shelves by what the books feel like they contain. The system is not official, but several readers leave happy. That seems more important than numbers. <<else>> The returns cart becomes lighter one book at a time. You forget the route, retrace it, and enjoy meeting the same quiet aisles again as if they are new. Nobody hurries you. By closing, most books are home and your head feels quieter too. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> A shelving shift: low pay, low stakes, and one of the last places in this city that asks for your hands and your attention and nothing further down. You take the cart into the stacks and work the call numbers with a cool efficiency the head librarian pretends not to notice approvingly. It's dull, and dull is a luxury you've learned to price highly. You point a lost freshman at the right aisle, answer a reference question without letting the sarcasm show, and let the hush do its work on the noise in your skull. The money barely dents the interest, but this is the one shift you don't have to wash off afterward, and you've started to understand exactly what that's worth. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShelve', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You spend the shift among the tall stacks with a loaded cart, restoring order to the call numbers one spine at a time. The work is quiet and methodical - shelving returns, pointing lost readers toward the right aisle, keeping the reading room hushed. The head librarian is exacting but not cruel, and for a few hours your mind has something to hold onto that isn't debt or shame. Your feet ache and the pay is modest, but you leave with a rare, clean tiredness and the sense that here, at least, your beauty is beside the point and your brain is the thing being asked for. <<elseif _v == 1>> Half the shift goes on the returns trolley and the other half on a single misfiled run of periodicals that somebody shelved by title instead of by year, sometime around the spring. Undoing it takes you two hours of pulling and re-seating volumes, and by the end your arms are shaking and the row is perfect. Nobody will ever notice. That is more or less the appeal. You have spent weeks being noticed for a living, priced and appraised and looked at, and here is two hours of work whose entire reward is that a shelf is now correct. You stand back and look at it anyway before you push the trolley on. <<elseif _v == 2>> A school party comes through in the afternoon and you are handed the easy job of keeping them roughly in one place. They are eleven or twelve and completely uninterested in the building, except for one girl who detaches from the group and asks you, with enormous seriousness, where the books about volcanoes are. You walk her to the section yourself. She takes three, considers, puts one back, and thanks you in the formal way children use with adults they have decided are staff. It should not matter. You think about it on and off for the rest of the shift - the small clean transaction of it, a person asking you for something you actually had. <<else>> The heating is out in the east stacks and you work the whole shift in your coat, breath faintly visible, fingers going stiff on the spines. The head librarian apologizes twice and offers to move you; you say you are fine, because the east stacks are the quiet ones and because you would rather be cold than back out front. Somewhere around the fourth cart the work goes automatic and your mind unhooks and drifts, and for once it does not drift to the interest. It goes to nothing much - the shape of the numbers, the order of the letters, whether the rain has stopped. You come back to yourself an hour later having thought about nothing at all, and recognize the state, distantly, as rest. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flash">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 1)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>><<run window.updateStat('beauty', 1)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 14, "libjob/flash")>> <<vid "libjob/flash" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryFlashB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Deep in the quiet rows where nobody much comes, a naughty warm idea bubbles up: what if somebody saw? So you "drop" something and bend way over, or reach up so your top rides high, or leave one more button undone than the rules like - and when a reader down the aisle catches an eyeful and freezes, the fizzy thrill goes right up your spine and makes you glow. You're not really doing anything, just being pretty in a place you're supposed to be plain, and the sneaky secret of it is the best game. Tips start appearing tucked into returned books, and you giggle every time. Being looked at in the hush-hush library feels twice as delicious, like a whispered compliment. <<elseif _v == 1>>You keep dropping the same book because bending to retrieve it makes a man stare and leave money inside the cover. It becomes your favorite book, though you never read the title.<<elseif _v == 2>>Reaching for the high shelves lifts your skirt, so you stretch slowly whenever footsteps approach. The silent gasps behind you feel like applause that remembers library manners.<<else>>You unfasten one button each time a reader tips. By lunch the blouse is barely doing its job, but the cardigan pocket is doing wonderfully.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryFlashC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The stacks have blind spots, and you've mapped every one. Between shelving runs you run the quiet grift: the calculated stretch, the bend held a half-beat too long, a button that management can't quite prove you undid on purpose. A reader clocks the show and stalls, and you feel the familiar lever move - the small cold power of being the thing a room can't stop looking at. It reads as decorum from ten feet off and as invitation from three, and that gap is exactly where the extra bills live, folded into returned books by men who'll never say a word. You keep it deniable and keep it moving. Even here, you monetize the sightline; it's just reflex now. <<elseif _v == 1>>You rotate three reliable sightlines: the ladder, the low archive shelf, and the desk reflected in glass. Each offers exposure with plausible deniability and a predictable return.<<elseif _v == 2>>A regular requests a specific aisle through a call-number note. You deliver one calculated glimpse, collect the bill hidden in his returned book, and never acknowledge the transaction.<<else>>You test whether stockings or bare legs convert better during shelving. By closing, the folded tips provide a statistically ugly answer.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryFlash', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Something restless stirs in you among the silent rows. You start to test the quiet - a stretch that lifts the hem, a slow bend to the low shelf, one button more than the dress code allows. When a reader at the end of the aisle catches sight of you and goes still, a hot, shameful thrill runs through you, half power and half disgrace. You tell yourself it's nothing, that you're only shelving books, but you angle yourself toward the watching eyes on purpose and feel your face burn. By the end of the shift there are folded bills tucked into the return slot, and you pocket them without meeting anyone's gaze, unsettled by how much you liked it. <<elseif _v == 1>>A reader catches your skirt riding up on the ladder. Instead of fixing it, you hold the pose until his stare becomes unmistakable. The bill he leaves turns an accident into a service after the fact.<<elseif _v == 2>>You bend too deeply over the returns cart and hear someone stop behind you. Shame tells you to straighten; the thrill of being watched keeps you there one breath longer.<<else>>One open button becomes two as the shift progresses. Every furtive glance makes the next concession easier, until the quiet library feels like a private stage.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "patron">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -2)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "libjob/patron")>> <<vid "libjob/patron" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPatronB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A patron follows you into the far archive, close and warm and certain, and when his hand lands on your hip you don't shoo it, because being wanted is nice and saying no is hard and the deep stacks are so private. He murmurs what he wants and you sink down happy to give it, mouth and hands, right there against the shelves with the whole silent library humming around you like a secret. It's naughty and hushed and you have to stay so quiet, biting your lip, which somehow makes the warm buzzy feeling even bigger. After, he slips folded money into your cardigan pocket and pats your cheek and calls you a good girl, and that last part glows in you all the way home. You'd come back just for the good-girl. <<elseif _v == 1>>A regular places money inside a book and leads you to the matching aisle. You kneel between the shelves, delighted by the secret game, and earn a whispered good girl for keeping perfectly quiet.<<elseif _v == 2>>A university student asks for private help in the archive. His question becomes a hand on your head and an easy instruction; you serve him happily while footsteps pass one shelf away.<<else>>The patron presses you against the reference shelves and asks for your mouth. You agree before he finishes, thrilled that the stern library has a naughty rule meant only for you.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPatronC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A patron trails you into the reference archive, and you read the whole transaction before he opens his mouth - the lingering, the "Could you help me find something?" that isn't about books. You could lose him in the stacks. You don't; the deep shelves are private and the price of a quiet quarter-hour beats a whole hour on the floor. You handle it fast and businesslike against the cold metal, mouth and hands, one ear on the aisle for footsteps, cataloging the risk the way you catalog everything now. He pays in folded bills pressed into your pocket, a little breathless, thinking he seduced you. You let him keep the story. It's cheaper than correcting him, and the money spends the same either way. <<elseif _v == 1>> A regular leaves a reference number and cash inside a returned book. You recognize the code for a remote aisle and meet him there during the quietest quarter-hour. The arrangement has become absurdly organized. He receives discretion; you receive more than the library pays for the entire shift. <<elseif _v == 2>> A visiting academic propositions you between shelves. You quote a price softly enough to respect the room. His surprise lasts one second; his acceptance, less. The service is brief, protected, and silent. He returns to his research believing spontaneity occurred. <<else>> You find a patron waiting in a known blind spot. One look confirms the transaction. No words are needed beyond the price, which feels fitting in a building devoted to words nobody here intends to use. The cash slips into your cardigan pocket like an overdue notice. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibraryPatron', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> A patron lingers too long at your cart, and his questions stop being about books. He follows you into the deep reference archive where the lights are dim and the aisles are empty, and his hand finds the small of your back. You know you should step away - you're staff, this is a library - but the habit the city drilled into you answers before your pride can, and you let him press you into the cold shelves. You give him what he wants there in the hush, quick and quiet, terrified of footsteps and shamefully unable to stop. Afterward he tucks folded money into your pocket like a bookmark, and you smooth your clothes and go back to your cart, cheeks burning, another clean place quietly ruined. <<elseif _v == 1>>A folded bill waits inside a returned novel with an aisle number written across it. You go only to confront him, then remain when he names the service. Minutes later the book has become an appointment ledger.<<elseif _v == 2>>A patron corners you beyond the security mirror and asks for something quick. You agree because the money is large and the risk feels unreal - until a cart squeaks nearby while you are on your knees.<<else>>His questions turn sexual in the deepest stack. You should report him; instead you quote a price in a whisper. Hearing the amount in your own voice ruins the library's safety more completely than his hands do.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "sex">> <<set _total += Math.floor($promiscuity * 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>><<run window.updateStat('iq', -4)>><<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 12, "libjob/sex")>> <<vid "libjob/sex" _id>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibrarySexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> By now the whole shift is really just about this: the word gets around that the sweet girl with the shelving cart says yes, and they find you in the quiet corners one after another. You let them bend you over the reading tables and take you against the stacks, books thumping softly to the carpet, and you keep your happy sounds down to a whimper because it's a library and that's the rule. Being used in all the hushed secret spots feels warm and right and easy, like this is what the tall private rows were always for. You lose track of how many and don't mind one bit - counting is hard and being a good obliging thing is simple. Your cardigan pockets get fat with folded bills and your head goes soft and shiny, and you float home a well-thumbed, well-loved little library toy. <<elseif _v == 1>>Regulars arrive with call numbers that all lead to you. You let them use you over reading tables and against shelves, shushing anyone whose pleasure gets too loud. Being the library's secret service makes you feel wonderfully important.<<elseif _v == 2>>After closing, several patrons remain in the archive for their turns. You move from one to the next like a cheerful lending item, collecting bills instead of due-date stamps.<<else>>The manager pretends not to notice the line forming beside your cart. You keep books in order and bodies satisfied, proud that even the dirtiest shift can follow quiet-library rules.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibrarySexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The shift has quietly become the trade with a card catalog attached. Word travels; the regulars know which staff member doesn't say no, and they come find you in the blind corners on a schedule you could almost publish. You take them over the reading tables and against the stacks, methodical and detached, one ear always on the approaching squeak of a cart, running the meter in your head between them. Books hit the floor; you'll reshelve them after. It's the highest-paying thing the library offers and you service it like any other route, from that cold room behind your own eyes where the accounting happens. You leave scraped hollow and heavy with folded bills, and you've stopped pretending the quiet in here ever protected you from anything but yourself. <<elseif _v == 1>> Three regulars arrive at intervals that suggest coordination. You assign each a different aisle and keep the encounters short enough to preserve the fiction of an ordinary shift. Between them, you reshelve books and update the desk log. You reshelve the last books before returning to the desk. There is still half an hour left on the ordinary shift. <<elseif _v == 2>> A donor books the restricted archive after closing and makes clear that the room is not what he paid to access. You protect the collection, protect yourself, and provide the rest across a reading table in the locked archive. His contribution exceeds your monthly wage. The library will call it philanthropy. <<else>> Word of the service has spread beyond regular patrons. Men arrive with call numbers copied from private messages, each number leading to you in another hidden aisle. You process them with cataloging efficiency. At closing, your pockets contain more cash than returned-book slips. Both need sorting. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtLibrarySex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> By the end of the shift, patrons are looking for you rather than the books. They take you over the reading tables and against the shelves, and you give yourself to it, books tumbling to the carpet as you try to keep quiet. You reshelve the fallen volumes between men. At closing you gather the bills from your cardigan pockets and smooth the crumpled book slips left among them. You are sore, tired, and carrying more than the shift would have paid. <<elseif _v == 1>>Word spreads until patrons arrive asking for you rather than books. You service them in blind corners throughout the shift, reshelving whatever falls and treating each violation as practical work.<<elseif _v == 2>>A donor reserves the reading room and shares you with invited friends after closing. The library accepts his contribution; you accept theirs, and the institution's silence becomes part of the transaction.<<else>>Men cycle through the stacks according to messages left in returned books. By closing, your body has become another cataloged resource - available, located, and repeatedly checked out.<</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if $wellRested>><<set _total = Math.floor(_total * 1.2)>><</if>> <<set _total to setup.payShift(_total, "library")>> Earned on the library shift: <<print _total>>$ * [[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. Everything up here is quiet and expensive and nothing ever beeps at you. Smith himself is sort of like a lizard in a good 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 sit opposite Smith and look at the monitor turned away from you. The coffee smells fresh, but there is no cup on your side of the desk. You open your account on your own phone while he finishes reading. <<else>> Smith is on the phone when you walk in. He uses the same tone with the other debtor: a name, a figure, a deadline. You wait until he hangs up, then put your own statement on the desk. You want to finish this before your next shift. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtOfficePlace', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The glass doors open onto a quiet, air-conditioned office. You smell fresh coffee. Smith sits behind his dark wooden desk, reading the monitor, with the city spread out through the window behind him. "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>>

<<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', -30)>> <<set $smithShifts += 1>> <<venueBeat "smith">> <<if $smithShifts gte 25 and not $teleSmith>><<set $teleSmith to true>> <div style="border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.2); padding: 6px 12px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: 0.82rem; opacity: 0.75;"> Twenty-five shifts in Smith's office. You know where the files go now, and which ones he expects back before lunch.</div> <</if>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "work">> /% Office event logic %/ <<if ($promiscuity < 25 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 8>> <<set _event to "harass">> <<else>> <<set _event to "work">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 50 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 50>> <<set _event to "work">> <<else>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <</if>> <<elseif ($promiscuity < 70 and not setup.buff('EndingDitz.b'))>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "work">> <<elseif _roll <= 75>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <<else>> <<if _roll <= 25>> <<set _event to "flirt">> <<else>> <<set _event to "sex">> <</if>> <</if>> /% Smith's client assignment displaces HALF of the clean `work` events from day 4 on. It lands on `work` specifically because that is the branch the low-promiscuity route lives on: before this, working for the loan shark actively CLEANSED promiscuity (the old `prom -3`), so a clean player could not lose by accident. Frequency is the difficulty dial - measured at 30/50/70%, which moves the "clean but tempted" probe from 93% to 50% to 4% wins. 50% is the setting where the optimizer still holds and the tempted player does not. %/ <<if _event == "work" and $days gte 4 and setup.storyFlow.roll("r2", random(1, 100)) lte 50>> <<set _event to "assignment">> <</if>> /% MILESTONE - "Smith the broker". Preempts EVERYTHING above, including the assignment, and fires exactly once per run. This is the threshold scene the ladders never had: crossing a line the player can feel, instead of a distribution quietly shifting under them. Deterministic interception, modelled on the pimp at Gentlemen.twee:350 - not a rare roll, or it dissolves back into the probability soup it exists to escape. Three triggers per NIGHT-REDESIGN §2.2, any one of them, and the REASON picks the MAN: deep debt -> Owner, because restructuring interest is the answer to "you cannot carry this" otherwise -> Rich, because he is trading up an asset that turned out to be worth more. Mechanically weightless on purpose: it grants access and moves no stat. Anything else reopens the balance closed on 2026-07-29. It only ADDS a door to Rich/Owner alongside the existing stat gates, so no ending can become less reachable. %/ <<if not $brokerSeen and $days gte 5 and ($pimped or $money lt -14000 or $smithShifts gte 6)>> <<set _event to "broker">> <<set $brokerSeen to true>> <<if $money lt -14000>> <<set $brokerTarget to "owner">><<set $metOwner to true>> <<else>> <<set $brokerTarget to "rich">><<set $metRich to true>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _event == "assignment">> /% The illustrated RichMeet is the canonical first appointment. Smith may send her back to the Rich Man through this recurring assignment only after that scene. %/ <<if $metRich and $richFirstDone>> <<set $assignClient to either("gangster", "rich", "scientist")>> <<else>> <<set $assignClient to either("gangster", "scientist")>> <</if>> <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 32, "office/")>> <<vid "office/" _id>> Smith doesn't slide the tablet across today. He turns his monitor away, laces his fingers, and looks at you the way he looks at a column of figures that has stopped balancing. "The reports can wait. I have a client with a specific requirement, and no one on my payroll who fits it." A pause, exactly long enough. "You meet the requirement." <<if $assignClient == "gangster">> He names a man you have seen in the parking garage - heavy rings, heavier company, the kind of laugh that empties a room. "He pays promptly. He is not gentle about it." <<elseif $assignClient == "rich">> He names the Rich Man you already met through his introduction, then writes down a different address: a top floor, a private lift, a standing account with the firm. "He was satisfied with the first appointment. He asked for you again." <<else>> He names a research contract the firm underwrites - a soft-spoken man with a clipboard and an interest in measuring things. "He wants a subject who can still hold a conversation. That narrows it considerably." <</if>> "You may decline," Smith adds, already reaching for a pen. "The agreement allows it. A refusal carries an interest penalty. That is the price of the choice." * [[Take the assignment|OfficeAssignmentAccept]] * [[Refuse|OfficeAssignmentRefuse]] <<elseif _event == "broker">> <<vid "place/smith-contract-room-" "02">> <<set _p to window.persona()>> There is no tablet today, and no client, and no pen sliding across the desk toward you. Smith picks up the phone instead, dials from memory, and talks about you while you are sitting in front of him - your figures, your appearance, your circumstances - in the flat, unhurried voice of a man describing a property he is finished holding. He does not use your name once. He does not need to; the man on the other end is not buying a name. <<if $brokerTarget == "owner">> <<if _p gte 3>> When he hangs up he explains it slowly, in the short words he uses with you now. The number got too big. There is a man who can make the number smaller. He is writing down where to find him, see, right here on the card, and all you have to do is go and be good. You take the card and hold it in both hands like something warm. Somebody important has arranged something for you, and arranged is such a nice feeling - it means the hard part is over and the deciding is done. You do not read the number he wrote under the address. Numbers slide off you these days, and anyway, Mr. Smith would not put you somewhere bad. <<elseif _p is 2>> "You cannot carry this," he says, and sets a card on the desk between you. "He can renegotiate terms I cannot. He will expect compensation, and he will not ask for money." You take the card without touching his fingers. He has arranged the introduction before discussing it with you. In the lift, you read the address again and check how long it will take to get there. Whatever he expects to gain, you still need to know what the man will pay. <<else>> "You cannot carry this," he says. For once, there is no edge in his voice. He sets a card on the desk. "This man renegotiates terms I am not permitted to touch. He will want compensation. Not in money." You read the address before taking the card. Smith is already turning back to his monitor. You want to ask how much he has told the other man, but the call is over and Smith considers the matter settled. You put the card in your pocket. <</if>> <<else>> <<if _p gte 3>> When he puts the phone down he tells you that you are going somewhere nicer. Nicer! He writes an address on a card, a proper one, uptown where the buildings have those lifts that open right into the room, and he says the man there appreciates girls who present well. Present well. You turn the phrase over and it glows. You are being moved up because you are pretty and pleasant and people like having you around, which is the whole of what you are good at now and it turns out that is plenty. You thank him twice. He looks at you for a second longer than usual, and something passes over his face that you do not have a word for anymore, and then it is gone and he goes back to his monitor. <<elseif _p is 2>> "Your usual work no longer makes the best use of you," he says, and writes an address on a card. Uptown. Private lift. "He pays for presentation. Yours has improved enough for an introduction." Uptown, a private lift, a client willing to pay more. You ask about the fee before taking the card. Smith gives you the number without explaining his own cut. You have worked for him long enough to assume there is one. <<else>> "Your usual work no longer makes the best use of you," he says, and writes an address on a card in handwriting far too neat for what it is. Uptown. A private lift. "He appreciates presentation. You have enough to get his attention." You look down at your clothes, then back at him. You came here to work with numbers; he is recommending your appearance. There is no mistake to correct in what he said. You take the card and ask when the man expects you. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "work">> <<run setup.payOffice(320)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 1)>> /% Same pool as the Burns work event in Jobs.twee - this is clean desk work, so it must NOT reach for the erotic office/ pool the flirt/sex/harass arms use. %/ <<set _id to window.pickImgNumber(1, 6, "place/study")>> <<vid "place/study" _id>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithWorkB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith gives you a tablet with all the hard parts hidden behind colored buttons. Green means approve, yellow means ask, red means leave it for someone clever. You tap carefully and smile whenever a row disappears. "Adequate," he says, placing money in your hand. You are proud until he adds that reducing the task was cheaper than replacing you. The sentence is too long to hurt properly, so you thank him. <<elseif _v == 1>> Your job is matching invoice pictures to account pictures. Same symbol, same box. It feels like a memory game, except every match makes Smith's money move somewhere secret. You finish without losing your place more than twice. Smith pats your head and calls you surprisingly functional. The praise feels warm; the word surprisingly slides past before you can catch it. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith reads numbers aloud and you type them. His voice is smooth, the keys click pleasantly, and following becomes easier than understanding. Whenever you make a mistake, he says again more slowly. By the end, you are repeating each figure after him like a lesson. He pays you and says obedience compensates for declining capacity. You remember only that obedience compensated, which sounds like good news. <<else>> The report keeps blurring, so Smith moves his chair behind yours and guides your hand from cell to cell. His directions leave no room for choices. Strangely, that makes the work peaceful. When the totals balance, he tells you that managed assets can remain productive long after independent judgment fails. You beam because productive is a job word and you were it today. <</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithWorkC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith slides over a set of concealed transactions and asks you to reconcile them. You recognize the structure: debt moved through shells until ownership becomes technically invisible. You solve it without commenting on the resemblance to your own life. Smith pays promptly and watches for a reaction. Denying him one is the only bonus you keep. <<elseif _v == 1>> The work is legitimate only in the sense that every signature exists. You trace funds through subsidiaries, identify the leak, and prepare a summary stripped of moral language. Smith calls that maturity. You call it compartmentalization. Either term earns the agreed wage, and neither requires you to pretend the money is clean. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith tests you with a report containing three deliberate errors. You find all three and a fourth he did not plant. For once, his expression changes before yours does. "Still useful," he says. You put the corrected report beside his keyboard, with the fourth error marked in red. He looks at it again before paying you. <<else>> You spend the afternoon modeling default risk for debtors whose contracts resemble yours. The patterns are cruel, elegant, and designed to make repayment less profitable than dependence. Smith asks what you learned. You tell him the model works. You do not tell him you saved the assumptions to memory. Information remains the one thing he cannot see you pocket. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithWork', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith slides a tablet of convoluted reports toward you. "There are inconsistencies I want to address. Your intellect is still useful. Injections would be wasteful at this stage." The work forces your mind to its limit, displacing fear and unwanted desire with numbers, charts, and hidden transactions. When you finish, he gives a restrained nod. "Excellent. A pity there are fewer of you every day." You collect the payment with pleasant mental fatigue and refuse to let his final remark spoil the victory. <<elseif _v == 1>> A payment trail disappears across six shell companies. Smith expects clerical cleanup; instead, you reconstruct the route and identify who diverted the money. He studies you more carefully after that. Being noticed by him is dangerous, yet being underestimated is another kind of trap. You take the wage and leave before pride can choose between them. <<elseif _v == 2>> Smith dictates adjustments while you verify each against the contract. Twice, his instruction contradicts the figures. Twice, you make him correct it without openly accusing him. The work becomes a quiet duel conducted through footnotes. He pays the agreed amount and smiles as if allowing you the win. You leave unsure who proved what, but certain your mind still has an edge. <<else>> The tablet contains projections of your own debt among hundreds of others. You find your account, then force yourself to keep working without revealing that you saw it. You keep your face still while you finish the projections. Before returning the tablet, you check which assumptions were applied to your account. There are three you want to look at again when Smith is not watching. <</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "flirt">> <<run setup.payOffice(430)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', 2)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 4)>> <<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('deckTxtSmithFlirtB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Smith keeps finding reasons to lean over your chair, and every time his hand stays a little longer. You smile up at him and make the neckline easy to see. At the end he gives his pretty, helpful girl a lovely big bonus.<<elseif _v == 1>>You turn report questions into a game of smiles and tiny touches. Smith answers patiently when you sit close enough, then rewards your concentration with cash and a slow stroke of your cheek.<<elseif _v == 2>>The numbers are difficult, but making Smith watch you is easy. You bend over the files, giggle when he notices, and leave delighted that being distracting pays better than being correct.<<else>>Smith asks whether you are flirting. You say yes because it seems obvious, then beam when the honest answer earns a bonus. Good girls should tell the truth.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithFlirtC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Smith enters more often than the work requires. You let his hand linger because access is currency and his favor has measurable value. The bonus confirms your valuation.<<elseif _v == 1>>You engineer three opportunities for Smith to notice your blouse and let him believe all three were accidental. He rewards the fantasy of mutual attraction; you record the actual return.<<elseif _v == 2>>A meeting becomes flirtation by degrees you control: closer chair, lower voice, fingertip on his wrist. Nothing further is sold today. Scarcity protects tomorrow's price.<<else>>Smith tests whether attention will reduce your accuracy. You finish the report perfectly while encouraging his gaze. Competence and provocation are not mutually exclusive revenue streams.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithFlirt', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Smith comes over to your workstation more often than the reports require. His hand "accidentally" lingers on your shoulder as he checks the numbers on the screen, and his gaze slides down the neckline of your blouse. You don't pull away, realizing that his favor is worth much more than clean reports. He rewards the flirting with a generous bonus.<<elseif _v == 1>>You notice Smith watching and, after a long hesitation, leave one button undone. His attention sharpens; your shame does too. The bonus at day's end makes the exchange impossible to call accidental.<<elseif _v == 2>>Smith corrects a formula from behind your chair, close enough that his breath touches your neck. You lean back instead of forward. It is the smallest invitation you have ever sold, and he pays generously.<<else>>You begin the shift determined to remain professional, then catch yourself timing each bend over the filing cabinet for Smith's benefit. His approving look feels like power until the cash reveals its price.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "sex">> <<run setup.payOffice(430)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -5)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 8)>> <<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('deckTxtSmithSexB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Smith tells you to lock the door and forget the numbers. You brighten because his special desk work is much easier: obey, make the happy sounds, collect the thick envelope. You leave proud of being his favorite task.<<elseif _v == 1>>There are no reports today. Smith points to the desk, arranges you as he likes, and praises every eager response. By the time he pays, you have forgotten the job was ever supposed to involve numbers.<<elseif _v == 2>>Smith calls the closed-door session a performance review. You giggle through his instructions and try hard to earn the good grade. The bonus says you passed beautifully.<<else>>You climb into Smith's lap before he finishes asking. His rare smile fills your empty head with sunshine, and the money afterward feels almost secondary - almost.<</if>> <<elseif _p is 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithSexC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Smith dispenses with reports and requests the real service. You lock the door, confirm the bonus, and let him use the office arrangement he has been constructing for weeks. You leave paid and entirely unsurprised.<<elseif _v == 1>>The appointment is unspoken but scheduled. You clear the desk, protect the time, and give Smith exactly the submission he now treats as part of your role. He pays at the established rate.<<elseif _v == 2>>Smith wants obedience more than sex, so you provide both while keeping one cold part of yourself outside his reach. The bonus is generous; ownership remains a claim, not a fact.<<else>>He asks whether this compromises your employment. You tell him this is your employment now. The accuracy briefly unsettles him, which is the only leverage the encounter leaves you.<</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithSex', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>>Today Smith doesn't pretend he needs reports. He has you lock the door and come to his desk, where shame and triumph blur together. You leave with a heavy wallet and the frightening sense that personal toy has become your actual position.<<elseif _v == 1>>The tablet remains dark. Smith pulls you across the desk and takes the service your earlier flirting promised. Each sound earns money and costs a little independence; neither of you pretends otherwise.<<elseif _v == 2>>You arrive prepared to work with numbers. Smith closes the blinds instead. Refusal never becomes a spoken question, and afterward the bonus waits exactly where the tablet usually lies.<<else>>Smith calls you closer, and the office quietly reveals its second job description. You comply willingly enough to frighten yourself, then count the money with hands that have stopped trembling.<</if>> <</if>> <<elseif _event == "harass">> <<run setup.payOffice(120)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 2)>><<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 1)>> <<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('deckTxtSmithHarassB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith is away, and his floor manager squeezes behind you at the filing cabinets even though there is plenty of room. His hand stays on your hip while he reaches past. You hold still because moving might make the folders fall. He tucks a bill into your blouse and calls you cooperative. You smile. Cooperative is another good job word, and you are collecting so many of those. <<elseif _v == 1>> The floor manager asks you to sit on his desk while he checks your work. He barely looks at the pages. His hands do most of the checking, and you wait patiently because he is important when Smith is gone. The money appears beneath your thigh afterward. You decide this was probably a performance review. You passed, which is what matters. <<elseif _v == 2>> A supervisor pins you gently against the archive shelf and says quiet girls advance faster. You become very quiet. He praises you, touches wherever he likes, and rewards the lesson with folded cash. For the rest of the afternoon, you practice silence at your desk. Advancement sounds complicated, but quiet is easy. <<else>> The manager's hand slips beneath your blouse while he explains office loyalty. You nod at every pause, trying to follow. Loyalty seems to mean letting him finish before anyone returns. When he pays, you ask whether Smith knows. The manager laughs and says Smith knows everything. That answer feels comforting for a second, then cold, then too difficult to think about. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtSmithHarass', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Smith is out, but his floor manager corners you by the filing cabinets, pinning you with his bulk while a hand wanders over your hip under the pretext of reaching behind you. You go rigid and wait it out. He tucks a "discretion bonus" into your blouse afterward. Officially, nothing happened. The fact that you let it slide settles inside you like a small, cold stone. <<elseif _v == 1>> The floor manager closes the archive door and comments on your probationary status. His hand moves from your shoulder to your breast while he explains how easily schedules can change. You endure until footsteps sound outside. Later, cash appears beside your keyboard. You leave it there for an hour before taking it, as if delay could keep the transaction from becoming true. <<elseif _v == 2>> A supervisor traps you between the copier and his body, pretending to show you a control panel. You know enough to step away, but fear of losing the assignment keeps you still. He rewards your "professionalism" with a bill. The word is obscene in his mouth. You keep the money because debt has taught you that disgust and need can occupy the same hand. <<else>> The manager asks whether Smith has explained the privileges of senior staff. Before you answer, his fingers slide under your skirt. You remove his hand; he replaces it and mentions your debt. Nothing further happens, yet the threat follows you through the remaining reports. Smith does not need to be present for his ownership to fill the room. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> /% The assignment branch renders its own fork and must NOT also offer the generic exit. %/ <<if _event neq "assignment">> * [[Continue|Afternoon]] <</if>> <</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>>He asks whether the room is too cold, then tells you where to stand. You follow his instructions and keep track of the time. He checks your pose once more before putting down his glass.<<elseif _v == 1>>The sheets are soft and he has set out the clothes he wants you to wear. You ask how long the appointment will run. He gives you a time and returns to choosing the jewelry.<<elseif _v == 2>>He chooses the music, the drink, and your clothes. You leave him to it, checking the fit of a strap while he adjusts the lights. He asks you not to move it. You put your hand down.<<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 stand there a second longer than you need to. <<elseif _v == 1>>You repeat the easy parts of his explanation and guess at the rest. Each note he makes lands somewhere warm, 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>>He asks you to repeat the procedure back to him. You do, then point to the restraint he has not explained. He gives you another answer and makes a note when you ask him to demonstrate it.<<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>>He asks you to describe each response as it happens. You answer precisely. His next question comes faster, and when you look over he is gripping the clipboard with both hands.<</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. <<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. There's a copy of something in Russian on the returns cart that nobody has checked out in four years - 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")>> <<set _offsiteReview to $smithTask and $smithTask.optional and $smithTask.target is "library">> <<run setup.smithTaskDone("library")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -20)>> <<run setup.studyIQ(5)>> <<if _offsiteReview>> You take a table where you can see the aisle. A book drops at the far end of the room. You hear a chair scrape as someone goes to pick it up. By the time they sit down again, you have found the end of the sentence. On the form you mark the line where you came back in. There is a box for the elapsed time. You write *I finished the page* beside it, in the space he left you. <<else>> You choose the most secluded table deep in the library, hidden behind massive shelves where the air seems still and heavy with age-old dust. Surrounded by thick, tattered volumes on economics, sociology, and law, you try to fully immerse yourself in the world of numbers and abstract concepts. The silence here is almost palpable; it presses on your eardrums, making your own pulse sound like dull hammer blows. You stubbornly run your finger along the lines, forcing your tired mind to follow each argument instead of returning to what waits outside. But the quiet leaves room for memories you came here to escape. Every shadow that flits by in the aisle seems like a ghost of the past, and the rustle of pages in the silence reminds you of clients' whispers. You feel a chill run down your spine, and your thoughts now and then want to slip from clear formulas back toward those memories. It's a constant struggle - word by word, paragraph by paragraph, you reclaim your right to sanity. <</if>> <<set _roll to setup.storyFlow.roll("r1", random(1, 100))>> <<set _event to "none">> /% Library "relapse" logic %/ <<if ($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 carry the cleverness home with you. 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 person 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 waiting room could belong to an expensive hotel. You read the price list, comparing each procedure with the nights it would take to pay for it. Financing is available, according to the sign beside reception. You skip that part and look at the recovery times. <<else>> The receptionist explains each package in the same reassuring voice. You study the before-and-after photographs instead: where the crop changes, how the woman stands, which scars are hidden by the pose. You ask to see the consent form before choosing anything. <</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 people 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 people 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>> <<if setup.transOn() and $femBody lt 100 and $chaserDeal?.status neq "fixed">> * [[Discreet feminization course|SurgeryFem]] ($<<print setup.feminizationCost()>>, body scale +15 up to 100) <</if>> <<if setup.canTakeAwareness()>> * [[Prostate awareness course|ProstateAwareness]] ($800, submission +3, reduces the stamina cost of passive agency bookings) <<elseif setup.transOn() and $clinicAwareness>> * <span class="dl-bureau-note">Awareness course completed. Passive agency bookings cost 5 less base stamina.</span> <</if>> <<if setup.chaser.canCourse()>> * <<if $chaserDeal.stage>>[[Continue Chaser’s prepaid course|ChaserCourse]] (body scale 60, $0, paid return included)<<else>>[[Start Chaser’s prepaid course|ChaserCourse]] (body scale 85, $0, paid return included)<</if>> <</if>> <<if setup.chaser.canReturn()>> * [[Use Chaser’s prepaid return|ChaserReturn]] (restore the starting point of this course, $0) <</if>> <<if setup.chaser.canFix()>> * [[Read the permanent terms|ChaserPermanentTerms]] <</if>> <<if setup.transOn() and $femBody gt 0>> <<if $blockPenis>> * <span class="dl-bureau-note">The signed clinic clause closes the reversal course.</span> <<else>> * [[Reversal course|SurgeryMas]] ($2000, body scale −15) <</if>> <</if>> <<if setup.canFinishTransition()>> * [[Close the clinic file|EndingFullTransition]] <<elseif setup.transOn() and $femBody gte 100 and $blockPenis>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Your clinic file is ready to close once the debt is paid and your signed terms allow you to leave.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Noon]]

<<if setup.transOn() and $femBody lt 100 and $chaserDeal?.status neq "fixed">> <<set _courseCost to setup.feminizationCost()>> <<set $money -= _courseCost>> <<if $transitionVoucher>><<set $transitionVoucher to false>><</if>> <<set $femBody to Math.min(100, $femBody + 15)>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/venue-stories/clinic-welcome-v1.png" alt="The clinic waiting room"></div> The nurse turns the statement around so you can read the number. You run your finger down to the line where the next review is listed. “Will I notice it right away?” “Some of it,” she says. “Write down what you notice. Bring the list if you come back.” <<if _courseCost is 0>> The receipt is marked paid. The voucher stays in the file. <<else>> The receipt records $<<print _courseCost>>. You fold it so the figure faces out. <</if>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Body scale · $femBody / 100.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

<<if $blockPenis>> The clerk checks your file. The reversal line is sealed under the clause you signed. <<elseif $femBody gt 0>> <<set $money -= 2000>> <<set $femBody to Math.max(0, $femBody - 15)>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/venue-stories/clinic-welcome-v1.png" alt="The clinic waiting room"></div> The reversal costs $2000. The nurse circles the aftercare instructions and asks you to read them back before you leave. “No judgment,” she says. “I just want you to know when to call us.” <div class="dl-bureau-note">Body scale · $femBody / 100.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

<<if setup.chaser.course()>> <div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" src="img/venue-stories/clinic-welcome-v1.png" alt="The clinic waiting room"></div> The nurse keeps the photograph in the folder. She sets the form down in front of you. “He paid,” she says. “I still need to hear which part you want.” <<if $chaserDeal.stage is 1>>You ask for the first course only. She draws a line through the next one.<<else>>You ask to go further. She brings out the original form so you can see the return clause is still there.<</if>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Body scale · $femBody / 100. Paid by Chaser. Return remains prepaid.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

<<if setup.chaser.returnToStart()>> The nurse brings out your first chart. The second signature is yours again. When you ask what gets sent to the person who paid, she turns the receipt over. There is room for a total. That is all. <div class="dl-bureau-note">Body scale · $femBody / 100. Return covered. Standing premium closed.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

<<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 person 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 person 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]]

<<if setup.canTakeAwareness()>> <<set $money -= 800>> <<set $clinicAwareness to true>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> The course is listed under Wellness, which is the clinic's word for things they will do to you that don't require anesthesia. The technician is matter-of-fact in the way that costs extra everywhere else in this city and is included here. "The gland is already present," she says, adjusting the chair. "We're not adding anything. We're introducing you." The introduction takes forty minutes and is conducted with the clinical thoroughness of someone showing a new tenant where the fusebox is. Before you leave, the technician gives you a short set of recovery instructions for your next booking. "Monthly is recommended," she says, reaching for the appointment book. You fold the instructions into your receipt and leave the date blank. <div class="dl-bureau-note">Course paid · $800. Passive agency bookings now cost 5 less base stamina.</div> <</if>> * [[Back|Clinic]]

<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>21+</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 at least 21 and 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 class="dl-tool-edition">DebtLppo 0.8</div> </div> * [[Review your arrangement|Contract]] * <<link "Content preferences">><<run setup.preferences.open("scenes")>><</link>> * [[AUTHOR'S CORNER|AuthorCorner]] <section class="dl-tool-entry" aria-label="Full Control"> <div><small>SUPPORTER TOOLS</small><strong>Full Control</strong><span>Shape your character, resources and progress.</span></div> <<if setup.hasSupporterTools()>><<link "Open Full Control">><<run setup.supporter.open()>><</link>><<else>><<link "Enter supporter code">><<run setup.supporter.open()>><</link>><</if>> </section> <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 in a hospital bed with a headache and no memory of how you got here. The lights hurt your eyes. You try to remember yesterday, then the days before it. Nothing. You push yourself upright. A man in the corner closes the folder on his lap. "Mr. Smith. You've been with us for several days. There was an accident outside one of my establishments. For a while, we weren't sure you would recover." He looks you over. "The specialists have done excellent work." "Expensive work. Your treatment and your stay have been charged to your account. I've prepared an arrangement for repayment." "My account?" He puts the folder on your bed. * [[Next|IntroFemale2]]

"Read it when you feel able. You'll work here until the balance is paid. I have a cafe, a bar, several other businesses. You may stay in the building." You try to ask what happened to you, but a coughing fit doubles you over. "Rest first. We'll discuss your schedule when you can stand." He presses a button beside the bed. Something cold enters your IV. You are still trying to catch your breath when you fall asleep. When you wake again, someone has moved you to a different room. The bed is softer and your head is clearer. You remember Smith, the folder, the account you never opened. Nothing before that. A knock interrupts you. A nurse comes in without waiting for an answer. At least, she is wearing a nurse's uniform. You doubt the neckline is standard issue. "Oh, good, you're awake. How's your head?" <<if not setup.transOn() or $startForm is "woman">> She checks the IV, then tells you where to get a hot meal and how the staff rota works. You ask whether the dress code comes out of your pay. "The first uniform is included," she says. "After that, read every line before you sign. Especially the ones that sound generous." She takes a pencil from her pocket and circles the daytime jobs on the sheet. The city pays by the booking at night. A shift is a shift. <<else>> She checks you over while explaining where to get meals and whom to ask for clean towels. You begin to relax. Then she mentions the staff dress code. "Wait. What dress code?" you ask. <<if $marketPressure>> "For some of the bookings Mr. Smith has in mind, you'll be expected to dress like the women here. The daytime jobs have their own uniforms." <<else>> "There's a staff uniform if you'd like to try one. The rota lists the jobs. You can ask me about any of them." <</if>> "I've never used makeup. Where would I even start?" "With me. I can help with the makeup. You don't have to learn everything this morning. Hold still a second..." She brushes your hair, fits the extensions and talks you through the makeup. By the time she brings out the dress, you have stopped trying to follow every instruction. You sit on the sofa afterward and stare at your reflection. You keep looking for something familiar in it. "There. What do you think?" She waits, but you can't answer. Her smile fades a little. "Listen. You should know about the work before you choose. Some night bookings pay well. Rates depend on the market they put you in. The daytime jobs have their own rates. Ask what a booking actually pays before you take it." You look up from the mirror. "You can say no," she adds quickly. "Ask about the other jobs. I just didn't want you finding out from a customer." <</if>> She sets a tube of lipstick beside the contract. <<vid "place/hospital-first-look-" "01">> <<if not setup.transOn() or $startForm is "woman">> "Sample from the staff drawer. It's yours if you like the shade." You try it in the little mirror on the table. <<else>> "That's the one I used," she says. "It's yours." You look in the mirror again. You can see the color properly now that she has stepped aside. <</if>> She adjusts her uniform and glances at the door. "Take care of yourself, okay?" After she leaves, you look through the contract again. Work, somewhere to live, a debt you don't remember agreeing to. You need to find out how much you owe. <div id="first-look-choice"> <<link "Keep the lipstick on">> <<set $firstMirrorChoice to "color">> <<replace "#first-look-choice">>You like the shade. You cap the tube and put it in your bag.<</replace>> <</link>> · <<link "Wipe the lipstick off">> <<set $firstMirrorChoice to "bare">> <<replace "#first-look-choice">>You wipe it off and look again. This feels right for today. You put the tube in your bag anyway.<</replace>> <</link>> </div> * <<link "Start a new life" "Morning">><<if not $firstMirrorChoice>><<set $firstMirrorChoice to "color">><</if>><</link>>

<<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 _chaserMorning to setup.chaser.morning()>> <<if _chaserMorning is 1>> The shirt you wore to the clinic sits differently at the collar. You do one button up and undo it again. You leave the photograph in the drawer while you decide what looks right. <<elseif _chaserMorning is 2>> You put on the same shirt you wore to the first dinner. At the clinic it felt like a way to check what had changed. This morning you keep it on because you like how it sits. <</if>> <<arcOffer "smithAftercare" "SMITH / FOLLOW-UP" "Read the note">> <<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="setup.resolveBodyArt(_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 $smithOffsiteReply and not $smithOffsiteReply.issued>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">Smith has filed your reply. The follow-up will arrive after the assignment already on your schedule.</div> <</if>> <<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><<if $smithTask.offsite>>OFFSITE FOLLOW-UP<<else>>SMITH'S MEMO<</if>> ★</b><br> <<if not $smithTaskIntro and not $smithTask.offsite>><<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.offsite and not $smithTask.optional>> <br><span style="opacity:0.6;">A missed shift counts as a refusal.</span> <</if>> <<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 $smithTask.optional and 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 $smithTask.optional and not $smithTaskAccepted>>  ·  <<link "Pass this time" "Morning">><<run setup.smithTaskExpire(true)>><</link>> <span style="opacity:0.5;">(no penalty)</span> <<elseif not $smithTaskAccepted>>  ·  <<link "Decline" "Morning">><<run setup.smithTaskExpire(true)>><</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 on the pillow! You turn into it and stretch, then remember how sore you are from yesterday. Maybe lie here a little longer. You can hear people outside already, though, and you want time to do your hair. What do you want to do first? <<elseif _p is 2>> The window needs cleaning. So does the room, but neither pays, and you need to get moving. You sit up slowly, waiting for the ache in your back to ease. Somebody outside has been leaning on a car horn for a full minute. 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>> Morning light reaches across the bed. You lie still for a minute, then sit up and check the time. Yesterday left you tired. You need to work out what you can manage today. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wake before the alarm and turn it off before it can ring. Next door, a radio is giving the traffic report. You listen until the weather comes on, hoping for a reason to stay under the blanket. <<elseif _v == 2>> No hot water this morning. You dress quickly, keeping your socks on while you pull your clothes from the chair. Last night's change is still on the table. You count it before putting it back in your pocket. <<else>> Rain is dripping onto the windowsill. You move your clothes away from the damp patch, then check whether anything got wet during the night. You'll have to tell someone about the leak before you leave. <</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 $firstMirrorChoice and not $firstMirrorRecalled>> <<set $firstMirrorRecalled to true>> <<if $firstMirrorChoice is "color">> You fish the tube from the hospital out of your bag. The color is warmer under this light. You turn it over and read the shade number so you can find it again. <<else>> The tube from the hospital rolls against the comb. You leave it capped. There's enough light here to see the shape of your mouth on its own. <</if>> <</if>> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lt 4 and setup.firstBodyBeat("mirror")>> <<if _b lte 1>> You wipe the mirror with your sleeve. The makeup changes where you look first. Your shoulders are still the ones you recognise from the hospital. <<elseif _b is 2>> The bathroom light picks up the softness around your eyes. You turn your head. The difference holds from the side this time. <<else>> The face in the mirror is beginning to look familiar without makeup. You set the brush down and look again. <</if>> <</if>> <<if _p >= 3>> You lean close to the mirror to check your face. Still a bit sleepy, but pretty. You try a pout, then a smile. The smile is better. <<elseif _p == 2>> You check your face under the buzzing bathroom light. A little concealer, fix the hair, see whether that smile still works. You slept badly, but a customer doesn't need to know it. <<else>> The bathroom smells damp. You turn toward the lamp and look at yourself in the cracked mirror. You have been avoiding a proper look lately. <</if>> <<if $surgeryLips > 0>> Your lips are swollen and glossy even before the lipstick. You part them, then try closing your mouth again. The fillers still make the expression look like a pout. <</if>> <<if $surgeryBody > 0>> The nightgown pulls across the new shape the clinic gave you. You run your hands down over the wider curve of your hips. The shape still surprises you; the clients have been quicker to get used to it. <</if>> <<if $surgeryFull > 0>> The surgery has left your face almost without expression. You try smiling. It barely changes. Your skin is smooth, your proportions too perfect, and you look like one of the expensive dolls in a shop window. <</if>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirrorB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You have to concentrate on the mascara. Hold still, don't blink. There. The lipstick is easier; you could do that with your eyes closed now. You try it, then have to wipe a little off your chin. You blow the reflection a kiss and turn your head to check both sides. Pretty from either angle. That ought to get a few compliments today. <<elseif _v == 1>> You practice the smiles people like. Sweet first, then flirty. The apologetic one takes a moment, but you get it right. That one is useful when a customer is cross. Mascara, blush, gloss. You go back for a little more blush. Too much? You tilt your head, trying to decide, then leave it. It looks nice when you smile. <<elseif _v == 2>> You look sleepy. Bright lipstick will help, and a little sparkle at the corners of your eyes. You lean close so you can get the two sides even. Your eyes still look tired, but the gloss is lovely. You press your lips together and check that none of it has got on your teeth. <<else>> You try to remember what you meant to fix. Your lips look good. So does your hair. There was something else, but you've forgotten it while looking at yourself. You brush your hair until it shines. "<<bodyText 'Good girl' 'Looking good'>>," you tell the reflection, and grin at how pleased that makes you. You say it once more before you put the brush down. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirrorC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> You catch yourself giving the mirror the same look you give a customer. Lowered lashes, a slight smile. It works just as well without an audience. You fix your hair and put on lipstick. Once, you used to feel sick doing this. Now your main concern is getting the two sides even. You wipe a stray line away with your thumb. <<elseif _v == 1>> You check the shadows under your eyes and the bruise near your collarbone. Concealer for the first, a higher neckline for the second. The corner of your mouth will have to heal on its own. Ten minutes later, you look fit to go out. You tilt the mirror toward the light for one final check, then put the concealer in your bag. <<elseif _v == 2>> You slept badly, and it shows. You dab concealer beneath your eyes, drink a little water and try a smile. Better. Nobody at work is likely to look any closer. You stop before you use too much. At the door, you catch your reflection from a different angle and pause. You do look good today. <<else>> You hold two lipsticks against your mouth, trying to decide what the evening calls for. One looks respectable. The other has earned its place in your bag. You choose the second. If people are going to stare anyway, they may as well like what they see. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMirror', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> Your eyes are heavy with sleep and the arousal that never quite leaves you now. You touch your cheek and try to remember how your face looked before the makeup, before all of this. You no longer feel sick when you put on lipstick. You know what a glance or a turn of your shoulder can do to a customer, and part of you is pleased to be good at it. You'd rather not think about that while getting ready. <<elseif _v == 1>> You wipe the steam from the mirror. The face is familiar, but you have picked up expressions you don't remember learning: lowered lashes, parted lips, a smile before anyone has asked for one. You straighten your mouth and watch it settle back into the same expression. You look away to get the makeup. There is work to get to. <<elseif _v == 2>> The bathroom light is less forgiving than the lights at work. You inspect your brow, your mouth, the way you keep tilting your head. You try standing straight instead. You take your time with the makeup. The finished face is beautiful. You wish it were easier to be pleased about that. <<else>> You try to remember your old face. The eyes are the same, aren't they? You frown at the mirror, hoping that will help, then stop before it makes you late. You know the routine well enough to do it while your thoughts wander. A moment later, the brush is down and you're ready to leave. You haven't answered any of the questions you came in with. <</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>> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lt 4>> <<if setup.firstBodyBeat("shower")>> <<if _b lte 1>> The water takes the nurse's work off in streaks. You keep your eyes closed until it runs clear. <<else>> A patch of skin is tender where your shirt usually rubs. You turn a little so the spray misses it. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<if _p >= 3>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShowerB', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The water is warm today. You stand under it until your shoulders loosen, then reach for the peach-scented soap. You like this part of the morning. Nobody asking you for anything yet. You tip your face into the spray and let your mind wander. By the time you remember the soap, you've been standing there for ages. You turn the hot tap a little higher. <<elseif _v == 1>> You work up a handful of foam and watch it slide down your arm. You meant to wash your hair first. Never mind; you've got the soap now. You wash off the makeup and sweat, then rinse your hair twice because you can't remember whether you did it already. The towel feels lovely when you step out. <<elseif _v == 2>> The soap smells of peaches. You use a bit more than you need and turn slowly under the spray, enjoying the warmth on your skin. You find a mark on your thigh and stop to look at it. You can't remember who left it. Somebody who wanted you close, anyway. You wash around the sore patch. <<else>> You sing while you shampoo your hair. The echo makes you sound much better, though you keep forgetting the words. You hum through those bits. You remember the chorus just as you turn off the tap, so you sing it once more while drying yourself. Someone knocks on the wall. Was it that loud? You lower your voice a little. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShowerC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The pressure is terrible. You have to stand right under the showerhead to get your hair wet. You work shampoo into it, rinse, and watch last night's makeup run toward the drain. For a while you just stand under the water. Nobody to talk to, nothing to do with your hands. You take your time drying off afterward. <<elseif _v == 1>> You check the bruises while you wash. Most of them are fading. One needs something on it when you get out, so you put the antiseptic where you'll remember it. The water hits the back of your neck and you lean into it. You stay there until the temperature starts to drop. <<elseif _v == 2>> You wash off the makeup, then work soap into the places where you can still smell somebody else's room. You take care with the sore patches. They'll be worse tomorrow if you scrub them raw. The stall fills with steam. You close your eyes for a minute, listening to the pipes. The boiler won't keep this up much longer, but there's no harm in waiting until it gives out. <<else>> You count last night's money while the water heats, then seal it in a bag and put it where it won't get wet. You keep checking the bag through the curtain while you wash. By the time you've finished, you know what you earned and what still hurts. You dry yourself carefully and get dressed for work. <</if>> <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtShower', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The first splash is cold enough to make you gasp. You wait for it to warm, then scrub off the sweat and street dust. You remember yesterday's hands and whispers, and catch yourself scrubbing harder. You make yourself stop before your skin is raw. You can hear traffic through the bathroom window, but nobody can see you here. You close your eyes and let the water run over your face. <<elseif _v == 1>> The water runs dirty around your feet. You wash the dust from your legs and the old makeup from your face, then rinse again. Your skin is starting to sting. You pull the curtain closed where it has slipped open. The room beyond can wait. You stay under the water until it starts getting cold. <<elseif _v == 2>> You wash your hair first, then your face, then work down the rest of your body. Keeping to a routine helps you avoid thinking about yesterday. Your hand catches a bruise. You stop, take a breath and wash around it instead. There is no point making it hurt worse. <<else>> The soap smells cheap and medicinal. You work it into your skin until it replaces the perfume and smoke, then rinse it away. One less thing to bring home from work. You finish slowly, reluctant to leave the warmth. When you step out, the towel is where you left it. You wrap it around yourself and sit down for a minute before getting dressed. <</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 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, and you don't have to think about anything else. 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. You should get up soon. Breakfast first, then whatever it was you meant to do. You lie there a little longer, trying to remember. <<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. You reach for the blanket and settle down to watch her again. <<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. Maybe you should set another alarm. <</if>> <<elseif _p == 2>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtMastC', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> No ceremony, no guilt, no warm-up. You know exactly where to touch yourself and how much pressure to use. 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 try to remember when this stopped embarrassing you, then give up and stretch again. <<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. You give up on the word and go to wash your hands. <<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 is already under your pillow. 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. Your face goes warm about the noise you made. Then the neighbor's radio comes on, as loud as ever, and you stop worrying. <<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. You still feel the satisfied pulse between your legs as you get up to put the toy away. <</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; the room is stuffy. 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, trying to put the customer's voice out of your 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 and use your finger to keep your place. 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 goes smoother. You go back and read them once more, just to be sure. <<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. You wipe the lipstick from your finger before turning the page. 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. You put the lipstick beside the book so you'll know what the writing is for. <</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. You have to go back over the last page, but you get there. <<else>> You choose contract law for obvious reasons. The prose is dry, precise, and difficult to twist with a smile. You compare each definition with the wording in your own agreement. 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 and your breathing has evened out. You leave the book open at the next exercise. It will be easier to start tomorrow if you know where you stopped. <<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 close the book, you understand why the answer in the margin is right. You could do the next problem without it. <<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. You mark the place before getting ready to go out. <<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, you test yourself without looking at the notes. You remember most of it. The mistakes are easy enough to find, and you correct them before putting the book away. <</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> <<arcOffer "smithHome" "SMITH / HOME APPOINTMENT" "Keep the appointment">> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<if _p gte 3>> You keep stopping to look at the signs above the street. There's one for the salon you like, all bright colors and lovely hair. You have a few hours before work. Time to do something nice for yourself. <<elseif _p is 2>> Lunch hour. Everybody's out spending the morning's pay, and every sign on the street has a suggestion for yours. You have a few hours before work. You should decide what you actually need before going into a shop. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtNoonScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The street is crowded and hot. Above it, advertisements promise better looks, a new life, an easy way out of debt. You check the time. There are a few hours left before your main shift. <<elseif _v == 1>> Office workers fill the pavement, carrying sandwiches and talking about their morning. You wait among them for the light to change. For a moment you wish you had somewhere ordinary to go back to after lunch. <<elseif _v == 2>> There is no shade between the buildings. At the corner, people queue for the cash machine while you wait to cross. You keep your bag close and check the time again. <<else>> A man outside the station is selling watch batteries, phone cables and single roses. You slow down to look, then remember what you came out for. There's still time before your shift. <</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 club signs are coming on. You check your reflection in a dark window and fix a strand of hair. Soon there'll be music, and people pleased to see you. You hurry a little. Time for the fun job. <<elseif _p is 2>> The clubs are opening. You stop at the corner to check you've brought everything, then get moving. Tonight needs to pay better than last night. Time to clock in. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtEveningScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> The sky darkens and the first nightclub signs come on. Other people are heading home. You still have your main shift ahead of you. <<elseif _v == 1>> You make your way through the office crowd heading for the station. A coat catches your bag and its owner mutters an apology without stopping. You keep going the other way. Somewhere behind you a shutter comes down over a shopfront. Ahead, the signs are warming up. <<elseif _v == 2>> Fine rain has soaked through your collar. You wait at the crossing, looking at the club signs in the puddles and working out what tonight needs to earn. Then the light changes and you cross with everybody else. <<else>> It's quiet for the time of day. Delivery vans idle outside the restaurants, and a man is hosing down the pavement. From a doorway comes a short burst of music as somebody tests the sound system. You stop beneath an awning to decide where to work. Once you've chosen, you set off before you can change your mind. <</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>> You're tired, but there might still be someone nice waiting downstairs. A little company, a little more money. Or you could get straight into bed. You sit on the edge of it, trying to choose. You can hear people talking in the alley. Someone laughs, and you want to go and see who it is. You reach for your shoes before remembering you were thinking about sleep. <<elseif _p is 2>> One more customer, or bed. You count what you brought home and try to judge how much strength you have left. A bad night's work can cost you tomorrow's shift. There are buyers in the alleys near your building. You know where they wait and what they'll pay. You put the money away while you decide whether to join them. <<else>> <<set _v to window.drawFromDeck('deckTxtNightScreen', [], 4)>> <<if _v == 0>> There are still cars on the street and people under the advertising lights. You could go back out and earn a little more. You could also use the sleep. You sit down before making the decision. You know where to find customers near the building now. You wish you hadn't learned the route quite so well. <<elseif _v == 1>> The buses are running farther apart. The people getting off them are starting work as you finish, and you recognize a few faces. You watch one of them cross the street, then turn toward your room. There is still money to be earned outside. You can hear your bed creak as you sit on it. You haven't taken your shoes off yet. <<elseif _v == 2>> Someone has the television on two floors down. The lift stops on your floor, starts again, then goes quiet. You stand at the window with your coat still on. If you go out now, you can make a little more. If you stay, you might wake up rested. You wish it were easier to stop working when the shift ended. <<else>> You add up the day's earnings again. You know the answer, but keep hoping you've missed something. Outside, a taxi has been waiting at the curb for several minutes. You used to need longer to decide whether to go back out. Tonight you catch yourself reaching for the door, then stop to think it through. <</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>> <<if $stamina gt 0>> * [[Prostitution|Prostitution]] (Earn with your body) <<else>> * Paid bookings are closed until you rest. <</if>> <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 and $stamina gt 0>> * [[Answer Vince's call|Outcall]] (Outcall - his cut, but the real money) <<elseif $trassaUnlocked and $stamina gt 0>> * [[Walk out to the highway|Trassa]] (Streetwalking)<<print setup.star("trassa")>> <<elseif !$pimped and !$trassaUnlocked>> * [[Take a walk before bed|NightWalk]] (Wind down... and maybe more) <</if>> <<if $stamina gt 0 and $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>> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lt 4>> <<if setup.firstBodyBeat("sleep")>> <<if _b lte 1>> You put the dress on the chair, beside the clothes you arrived in. In the dark you can tell them apart by the sound they make when you fold them. <<else>> You try the position you always sleep in, then roll over. The pillow under your arm helps. <</if>> <</if>> <</if>> <<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. You ought to check it. You pull the blanket off one foot, then forget why you did that. 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. You are asleep before you can remember what the third one was. <<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 pat yourself on the back for thinking that far ahead. 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. At least you know what you're wearing tomorrow. <</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. You wake just long enough to put the money away. <<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 wish you'd started doing this before the bruises got so sore. 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. You keep forgetting to drink enough when you're tired. Sleep takes longer than expected. Your body keeps replaying touches without asking whether they were pleasant, and your mind keeps attaching prices to them. You roll over, uncomfortable, then move the pillow under your hip. Eventually you find a position you can sleep in. <</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. You don't wake again until morning. <<elseif _v == 1>> You don't remember getting undressed. You can still hear sirens and somebody's music, but you're too tired to care. None of it can reach you here. You pull the blanket over your shoulder and fall asleep. 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 above the lamp - and let the day drain out of you muscle by muscle. You keep changing position, trying to get comfortable. Eventually you stop noticing the cold. 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. You leave everything where you'll be able to find it in the morning. Under the blanket, you listen until the rain becomes only texture. You turn away from the clock and pull the blanket close. For once, you fall asleep before you can start worrying about tomorrow. <</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"><<print $money lt 0 ? "Current debt" : "Available balance">></span> <strong class="tally-card-value"><<print Math.abs($money)>>$</strong> </div> </div> <<if $money lt 0>> <div class="tally-threshold"> <<if _isEndzone>> <span style="color:var(--danger);"><<print _distToNext>>$ until total enslavement</span> <<elseif !$fileRate>> <<print _distToNext>>$ to the _nextRateStr base-rate band <<else>> Your debt file sets a fixed base rate of $fileRate%. <</if>> </div> <</if>> <<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>> <<if setup.canFinishTransition()>> <div data-content-extra> * [[Close your file at the clinic|Clinic]] </div> <</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. He turns the monitor toward you. Your payments are listed by date, with the remaining balance at the bottom. You've been checking that figure every day. It's nearly finished. <<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 know what he's going to say. You have nearly paid him, and now he thinks he should have charged more. You wait for him to name the difference. "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 point out how close you are to paying him off. His expression stops you. "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." You look from him to the revised figures. One day working for the Owner, or all those extra payments. He waits for your answer. <</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 $money - _owed>> <<set _p to window.persona()>> <<set _smithRefuseKey to "smith/revision-refuse/t" + Math.clamp(_p, 0, 3) + "-">> <<set _smithRefuseVariant to either("a", "b")>> <<vid _smithRefuseKey _smithRefuseVariant>> <h2>Revised Terms</h2> "No." You expect him to argue, or at least to look up. He does neither. He writes a short line at the bottom of a page you cannot read upside down, caps the pen, and turns the monitor back toward himself, and the whole refusal costs him about four seconds of his afternoon. <<if _p gte 3>> He is not angry, which is a relief, because angry is scary. He just says the number has to be bigger now, and shows you, and the number is indeed bigger. You look at it for a while. It was going to be finished soon and now it is not finished, and you cannot quite work out how that happened, only that it did, and that you did it, and that he was polite about the whole thing. <<elseif _p is 2>> You watch the new balance appear. He hasn't even argued. All that work, and he can put the money back on the account in a few keystrokes. <<else>> "Noted," he says. That is all. The correction appears on the screen in front of you, unhurried, itemised, and entirely within the terms you signed in a hospital bed with your head full of fog. On the way out, you start counting the extra days. You stop before you reach the door. You still mean the refusal; you just hadn't expected it to hurt this much. <</if>> <span style="color: #ff4444;">Balance revised: -$<<print _owed>> added to the principal. Interest rate +<<print _add>>%.</span> * [[Leave|Morning]]

<<if $smithOffsiteReply and not $Gallery>> <h2>Smith’s reply</h2> <<vid "morning/t0-" "b">> The phone buzzes against the table. It is a message. You let it buzz a second time before you pick it up. <<if $smithOffsiteReply.full>> “I have entered the second line as yours. Keep a copy. I have left a space at the library for a further observation, if you want one. — M.S.” You save the draft before you close the conversation. The copy still says *I*. You check that twice. <<else>> “Time entered. No further observation received. The report is closed. I have put a shift on the schedule. — M.S.” You read *received* again. It is exactly true. The second line is still open in your drafts. <</if>> <<if $smithOffsiteReply.day gt $days>> <div class="dl-bureau-note">The follow-up comes after the assignment already on your schedule.</div> <</if>> <</if>> * [[Back to the morning|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+ and debt over $10k, or an introduction/eligible clause; regular bookings also check IQ and promiscuity, plus appearance with optional routes on) · 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." You wish they would stop discussing how well you do it. 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. You try to follow the instructions while keeping up with the others. 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. You wait for one of them to mention you. They go on discussing the next shift until Tommy gets up. 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 <<bodyText 'beneath your breasts' 'beneath your chest'>>. 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 <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>, then your hair. They finish over you one after another, laughing and swearing, until your face and chest are covered. 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. You have to hold the rail to make it up the stairs. <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. Someone has slipped a thick cream card under your door. 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 you can afford to refuse. 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. You get in before he has to ask. <<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 from a nearby room. 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 - waiting for instructions. <<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, with thin straps; 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. You put on the red lipstick from the shelf, then blot it on a tissue. 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 are still tender from the last visit. The pelt is deep, warm, expensive; your weight sinks into it. Your hand finds the gold tap: water runs thin, and you leave it running while you wait. 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, but keeping you close. 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 seat raised above the spotless bowl - and run your tongue along the rim. Slowly, thoroughly, without coming up for air: the industrial lipstick leaves a half-moon on the porcelain - you can see it clearly against the white glaze. 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 - loud enough that you wonder whether they can hear you through the wall. Cold vitreous china against your cheek; the sharp smell of chlorine. 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 - you can't pull away without turning into his hand. The lipstick is smudged at the corner, the cheek is wet, the eyes - he looks at them for a moment before checking the rest of your face. 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 you hate how readily your body responds after what you have just done. 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 sounding drowsy. 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: you struggle to breathe through your nose, 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, you have stopped trying to pull back. When he finally comes - into your mouth, deep - the sitting room remains silent: he has already gone. You never heard him leave. 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. Your knees ache where the fur rubbed them. 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. You try to remember his expression and can't be sure of it. 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. You check the fit while you wait for the guards to return. 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. He watches your mouth, adjusting his grip whenever you pull back. 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. He says it while looking you over, then reaches for your hair. 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 <<bodyText 'beneath your breasts' 'beneath your chest'>>. 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. Don't move away." 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. "Stay there." 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. He glances at you over the rim of his glass. "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. You read the new rate twice before putting the phone away. <<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>

<<if setup.runBlockReason("RichMan")>> * [[Back|Night]] <<elseif not setup.richAcceptsAppearance()>> * [[Meet the Rich Man for breakfast|RichReject]] <<else>> /% =================================================================================== 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> <</if>>

<<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?" You put your glass down. You hadn't realized Smith had told him that much. 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. You put the hat on last. There is considerably less to the rest of the outfit than there was at dinner. 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." You are relieved not to be hurried. You can manage this more easily if he lets you take your time. <<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. He kisses you again and waits for you to return it. You do, though you are still watching his hands. <<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." You try to answer, but lose the words when he draws you back again. <<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. You brace yourself against the leather as he settles into the pace he wants. <<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. You lose the sum and start over. After a few attempts, you stop trying to count. 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. On the way home, you remember how quickly you began doing what he wanted. You had expected it to be harder. You sit with that thought until the car stops. Before you get out, the driver asks whether he should expect another booking. You tell him you haven't decided. <<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. The driver starts the car before you can ask anything else. 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 <<bodyText 'on your breasts' 'on your chest'>> 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 through your body and you cannot stop it 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. He keeps watching as he moves. <<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: <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>, 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". You hear yourself asking whether he likes it. <<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 <<bodyText 'on your breasts' 'on your chest'>>, 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 <<bodyText 'under your breasts' 'under your chest'>>, 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 watches each attempt, waiting for you to try again. 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. You wait for him to tell you what he wants next. <<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. You leave the box where it is while you get dressed. <<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 - the duty receptionist must have seen you approach. 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: its jaw hanging slightly open. "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. He takes the clipboard away without checking whether your name is legible. <<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. You look toward the skeleton in the corner rather than up at him. <<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 <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>. These hands manage everything. In the corridor pass a cleaner's footsteps; a mop knocks against the baseboard and recedes. The footsteps pause outside, then move on. Nobody knocks. <<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. You can still see the red dot at the edge of the monitor. "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 administrator marks the clips she wants to keep. <<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. You check the notification, then put the phone away to finish dressing. 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." You read it again, then check the bus times. "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, a sharp look that takes in you and the queue behind you. 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. He checks the recording before putting the phone away. <<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 curtains stay closed throughout the shift. <<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 and takes you from behind over the arm of the couch - slow, thorough, both hands on your hips with a gentleness nobody at this address has shown you yet. You move with him, and for a whole minute it is almost pleasant: warmth, a living tempo, someone else's palms that do not grab but hold. After four hours of shift your body runs on mechanics, not want - and then his size, his rhythm behind you, fall suddenly into yours, and you nearly lose the thread of your own thoughts. He breathes into the back of your shoulder. You feel his breathing gather and hold. From the corner the madam watches, making sure the "almost" does not grow into anything. She taps her watch when you look her way. He comes quietly, deep, eyes shut. You climb off, and the "almost" stays on the couch with him, along with the rest. You tidy yourself and wait for the next man. <<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. They keep the pace together, one watching the other over your shoulder. You try to find enough breath to keep up. <<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 lays you back on the bed, draws your legs up in one arm, and settles into the shift's slick with one motion - and then lays his palm on the front of your throat: not squeezing, just resting its weight there. You feel it every time you swallow. No pressure, only weight. He works deep and measured; your heart hammers up into someone else's fingers, your breath goes short and tight, and out of that tightness the pull comes low and hard, harder than his tempo alone. The madam watches through her cigarette smoke: "No marks. She's on an outcall tomorrow." The palm retreats, reluctantly, to the headboard - still status, but no longer a claim. At the end he draws out, careful, finishing well outside the frame - the house looks after the goods. She checks your skin before the next man comes to the bed. <<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 you rely on the madam to tell you how many are left. 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." You recognize the firm's stationery. 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 - she already has your name on the appointment list. The negotiation room: a glass table, two laptops, blinds, a window half a wall. Everything as in offices where people lead ordinary lives. 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. You cannot tell whether he is reading the figures or watching you. "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 looks away when you catch his eye. <<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. He waits for you to get your breath back. 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, neither of them looking down at you. "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. At closing time, 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 - you are left to find out when the guest arrives. 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 - without stopping his reading. 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. He holds your hand for a moment before letting you go back to work. <<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. You give him the smile he is waiting for. 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 you try to keep your eyes away from the files on the desk. <<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: he signs the payment and sets the report aside. <<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?" You can almost hear him saying it. 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. You shift a little, trying to find a more comfortable place. 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. You wish he would stop worrying long enough to enjoy himself. <<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. You swallow, then laugh when you can catch your breath. He laughs too, still trying to steady himself. <<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. He waves you over to the men seated beside him. 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">> Upstairs from the restaurant the boys keep a flat - white couch, big windows, a plant somebody actually waters. Bright as a clinic and cleaner than the kitchen downstairs. That's where the two of them take you: the ones who did the driving tonight, the big one and the quiet one. Introductions happen without names. The big one lies back on the couch like it's his own living room - which it is - and pulls you down between his legs, his cock already out, already hard. You take him in one hand, the quiet one in the other, kneeling on the floor and turning from one to the other. The big one feeds you the first few inches and lets you work. The quiet one holds your hair out of your face - not pulling, just holding, the courtesy of a man who has done this in shifts. Through the floor, the muffled bass of the restaurant. He is down there. The weight of that does what it always does. <<linkreplace "Sparring">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "02">> "Swap," one of them says - the only full sentence for a while. They move you up onto the couch, onto the big one, and he holds his cock steady while you sink down onto it, facing him. The quiet one kneels up close so your mouth can keep working, and for a while the three of you find the count - you rising and falling, your head bobbing, the couch keeping time. They work like a crew that has done jobs together: no wasted motion, no collisions. A thrust from below lifts you onto the one in your mouth; the one in your mouth pushes you back down. Somebody's phone buzzes on the armrest and goes unanswered, which in this room is a kind of compliment. <<linkreplace "The third">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "03">> Between rounds they let you rinse off - a bathroom with somebody's razor on the sink and a towel that smells of the same aftershave as the couch cushions. Your hair is still wet when the quiet one lays you on your back along the couch. Missionary, thorough, unhurried. He hooks your legs over his elbows and goes deep and stays deep, working in short rolls, his face close enough that you can smell the cigarettes on him. The big one sits at the window end with one slow hand on himself, watching, keeping ready. "Easy," says a voice from the stairs. The gangster, two steps at a time, phone still in hand, checking his property the way a foreman checks a machine. "Easy. She's for everyone." The quiet one slows at once. He waits for the nod before he looks back at you. <<linkreplace "The fourth">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "04">> The narrow way belongs to the big one. He sets you on your knees on the couch, chest low, hips high, and works into your ass with terrible patience - a centimeter at a time, one hand splayed on your cheek to hold you open, the other anchoring your hip. The ring burns, stretches, gives. "Breathe," the quiet one offers from the armchair, holding the cigarettes now. You breathe the way you were taught - short, into the belly, passing each thrust through yourself - and think about the envelope, which is the point of the exercise, and is not nothing. <<linkreplace "The fifth">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "05">> The long round. They trade you between positions like equipment: the quiet one takes you from behind at the couch arm; sits back down and has you ride him again, your back to the room, his teeth at your shoulder blade; then the big one again, from behind, your face turned back over your shoulder because he likes the look of it. His palm settles on your behind - and lands, full swing, once. You flinch before the second. The window reflects the couch and the plants. Somebody's drink sweats rings onto the floorboards. Nobody's watching it. <<linkreplace "All together">><<replace "#afterjob-stage">><<include "AfterJob07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/afterthejob/" "06">> The finish they do together, which nobody planned and nobody objects to. The quiet one lays you on your back across the couch and takes your ankles up in one arm - legs high, spread as far as his grip decides - and drives the last stretch while the big one kneels by your head and feeds you his cock sideways, into a mouth that has stopped being asked things. They finish in turn, almost politely: the one inside first, deep, with a growl; the one in your mouth holding your head still and groaning through his teeth. The gangster comes up the stairs with his phone away and an envelope out. It lands on your stomach, which is still rising and falling. "Good girl," he says. "That's for keeping everyone happy." Then he calls for the car, and the envelope is your share of the bonus: $<<print setup.eventQuote(400)>>. You count it before it goes anywhere near your bag. <<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. There is nowhere to change out of sight. 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. He waits while the guest looks you over. You wait too, unsure whether to sit down. <<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: his breathing hardly changes. <<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 had been brought to celebrate it. 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. He has not unpacked anything else yet. 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 <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>, 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. He reaches down to find the remote, misses it, and leaves his hand hanging over the side of the bed. You sit beside him while he gets his breath back. In the morning, on your phone: a hundred and fifty dollars and "thank you!!!". You send a reply before leaving for work. <<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 - waits at the foot of the bed; you climb onto the mattress onto your knees in the outfit his ledger provided - white shirt, plaid skirt - 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 - careful not to hurry him. 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. You look at the bridges while he holds you there. <<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. Your knees ache against the tile. <<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. You fix your eyes on their edges to keep your head still. <<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 careful not to drop anything on the way 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>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 come in slowly while you talk. * [[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 - taking the extra orders when the regulars ask. * [[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." You stay seated for a moment after he has finished speaking. Then you stand, stiff from the hour in the booth. * [[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 on the bus. Still early. You do it again at the next stop, then put the phone away. You've been looking forward to Thursday all week. You wore the white T-shirt, though there's a small hole near the hem. You spent too long choosing it from the three hangers in your closet. It is what you wore the last time you had a good evening here. The boys on the corner nod as you pass. They used to whistle; you don't know what changed and haven't asked. You nod back. The tall one gives you a half-smile, and you return it before going round to the back door. The restaurant's back light hums. You don't knock because you never knock and he doesn't expect you to. The kitchen smells of garlic and onions. Oxtail is simmering on the back burner. He told you what it was the first time you ate here, standing at the counter while he leaned against the opposite one. Neither of you had much to say. You remember how comfortable that was. <<linkreplace "Go up">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

You step over the fourth and seventh stairs so they won't creak. You learned that without meaning to. At the top, the bathroom door is open and steam is drifting into the hall. You lean against the wall and wait. Your hands used to shake before these visits. Tonight you're listening for the shower to stop, hoping he won't be much longer. 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 waiting. You can't tell much from his face until he speaks. "Hey, babe." You smile before you can help it. He steps aside to let you in. <<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 still in your white T-shirt and jeans, the black leather choker at your throat. It fits without pinching. You remember him checking that with two fingers when he first fastened it on you. You undo his belt. Two and a half turns, always. His jeans drop, and you take him in your hand, familiar weight against your palm. 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, resting a hand on your head. He leaves it there without guiding you. You like its warmth through your hair, and how still he lets you be. You wait for his fingers to tighten. They don't. He strokes your hair once, then rests his hand again. You work slowly. There is no driver waiting outside, no line of customers behind him. The pipes knock in the wall, and you can smell the pot from downstairs. He lets you set the pace. 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 recognize the taste before you think about it. You have been paying attention to him more closely than you meant to. "Jus' like that," he murmurs. His voice is rougher than it was at the door. You glance up, pleased to hear it, then go back to what made him say it. <<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 you don't want to stop yet. You keep going until you need another breath. You pull back for air, strings of saliva linking your lips to his skin. He is watching you. You hold his gaze for a moment, trying to read it, then lower your head again. He lets his eyes close briefly before you take him deeper. 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. He catches himself and holds still, letting you choose how much farther to go. "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. You know how little he lets other people see. When you look up again, he hasn't turned away. "You know what you do to me?" His hand moves from your hair to your cheek. He runs his thumb along your jaw, smearing the mascara, and you lean into it before you remember to be careful. 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. You have heard him swear at other people. This is quieter, barely a word, and you know what it means. 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 for a second or two. You watch his face relax, then feel his fingers move in your hair. When he looks down again, you are still looking up. You swallow and lick your lips. Neither of you speaks while he gets his breath back. You can hear the pipes settling in the wall. He steps back and pulls his jeans up. The towel lands in a heap on the rail. He usually folds it; for some reason you notice that tonight. <<linkreplace "After">><<replace "#ganglove-stage">><<include "GangLove08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

The bathroom is quiet after he leaves. You look in the mirror: smeared mascara, flushed cheeks, swollen lips. You should clean up before the bus, but for a moment you just look. You're smiling. 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 with his soap, rinsing the mascara away. You know where he keeps the clean towels now. Downstairs, the kitchen. The pot is off the burner. On the counter: one bowl, one spoon. The ladle resting across the rim. The bowl is for you. He hasn't left a note or called you down to eat, but the spoon and ladle are ready. You wait to see if he is coming back. When he doesn't, you serve yourself. You eat at the counter, standing where you stood the first time. The soup is good. You finish it slowly, reluctant to leave the kitchen. 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. Next Thursday. You wonder whether the white T-shirt will wash and dry in time. <<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?" Marcus keeps his hands to himself. He knows better than to touch you without permission. But he calls you *thing*, and the men beside him laugh. When he adds *baby*, you feel your face grow hot. 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 behind the door, waiting. You hadn't heard him approach. Perhaps someone on the corner texted him; you don't ask. His gaze drops to your fists, still in your jacket pockets. You are standing farther from the doorway than usual. He steps back to let you pass. He doesn't ask about the corner. You wonder how much he has already heard. "Come inside," he says quietly. You take your hands out of your pockets. You go inside. <<linkreplace "Upstairs">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "01">> He leads you to the bedroom instead of the bathroom. The sheets are pulled back and there is a dent in the pillow. You've been here often enough to recognize a change in the routine. You wait beside the bed. He sits on the edge of the bed. You start to kneel in front of him, but his hand catches your shoulder before you reach the floor. "Not tonight," he says. You look up. His hand stays on your shoulder. You wait for him to tell you what he wants instead. "Take that off," he says. He means the jacket. You meant to keep it on. You take off the jacket. He catches the hem of your T-shirt and draws it upward. You lift your arms. His palms are warm against your ribs, and you lean toward him before the shirt is over your head. The T-shirt joins your jacket on the chair. He unfastens your bra, eases the straps over your arms, and puts it beside them. His calloused fingers brush your shoulders as he turns back. <<linkreplace "Let him">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "02">> He lays you back on the bed. The sheets smell of soap and his skin. After so many visits spent kneeling on the bathroom tile, lying here feels strange. You pull the pillow beneath your head and watch him. 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. Now his tongue is between your folds, your back is lifting from the mattress, and you grip the sheet to keep from reaching for him too soon. He takes his time, finding the place with the flat of his tongue and returning to it when your hips lift. You try to say his name. The last syllable catches in your throat. He keeps the same steady rhythm. You let go of the sheet long enough to put a hand in his hair. He presses closer, and you forget what you meant to say. <<linkreplace "Oh God">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "03">> You come with your eyes closed, your fists in the sheet and your thighs pressed against his ears. It lasts longer than you expected. When it passes, you lie still, breathing hard, reluctant to open your eyes. He lifts his head. You can feel the absence of his mouth like a draft. When you look down, he's still between your legs, his chin wet. He wipes it with the back of his hand. You want to draw him up beside you. You want this to mean he heard what happened on the corner and chose you over it. It may mean none of that. He hasn't explained himself, and one night in his bed will not change how he treats you in front of his crew. You know better than to settle that question for him. 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 climbs onto the bed and settles over you, his face close to yours. You can smell yourself on his breath. You turn toward him and kiss him before either of you speaks. He enters you slowly. You are wet from his mouth; he slides deep and stops for a moment. You rest your hands against his back and wait for him to move again. "Fuck," he says against your neck. You feel his breath catch as you draw your legs around him. You hold him with your arms as well as your legs. He lets his weight settle against you. When you tighten your hold, he doesn't pull away. You keep your face against his neck as he starts moving. Your fingers find the short hair at the back of his head and the bent edge of his left ear. You brush it once with your thumb. He turns his face into your neck. <<linkreplace "Again">><<replace "#ganglove2-stage">><<include "GangLove207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ganglove2/" "05">> He turns you onto your stomach with a hand at your hip and enters from behind. The angle is deeper. Your face presses into the pillow, muffling your next breath. Behind you, his breathing grows rougher. He gathers your hair at the base of your skull and holds it. You push back to meet him. He adjusts his pace to yours, and for a while neither of you has to correct the other. 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 the scar. He leaves it uncovered when he reaches for the pillow. You look away before he catches you staring. The room is quiet enough to hear someone moving on the stairs outside. No one comes to the door. He stays beside you, one arm behind his head. "You eat yet?" he says. You shake your head against the pillow. "I'll make something." He pulls on his jeans and goes downstairs barefoot. In the kitchen, the fridge opens. A moment later you hear a pan go onto the burner. You lie in his bed and listen. On the corner, Marcus had called you *thing*. You had wanted to ask whether that was what the boss called you when you weren't here. The question is still there. You don't want to take it downstairs. 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 stay for another minute, then another, watching the crack in the ceiling. When you finally check your phone, the time startles you. There is still the bus home and work tomorrow. $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>> for tonight. You count it again before putting it away. You want another hour here, but the payment is already in your pocket, and you have tomorrow's shifts to plan. You find your clothes in the dark and dress quietly: bra, T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, jacket. At the bedroom door you look back for your phone. It is still on the pillow. He's at the stove when you come down. He glances at your jacket, then reaches for a plastic container and fills it from the pan. He presses the lid down carefully before handing it over. "For later," he says. You hold the container against your chest. "Thanks." It is warm through the plastic. Tonight paid $<<print setup.eventQuote(300)>>, and he has packed you food for tomorrow. You almost ask to stay. Instead, you check the time of the next bus. 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." His brother. You look at him to see whether he is joking. He waits for an answer, more serious than when he asks about Thursday. You have heard him mention his brother before. You have never been invited to meet him. "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 sits on the bed. The family resemblance is clear in his jaw and nose, though his face is younger and softer. His hair is longer, his eyes brown rather than gray. He is wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers that still have 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 top falls open 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 sits wrong 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." His brother sets a faster pace, his hips slapping wetly against yours. He checks your face, then glances toward the other man. You pull his attention back with a hand on his shoulder and meet the next stroke. 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.* Someone telling you that you 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. You count seven men without turning your head: four on the couch, two by the window, one at the counter with an unopened beer. You recognize a few from the corner. The others look up as you enter. Behind them, you can see him in the kitchen. 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 of beer and smoke. You work him slowly, your hand at the base, then cup his balls and take him deeper. He groans above you. One of the men on the couch laughs and shifts forward to watch. 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 and turn toward the next man. Another comes across your chest, warm stripes cooling on your skin. You glance toward the kitchen between them, trying to see whether he is still watching. "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, then toward the room behind you. For a moment his jaw tightens. You wait for him to speak, but he looks down at your wrist instead. Whatever he is thinking, he leaves you to guess. "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 you 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 against his chest. You are too tired to keep them open. His heartbeat is steady beneath your cheek, his cock still inside you. From the kitchen comes the faint hiss of the pot on the stove. You mean to remind him about it before you fall asleep. 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. The room is quiet in the way his rooms are quiet — no music, no TV, just the two of you breathing — and this is the opposite of the gym, where an hour ago 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 lamp light. You lick it away. You look up at him — bra still on, red, his favorite accident of laundry day — and 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 bra went missing two rounds ago — his doing or yours, neither of you logged it — and by now you're working skin to skin: both hands stacked on his shaft, your mouth on the head, a three-part machine that runs wet and steady while the ceiling fan turns above you. 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, 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 keeps the firm's suite at the top - fireplace lit, gray couch already certain of itself. The 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 chest is 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. You feel the movement all the way up through your shoulders. 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 chest is 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 <<bodyText 'against your breasts' 'against your chest'>>. 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 <<bodyText 'your breasts' 'your chest'>>, 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> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lte 1>> The apartment above the office has no name on the buzzer and always smells of laundry detergent. The room is the same every time, but you are not, and the mirror in the hallway knows it: the chest still flat, the hips still narrow, but the cheekbones have shifted since last month, and the jaw is softening its argument. You are being renovated in increments too small to grieve and too large to ignore. <<else>> The apartment above the office has no name on the buzzer and always smells of laundry detergent. <</if>> 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 <<bodyText 'under your breasts' 'under your chest'>>, 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 <<bodyText 'under your breasts' 'under your chest'>> — 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 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. Something is different tonight, and it takes you the length of his hallway to name it. No fight incoming, no victory still burning 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 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 your leg a few degrees in his taped grip, reading the bruise across your kneecap like 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's fine." "Fine isn't a recovery plan." He stands, goes to the shelf, and comes back with a folded towel, which he sets down on the floor beside the couch with the gravity of a man laying out a mat. Then the sentence that does more to you than anything fight week did: "Towel. Every time, from now on. The floor's off the program." You kneel on it. The pile is soft under the bruise, and he checks the placement with one nudge of his foot - his own work, verified - and then his thumb hooks your chin up, a small exact adjustment, like taping a wrist, and you open for him. He goes slow. Slow is a discipline like any other. You work him with your mouth and both hands, and his hand rests on the crown of your head the way a spotter's hand rests on a barbell: present, ready, not interfering. "Breathe," he says. "Pace yourself. This isn't a sprint." You pace yourself. It is the first time in this city anyone has told you not to hurry. <<linkreplace "The bed">><<replace "#herblock-stage">><<include "HerBlock03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "06">> Round two, he takes into the water. The building's recovery pool at this hour is empty and lit from below, lane ropes coiled against the wall - a room he has to himself the way he has most rooms, by showing up when nobody else does. The kitchen timer - the big dial one, white, older than his career - sits on the pool ledge: sixty minutes, the session structured the way everything he does is structured. Warm-up. Work. Cool-down. The work, tonight, is you kneeling on the submerged step while the water takes your weight - your knees, for once, carrying nothing at all. You didn't plan that. He did. "In the water they weigh zero," he says, before you can say anything, because he has already done the arithmetic. "Report if the step edge bites." He stands in front of you in it, and you take him in your mouth again, slower now, the water making everything quiet and strange - sound gone rubbery, his thighs slick under your palms, the light from the bottom of the pool running up over his stomach. He watches you the whole time. He always watches. "Report," he says, halfway, because everything is a report. "Good," you say, and mean it as data. When he comes, quietly, his hand closes - carefully, deliberately - around the pool edge instead of your head. Even now. Especially now. The timer rings at exactly sixty; his body never hears it, running its own clock the way it does, but you do, and for once the arithmetic comes out in your favor. <<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> The cool-down, his term, is taping. He sits you on the bench by the pool and wraps your knees: 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." 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>

<<vid "scene/aftermatch/" "07">> 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. You dress for it, too - the red set, stockings and all, his one visible preference, filed once and never mentioned again, which is how he mentions things. 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. The work runs long and careful and ends the way it ends now: your knees on the towel, your mouth on him, his hand resting on your head without steering, and the finish taken quietly, on your tongue, his eyes open the whole way through because they always are. 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>>

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>

<<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lte 1>> He is waiting for you in the hallway at noon, coat already on. His eyes do the inventory they always do — the face, the frame, the flat chest under the shirt — and you can see him filing the data. He is not judging. He is pricing. <<else>> He is waiting for you in the hallway at noon, coat already on. <</if>>, 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.* <<if not $Gallery and $smithOffsiteReply and $smithOffsiteReply.result>> <<if $smithOffsiteReply.full>> The papers include a copy of your offsite report. Smith has kept the second line in your handwriting. It is the only place in the packet where anyone says *I*. <<else>> The papers include a copy of your offsite report. The time is entered, the next line blank. There is a tick beside *report complete*. You know exactly when he put it there. <</if>> <</if>> 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>

/% 0.7 intern, office, Owner and Rich Man 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. At 2:14 a.m. your phone lights up. *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. "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">> Only the lamp is on. He sits on the edge of his bed — the new bedding from the housewarming, the purple one — and his knees are shaking as you kneel up between them on the mattress and undo his belt. His phone lies dark on the pillow beside your knee. He watches your hands, then looks up when you speak. "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 headboard and whatever else he rehearsed dies in his throat, unpracticed. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intdare-stage">><<include "IntDare03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internnight/" "02">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You set the pace with one hand around the base. When he starts to apologize, you hum against him and feel the word catch. Your jeans are too tight to kneel in comfortably. You shift your weight and keep going. <<else>> You set the pace: long, unhurried strokes, your tongue pressed flat, one hand around the base of him. His breath catches when you take him deep. He starts to apologize, but you hum against him and the word breaks off. <</if>> His hand hovers beside your head before settling lightly in your hair. He gathers it back from your face, careful, the way he handles things he has decided not to be scared of. "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, startled, then comes, shaking, his hand still holding your hair back. You swallow. For a moment he can only stare at you. "Thank you," he says at last. <<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 catches the lamplight. You look at him over the frames and wait. "Well?" you say. "How do I look?" "Um." He makes himself meet your eyes. "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 and settle between his knees, glasses still on. Before you lean in, you place his hand on the back of your head. “Two taps means stop.” He nods and waits until you take him in. "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. "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, 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 he tries to get the words out: "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">> You shift around onto all fours on the carpet — glasses steady, hair up, looking at him over the lenses the way he looked at the twist and tuck of your hair — and before he moves you rest a hand on his thigh and show him the signal: two taps, stop and let you breathe. He nods. His first thrust is tentative, the next a little surer. His hands hover beside your head. "Sorry," he says anyway, mid-rhythm, automatic. "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. When he comes, both hands finally settle in your hair. He holds on until you draw back. <<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, under a full centimeter of bubble wrap: armor. Matte black plate with silver trim, shoulder guards, a visor on a hinge, a collar with one heavy ring — every piece from the same character, and you know this because he has included the reference stills, printed in color, paper-clipped in viewing order. The note is in his capitals: IT'S FROM THE OPENING MISSION. THE SECOND SUIT, NOT THE FIRST. THE FIRST ONE WAS A PROTOTYPE. "You bought replica armor," you say on the phone, holding a greave up to the lamp. "The accurate one," he says, wounded by the doubt. "There's a version with the wrong chest plate going around. I checked the seams." 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 "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "01">> He has thought about the lighting, which in his language means he has taped blue strip lights along the shelf edge — "because the cabin in the game is—" and then he stops explaining. The apartment is a locker room in orbit. You duck into the bathroom to buckle everything and close the door. "Give me a second. You can have a proper entrance." Then you come out into the blue with the visor up, boots on his rug, every seam checked. 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. It'll last-" He shakes his head before you can finish. "I'm looking," he says. His hands are still tangled in his sleeves. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "02">> You give him the slow turn anyway — the plate catching blue with every quarter — and stop facing him, visor down, hands at your sides like the character at parade rest. "Correct trim?" you say. "You're making fun of me." "I'm asking about the suit. I take product feedback seriously." "The suit," he says, with the strained dignity of a man reading from an internal document, "is perfect. The suit 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 put his hands on the shoulder plates. "Then we'll solve them in order." You sit him on the couch and kneel between his knees, the armor clicking softly as you settle. 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 his hips, and you take him into your mouth still wearing the collar, still wearing everything, only the arrangement of your knees and his lap saying what the room is for. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You have to shift your knees again when the suit presses between your legs. He hears the armor squeak and nearly laughs. Then he remembers what he was about to ask. <</if>> "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 suit," you say against his stomach. "The evening's mine. Lie back." He lies back. In the kitchen, the kettle clicks off. Neither of you gets up to make the tea. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume-stage">><<include "IntCostume06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume/" "05">> You work him slowly, with a long pull and a pause at the crown that makes his thigh jump. The suit has made him unusually quiet. Whenever you look up past the collar's ring, he draws a sharp breath. 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">> You pick up the pace, your hand and mouth working together, the visor pushed up out of the way because your eyes have a job tonight too. "Sorry, I'm going to, sorry-" You hum against him. He comes with a broken-off thank you, his fingers gentle in your hair. He watches you swallow, too dazed to look away. "Opening mission suit," you say, climbing up beside him, straightening the collar 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 seams. <<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 extra is in the envelope, right down to the dollar. Beside it is a smaller one marked MAINTENANCE. He checks your face when you read it. "Keep it here," he says, of the suit, fitting each plate into its foam slot and checking it against the diagram inside the lid. "The closet's got room. That way it won't — travel. Get scuffed. That's a real concern with the finish." "It's a closet." "It's your row," he says. "Left side. The hangers were empty anyway." You look at the space he has cleared. On the way out he turns the receipt over and writes, beneath PLUS FOR YOUR TIME: *suit ok. no scuffs. she - better than the reference.* You fold it into your bag. He notices and tries 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 smooths the tissue paper flat while you hold the collar up to your shirt. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "01">> He waits on the bed while you change in the bathroom. You hear the frame creak once, then nothing. When you come out with the sailor collar straight and your hair in two buns, he starts to get up, then sits down again. 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. "Worth it," he manages. You take him back down. His shaky laugh turns into a gasp. <<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 gently around your hair. He gives a single slow push past your lips. You hold him there, then let him a little deeper. He draws a sharp breath. "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 down: a long pull, a pause with just the crown in your mouth. His hips tremble. Above you, his next sentence comes out in pieces. "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, both hands cradling your head. You keep him in your mouth until the last shudder passes. When he looks down from the ceiling, you are still watching him. You swallow. You smooth your tie flat, leaving the knot exactly as it is. "There," you say. "Now it's both of ours." He laughs weakly and draws you up into his arms. One of the buns brushes his chin. He rests his cheek against it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intcostume2-stage">><<include "IntCostume210">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/interncostume2/" "09">> He counts out two hundred with his back against the headboard. On a separate slip he's written SORRY TAX and crossed it out three times. You leave the slip where it is and put your head back on his stomach. "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. "Good enough to keep," you say. He laughs and reaches for the tie. Later he puts the second uniform in the closet beside the first, straightening both hangers. <<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 from the stack of bills to his face. He waits without touching the money. "Order a pizza after," you say, taking your coat off. "The whole evening runs long." He lets out a breath and reaches for your coat. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> 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>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/intern.png" alt="The intern"></div> "Wait." He fetches his phone, raises it, then lowers it again. "Could I take one photo? For me. Only me. You can check it after. I know what men do with— I wouldn't. I just want to remember this." "One," you say. "Make it count." He takes one photo, without flash. The shutter sounds loud in the quiet room. He looks at the screen, then turns it toward you. "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 asks, looking down at you. "Slow. And look at me, not the ceiling." <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> He starts slowly. The pressure catches you off guard and you tighten your hand on his shoulder. He stops as soon as he feels it. “Give me a second,” you say. When you nod, he moves again. <<else>> 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. <</if>> "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">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You tell him to stay at that angle. He slows until you can answer him without catching your breath. <</if>> 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 take his face in both hands and kiss him. He trembles against you, then kisses you back. For a while he has nothing more to say. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intfirst-stage">><<include "IntFirst06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "01">> You press a hand to his chest and push him gently onto his back. He goes willingly, surprised. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You turn slowly over him and brace your palms on his knees. You can feel him watching you now. When you look over your shoulder, he meets your eye and keeps his hands where you put them. <<else>> You follow him down, take him back inside — and then keep turning, one slow pivot over him, until your back is to his face and your palms find his knees. <</if>> “Oh,” he says, so quietly you almost miss it. "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 hips and holding on — and he said no dark, he wanted to see, and this way he sees everything: all of you at once in every lamp he turned on, the one photograph live and moving above him. When the end comes for him his spine arcs up off the blanket and his hands clamp 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>>

<<vid "scene/internfirst/" "05">> Later — before water, before folders — you finish him once more with your mouth, unhurried, his hand loose in your hair like a man teaching himself not to hold on. He comes quieter the second time, apologetic even now, and you let him keep the apology. Once. Tonight. Then he shows you the folder, 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." You eat the pizza cross-legged on the blanket, using the box as a table. He asks whether you want the last slice. When you say yes, he puts it on your side without dividing it first. 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 step into the hall. He stays at the door until you reach the stairs. <<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 are a cheap bottle of red wine and two mismatched glasses. The wool uniform is laid out on the chair, neatly pressed. "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">> Once you have changed into the dress — his choice this time: navy, white polka dots, "the reference era, not the school one" — he undresses you again at the foot of the new bed. This time his hands are steady. He unzips the skirt of it, unhooks everything underneath, and lets each piece fall onto the chair. When you stand bare before him, he looks at you and says a quiet "Oh." "Better or worse?" "Worse," he says, dazed. "It's worse. For me. I mean better—" He restarts the sentence twice and gives up, and pulls you onto the new bed, and the first round is face to face: his forearms propped, his eyes going from your bodies to your face and back like a man checking work against a reference. "Hi," he says, wrecked and quiet, the whole length of him a held note. "Hi. Move." He moves in long, full strokes, and the new bed takes them without one complaint, which is more than either of you expected. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "02">> Item two on the plan is the kitchen, because the plan exists, laminated in his head: BED. KITCHEN. COUCH. CHAIR. FLOOR. He walks you there by the hand, formal as a tour guide in his own flat, and bends you over the counter among the drying rack and the kettle. "I measured," he says, apologetic and enormous, already behind you. "The counter is exactly the wrong height. I measured it anyway." "Item two," you agree into the cabinets, and he laughs — actually laughs, once, startled out of himself — and takes you from behind in slow, careful strokes while the tap drips in time. The ratio holds. The ratio holds everywhere, it turns out. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "03">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> He calls it an intermission and waits for you to show him what you like. The first time he gets it right, your hand closes around the edge of the blanket. <<else>> Back on the bed — "intermission," he announces, "officially" — he lays you back on the blanket and puts his mouth on you. His tongue finds the place you showed him; his fingers curl inside you at the angle you like. <</if>> He steadies your hip. "Like that?" he asks, once, into you. "You're doing your homework," you breathe, and feel him smile against you, and the homework goes on and on, patient as everything he has ever decided to be good at. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "04">> Then: "The couch," he says — and hears himself, and blushes at his own nerve, and does not unsay it. The couch is white, second-hand, the first thing he ever bought for this apartment. You get on it on all fours and he settles behind you, one hand firm on your hip, and takes you from behind in long deliberate strokes, and somewhere in the middle of it he stops apologizing entirely — stops even rehearsing apologies — and just works, breathing his four-count, learning you like a system he intends to master. "Good," you say into the cushion, meaning every layer of it. "I know," he says, hoarse, astounded at himself. "I mean — thank you. Both." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "05">> Back on the bed, he takes his time finding the pace again. When your hand closes on his shoulder, he covers it with his own. Your fingers settle between his. "You're quiet," he manages, into your hair. "I'm busy." "Can I — a little harder? The plan says—" "The plan can say harder." He laughs once and thrusts harder, still taking his time. The frame squeaks louder. Your joined hands press into the mattress and the blanket slides toward the edge. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "06">> He's measured the height of the chair and marked the lever with tape. You grip the armrests. He stands between your knees and lifts your legs onto his forearms. "See?" he says. "The angle—" "Show me the angle." He moves a little closer. You hook one foot behind his back to keep him there. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome-stage">><<include "IntHome08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome/" "07">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> He asks for the dress again. You get it over your head, and he helps free the hem where it catches at your hips. Then he sits back to look. “The picture didn't have that neckline,” he says. “Mine does.” He smiles. He has forgotten what he was about to say next. <<else>> The last item but one is the dress again — he asks for it back on, just the dress, nothing under it, pushed up around your hips on the bed — "because the picture, the era one, in my head it's—" and you already have it over your head. <</if>> "Like the picture?" you ask, lying back. "Exactly. Thank you." Formal, stricken, hip-deep in you. This time he notices when you want him closer. You reach for his shoulder, and he lowers himself without waiting to be told. The dress bunches between you; he pauses to free the hem, then kisses you. "You're learning me," you say — not a question. "I made notes," he says. He is trying to sound serious, but you can feel him smiling. <<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 his eyes asking; you answer by sliding down off the bed onto the rug, onto your knees, mouth open, tongue out — and his hand finds your hair and doesn't steer, and he comes across your tongue with a broken-off "oh, thank—" that doesn't finish and doesn't need to. You swallow. He watches, too dazed to look away, then goes crimson, then fetches tea neither of you drinks. The list gets a checkmark. "Friday's list," he says, to the ceiling. "The apartment's done." A pause. "I'll need a new list." "You'll think of something." "I already have eleven," he says, appalled at himself, delighted, and you laugh into his shoulder on the new bed that took them all. <<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, towels on the chair, and the uniform pressed in the closet. You laugh until your ribs hurt. He waits with his ears crimson, but he is smiling now too. "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 with both initials, then hands the pen back. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "01">> Item one is *her — first*, and the syllabus turns out to know what it is doing: he lays you back on the bed, kneeling between your knees with the focus of a man defusing something, and puts his mouth on you. Shy at the start — a question, not an answer — then not shy at all, his tongue patient, two fingers curling on a schedule he is keeping in his head. "For the ratio," he says into you, breathless, absurd, sincere, and you laugh and then stop laughing, because the homework is working. You come with both hands in his hair, holding on. He surfaces wrecked and triumphant and wipes his face on his forearm like a man who has just fixed something. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "02">> Item two: *from behind — the dress stays on (2nd)*. He bends you over the made bed, pushes the polka-dot skirt up around your waist, and takes you from behind in long deliberate strokes while the white curtains billow. "The list said second," he manages, hips finding their four-count. "For a reason. I can last — longer — this way. I tested—" He cuts himself off. His hands settle more firmly on your hips. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "03">> Between items he brings you water. He asks about ice. You shake your head, and he puts the tray back in the freezer without argument, having lost the argument with himself in advance. Item three is just *looking — close — permitted*. He kneels over you in the window light, holding your hand. For once he has nothing prepared to say; he is too busy looking. "The framing one," he explains, hoarse. "From the photo. I never get to just — look." "You're staring." "I'm *studying*," he says, scandalized, staring. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "04">> Item four is *slow — the study one*: face to face on the bed, deep and unhurried, his forehead against yours, the whole event conducted at revision pace. Every stroke is a full sentence. Nothing is skipped. When your breath shortens he lengthens, reading you like the last page of something he refuses to finish. "There," he whispers, feeling it. "There?" "There." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome206">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "05">> Item five is *desk (I measured)*, and the desk is exactly desk-height, which is the point: he sits in his chair at his computer — his actual chair, graphs open on the screen over your shoulder — and you go down on him while he grips the armrests and tries, valiantly, to keep notes. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You have to shift twice to get comfortable on the edge of the desk. He slides a folded cushion under you and waits for you to tell him where to put his hands. <</if>> "Column three," he says, wrecked. "I can't — the columns—" "Later." "Later," he agrees, martyred, and his hand settles in your hair, and the columns of the world can wait. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "06">> And then there is the pencil item — written smaller than the rest, at the bottom, under a drawn line: *the other way? if she wants. no pressure. i researched it. properly.* "You researched it," you say, looking up from the list. "Three sources," he says, scarlet. "Cross-referenced." He is slow about it the way he is slow about everything that matters: pillows adjusted, the whole business conducted like a lab protocol, your body asked at every step and answering yes at every step, until he is inside you where nobody keeps the ratio, his hand wrapped around, his voice in your ear fraying on the four-count. "Okay?" he manages. "Item six," you say, into the pillow. "Do your homework." He does his homework. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome208">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "07">> Item seven is the floor — his idea, earnest as ever: "carpet's new too, it shouldn't — go to waste" — and you kneel on it with him standing in the last of the daylight, and take him in your mouth while the sun comes through the sheers in long stripes. His hands stay at his sides for three whole strokes — visible effort, hands flexing — before one settles in your hair, steering nothing, holding everything. <<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 to the edge and hold him there, mouth and hand working the long slow shallows while he dissolves into a boy conducting his last coherent thought. "I can't — you're going to — the list doesn't have—" "Amended," you say, and slow down. He loses his grip on the edge of the mattress. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome210">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "09">> Then he asks — of course he asks — and you climb back up onto the bed and go onto all fours for the last printed item, and he takes you from behind with everything the four-count has left, measured gone wild, his rhythm lovelorn and exact. The list, somewhere under his hand on the pillow, is creased now beyond saving. Neither of you is saving it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#inthome2-stage">><<include "IntHome211">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internhome2/" "10">> He finishes on his knees and so do you, the pair of you on the rug in the late light — his last careful question asked with his eyes, answered by your open mouth, his hand shaking in your hair — and then it's towels, water, the blanket pulled down to the carpet. While you lie tangled, he retrieves the torn syllabus and fits the pieces together on his chest. "Next time," he says, "I'm printing it on card stock." <<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 light falls across the torn list and the empty glasses. The blanket has slipped off one corner of the bed. You remember waking briefly to the sound of him tightening the frame with a wrench, trying not to disturb you. 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." "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.*" You set your bag down beside the couch. He watches you do it, then looks away. "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. His eyes drop to the envelope. "Fix one of those. Any one." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intangry-stage">><<include "IntAngry02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internangry/" "01">> He crosses the room and kisses you hard, his hands in your hair. For once he has no question ready. You could end it with one word. He is close enough to hear it. You take a breath, deciding what you want. You hold his gaze for a moment. Then you kiss him back, fisting your hands in his shirt and pulling it free of his jeans. His breath catches against your mouth. There is no envelope on the table tonight. You notice right away. 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">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> “Tell me it's different with me,” he says into your shoulder. “It is.” You have to say it twice before he hears you. You turn your head far enough to catch his eye. <<else>> "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. <</if>> He thrusts harder, one hand wrapped in your braid, the other on your hip. You grip the couch cushion. Beneath the jealousy he is frightened; you wish he had managed to tell you that before this. "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. He laughs once, breathlessly, and holds your hips closer. <<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." He puts the kettle on. You sit at the table in the blanket from his bed while he brings two mugs. Neither of you mentions the missing envelope. 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. You drop your coat back on the hook. "Move over." He steps aside at once, smiling before he can stop himself. You lie in the dark with your back to his chest and his arm around your waist. Neither of you sleeps. After a while he adjusts the blanket over your shoulder. You put your hand over his. <<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. Six-thirty. He reaches for the nightstand, misses, and goes still against you. You feel his breath on your neck. "I'm so — " he begins, automatic, still reaching for his phone. You kiss him before he can finish apologizing, then reach over him and turn off the alarm. <<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. "Hi." You kiss him slowly. "Morning." "It is," he says, astonished. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "02">> “Is this in the syllabus?” you ask. “It's off every list.” His hand stills under the covers. You guide it back. “I checked,” he adds. When he slides inside you, you feel him smile against your shoulder. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "03">> He moves gently beneath the blanket, his face inches from yours. Morning light creeps through the curtain. You brush his hair away from his eyes. "Okay?" he whispers, the one gauge. "Better than okay," you say, and his shoulders drop an inch. "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. "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">> His hands slide over your thighs as you ride him. The room grows brighter. He watches your face and holds back until you come, then follows with three uneven thrusts, gasping a thank you he cannot finish. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmorn-stage">><<include "IntMorn07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmorning/" "06">> You lie beside him, catching your breath. His hand strokes your hair. Without the alarm, the room is so quiet you can hear someone unlocking a bicycle outside. "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. <<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. The stove takes forever to heat up. You watch him watch it, both hands flat on the counter, and you notice the wall behind the stove has a rectangle of slightly different paint where a calendar used to hang. You don't ask. He stands at the stove in the good T-shirt, studying the pan. You sit on the counter with the blanket tucked around you. "Question," he says, formal, spatula in hand. "How do you take your eggs?" You tell him. He nods once, serious — then turns to the fridge and checks. 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 pause in the doorway, wearing his jacket. He is still looking at the pan when you answer: "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, breathing 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. The white stockings stay on. He takes his time, looking up each time you move. When you draw him closer, he lets you set the pace. He says *Norma* softly, against your cheek. For tonight, you answer to it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#norma-stage">><<include "Norma04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/norma/" "03">> Neither of you mentions a fee. You stay on the bed while the unwatched film plays on in the other room. 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 try saying the name silently. You can almost hear how he said it at dinner. You close your eyes before he wakes and asks what you are thinking. 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, then kisses your cheek before he can lose his nerve. <<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. The third time your thumb stops on *love* and stays there. 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 looks at the envelope again, then back at you. Neither of you has mistaken it for enough. "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 — though the black stockings stay, and the choker: yours, bought, not lent — 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." You take his face in your hands and hold him close. For a moment, you cannot answer. 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 says through a ragged breath. You both laugh as he starts moving again. 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 on the bed, he moves above you, deep and slow. You wrap your arms and legs around him and cross your ankles at his lower back. He kisses you between thrusts until both of you are breathing too hard for it. <<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 gently, brushing the tears from your cheek with his thumb. You hold him close and let them come. When you laugh through one, he finally smiles. 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." He stops talking and presses his forehead to yours. The money is still on the table. You put a hand against his cheek and draw him closer. <<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. Later you ride him by candlelight, his hands framing your face. He smiles up at you. You lean down to kiss him, then sit back and take your time. <<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 watches the last candle go out. “We're terrible at this,” he says. You pull the blanket over you both. He laughs into your shoulder and settles against you. The folded page is still on the bedside table. Morning comes without the alarm. His phone is still face down. You count the money at the table. One thousand dollars, as promised. He watches you fold it back into the envelope. “This goes against my balance,” you say. “Last night was mine.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#intmoved-stage">><<include "IntMoved14">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/internmoved/" "13">> “Of course.” He writes *FIRST PAYMENT* on the envelope and hands it back. He stands at the stove in his good T-shirt, holding the pan. "How do you take your eggs?" “However you make them.” He reaches for the pan. There are six eggs left in the carton this time. <<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. <<if $money lt 0>> SMITH: *Your balance remains outstanding. My office hours have not changed.* <<else>> SMITH: *Your payment has posted. The account is settled.* <</if>> You read the message twice and put the phone away. At the corner you check for the envelope. It's still in your coat pocket. You wonder whether he has gone back to sleep or started his next list. 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, surprised, and reaches for the next file. You leave with the promotion memo. Back at your desk, you read the line about personal attendance again. <<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. Your name is already typed in the requested-closer box. The client has stalled for three quarters. Four closers have come back without a signature. 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 your reflection 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 to the east wing. Two people look up as you pass. Both turn back to their monitors before you can meet their eyes. 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> <<set _b to window.body()>> <<if _b lte 2>> 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. Once, mid-objection, his eyes drop to your chest — the flat chest, the shirt that hangs where the firm expects curves — and you watch him do the math. Not the deal math. The other kind. The kind where he decides whether the asset in front of him is the asset in the file. <<else>> 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. <</if>> <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The First Closing" src="img/scene-covers/office-arc/officefirst-v1.png"></div> Over the delivered dinner he relaxes. By the second container he is talking about more than delivery terms. His wife travels; his sons rarely call. He tells you these things while smoothing the corner of his napkin. His joke about the audit of '19 is better than you expected. You laugh, and he sets down his fork to tell you the rest. For a few minutes neither of you looks at the draft. The cartons go cold. The city keeps its lights on. And when you reach across to square the draft to the table's edge, your hand lands over his, and neither hand moves. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "02">> You close his laptop and leave your hand on the lid. "One term left," you say. "The one that isn't in the draft." Kessler's breath changes. He looks at the door — checks it, a man's reflex — and then back at you, and takes his glasses off and folds them, and sets them on the draft, precisely, the way he initials pages. "The last negotiable," he says. "Customary," you agree, and stand, and begin with the top button. <<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 longer over your own clothes. Beneath his shirt he is heavy through the shoulders, going soft at the middle, a man built by decades of desks. He watches every button like a man reading the final page, not skimming it now. The desk is walnut, the size of a dinghy. You put your palms on it and look back at him over your shoulder: the last clause, on the table. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "01">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> Kessler turns you by the hips. His hands pause at your waistband, long enough for you to look back. “Anything you need to ask?” you say. “Where do you want my hands?” He waits for you to show him. Then he gets to his knees. <<else>> He laughs — the same bark from dinner, lower — and turns you by the hips, and goes to his knees on the office tile behind you like a man paying homage to the founding documents, and puts his mouth on you from behind, unhurried, thorough, astoundingly educated for a man whose file says he only rereads contracts. <</if>> "Twenty-two years of marriage," he says, into you, polite to the last. "I do my reading." You grip the far edge of the walnut and let the reading continue. The tile is cold under your toes. The city glitters below like the price of him running in real time. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "04">> Then it's your turn to give proof of diligence. He sits in his chair — the big one, leather, on wheels — and you kneel up between his knees on the cold tile and take him into your mouth slowly, tongue flat, one hand remembering what the other is doing, and the chair rolls an inch with his first groan, and he grabs the desk to arrest it, and the whole office negotiates its position. "Twenty-two years," he gasps. "I've read contracts in one sitting before —" "Not this one." You come off him with a slow, wet pull. "This one gets negotiated clause by clause." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "05">> You climb him like a clause ladder: mouth first, then the drag of your chest up his sternum, his throat, his jaw, until you are poised over him in his own chair, holding just the head of him against you, making the last inch a term to be met. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> The chair shifts an inch. You catch the armrest and make him wait while you find your balance. <</if>> "Concessions," you breathe. "Anything," he says, ruined, honest, a buyer. "Name them." "Multi-year. Full renewal. No stall." His hands find your hips and pull — the whole signature, notarized — and his eyes roll back like a man initialing his own fate. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "06">> You set the pace in his chair: slow, deep, your palms flat on his shoulders, the leather complaining in iambic, the wheels ticking against their locks. The room fills with the plain wet sound of it, skin on skin, the city's hum under the glass. And he is thick — thicker than the file suggested — and every stroke closes another clause. He starts saying it into your hair, building speed: "After this, I'm retiring the stall. Full renewal. Multi-year — " thrust — "multi-*year* —" "Say it again." He says it again. Somewhere below, a whole city full of men is sleeping on deals that will never close like this. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst09">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "07">> The finish, when it comes, is a handshake: you feel him arrive at the edge and you clamp down and hold him there, and he breaks — panting, game, gallant — and signs with his whole body, and the walnut desk takes your combined weight while the pen cup jumps and settles. After, he finds his glasses on the draft and puts them on, and looks at you over them, and at the wreckage of his conference room, and delivers the verdict of a man who has just had the best counteroffer of his career: "It's never the terms," he says. "It's never the terms," you agree, and hand him his tie. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offfirst-stage">><<include "OffFirst10">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officefirst/" "09">> The office coffee at dawn is terrible. Kessler signs the actual contract at his own desk with a pen from his breast pocket. He reads the final page once more before initialing it — then initials it twice more than he needs to, for the pleasure of it, and walks you to the elevator himself. "Invoice my office," he says. The doors open. "And — the same team for the renewal. *You.* Specifically you." The elevator drops you forty floors through the pink morning light. In the mirror your blouse looks almost untouched. Almost. <<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> 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 reads the signature, then looks at you for three full seconds. He asks nothing about the dinner or the hours after it. "There'll be more of these," he says. Already, there is a custom. <<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 pulls the draft agreement from his briefcase. <<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 <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>and slip them under your waistband<<else>>and part your folds<</if>>, 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." <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>You catch him looking and let him look for a moment longer.<<else>>You slide one finger through your own wetness and hold it up to the gold light.<</if>> "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 knows it. You bend over the mahogany and look back at him, waiting until he takes the hint. "Well, Daniel. The market's open." He enters you in one long stroke. You grip the far edge of the table and let out a sound he takes as encouragement. "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, your voice carrying through the room. "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 on the table, your back against the cold mahogany and your calves over his shoulders. Your heels knock against his collarbones as he fucks you. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>You wrap a hand around yourself. He watches you set the pace.<<else>>You bring a hand to your clit and watch him watch it.<</if>> "Stop," you say at the edge of your orgasm. He stops mid-stroke, trembling. "Is this — " he manages, held at the gate, cock jumping against you, impatient to be back inside — "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">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> Your fingers slip on the polished table. Daniel catches your wrist. You stay bent over, breathing until you're ready to speak. <<else>> 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. <</if>> Then, wrecked and gracious, you open your arms. "Now finish the negotiation." At your nod he finishes on your stomach, long hot ropes reaching the underside of your chest. The draft agreement is still beside your head, unsigned. "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 keeping a list of clients, dates, terms, and what happened after the meeting. You write it in code, in a notebook the firm did not issue. 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 arrive Friday and find a reason to leave by Saturday lunch. If you need the taxi, ask. Supper first." <<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. The reading glasses stay on — he asks, plainly, the way he asks about livestock — and you climb the stairs to the first door wearing them, which turns out to be the correct reading of the terms. Hellman takes his time undressing you. He folds each piece and puts it on the chair. His rough hands catch briefly on the silk of your blouse; he eases it free before touching your shoulder again. "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. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>His hand pauses. “Show me,” he says. You do.<<else>>Two work-roughened fingers slide through your folds, and when they find you already wet he makes a small sound of respect.<</if>> "Somebody's been reading between the files." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "03">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> Hellman pulls the blanket back and looks down. His gaze pauses, then returns to your face. You shift closer. He waits for you to settle before he goes on. <</if>> "Somebody's been *drinking* between the files." He laughs against your shoulder, 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. He rocks through you in long, slow strokes. The feather bed shifts beneath his weight. You grip the sheet, then his shoulder, as he finds an angle that makes you lift your hips to meet him. "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, <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>his mouth moving slowly<<else>>his tongue patient on your clit<</if>> 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, and keeps moving. By the time he finishes, there is gray light at the window. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhouse-stage">><<include "OffHouse07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehouse/" "06">> He rests an arm over you. Rain taps against the window, and one of the horses calls from outside. 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. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>He waits while you guide him, then moves slowly, one hand steady at your hip<<else>>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<</if>> 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. You come on the kitchen table with his hand still between your legs. He follows, leaning over you until his breathing settles. He lets you up when the fire needs tending. You straighten your skirt while he fetches another log. 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." His hand follows the cloth beneath the water. You stop talking as <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>you feel his hand close around you<<else>>his fingers find your clit<</if>>. Water spills over the rim when you arch against his hand. He leaves the towel on the floor to catch it. 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. 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 aloud from a farm ledger kept in the 1800s. You lean against his woolen shoulder and listen to an argument about missing sheep. He turns back a page to show you the previous owner's reply in the margin. 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. 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 the note into your handbag beside the signed renewal and your notebook. The director is already asking when you can brief the partners. You tell him you will need a few minutes first. At your desk, you open the notebook to a fresh page. 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: a six-month retainer for Ashford Logistics. Overnight attendance at the client's premises. *Breakfast signing, per the client's custom.* Ashford lives above the executive floor; the file gives you the building address and an overnight access code. None of this appears in your employment contract. The assistant has put it in your schedule anyway. Ashford is fifty and lives alone in the apartment above the executive floor, furnished for a family. There are four chairs in the kitchen, but only one has a worn seat. "I could sign at your office," he admits, pouring wine at the kitchen table. "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 floor: 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 warehouse she liked. You ask a question, and the answer carries you through the rest of dinner. By eleven you have agreed the terms. The contract can be signed at breakfast. He clears the plates slowly, making room for another glass of wine. "You don't have to sleep on the office couch," Ashford says at the foot of the stairs. "There's room upstairs. I mean — either is fine. The building doesn't judge; I've had it rewired." He waits, one hand on the banister. You set down your glass. "Show me yours." You take his offered hand and follow him upstairs. Halfway up, he looks back to check you are following. You squeeze his hand. You would have stayed for another glass of wine even without the signing. That part will stay out of the report. He stops at the bedroom door. You kiss him before he can apologize, then follow him inside. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "01">> Dawn comes up over the loading yards, through the blinds. Ashford wakes with an erection pressed against your hip and immediately tries to move away. You catch his hand and kiss him. "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. Breakfast, then the signing, then the car.” You throw a leg over him and reach back to guide him. He waits for you to settle before he moves. Dawn comes through the blinds in narrow strips. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offmorning-stage">><<include "OffMorning03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officemorning/" "02">> He keeps his hands just above your hips, hesitating to touch. You take them and press his palms flat against you. "Hold on, John." You roll your hips, taking him deep again and again, the headboard knocking steadily against the wall. "The building 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, the blinds striping both of you with morning light. "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, <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>reaching down between you<<else>>your own hand going down to your clit because two kinds of hunger deserve feeding<</if>>. "Shut up and *sign* —" He thrusts again. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>You keep your hand between you and come with your ankles locked behind him.<<else>>You keep your hand on your clit and come with your ankles locked behind him.<</if>> He follows inside you, holding you close as his rhythm breaks. Afterward he starts laughing quietly. You ask what is funny. He shakes his head, still laughing, and kisses your shoulder. You find yourself laughing too. The second round happens in the shower, because the custom apparently includes plumbing: hot water, steam, his hands soapy and careful on your chest, 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">> At breakfast the contract sits beside the juice. He signs each page, pausing once to brush a crumb from the paper. You check the initials while he pours another coffee. "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 waits with the pen still in his hand. You turn the request form toward him. "I'll write the request myself. Pre-printed forms are for people without imagination." He laughs and pours the last of the coffee. You move the signed pages away from the butter dish. 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. You remember Hellman's warning about a younger trainee. There is no new hire yet. In the elevator you fix your collar and rehearse the report the director wants: 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, checking the time. "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 checks his watch and leaves. Neither of the others stands to see him out. The door clicks. Marla turns the folder to a fresh page — blank, headed with today's date — and sets down her pen. The carpet in here is new. You can smell it — that chemical sweetness that takes about a year to go away. 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 stops smiling. "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 rests against cool mahogany as he pushes your skirt over your hips. His hands move over the backs of your thighs <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>and the fabric of your briefs. You flinch when his thumb presses down.<<else>>and the wet silk of your panties. You flinch when his thumb presses over your clit.<</if>> "Responsive," he notes, to the room, to the pen. "Responsive," confirms Marla, and dates it. He pulls your panties down and works two fingers into you. You grip the table as your body responds. Across the room, Marla turns a page. <<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 keeps to the same measured strokes, one hand planted between your shoulder blades. You hear the wet sound of his cock moving inside you, then a pause in Marla's writing. She looks up, makes another note, and turns back to the page. "Volume," the director observes, mid-stroke, hips snapping a demonstration. "Sufficient?" <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "03">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You turn your head enough to see the folder. Beside your name is a note that wasn't there on Monday. Marla catches you reading it and lays her hand across the page. <</if>> “Sufficient,” Marla says. "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. “You know the list, closer. I always liked that about you.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtalk-stage">><<include "OffTalk05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetalk/" "04">> A phone buzzes on the table. The director glances toward it without changing his pace. You turn your face away from the screen. 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 puts the phone down and resumes. Marla moves her pen to the next line. You keep watching the dark screen, waiting for it to light up again. Then he walks you two steps left, to the cot that has always stood in the corner of Room A under a gray throw — nobody has ever asked why it is there, and today is not the day anyone starts — and turns you onto your back on it, and holds your calves over his forearms. The overhead lights shine in your face. He finishes inside you with three deep strokes and a short grunt. <<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 through the empty bullpen with his spend cooling against your thigh. In the elevator you check your skirt in the mirror, then your blouse. You have missed a button. You do it up before the doors open. 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 is Kessler. Thursday is the delegation. You copy both appointments into the notebook, then add the names of everyone who attended tonight's meeting. 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 courier waits while you sign for the garment bag. Inside is a white silk blouse cut to your measurements. A black pencil skirt. Pearls, the typed note says, on loan. Heels you could invoice under office supplies. And at the bottom, in blue ink, in Marla's hand: *Wednesday, 7 p.m. The corner office. Dress code: white. It isn't a costume.* You've been on the executive floor exactly twice, both times carrying files somebody didn't trust to the tube. At seven on a Wednesday it stands empty with all its doors open. The corner office has the blinds down and the desk lamp on. Kristoff is there with the leather notebook. Marla is there with the folder, two chairs, and a water carafe. "Thursday," Kristoff says, instead of hello. "The delegation. Six men, three currencies, the firm's whole quarter in one room. Before we put an instrument in front of that—" he turns a page he isn't reading "—the partners calibrate. Call it a fitting. One at a time, by seniority. The others wait in the conference room." "Seven-oh-seven," says Marla, and writes down the first time of the evening. The senior partner won't attend. Kristoff says it while lining up the corners of his notebook and Marla's folder. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "01">> The first is logistics: big hands, a wedding ring he keeps forgetting to twist. He doesn't undress. He unzips, sets his phone face-down next to the stapler, and stands there in his shirt like a man waiting for an elevator. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> His eyes go to the open button on your blouse. Marla gives him a moment, then asks if he has a question. He turns his phone face down again, though it hasn't moved. <</if>> “You don't have to—” He glances at Marla. “Whenever you're ready.” You kneel on the carpet. He holds himself for you to start — his hand under, your hand around, your mouth over, plain mechanics — and the pearls swing forward and tap your collarbone. "Eyes up," Kristoff says from the chair by the monitor. You look up. That's the whole job for a while: eyes up, mouth soft, your hand keeping a time your mouth can't. "Eye contact," says Marla's pen. "Sustained." "I'm— sorry, it's been a day," the partner says, to nobody, meaning the airport, meaning his daughter's recital, meaning nothing he'll finish. You hum something polite around him and he groans like a man setting down luggage. He finishes without warning and apologizes only after. "Swallows — yes. God, yes." "Recorded," says Marla. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "02">> Second is tax, and tax takes his time. Older, dry, entirely calm about the arrangement. He gathers your hair out of your face in one hand, like change off a counter, and sets the pace himself — slow, deep, deeper than comfortable, and your throat makes room the way it's been making room since Monday. "Depth," Kristoff observes, not looking up. "Noted," says Marla. Your hands ride the fronts of his thighs. Good wool; heat under the wool. Your eyes water. "Terrible quarter for munis," tax says to the room, conversational, mid-act. Nobody answers. The rhythm doesn't change. He holds your head still through the finish, lets go, and thanks you once, formally, the way you'd thank a chauffeur. "Sound," he pronounces, tucking himself away. "Sound," agrees Marla, and dates it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "03">> The third partner checks his watch. He has a night flight to Zurich. He tucks the laptop under his arm and sweeps the papers off the desk with his free hand. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> He checks the note Marla hands him. You point him to the edge of the desk with the most room, and he follows your lead for the first time that evening. <</if>> He pushes your blouse open. The skirt goes up rather than off. "Dress code intact," notes Marla. Your right leg hooks up over his forearm. He stands between your legs and gets to work, and the desk knocks the wall in a rhythm Marla could set her watch by. "Throughput," Kristoff says. Then the young one turns you over without ceremony — belly down, hips at the desk's edge, skirt at your waist — and takes you from behind while you grip the far side and the pens roll out of reach one by one. "Good luck tomorrow," he says at the door, meaning it. The watch is back on his wrist before the door closes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "04">> Fourth never stands at all. He lies back across the desk in his shirt and tie, arms loose, and looks up at you from the letterhead level. "The firm has seen the asset handled," he says. "Now the firm would like to see the asset work." So you work. You straddle him, hands on his shoulders for balance, and set a pace nobody feeds you, the pearls keeping their own time against your open blouse — the strangest ten minutes of the night, being the only one in the room doing anything while three people watch and one of them writes. Then: "One more line item." And the room changes. He sits you off him, turns you, kneels you up on the desk — and presses where nobody at Monday's conversation so much as gestured, slow and patient and utterly scheduled, and your body, which the firm has been training since Monday, opens like a file. "Extended diligence," says Marla, and adds a page. Your knuckles are white on the desk edge. The page-turn is the loudest thing that's happened all night. "Volume," Kristoff observes. "Sufficient," confirms Marla. The minutes don't ask you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "05">> Between slots, Marla hands you water, a tissue, and — flat in a sleeve, from the folder — glasses. Plain wire reading glasses. "The senior partner prefers them," she says. Doesn't explain. Prefers. He arrives at his slot last, and unhurried about it. For his age he keeps himself the way he keeps the books: nothing extra on him anywhere. Everything goes over the red chair, folded, except the tie. The tie stays on. Habit or policy, you never find out. "Significant night," he says, to the room, to nobody. Then business. Over the chair first, your hands on the backrest. Then the desk, and him behind you, standing, unhurried, complete, exactly as long as he decides things are. The glasses slide down your nose. His hand gathers your hair and asks, and you look back over your shoulder, and your face does its work: the smile that closes rooms like this one. It's a skill. It's on file. "Hellman renewed for five years," he says, mid-stroke, conversational as tax. "He asks after you. Sends his regards from the farm." The correct reply to a client's regards, in your position, is nothing at all. The desk knocks the wall. The pen keeps up. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offshow-stage">><<include "OffShow07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officeshow/" "06">> "Last item," the senior partner says. It's the floor again, and the cabinet. He stands braced with one arm above your head, hand flat on the wood, and you kneel under it and finish him slow and formal — eyes closed, mouth soft, his other hand riding the back of your head without steering. From underneath he is mostly chin and forearm and lamplight. It helps. He gives the verdict first, like a date on a memo: "Sound instrument. Heads the table tomorrow." Then, under his breath, almost human: "Hell of a quarter." "Complete," says Marla, and underlines it twice. Kristoff closes the notebook. It's the first sound all night of anything ending. <<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> Marla sets your empty glass beside the carafe and returns the pearls to their case. You slip the glasses back into their sleeve. She closes the folder. "The blouse is yours to keep," Marla says. "The skirt — the firm's dry cleaner is on the ground floor. No charge." In the elevator there's an envelope in your bag that wasn't there at seven: two hundred dollars, *assessment stipend*, typed. The typing is Marla's. Tomorrow: six men, three currencies, head of the table. By morning there will be a copy of the seating plan on your desk. At home you hang the white blouse in the closet — yours to keep, and still mostly white — and write one line in the notebook before the lamp goes off: *They kept the pearls. I kept the notes.* <<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 talks over the delivery schedule before you finish the first sentence. He wants the meeting in Conference Room A, with the blinds open. He looks toward the glass door twice while you lay out the papers. 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">> In Room A he keeps one hand on the far edge of the table. He's read the rider and follows it to the letter. You still have to ask him to slow down. At the end of the day you make a note in the drawer: *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. His hands tremble slightly in the elevator. "They told me at the trade show. About the firm. About you—the portfolio." He looks down at the floor numbers. "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 undresses you slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. He folds your blouse, then opens it again to smooth a crease. When he goes down on you, his hands are careful at your thighs. Later, inside you, he keeps his face close to yours and asks twice whether you are comfortable. You hold him when he comes. It takes only a few slow strokes this time. He shudders against you and 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 smells of duty-free and takes his time. The interpreter stays outside the door. 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 and write down the tentative bookings in your notebook. Around you, phones ring and the printers keep running. You turn back to the screen to check the new column once more. There is still no name. You leave a space for it beside the bookings. 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> The appointment is in Outlook now. *3:00 — 4:00 p.m. — Meridian Grand, Suite 12 — RENEWAL REVIEW — CLOSER — 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 request at 9:04 a.m. The block turns solid blue. Across the aisle, someone is cutting a birthday cake for a woman in Records. You decline a slice and open the client file. 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 bends you over the writing desk, his slacks open and the rest of his clothes still on. He enters you with his hands at your waist. You look down at the blotter, then out through the open blinds. 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">> Before the blotter, the preliminary: you go down on your knees on the suite carpet, reading glasses still on — his instruction or the custom's; nobody remembers whose — and open your mouth on him while the afternoon lays itself across the desk in yellow stripes, patient as anything. "Terms," you say into the desk blotter, taking him, your chest 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. At four, you are still fastening your blouse. You check your watch between the last two buttons. 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">> He finishes you on the couch with your heels over his shoulders and the contract clock running somewhere behind him, thorough, punctual, filed. The city takes an hour of you and initials it. *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 — closer — 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 close the notebook and put it in your bag. The next blue block is already waiting on the screen. <<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 you’re 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/" "02">> <<if setup.sceneSeen("SceneOfficeBBC")>>You're back in the same offices: the corner suite, the terrace, the broad white desk. He kept the suite on the booking. You notice; he notices you noticing; nobody mentions it.<<else>>His offices are half-lit and emptying, and Marcus waits while you look around, then puts his key on the table where you can both reach it.<</if>> The retainer renews on the terrace first — that's how he does paper. His counsel has stayed to witness it: a gray-suited man who reads the rider twice, initials the change, shakes your hand like a closing, and is gone with the last of the daylight, leaving the two of you, the signed draft, a bottle of Bordeaux, and the city coming on below the railing. Your terms, in the order you give them: slow. His mouth first. And nothing happens that you don't start. He accepts all three out loud, standing at the white table 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 lays you back on the table among the papers and 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 glass of water sweats by the draft — 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 — the black lace the firm's note specified, gartered, worn under the red dress all evening like a clause waiting to be exercised — and then him. Marcus is enormous. You noticed at dinner, you have thought about it since, and now you undress him yourself — shirt, belt, everything, 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. "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, the terrace lights coming on one by one along the railing. 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. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhard-stage">><<include "OffHard03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehard/" "01">> Inside, the office keeps the pace you set. He bends you over the white desk in the black lace and takes you an inch at a time, your body adjusting around the sheer size of him while he holds perfectly still and lets it happen, one hand wrapped in your hair that never once pulls. When he's finally seated to the root, both of you groan. It isn't elegant. It isn't supposed to be. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> Marcus asks where you want his hand. It takes you a second to realize the question is for you. You move it yourself. <</if>> "Rate," he says, rough now, hands finding your hips. "Renewable," you say, and start to move. You set the pace against the desk until the city blurs, and 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 the small of your back in long heavy stripes, both of you watching it happen in the black window, his hand wrapped around yours because you put it there. Afterward he brings a warm cloth from the washroom and wipes your back. You lift a hand to help. He gives you the cloth and gets another for himself. The second round happens around two — slower, half-asleep, on the couch under the ceiling vents, 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 takes it back out to the terrace table, and you lie in the dark on your stomach in his suit jacket while the space heater ticks, 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 the 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 rest the glass on your knee. Inside his jacket, your hands are finally warm. "Did you at least get her name?" you ask. "I didn't ask." He reaches over and turns off the terrace light. "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 email is there when you check the time: four hundred dollars, no receipts required, *personally* in the memo line. At the elevator Marcus kisses your knuckles before the doors open. You leave *personally* out of the copy you keep. On the bus you open the notebook to the terms for the retainer and add a line: *He said no for her. He made them take it out of the rider. In writing.* You close the notebook. You pass your stop and let the bus carry you to the next one. <<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. You lift the spare blouse by its collar, check the label, and fold it back into the drawer. Everything is in your size. Facilities has even supplied a charger for your phone. 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. You look around the empty floor. Every priority file on your desk has your initials on it. You count the remaining appointments, then check the time. The car is due at seven. There is nothing to do but wait. <<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 is heavy and takes his time. His hands slide beneath your blouse as you ride him. The chair creaks when he leans back. You brace a hand on the desk and keep moving. As you come, he steadies your hips and holds you against him. "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 ink bottle, close the notebook, and put it in your handbag. You check the trainee's start date once more before setting the bag beside the door. The farm said: keep your own books. Marcus said no for her. The elevator said: try to stay a person. You open the book once more and put her start date beside your own first red tab. Then you put the book away 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 is already on the grid when you come in. Someone has added a column marked TRAINEE and left her file on your desk. She is nineteen, with a business certificate from night school and a gap in her work history. Her application misspells *invoice* twice. You read the salary line again and wonder what she was told at the interview. 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: senior closer.* 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. 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 tell her. She puts both feet flat on the floor and tries again. She's misspelled *shadow* at the top of her notebook. She looks at you with the same uncomplicated admiration you remember from the young interpreter. You wait until she goes to lunch before you open your own notebook. *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 quickly. When she corrects *invoise* to *invoice* in a draft memo, she brings it over to show you. At an ordinary Meridian review, she watches you take Kessler through the quarterly figures. Afterward she follows you into the elevator with her notebook already open. "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?" You think of the other Meridian appointments, the ones she has not seen. She waits with her pen above the page. "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. You watch the feather on her pen bob against the paper. <<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: "That's what they booked you for." You keep your voice low as the doors open. "Keep a record of every appointment. What they told you, who was there, what happened. Keep it somewhere they can't get to it. Start tonight." She opens her notebook in the lobby. Under *shaddow*, she writes *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*." This time she notices who checks the clock and who gets to leave first. Back in the lobby, she sets her coffee down and waits for you to look up. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offtrain-stage">><<include "OffTrain06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officetrain/" "05">> "Does it ever stop being two jobs?" she asks. "The desk and the other thing?" You turn the paper cup until the seam is under your thumb. “Some days.” You put your cup down. “I ask what I can turn down and still come in on Monday. If they hand you a form with blanks, bring it to me.” She nods and opens her notebook again. This time she turns it slightly away from the room before writing. 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. <<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. The same annotation is beside his name: V. AGG. You check the booking twice. Both your names are listed for Conference Room A. 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." She comes before the client, gripping your wrist as she shakes. Holtzmann follows loudly, his hands tightening on her hips. Afterward, the contract goes across the table with two names on the closer line. She signs with the pen she bought after the elevator conversation. The feather is gone. Her hand shakes, and she pauses between her first name and her surname. "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. Marla is waiting by the elevators with two envelopes. The trainee's contains one hundred dollars, labeled *trainee closing bonus*. She turns it over to read the label again. 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. Appointment: Head of Department. Direct reports: two. Grade increase: five steps.* Five steps up the pay scale, a key for the floor below the partners, and a corner office with a door. Your nameplate is on order. You remember Hellman saying that promotion was how firms held what they could not price. HR waits for you to sign the new terms. 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 — Head of Department — approving officer: Head of Department.* 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: HEAD OF DEPARTMENT — *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 file to the window and read the request again. For the first time, the booking also has a line for your approval. You leave the approval box blank for now. Before leaving the office, you put the request in your notebook. You want to read it away from this desk. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "01">> The intercom buzzes. "The principal's car has arrived," Marla says. "Conference Room A, per the custom." She pauses. "And congratulations, Head of Department. Compliance looks forward to working with you." "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. A few people look up as you pass. In Conference Room A, Hellman is standing at the head of the table in the same tweed jacket he wore at the farm. "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 mention the evening booking. 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 books." Hellman stands and puts on his hat. "Keep yours. And read what they put in front of you. When they bring you the next trainee, you'll be signing her schedule. Alcott's handler never had that choice. Use 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. Conference Room A. 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. The principal's people asked for three closers — the department, quoted as a unit, like stationery. Your trainee is available; Scheduling has assigned a second closer from the trade-mission roster. Requested night: Thursday. Requested room: Conference Room A, per the custom. You could decline it. That's the inversion; that's the whole point of the budget line — approving officer: you. You approve it. Under STAFF you add your own name beneath the two closers'. In the next field you type ATTENDING. You leave the cursor there for a moment before saving the form. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "04">> You brief your closers yourself, at the long table, in daylight, the way nobody briefed you. "Terms are mine tonight," you tell them — your trainee and the visiting closer in their white blouses, notebooks out, taking this the way you once took a red tab. "Slow. All of it. And no clocks. Nobody touches the principal until the principal asks, and nobody does anything she hasn't done herself first." A beat. "Those are an old man's terms. I'm renting them out. They hold." Both women nod. Your trainee writes *terms hold* and underlines it. You wait while the visiting closer checks the booking, then ask whether either of them has questions. At nine, Room A fills with its one chair and its custom: the principal at the head of the table, three closers in white, and you standing at the window end where the folder used to stand, running the room. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "05">> The custom runs long and runs slow, exactly as specified. The girls take him in turn first — the visiting closer on her knees working him with the patience of a first audit, then your trainee at the table's edge taking him in long even strokes while he holds her hips like paperwork — and then together, both mouths on him at once, three women's worth of white silk and careful hands and no clocks anywhere, exactly as an old Baptist once specified and the city has been renting ever since. And you conduct: the word is Kristoff's and the folder's, and you take it the way you take the room — thoroughly, without cruelty, watching the principal's breathing the way Marla once watched yours, calling the changes with one finger off your own folded arms. When the principal asks — properly, out loud, the terms holding — for the head of the table, you unbutton your own blouse to the second button, exactly, and give him the last hour yourself on the mahogany where they once inventoried you, your two closers watching their department work, learning what the top of the custom costs and pays. He leaves at one. You check the signed pages at the door, then go back to ask both women how the booking went. Marla never asked you that. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#offhead-stage">><<include "OffHead07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/officehead/" "06">> The quarter closes the way quarters close. 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 — the birthday cakes of other people, and now a ballroom eating yours. Hellman finds you before the toasts, hat in hand, tweed in a room of tuxedos. "Heard the department closed Meridian's man. Slow, I'm told. No clocks." A dry bark. "An old man's terms, were they?" He settles the hat. "Next review. Same closer. I'll write the name in myself — under the new letterhead." He taps your glass twice with one knuckle, the Baptists' toast, and goes to find the shrimp. 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">> *Two people to train. Check both schedules myself.* 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.* *Department of Objection Handling. I used to be afraid of raising one. Read every booking before signing it.* *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', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnPublic")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnPublic")>> <h2>Public Property</h2> <div id="ownpublic-stage"><<include "OwnPublic01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Public Property" src="img/scene-covers/owner-arc/ownerpublic-v1.png"></div> His text arrives without a greeting. *Address. 22:00. Wear what's in the box. Nothing else.* At six, a courier leaves a plain brown parcel at your door. Your name is typed on the label; there is no return address. Inside are a thin floral dress, a black leather choker that ties at the back, and a pair of cheap flip-flops. No underwear. The address is a public restroom at the edge of Ashton Park. You've seen it from the bus: graffiti on cinder block, a flat concrete roof. At ten the paths are empty and the sprinklers are running. The Owner's car is already parked. He doesn't get out. The window comes down two inches. "You're on time. Go inside. Wait by the sinks. Someone will join you." "Who?" "Someone." The window goes back up. You leave your coat and the bag with your own clothes in his car. Behind a brick pillar, you check the tie at your throat. It takes two tries; the stiff leather keeps slipping through your fingers. Then you walk inside. One of the fluorescent tubes is flickering. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerpublic/" "01">> A stranger is leaning against the sink with his arms crossed. He looks you over, lingering at the hem of the dress. "He said you'd come." The stranger uncrosses his arms. He offers no name, and you don't ask for one. Behind him, in the doorway, the Owner appears. He doesn't enter. He stands at the threshold with his hands in the pockets of his coat, watching. The stranger takes your arm and turns you around. His grip is rough. He bends you over the counter and pushes the floral dress up over your hips. The porcelain is cold against your chest. The Owner's voice, from the doorway, unhurried: "Availability is a form of maintenance." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerpublic/" "02">> The stranger unbuckles his belt and loops it around your wrists behind your back. He cinches it until your shoulders draw back. You can't see the Owner from here. You listen for a footstep at the doorway, but he hasn't moved. The stranger enters you without preamble. No fingers first. No warmup. He pushes in dry and your body has to catch up, and the porcelain digs into your cheek, and somewhere above you the graffiti says something about someone's mother that you can't quite read upside down. A second man steps up as the first pulls out. His jacket is still on; his fly is already open. He's older than the first. He turns you toward the mirrors. Your dress is bunched at your waist, your hands are still bound, and the choker has twisted sideways against your throat. "Look at yourself," the Owner says from the doorway. He waits until you raise your head. In the mirror you see the stall doors, the water-stained ceiling, the second man's hands on your hips. You try to hold your own gaze. Your eyes keep dropping to his hands. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerpublic/" "03">> The second man takes his time. He stops to adjust his grip and starts again without a word. The porcelain has warmed beneath you. Beside the no-smoking sign, the first man lights a cigarette and watches. You keep waiting for the Owner to say something. He stays in the doorway. When they're done, they leave. No goodbye. The first man drops the belt on the floor and walks out. The second straightens his jacket and follows. You're alone in the restroom with the Owner. He enters now. For the first time. He walks to the sink where your cheek has been resting and turns on the tap — cold water, then warm — and washes his hands. He offers you a towel. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerpublic/" "04">> "You did well." He holds out the towel until you take it. "They saw you." The choker is still tied at your throat. Your wrists have red lines where the belt pressed. The floral dress is wrinkled beyond repair. Outside, a woman in leather is leading a naked man across the parking lot on a leash. You don't recognize either of them. He keeps his eyes down and steps carefully over the broken pavement. The Owner holds the car door open for you. His hand is steady. His face reveals nothing. "You can take the dress off now," he says. "It served its purpose." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerpublic/" "05">> You take the dress off in the back seat and reach for your bag. The seat leather is warm against your skin. Outside, a couple waits at a crossing with shopping bags between their feet. The car stops at your building. You're back in your own clothes. The choker is in your bag. "Thursday," the Owner says. "Same address. Different company." You get out with your coat buttoned and your bag clutched under one arm. The car merges into traffic before you reach the door. Upstairs, you leave your clothes by the shower and stand under the water until it goes cold. You dry your hair before you remember the choker. You leave it in the bag for now. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownpublic-stage">><<include "OwnPublic07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Public Property" src="img/scene-covers/owner-arc/ownerpublic-v1.png"></div> Your phone buzzes. SMITH: *Your updated statement is available.* You turn the phone face-down. The shower is still dripping. You go back and tighten the tap. The next morning, a woman at the bus stop is reading a battered paperback. You glance at the cover, then look away before she notices. She carries on reading when the bus arrives. You let her board first and take a seat upstairs. At home, the choker is in your drawer beneath a dry-cleaning receipt. You put it there while you were looking for your keys. On the bus, you catch yourself touching the bare skin at your throat. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Public Property</h2> <div id="ownpublic-stage"><<include "OwnPublic01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 9)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 7)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneOwnProto")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneOwnProto")>> <h2>The Protocol</h2> <div id="ownproto-stage"><<include "OwnProto01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Protocol" src="img/scene-covers/owner-arc/ownerprotocol-v1.png"></div> A courier knocks on Tuesday evening. By the time you reach the door, he has left a brown parcel on the mat. Inside is a folder with your name on the tab. Three pages: a schedule, a list of items, and a blank sheet. A box beneath the folder contains latex stockings, pasties, a choker with a small D-ring, and heels in your size. You check the label on the shoes twice. The schedule reads: *Position one: 22:00. Position two: 22:20. Position three: 22:40. Compliance review: 23:00.* You read the schedule twice, then look through the other pages for instructions about cancellation. There are none. The last page has no signature line. You sign at the bottom, leaving the rest blank. Before you close the folder, you look once more at the space above your name. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "01">> His building has no buzzer. You walk in. There's a key switch in the elevator. Tonight, the button for his floor lights up when you press it. The elevator opens onto a workshop: corrugated metal walls, a long steel bench, tools hung inside painted outlines. You stop on the threshold to check the floor number. Your heels sound loud on the concrete. He's standing under the single hanging lamp with his back to you. "Undress. Put on what's in the box. Sit on the bench." You undress. It takes less time than you thought — you're wearing almost nothing under your coat. The latex rolls up your legs, cool and tight, sealing you in. The pasties stick to your skin with a small tug that makes you exhale. The choker goes on last. The D-ring hangs at your throat, a small cold weight. You sit on the bench. The cold steel makes you draw a breath. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "02">> He turns from the window. His gaze moves from the stockings to the choker. He straightens the D-ring with one finger. "Position one," he says. "Kneel." <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You kneel. The latex pulls tight at the hips and loose across the chest. He straightens the edge of the collar with one finger, then takes his hand away. <<else>> You kneel on the concrete. It has been swept for this — you can smell cold stone and faint machine oil. Your knees are together. The latex catches the light of the hanging lamp. <</if>> He stands in front of you. He unzips. He doesn't speak. The folder is open on the bench. From the floor you can still read *Position one: 22:00.* You glance up at the clock. You take him into your mouth. He's already hard. He hooks a finger through the D-ring and holds it, keeping your chin raised. He starts slowly, testing how far you can take him. Then he increases the pace. His finger stays in the ring. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "03">> The clock reads 22:18 when he pulls out. "Position two." He bends you over the bench. The stockings grip your thighs; the pasties are still on. His palm presses between your shoulder blades, holding you down. Under the hanging lamp you can see the brushed steel, a faint ring where a vise once stood, the edge of the folder beside your face. He enters you from behind, deep and unhurried. You brace your hands against the far edge of the bench. He keeps you there, using the time allotted to him. "Hold that position," he says when your elbows begin to bend. Your cheek lies against steel that smells of machine oil. Somewhere below, a freight door slams, and you flinch. His hand settles more firmly on your back. You straighten your arms and wait for the next instruction. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "04">> You keep looking at the clock. There's still time left in this position. He turns you over. Your back is on the bench now, the folder crumpling beneath you. The pasties are still on — he didn't remove them, didn't ask to. The latex ends at your thighs. "Position three." He stands between your legs and places your heels on his shoulders, one ankle at a time. When you shift, he moves your left foot back. He enters you again. Face to face this time. You look at him, but he is watching where your bodies meet. His pace stays even. You feel yourself responding despite the awkward position, despite the folder digging into your back. You close your eyes. He tells you to open them. He comes. You feel the heat and pulse of it as his rhythm falters. A moment later he pulls out and checks his watch. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "05">> "Compliance noted." He zips up, takes a pen from his pocket, and makes a mark on page two. You lower your legs while he writes. He finishes the line before looking up. "You can get dressed." In the bathroom, the stockings peel off with a sound like tape. You wince as you remove the pasties. The choker goes into your bag beside the one that ties. The bathroom mirror is spotless. You lean closer to inspect the red mark beneath your chin, then turn the choker over in your bag so the ring won't catch on anything. When you come out, he's standing beneath the hanging lamp with his back to you. The folder is closed on the bench. "Thursday," he says. "Same time." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/ownerprotocol/" "06">> "Same positions?" "No." He turns from the bench. "Page three." You look at the closed folder. There was nothing on page three except your signature. You almost ask what he intends to add. He is already waiting for your next question. "Should I bring anything?" you ask. "No," he says. "Just yourself. The rest is provided." The doorman nods as you cross the lobby. Outside, you pull your coat closed and stand for a moment before heading toward the bus stop. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#ownproto-stage">><<include "OwnProto08">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Protocol" src="img/scene-covers/owner-arc/ownerprotocol-v1.png"></div> Your phone buzzes with a calendar notification. You don't remember accepting an invitation: *Thursday. 22:00. Position review.* You open the entry. The address is already filled in. You leave it on the calendar and put the phone away. You walk to the bus stop. You wait. The bus comes. You get on. Upstairs on the bus, you settle your bag on your lap. The two chokers have tangled together. You separate them with one finger and close the zip. You miss your stop. At the next one, you get off and walk back. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Protocol</h2> <div id="ownproto-stage"><<include "OwnProto01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneRichHouse")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichHouse")>> <h2>The Country House</h2> <div id="richhouse-stage"><<include "RichHouse01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Country House" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richhouse-v1.png"></div> His driver collects you at seven on Saturday morning. You watch the dashboard clock as the city gives way to fields. By the time you turn into the drive, more than an hour has passed. The drive follows a long fence. Two horses graze beyond it. The house is low and built of stone, with a wide veranda facing the morning sun. He's on the veranda with coffee and a newspaper. When the driver brings you over, he folds the paper and moves it off the chair beside him. "Coffee's in the kitchen. Sugar's on the counter." You bring your coffee outside. For a while you watch the horses without speaking. He has put the paper down, but you still have your bag on your lap. "You didn't ask how long I'm staying," you say. "You'll stay as long as you like." He glances at your bag. "You can put that down, you know." "The whole weekend?" "Or part of it. That's yours to decide." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richhouse/" "01">> He leaves you alone over breakfast. There are eggs, fresh bread, and butter soft enough to spread. When the horses approach the fence, he points with his knife. "That's Pepper. The other one's new. I keep forgetting his name." "Does he know yours?" "Only when I have apples." You laugh. He looks pleased with himself. After breakfast he says, "Upstairs." The bedroom faces east. Pink lace is laid out on the white bed, with a tag bearing your measurements. You touch the stitching. This was ordered before you agreed to come. "You planned this," you say. "I plan everything." He undoes the top button of his shirt. "That doesn't mean I rush it." He undoes your clothes one fastening at a time, his fingers warm against your collarbone. Once the lace is on, he steps back to look. Then he comes closer, straightens a strap, and brushes your hair away from it. He kneels. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richhouse/" "02">> You weren't expecting him to kneel. He slips the lace off and lays it on the bed, then settles between your thighs. His mouth is warm. You reach for his shoulder before letting your hand slide into his hair. The window is open. You can hear the horses. One of them — Pepper or the one whose name he forgot — is making a sound against the fence, and it mixes with the sound of his mouth on you, and you close your eyes, keeping your hand in his hair. "That's — " you start, and don't finish, because his tongue finds a place that makes finishing sentences unnecessary. Your hips move against his mouth. He keeps his pace, one hand steadying your thigh. When you come, your knees draw together around him. You keep hold of his hair until you can breathe normally again. He looks up. His chin is wet. He doesn't wipe it. "Was that okay?" he asks. You nearly ask him the same thing out of habit. Instead, you nod and manage a breathless "Yes." He waits until you let go of his hair before standing. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richhouse/" "03">> He enters you slowly. You pull him closer, then catch his wrist when he starts to move faster. "Like that," you tell him. "Keep doing that." “Look at me,” he says, one hand behind your head. He’s close enough for you to see the lines at the corners of his eyes. When you tighten your grip, he pauses. "Hi," you say. "Hi." He smiles, and you laugh at yourself. "Still all right?" "Yes. I just... hi." He resumes the same slow pace. Your second orgasm takes longer. You draw him close as it builds, and he holds still while you shake against him. His hand stays behind your head until you loosen your grip. When it passes, he starts again. The sun has moved across the sheets. Outside, one of the horses rattles the gate. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richhouse/" "04">> He finishes deep inside you with a long exhalation. His forehead rests against yours. For a while neither of you moves. "Stay through Sunday," he says. You look toward the open window before answering. He lifts his head to see your face. "The driver can take you back whenever you want." "But if you stay, I'll make breakfast. You can sleep as long as you like." He puts on a robe and goes to the kitchen. You hear a cupboard open, then the tap. He comes back with two glasses of water and sets yours within reach. You drink half the glass. Beyond the window, the horses are back at the fence. You ask him what time breakfast is, then realize you've answered him. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richhouse/" "05">> He tells you breakfast can wait until you wake up. Morning. You didn't hear him leave the bed, but the sheets on his side are cold and the pillow still holds the shape of his head. The clock on the nightstand says 9:47. You've never slept past eight in this city. From the kitchen comes the scrape of a knife on a cutting board and the rising hiss of a kettle. You find his white shirt on the chair and put it on. The floor is warm under your bare feet. At the kitchen door you stop to roll back the cuffs; they keep slipping over your hands. He's at the counter slicing bread. There are eggs in a bowl. There's coffee in a press, waiting. "You sleep okay?" he asks, not turning around. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richhouse-stage">><<include "RichHouse07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Country House" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richhouse-v1.png"></div> "Yeah." "Good." He sets a plate on the counter. "Eggs all right?" "As long as I don't have to cook them." He slides the plate toward you. You sit on the stool and eat, and he eats standing up, leaning against the sink, and neither of you mentions last night or this morning or Sunday. The horses are at the fence. You can see them from the kitchen window. "They'll come up after breakfast," he says. "If you want to see them." "I don't know anything about horses." "You don't have to." He drinks his coffee. "They don't care what you know. They just want the apple." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Country House</h2> <div id="richhouse-stage"><<include "RichHouse01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneRichMorn2")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichMorn2")>> <h2>The Second Morning</h2> <div id="richmorn2-stage"><<include "RichMorn201">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Second Morning" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richmorning-v1.png"></div> On your next weekend at the house, you wake with the window open and his shirt still on the chair. You're staying another day. Last night, you checked the time of the drive back and decided you could leave in the morning. Now it's morning and you're in no hurry to get up. His side of the bed is empty. From downstairs comes the sound of a pan being set on the stove. He was up before you yesterday, too. You put on his shirt and follow the smell of coffee to the kitchen. One sleeve is still rolled up from yesterday; you fold the other to match. "Morning," he says. "Morning." "Eggs?" "You know how I take them." "I do." He reaches for another egg. "Just checking you haven't changed your mind." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn202">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "01">> After breakfast he goes to check the fence. You take the rest of your coffee onto the veranda with his newspaper. You read about a bridge opening and a prize awarded to a novelist you haven't heard of. Then Pepper leans over the fence. There are apple slices in a bowl on the rail. You offer one on your palm and nearly drop it when his lips brush your skin. Your host comes back with mud on his boots. He stops at the foot of the veranda and watches you offer another slice. "You'll never get rid of him now." "I'm almost out," you say, showing him the bowl. "There are more in the kitchen." He takes his boots off at the door. A moment later, you hear the tap. When you bring the cups inside, he is drying his hands. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn203">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "02">> You rinse the cups while he puts the towel away. One has a stubborn coffee stain. You rub it with your thumb and hold it under the tap again. His hands slide under the shirt. His palms are warm from the tap he just used. He finds your waist and rests there, his chin on your shoulder, his breath in your hair. "You don't have to do those," he says. "I know." "I have a machine." "I know." You set the cup in the rack. "I like it." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn204">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "03">> He's quiet for a moment. His hands don't move. They just hold. "I like having you here," he says. His chin rests against your shoulder. You turn off the tap. You turn in his arms and kiss him. Your teeth knock against his. You both pull back, smiling, then you put your hands against his face and try again. This time he catches your lower lip gently between his. You forget about the cup in the draining rack. The shirt comes off in the hallway. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn205">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "04">> He pulls the shirt over your head as you stop in the hallway. You lift your arms to help. A sleeve catches on your hand; you shake it loose, and he catches the shirt before it falls. The bedroom. The white bed. The window with the horses. He lays you on the bed and takes off his shirt. In the daylight you notice the hair on his chest, a pale scar near his ribs. You reach toward it, then stop. "You're staring," he says. "I'm not." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn206">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "05">> "You are." He kneels on the bed. "It's okay. I stare at you too." He enters you in the morning light. Slowly, face to face. A strip of sunlight crosses your shoulder. He leans over you, shading your eyes. He watches your face as he moves. You try to hold his gaze, but after a moment you smile and look down at his chest. "You're doing the thing," you say. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn207">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "06">> "What thing?" "The thing where you look at me like I'm a painting." "You're not a painting." He shifts his weight. The angle changes. You inhale. "Paintings don't make that sound." You laugh, then catch your breath as he moves again. You press your heels into the bed and pull him closer. When you come, the sound you make is much louder than the laugh. He feels it and stays still, and his hand finds your hand and laces the fingers together, and the ceiling is white and the window is open and the horses are quiet for once, and you hold on. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn208">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "07">> After, in the quiet, his thumb traces your collarbone. He follows the curve of the bone with his thumb, then brushes a strand of hair out of your mouth. You turn your face against his wrist. "I could get used to this," he says. You wait to hear what comes next. "Stay through Monday." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn209">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "08">> "Monday?" "I'll drive you back myself. Early, if you need to be there." "Okay." "Okay?" "Monday. Early." You tap his chest. "I'm holding you to that." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn210">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "09">> The second time that afternoon is different. This time he says your name. You look up, surprised to hear it in the middle of sex. He says it again, more quietly, and touches your cheek. You put your arms around him. With the window open, you hear a fly bump against the glass, then lose track of it as his pace quickens. You come loudly, your hands on his back, your heels pressed against his thighs. He keeps moving, close against you. You try to say his name too, but it comes out broken. He follows you with an uneven thrust and a sharp breath against your neck. His hand slips on the sheet. You catch it and keep it in yours until he settles. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn211">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richmorning/" "10">> Evening. The light goes orange across the field. You're on the veranda with a glass of table wine. He's at the grill, turning something with a pair of tongs. You smell meat and ask when it'll be ready. He tells you to have some bread while you wait. The newspaper is still on the table. You tuck it under the bread basket to stop it blowing away. "I have a question," you say. "Ask." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richmorn2-stage">><<include "RichMorn212">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Second Morning" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richmorning-v1.png"></div> "When you ordered the pink lace — how did you know my size?" He looks over his shoulder, then sets the tongs down. "Smith keeps measurements in your file. I passed them to the tailor." "You could have asked me." "I wanted it to be a surprise." He picks up the tongs again. You turn the glass by its stem. You liked the lace. You would still have liked to be asked. Tomorrow, he has promised to drive you home. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Second Morning</h2> <div id="richmorn2-stage"><<include "RichMorn201">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneRichShower")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneRichShower")>> <h2>The Shower</h2> <div id="richshower-stage"><<include "RichShower01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Shower" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richshower-v1.png"></div> After the pool he finds you in the outdoor shower. You didn't hear him coming — the water was too loud, the steam too thick. You're standing under the spray with your eyes closed, fingers in your hair, and when you open them he's there. In the doorway. Still wearing his shirt. "Mind if I join?" You move over. He steps under the spray without taking off his shirt. It clings to his chest as the water soaks through. "You're getting your shirt wet," you say. "I know." "You could take it off." "I could." He pulls it over his head and drops it on the teak floor. "You might have mentioned that before I got in." "I thought you had a plan." He laughs and rubs the water out of his eyes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richshower-stage">><<include "RichShower02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richshower/" "01">> You sink to your knees on the teak slats. He looks down as you kneel. You rest a hand on his thigh and draw him closer. Water streams over both of you. His cock is hard against your lips. You take him into your mouth, shifting to keep your face out of the spray. There is still a faint taste of chlorine on his skin. His hand cups the back of your head. When you shift your knees on the slats, he loosens his hold and waits for you to settle. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richshower-stage">><<include "RichShower03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richshower/" "02">> "That's—" His voice catches. His hand tightens briefly, then relaxes. You look up through the water before taking him deeper again. His hands slip beneath your arms. He pulls you to your feet, then lifts you against the tiled wall. Your shoulder blades slide on the wet surface. He steadies you and enters you standing, your arms around his neck. “Oh.” Your feet slip against the tile. You tighten your arms around his neck. Water runs down his temples as he leans close. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richshower-stage">><<include "RichShower04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richshower/" "03">> "Still all right?" he asks against your mouth. "Yes. Don't slip." You tighten your arms around him. He adjusts his footing and holds you more firmly beneath the thighs. His pace is quicker here. The tiles stay cool against your back, and whenever you lift your face to kiss him, water runs into your eyes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richshower-stage">><<include "RichShower05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/richshower/" "04">> He finishes with your name half-lost in the water. You feel the heat and pulse of it as his arms tighten around you. He holds you until his breathing settles, then lowers you carefully to the teak slats. You keep a hand on his shoulder while your legs steady. He turns off the water and gets you a robe from the heated rack. You put it on while he retrieves his sodden shirt. It drips all the way to the door. He catches you smiling and rolls it into a ball under his arm. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#richshower-stage">><<include "RichShower06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Shower" src="img/scene-covers/rich-arc/richshower-v1.png"></div> "Another day?" he asks as you walk back toward the house. "All right. But you're drying the shirt." He squeezes your hip. At the veranda steps you stop to tighten the robe belt. He waits beside you, wet shirt in hand, then follows you inside. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Shower</h2> <div id="richshower-stage"><<include "RichShower01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -25)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 3)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 2)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(180, true, false)>> <<set $chaserVisits += 1>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChaseMeet")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChaseMeet")>> <h2>The Regular</h2> <div id="chasemeet-stage"><<include "ChaseMeet01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Regular" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png"></div> His note comes through the agency. *Corner booth. Just company, please.* When you arrive, he is still in his work clothes. He moves his coffee so you have somewhere to put your bag. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasemeet-stage">><<include "ChaseMeet02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "01">> The envelope is already on the table. You count $<<print $Gallery == 1 ? 180 : _chaserReceipt.base>>. He watches the window until you are done, then asks whether you want the coffee he ordered for you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasemeet-stage">><<include "ChaseMeet03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "02">> It is already sweet. You drink it anyway. He tells you a long story about a plaque his boss insists on keeping in the lift, then asks what you did before you came here. He remembers the first thing you tell him by the time you get to the second. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasemeet-stage">><<include "ChaseMeet04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "03">> When the hour is up, you move to get your coat. He moves as if to order another coffee, then asks whether you have time instead. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasemeet-stage">><<include "ChaseMeet05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Regular" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png"></div> At the corner he waves down a cab. He waits until you have the door open before asking whether the booth would suit you next time. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Regular</h2> <div id="chasemeet-stage"><<include "ChaseMeet01">></div>

<<if not setup.sceneSeen("SceneChaseGift")>> <<run window.updateStat('stamina', -30)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(180, true, false)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChaseGift")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChaseGift")>> <<else>> <<run setup.storyFlow.consume("ChaseGift")>> <</if>> <h2>The Reference</h2> <div id="chasegift-stage"><<include "ChaseGift01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Reference" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png"></div> The coffee is right this time. The envelope is under his cup, as usual. There is a gray folder under yours. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasegift-stage">><<include "ChaseGift02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "04">> The first page is a photograph. The person in it has soft features and the cut of a man's shirt. The photographer has left the shoulders in the frame. You look long enough for him to notice. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasegift-stage">><<include "ChaseGift03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "05">> “I have been trying to ask you this since the first night,” he says. “I want to book you in that image. The clinic can help, if you want to try it. I paid for the first step and for the way back.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasegift-stage">><<include "ChaseGift04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaservisit/" "06">> Smith has clipped a rate card to the folder. One line carries your usual booking. Below it, in another hand, is the supplement: $30 after the first course, $75 at the second stage, up to three bookings a week. You ask Chaser if he wrote the second figure. He turns the card over before he says yes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasegift-stage">><<include "ChaseGift05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Reference" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaservisit-v1.png"></div> “The usual booth is still yours,” he says. He puts the regular envelope on your side of the folder. For a little while the two payments have nothing to do with each other. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <<if setup.chaser.canOffer(State.variables)>> * <<link "Take the folder" "ChaserFolderReply">><<run setup.chaser.answer(true)>><</link>> (Take home a prepaid, reversible clinic offer.) * <<link "Leave the folder" "ChaserFolderReply">><<run setup.chaser.answer(false)>><</link>> (Keep the usual bookings.) <<else>> * [[Head home|Tally]] <</if>> <</if>>

<h2>The Reference</h2> <div id="chasegift-stage"><<include "ChaseGift01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(350, true)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChaseFirst")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChaseFirst")>> <h2>Same Booth</h2> <div id="chasefirst-stage"><<include "ChaseFirst01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Same Booth" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chasersx-v1.png"></div> At the booth he takes a second to stand. You can't tell what he noticed first. He pushes the coffee toward you, the right order, and you undo the top button of the shirt you wore to the clinic. <<if $Gallery neq 1>>The receipt lists $<<print _chaserReceipt.base>> for the evening<<if _chaserReceipt.premium>> and $<<print _chaserReceipt.premium>> on a separate line<</if>>. You put it away before you touch the cup.<</if>> "Oh," he says. "Oh, it's you. It's — you." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasefirst-stage">><<include "ChaseFirst02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "01">> "Booth's the same," you say. "City's the same. Everything else is under new management." He laughs the one syllable. Then he pays for the whole evening on the spot, in advance — "so we don't have to talk about it after" — and the two of you take the long way to his place, and the whole walk he keeps almost-touching your hand like a boy with a bus transfer. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasefirst-stage">><<include "ChaseFirst03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "02">> His apartment is as nervous as he is: books squared, one lamp, a couch that has clearly been vacuumed twice. He undresses you like the reference photograph is going to be graded on it — careful, itemized, everything folded — and when the last of it is off he just looks, and his breath does the crack. "Hi," he says, wrecked, to all of you. "Hi. Your turn." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasefirst-stage">><<include "ChaseFirst04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "03">> He's hard before you touch him, which flatters you both. You take him in your hand and then your mouth, working him slow against the new arithmetic of your own body — the course changed the terms, and everything you knew still counts, it just counts somewhere new. He watches with his hands fisted in the couch cushions like a man at his own audit. "You don't have to — " he manages. "Either — any of it — " "Shh." You pull off, wet, unhurried. "I'm learning the new ledger. Let me balance something." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chasefirst-stage">><<include "ChaseFirst05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Same Booth" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chasersx-v1.png"></div> After, flat on your backs, breathing at his ceiling, his hand finds yours on the seam of the couch cushion and holds it like a rail. "This is the part where I over-tip," he says. "You already did." "Then this is the part where I book Thursday." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Same Booth</h2> <div id="chasefirst-stage"><<include "ChaseFirst01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<set _chaserReceipt to setup.chaser.pay(420, true)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChasePrem")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChasePrem")>> <h2>The Premium</h2> <div id="chaseprem-stage"><<include "ChasePrem01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Premium" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chasersx-v1.png"></div> <<if $Gallery neq 1>>The standing receipt lists $<<print _chaserReceipt.base>> for the evening<<if _chaserReceipt.premium>> and $<<print _chaserReceipt.premium>> under the sponsor's terms<</if>>.<</if>> He becomes the line the ledger circles in red: THE PREMIUM, retainer rate, standing Thursday. The firm would call him a whale. The trade would call him a gift. You call him by his first name now, which costs him extra every time, and he pays it like it's nothing, which it isn't, because you've seen his building's lobby. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseprem-stage">><<include "ChasePrem02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "04">> The Thursdays build their own liturgy. He likes you on top — "the view," he says, mortified, honest — likes to watch your face do the accounting while his hands learn the new map like a city he intends to live in. Sometimes, mid-act, he goes so quiet you check on him, and he's just looking, filing it, the reference made real and riding him. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseprem-stage">><<include "ChasePrem03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "05">> "Say the thing," you tell him, one Thursday, slowing to a stop that makes his eyes cross. "The thing you haven't said for a month." He goes scarlet. "It's a word. For — for you. The trade has them and I hate all of them, they're all parking-lot words—" "Then say the real one." "...Beautiful," he blurts, ruined. "The real one is beautiful. It's been the real one since the booth." You ride him through his own confession until he stops being able to conjugate it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseprem-stage">><<include "ChasePrem04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chasersx/" "06">> After, in the shower steam, he soaps your shoulders like a man polishing a cup he won at a fair. "The clinic called," he says, casual as a landmine. "The clinic has the next appointment ready. I paid for it too. Your way back is still in the folder. You can leave the whole thing where it is." The water runs. Your body, new-ringed and new-priced, waits for the ledger's opinion like a jury. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseprem-stage">><<include "ChasePrem05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Premium" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chasersx-v1.png"></div> He walks you down with your coat over his arm. At the street door, out of the apartment's honest light, the question stands on the sidewalk with you both, wearing his scarf. "Thursday?" he says. "Thursday," you say, and the word has stopped being a day. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Premium</h2> <div id="chaseprem-stage"><<include "ChasePrem01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -55)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', -4)>> <<run setup.chaser.pay(500, true, false)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChaseRev")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChaseRev")>> <h2>Trade</h2> <div id="chaserev-stage"><<include "ChaseRev01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Trade" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaserrev-v1.png"></div> The ask arrives the way all his asks do: over-tipped, over-rehearsed, set down between the coffee cups like a passport. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaserev-stage">><<include "ChaseRev02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "01">> "The other way around," he says. "Me underneath. You in charge. If you'd like that." He brings out another folder, then notices you looking at it. "Yes, I know." Inside: the clinic's other brochure — the one for him, the consultations circled. "I started before you," he admits, to his coffee. "That's the joke. The reference picture was never a fantasy catalog. It was peer review." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaserev-stage">><<include "ChaseRev03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "02">> So the Thursday inverts. You spend an evening learning what the new body can do with a man underneath it who wants exactly that: your hands on his wrists, his yeses coming up like bubbles, the trade running in a direction the ledger never priced because the market never had the nerve. He's beautiful like this — the folders finally on the floor, the hands finally still, everything itemized out of him. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaserev-stage">><<include "ChaseRev04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "03">> "You knew," you say, after, when you're both breathing. "The booth. The first night. You were already — " "Three consultations in." He laughs at the ceiling. "I booked you because I couldn't book the mirror. And then the mirror went and booked you too." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaserev-stage">><<include "ChaseRev05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Trade" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaserrev-v1.png"></div> At the door he doesn't ask about Thursday. He asks the other thing, the big one, folder-flat on the hall table like a hand of cards: "There's an endgame in this for both of us. Mine has a surgery date. Does yours?" <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Trade</h2> <div id="chaserev-stage"><<include "ChaseRev01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<set $money += 3500>><<set $dailyIncome += 3500>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneChaseConf")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneChaseConf")>> <h2>The Confession</h2> <div id="chaseconf-stage"><<include "ChaseConf01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Confession" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaserrev-v1.png"></div> The last Thursday of the retainer starts with the biggest envelope yet — and it isn't for tonight. It's for the ledger: three thousand five hundred dollars toward the balance. You count it twice before putting it away. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseconf-stage">><<include "ChaseConf02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "04">> "I used to just think girls with dicks were hot, you know?" he says, in the booth where all of this started, both of you drinking coffee like the first night. "That was the whole file. And then it was you, and the file kept getting revised. I started feeling jealous. Then I just — I don't know. I started becoming the reference. The clinic says June." He turns the cup. "So here's the confession: I'm not buying Thursdays anymore. I'm asking for — " <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseconf-stage">><<include "ChaseConf03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "05">> " — Fridays," he says. "The unbillable kind. The kind where nobody's a reference or an asset or a line item. I know what your ledger looks like. I did the math on that too. This envelope is the math. Not a gift — a merger. Two transitions, one calendar." "Say the number," you say, because you are still, first and last, someone who reads contracts. "Three thousand five hundred," he says. "Count it. Then tell me what you think." You have counted it. You are still getting used to being asked about the rest. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseconf-stage">><<include "ChaseConf04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/chaserrev/" "06">> The city takes you home through all its usual lights. In the cab mirror your own face — new-ringed, new-priced, still yours at whatever tier the ledger finally lands — does something it almost never does on this route. It smiles. Off the clock. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#chaseconf-stage">><<include "ChaseConf05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Confession" src="img/scene-covers/chaser-arc/chaserrev-v1.png"></div> The ledger, read at the kitchen table at 2 a.m., still bites — but the teeth have a countdown now. Between his number and the premium year, the end of the debt has a date. A real one, with a day of the week. You write one line in the notebook before the lamp goes off: *The reference wanted the mirror. Both of us are becoming it. Fridays, unbillable.* <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Confession</h2> <div id="chaseconf-stage"><<include "ChaseConf01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -50)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 9)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(260, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithHome")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithHome")>> <h2>Home Office</h2> <div id="smithhome-stage"><<include "SmithHome01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Home Office" src="img/morning/t2-b.png"></div> The envelope is in your own mailbox, which is the whole message. Your building, your floor, your name typed on a label — inside, a laminated card the size of a library card. *HOME CONSULTATIONS — TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS, 13:10-13:55. THE CLIENT PREFERS YOUR RESIDENCE. RATE: FURNITURE ALLOWANCE APPLIES.* There is a furniture allowance. There is a line item for your couch. You sit on the couch holding the card and understand, the way you understand interest, that the office has expanded. Smith's covering note is two sentences, because his sentences are always two: *"The client values domestic settings. Your premises have been assessed as adequate."* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithhome-stage">><<include "SmithHome02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t2-b.png") isnot "img/morning/t2-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Home Office" src="img/morning/t2-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The first Tuesday, the client arrives at 13:10 exactly — a broad man with a briefcase and the apology of a man visiting a bank. He brings towels. His own towels, still in the packaging, which he sets on your chair with the gravity of a deposition. "I usually go to an address downtown," he says. "But they close the blinds there. Here you have windows." He means it as a compliment to the premises. He takes off his watch and places it on your shelf, face up, where he can see it. You undress by the window because the daylight is what the rate includes. He sits on your couch in his shirt and watches the way men watch weather. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithhome-stage">><<include "SmithHome03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t2-b.png") isnot "img/morning/t2-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Home Office" src="img/morning/t2-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("03", "04")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> At 13:30 he draws you onto the bed by the wrist. He checks the angle against the window light, then glances at the card to see how much time he has left. "Downtown, they'd have finished by now," he says, turning you onto your front. "Here I've got another twenty-five minutes. It says so on the card." You make a note to remember *downtown*. When you look back at the window, the blinds are still open. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithhome-stage">><<include "SmithHome04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t2-b.png") isnot "img/morning/t2-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Home Office" src="img/morning/t2-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("05", "06")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> At some point the appointment stops being a matter of minutes and becomes the bed — his weight, his patience, the small municipal sounds of your own street arriving through the window you are no longer looking at. He is not rough. He is *thorough*, which in this economy is the more expensive thing, and when he finally spends it is with the exhale of a man signing off on an inspection. He checks his watch. Four minutes of margin. He uses them on your back, unhurried, as if margin is also billed. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithhome-stage">><<include "SmithHome05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Home Office" src="img/morning/t2-b.png"></div> He leaves at 13:55. On the shelf, next to where his watch sat, he has placed the envelope — and under the envelope, the receipt for the towels, torn off, initialed. Smith's evening text arrives before the client's bus does: *"Premises assessed as adequate. Confirmed for Thursday."* Your home has a rating now. The rating is adequate. You make tea in the kitchen where a client has been, and catch yourself calculating what the kitchen would fetch per hour. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Afternoon]] <</if>>

<h2>Home Office</h2> <div id="smithhome-stage"><<include "SmithHome01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 7)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(300, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithPatron")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithPatron")>> <h2>The Patron</h2> <div id="smithpatron-stage"><<include "SmithPatron01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Patron" src="img/morning/t1-a.png"></div> The referral arrives as referrals do now — typed, filed, carbon-copied to your future: *MR. H. HAS STANDING WITH THE OFFICE. HE PREFERS STRUCTURE. ATTEND TO THE RITUALS AND THE RATE IS UNCHANGED.* Mr. H. is sixty if he is a day, upright as a hymnbook, and he shakes your hand at the door of a flat that smells of pencil shavings and ironed cotton. There is a corner set aside — a straight-backed chair, a ruler on the seat, a jar of bands for your hair. "They haven't told you what I expect," he says, hanging his jacket. "Good. I'd rather show you myself." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithpatron-stage">><<include "SmithPatron02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t1-a.png") isnot "img/morning/t1-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Patron" src="img/morning/t1-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02")>><<vid "scene/smithpatron/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The rituals are exact and he teaches them like catechism. Hair in plaits — his hands are quick and impersonal and remembered from somewhere before your time. Sleeves rolled. The turquoise top he has supplied, laid out on the bed in the order it goes on. Then the chair. Over the knee, like arithmetic being checked line by line, and the ruler is wood and the count is twelve and every stroke lands exactly where the last one promised. "Small faults first," he says, in the pause where the burning blooms. "Untucked shirt. Slouching at the window. We will work up to the large ones when I know your margins." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithpatron-stage">><<include "SmithPatron03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t1-a.png") isnot "img/morning/t1-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Patron" src="img/morning/t1-a.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/smithpatron/" "03">><</if>> After, he sets you on the bed and takes his time like a man reading a will — unhurried, thorough, one hand around your plait where it meets the neck, the discipline still glowing in you like a hearth. He is not rough. Roughness would be sloppy, and Mr. H. has never been sloppy a day in his life. "There," he says, when it ends — the way, you understand, he has always said it. "That will be all for the small faults." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithpatron-stage">><<include "SmithPatron04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t1-a.png") isnot "img/morning/t1-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Patron" src="img/morning/t1-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("04", "05")>><<vid "scene/smithpatron/" _sceneClip>><</if>> At the door he restores your collar to symmetry with two fingers and hands you the envelope, and the envelope is heavier than the rate, and he sees you notice. "Carry forward," he says, which is a phrase you know from another mouth entirely. "The difference goes to the large ones. We'll begin those next month." You walk to the bus feeling thirty years younger and fifty years more supervised, and you cannot tell anymore which of those is the service being sold. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Patron</h2> <div id="smithpatron-stage"><<include "SmithPatron01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 9)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(450, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithDaughter")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithDaughter")>> <h2>The Daughter Clause</h2> <div id="smithdaughter-stage"><<include "SmithDaughter01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Daughter Clause" src="img/sleep/t0-b.png"></div> The contract is four pages and reads like adoption papers drafted by an actuary. *WEEKEND GUARDIANSHIP — FRIDAY 19:00 TO SUNDAY 17:00. THE WARD WILL BE ADDRESSED AS AGREED. ALLOWANCES: BOARD, TUITION, CORRECTION.* Smith's note: *"The client has held standing for eleven years and never once breached. The clause renews monthly. Consider it carefully; it considers you."* The client — V., the papers say, just the initial — meets you at the door in a cardigan, and the house behind him is a house that has been waiting: your slippers by the door, your toothbrush in the cup, a room with a bed and a lamp and nothing on the walls. "Term begins Friday," he says. "Come in. I've put the rules on the kitchen table. Ask me while we're both here." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithdaughter-stage">><<include "SmithDaughter02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t0-b.png") isnot "img/sleep/t0-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Daughter Clause" src="img/sleep/t0-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02")>><<vid "scene/smithdaughter/" _sceneClip>><</if>> Friday, 19:00. The turquoise top is hanging on your door when you arrive — *weekend uniform*, the tag says — and V. reads the house rules at the kitchen table the way other men read mortgages: voice level, bedtime, the tariff for rolled eyes. The evening is terrifyingly domestic. Homework at eight — he checks it, in pen. Cocoa at nine. At nine-thirty he turns your face toward the light, examines the day like a dentist, and pronounces: "Adequate. No corrections today." You sleep in the small room under the eaves and dream of nothing, which is somehow the point. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithdaughter-stage">><<include "SmithDaughter03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t0-b.png") isnot "img/sleep/t0-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Daughter Clause" src="img/sleep/t0-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("03", "04", "05", "07")>><<vid "scene/smithdaughter/" _sceneClip>><</if>> On Saturday morning he goes over the arithmetic at the kitchen table. In the afternoon he corrects your posture in the bedroom. He starts the count again each time you move. You hear him turn a page while you're still trying to get through to twelve. "There," he says, when you finally hold still through an entire count. "Now you're learning the house." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithdaughter-stage">><<include "SmithDaughter04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t0-b.png") isnot "img/sleep/t0-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Daughter Clause" src="img/sleep/t0-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("08", "09", "10", "11", "12")>><<vid "scene/smithdaughter/" _sceneClip>><</if>> Saturday night he sets down his cocoa and asks you to stand by the bed. You still have no idea what he saw you do. He counts to twelve in the same quiet voice he used over your homework. When it's over, he waits for you to stand. You have to hold the bedpost to do it. By Sunday you know the house the way you know your debt: completely, and from underneath. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithdaughter-stage">><<include "SmithDaughter05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Daughter Clause" src="img/sleep/t0-b.png"></div> Sunday, 16:55, he packs your bag himself — the uniform laundered, the envelope in the front pocket, one chocolate on top, because the chocolate is in the contract too; it is clause something; everything here is clause something. At the door he straightens your collar with two fingers, and for a second you forget that you can walk away. Then the bus pulls in and he has to let go. The envelope clears the weekend's rate by the price of the chocolate, which you eat at the stop, standing, in two bites, like contraband. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Daughter Clause</h2> <div id="smithdaughter-stage"><<include "SmithDaughter01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -70)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 2)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithNight")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithNight")>> <h2>Delinquency</h2> <div id="smithnight-stage"><<include "SmithNight01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Delinquency" src="img/night/t0-b.png"></div> The notice is one line, because punishment is the one genre Smith keeps brief: *ACCEPTED ASSIGNMENT NOT COMPLETED. CORRECTIVE EVENING ARRANGED, 22:00. THE BALANCE OF THE EVENING WILL BE EXPLAINED ON SITE.* There is no rate attached. That is the sentence you reread. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithnight-stage">><<include "SmithNight02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/night/t0-b.png") isnot "img/night/t0-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Delinquency" src="img/night/t0-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02", "03", "04", "05", "06", "07", "08", "09")>><<vid "scene/smithnight/" _sceneClip>><</if>> 22:00 is an address with its lights already off. Two men you don't know and one you half-recognize from a Tuesday, and nobody apologizes here, nobody brings towels, nobody watches the clock on your behalf — the corrective evening runs until the correction is finished, and the correction is finished when they are. One of the men asks the time. Nobody answers him. You can just make out the numbers on the clock in the hall until someone pushes the door shut. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithnight-stage">><<include "SmithNight03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/shower/t2-b.png") isnot "img/shower/t2-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Delinquency" src="img/shower/t2-b.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/smithnight/" "10">><</if>> After — when the door has closed behind the last of them and you are alone with the shaking — the bathroom runs itself: hot water, foam to the brim, the too-soft towels stacked where you can reach them without standing. Somebody has provisioned your aftercare the way one provisions a fire exit. You lower yourself into the foam and the heat unpicks the evening from your muscles, and you laugh once, quietly, at the tub, because the tub is in the budget and the tub is the tell: even this was scheduled, itemized, and filed. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithnight-stage">><<include "SmithNight04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Delinquency" src="img/night/t0-b.png"></div> Smith's morning text is punctual and mild as ever, and that is the whole design — the instruction read back as if nothing had happened: *"Corrective evening logged as settled. No additional interest adjustment. The next appointment stands."* No second markup. Nothing added to the correction already on the account. You check the number twice, then a third time, and understand the price you actually paid, which is not on any page: you have just learned what the office does with its other hand — and that it, too, keeps its word. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Delinquency</h2> <div id="smithnight-stage"><<include "SmithNight01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -65)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 12)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 4)>> <<run setup.eventPay(500, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithExam")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithExam")>> <h2>The Practical Assessment</h2> <div id="smithexam-stage"><<include "SmithExam01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Practical Assessment" src="img/smith/revision/t3-a.png"></div> The summons says *PRACTICAL ASSESSMENT — TWO EXAMINERS* and nothing else, because the rest you are meant to infer, and you infer it all the way up the stairs. The apartment above the office has been rearranged for it: the striped bed made to inspection standard, the octopus pillow — for once — relocated to a chair, like a witness seated out of the room. Smith stands at the window with his folder. He will not touch you tonight. He will only count. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithexam-stage">><<include "SmithExam02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/smith/revision/t3-a.png") isnot "img/smith/revision/t3-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Practical Assessment" src="img/smith/revision/t3-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02")>><<vid "scene/smithexam/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The examiners are faces you know: one trained your throat in this same room, one held your weekends under the eaves. They greet each other over you like colleagues at a viva. *Good progress. Still rushing the second half.* The practical begins without ceremony. One takes your mouth and one takes the rest. You hold the count they taught you. Above you, for the first time, both your teachers are synchronized, marking the same candidate from opposite ends. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithexam-stage">><<include "SmithExam03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/smith/revision/t3-a.png") isnot "img/smith/revision/t3-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Practical Assessment" src="img/smith/revision/t3-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("03", "04")>><<vid "scene/smithexam/" _sceneClip>><</if>> In the long middle of it you forget to be frightened and start, instead, to be good — the exam taking over the way exams do, the body answering in the language it was drilled in. When you slip once, the correction is immediate and impersonal as a red pen stroke; when you recover, nobody praises you, and the absence of praise lands heavier than the correction did. At the end, over you, the two of them compare notes literally — a sentence each, low, in the shorthand of men who have graded before — and you lie there, wrecked and inspected, and wait for the verdict like weather. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithexam-stage">><<include "SmithExam04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/smith/revision/t3-a.png") isnot "img/smith/revision/t3-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Practical Assessment" src="img/smith/revision/t3-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("05", "06", "07")>><<vid "scene/smithexam/" _sceneClip>><</if>> Smith closes the folder. Two words, future tense, as always — the same tone he uses to confirm a booking: *"You'll do."* The envelope is on the dresser, the thickest yet, and under it your braids' black bands, laundered, in a fresh envelope of their own — because you left them last week, and Smith does not remind twice. He supplies. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Practical Assessment</h2> <div id="smithexam-stage"><<include "SmithExam01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -80)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 14)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 5)>> <<run setup.eventPay(650, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithWhore")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithWhore")>> <h2>Throughput</h2> <div id="smithwhore-stage"><<include "SmithWhore01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Throughput" src="img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png"></div> The schedule arrives without your name on it, which is the message: *SATURDAY, 14:00-20:00, THE PENTHOUSE FLOOR. UNIFORM: NONE. RATE: FLAT. REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED.* Flat rate. The office used to send you a breakdown. Now it sends a single number. It is somehow the honestest number Smith has ever sent you. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithwhore-stage">><<include "SmithWhore02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Throughput" src="img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02")>><<vid "scene/smithwhore/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The floor is one large bright room with couches and water bottles and men arriving like a shift. There is no ritual because ritual is a per-unit cost; there is no name because names are for the asset column, and tonight you are the throughput column. They are not unkind, the afternoons men. They take turns with the patience of a queue, and the queue is the whole event — you on the gray sectional in the good light, one then the next then the next, the count losing its denominations until it is just counting. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithwhore-stage">><<include "SmithWhore03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Throughput" src="img/client-approach/rich-man-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/smithwhore/" "05">><</if>> At 20:00 the floor empties on schedule, and the envelope on the counter is exactly the flat number, not a bill more, and Smith's text is one line, mild as Monday: *"Saturday's throughput reconciles. Same booking monthly."* In the elevator you catch your reflection and say, out loud, to nobody, the word for what the rate was, and the doors open on the lobby, and the lobby does not disagree. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Throughput</h2> <div id="smithwhore-stage"><<include "SmithWhore01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -40)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 2)>> <<run setup.eventPay(400, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithHeir")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithHeir")>> <h2>The Successor</h2> <div id="smithheir-stage"><<include "SmithHeir01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Successor" src="img/lib/studypic1.jpg"></div> The debt is paid. That is the strangest sentence in the language now — paid, whole, receipted — and the city has been treating you gently, the way it treats anyone it has finished with. Then the envelope comes anyway, your name typed, and inside is not a booking but a *file*. A new hire's file. Twenty-two, a number in the ledger's own font, a photo paper-clipped at the corner like a passport photo at a border. Smith's note, two sentences, future tense: *"Your account is closed; the office's is not. She would benefit from a first appointment that is not a corrective one — you are listed as the reference."* <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithheir-stage">><<include "SmithHeir02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Successor" src="img/lib/studypic1.jpg"></div> You meet her at the same diner where somebody once taught you to read a contract, and she has the braids and the notebook and the arithmetic face, and she asks the questions you asked, in the order you asked them. You do not tell her to run. You tell her the true things: what the tap-out signal is, and that this office keeps it. What the corrective evenings are, and that they are scheduled, not angry. What flat rate means, and which number she should never let them flatten. She writes it all down in the notebook like scripture. You watch her write and feel the shape of the room tilt: this is the other side, and the other side has a rate too. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithheir-stage">><<include "SmithHeir03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/lib/studypic1.jpg") isnot "img/lib/studypic1.jpg">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Successor" src="img/lib/studypic1.jpg"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02", "03")>><<vid "scene/smithheir/" _sceneClip>><</if>> Her first appointment, you attend — as the file said, as the reference. Two of you and the client, and you teach the way you were taught, which is to say: thoroughly, by hand, by count, and you watch her hold the tempo and lose the fear one count at a time, and when the client checks his watch you feel your own absence of flinching like a scar that finally aches the right way. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithheir-stage">><<include "SmithHeir04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/lib/studypic1.jpg") isnot "img/lib/studypic1.jpg">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Successor" src="img/lib/studypic1.jpg"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("04", "05")>><<vid "scene/smithheir/" _sceneClip>><</if>> After, at the bus stop, she counts her envelope twice and looks at you with the face you must have had — the one that is doing sums about its own future and hating the answer less than expected. "What do I call this?" she says. "The job." You think of the folder, the tap-outs, the Saturdays, the tub. You give her the only job title this office has ever printed honestly. "Throughput," you say. "Until it's something else. Keep the notebook." <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>The Successor</h2> <div id="smithheir-stage"><<include "SmithHeir01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -60)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 15)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 10)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -8)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSciFail")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSciFail")>> <h2>Termination Report</h2> <div id="scifail-stage"><<include "SciFail01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Termination Report" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div> Thursday's comparison session starts at the same bench. There are four new restraint points, fresh coils of rope, and attachments laid out in order of size. "Your baseline was remarkable," the scientist says, calibrating. "Remarkable is a problem. Remarkable means the protocol has a ceiling we haven't found — and science does not leave ceilings unfound." The green button goes into your palm, warm from his pocket. "The override stands," he says. "Press it and everything stops. Statistically, no one presses it past minute forty." You were at thirty-eight last time. You sign the form clipped to the bench — PARTICIPANT NO. 7, TERMINAL PHASE — and he fastens the first rope. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#scifail-stage">><<include "SciFail02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<h2>Termination Report</h2> <div id="scifail-stage"><<include "SciFail01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -55)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 8)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 5)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 3)>> <<run setup.eventPay(330, {receipt: true})>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithReturn")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithReturn")>> <h2>The Standing Booking</h2> <div id="smithreturn-stage"><<include "SmithReturn01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standing Booking" src="img/sleep/t2-a.png"></div> The second booking comes with a small correction. A later time, a different client, the same address. You read the last line twice: the firm has kept your front door on file. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithreturn-stage">><<include "SmithReturn02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t2-a.png") isnot "img/sleep/t2-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standing Booking" src="img/sleep/t2-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("07", "08", "09")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The new client asks where to leave his coat. You point at the chair before remembering that you used to leave your own coat there. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithreturn-stage">><<include "SmithReturn03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t2-a.png") isnot "img/sleep/t2-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standing Booking" src="img/sleep/t2-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("10", "11", "12")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The light fades. When the appointment ends, he checks the time, puts the furniture back, and counts the money where you can see it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithreturn-stage">><<include "SmithReturn04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/sleep/t2-a.png") isnot "img/sleep/t2-a.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Standing Booking" src="img/sleep/t2-a.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("13", "14", "15")>><<vid "scene/smithhome/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The receipt shows $<<print setup.eventQuote(330, {receipt: true})>>. Smith's note beneath it says he can now book the premises without inspecting them again. You tuck the note into the drawer where you keep the spare key. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Afternoon]] <</if>>

<h2>The Standing Booking</h2> <div id="smithreturn-stage"><<include "SmithReturn01">></div>

<<run window.updateStat('stamina', -45)>> <<run window.updateStat('promiscuity', 4)>> <<run window.updateStat('domsub', 6)>> <<run window.updateStat('iq', -3)>> <<run window.updateStat('loanSharkPet', 2)>> <<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithOffsite")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithOffsite")>> <h2>Offsite Hypnosis</h2> <div id="smithoffsite-stage"><<include "SmithOffsite01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Offsite Hypnosis" src="img/night/t1-b.png"></div> The address is an apartment. Smith is on the recorder rather than in the room. The tape begins with the words he used to close your weekly report. *Carried forward.* Then a click. “When you hear that, say *present*.” He leaves enough tape for you to answer. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithoffsite-stage">><<include "SmithOffsite02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/night/t1-b.png") isnot "img/night/t1-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Offsite Hypnosis" src="img/night/t1-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("01", "02", "03", "04")>><<vid "scene/smithoffsite/" _sceneClip>><</if>> The appointment moves away from the recorder. You can still hear it on the table. Once the click comes in the middle of a silence. You answer before you have time to look over. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithoffsite-stage">><<include "SmithOffsite03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/night/t1-b.png") isnot "img/night/t1-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Offsite Hypnosis" src="img/night/t1-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("05", "06", "07")>><<vid "scene/smithoffsite/" _sceneClip>><</if>> At the end the tape runs out and the machine stops. It makes almost the same sound. You say *present* into the room. By then nobody is waiting for an answer. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithoffsite-stage">><<include "SmithOffsite04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/night/t1-b.png") isnot "img/night/t1-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="Offsite Hypnosis" src="img/night/t1-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("08", "09", "10", "11")>><<vid "scene/smithoffsite/" _sceneClip>><</if>> On the landing your phone lights up. *When you wake, write down the time and the first thing you remember. There is a second line if anything follows you home. — M.S.* You read it all the way down the stairs. There is no instruction for what to do tonight. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> * [[Finish|Tally]] <</if>>

<h2>Offsite Hypnosis</h2> <div id="smithoffsite-stage"><<include "SmithOffsite01">></div>

<<run setup.pointUnlock("SceneSmithMorning")>><<run setup.markPlayed("SceneSmithMorning")>> <h2>The First Thing You Remember</h2> <div id="smithmorning-stage"><<include "SmithMorning01">></div>

<div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The First Thing You Remember" src="img/morning/t0-b.png"></div> The kettle switches off. Your mouth is already open on the first syllable. You stand there with your hand on the handle until you can hear the water settling inside it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#smithmorning-stage">><<include "SmithMorning02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/morning/t0-b.png") isnot "img/morning/t0-b.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The First Thing You Remember" src="img/morning/t0-b.png"></div><<else>><<set _sceneClip to either("07", "08", "09", "10", "11")>><<vid "scene/smithmorning/" _sceneClip>><</if>> You cover the second line with your thumb. What is left could be a receipt for anything. You read the longer version once more before you decide which one Smith gets. <<if $Gallery == 1>> * <<link "↩ Back to the Archive">><<set $Gallery to 0>><<goto $prevPassageEnd>><</link>> <<else>> <<if $smithOffsiteReply>> * [[Back to the morning|Morning]] <<else>> * <<link "Tell him about the click" "SmithOffsiteResponse">><<run setup.recordSmithOffsiteReply(true)>><</link>> (Request a library review. Optional, with no cash bonus.) * <<link "Send only the time" "SmithOffsiteResponse">><<run setup.recordSmithOffsiteReply(false)>><</link>> (Take a shift with a $150 supplement and the usual refusal terms.) <</if>> <</if>>

<h2>The First Thing You Remember</h2> <div id="smithmorning-stage"><<include "SmithMorning01">></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, and the apartment smells like something he tried to cook and mostly didn't burn. 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." A beat. "That's not what this is." "You called. You said sorry. I'm here, aren't I?" He takes you to the bedroom instead of the couch — vertical blinds, afternoon light coming through in strips — and when you ask, he says, "I'm not done apologizing," and puts you on the bed and puts his mouth between your legs like a man doing amends. Slow. Thorough. Unhurried, his shaved head working in the long light while the apology happens everywhere the words couldn't reach. You come with a heel against his shoulder blade and the blinds striping the ceiling. "That's the statement," he says, wiping his mouth on his forearm. "The press conference's later. Beer's in the fridge." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athaway-stage">><<include "AthAway02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athleteaway/" "02">> The football is just starting when you settle on the couch with the beers. 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 jersey — blue, white stripe, an Italian patch on the chest. "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." 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 —" 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." At halftime you even the account: on your knees in his blue jersey, his cock in your mouth, the studio analysts saying nothing useful at volume while you work him slow and deep, one of his hands loose in your hair. He is hard as an argument and just as convinced. The second half starts. 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." The debt gets settled in the bedroom, face to face, which is not what his voice promised but is what he does: your jersey up around your chest — he won't take it off; blue gets to lose with its colors on — his weight on you, his hips rolling with the patience of three rounds of groundwork. Hard, deep, unhurried, a man collecting a bet he never doubted. 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 and stays, forehead against yours, breathing, still mostly in you, the jersey bunched between you. "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," you say. He looks at you. "Not front row?" "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. Then his bare feet cross the room. <<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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> 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 jeans 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/" "01">> He drops you on the bed — not gently, not angrily, decisively — belt thudding to the floor, shorts gone before your jeans are, and then he's on you and in you in the space of one breath, your legs up and spread in the crooks of his arms, the championship pace: deep, straight, unhurried in the way of a man who knows exactly how long he has. "I won," he says into your mouth, the voice from the ring, stripped and certain. "And I'm collecting." There's no question in it. There's a promise you made at his door — closed-door, exact change — and he has never once broken a promise or let one be broken to him. He takes his time anyway. Whatever else he collects tonight, he collects this at title pace, and your body answers the belt in the room before your pride can file an objection. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "03">> Between strokes he talks — the fight, the fight, the fight. "Right hand in the second — you saw it — same setup —" "Yes," you gasp, "I saw it — congratulations —" His hips don't stop. "He tried the takedown in round three —" "You sprawled —" "You watched film." "I watched you." His hand comes up and closes — light, deliberate, a collar of fingers and thumb — around the front of your throat, not squeezing, just holding you exactly where you are while he changes the angle, and the new angle empties both your vocabularies for a while. "Ready?" he says, against your ear. 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">> "First," he says, sitting back on his heels, "get it ready." You know the drill from the tone. Shirt off, bra on — white, everyday, nothing you planned for this — and you get on all fours across the sheets with your jeans down around your thighs and take him into your mouth, all the way soft, wetting him root to crown with the patience of a corner man taping wrists. His hand cups your jaw, fingers along your cheek, feeling himself through it. "That's all the mercy it gets," he says. "Yours, I mean." You hum around him, which he feels as agreement, because it is. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "05">> He turns you over with one hand — face down, hips pulled up, your cheek to the sheet and his palm spread flat between your shoulder blades, holding you into the mattress like a man pinning a map. Then the head of his cock, slick from your mouth and insistent, against the tight ring of your ass. <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> He stops as soon as your fingers tighten on the sheet. “Still with me?” You nod, then remember he can't see you properly. “Yes. Slow.” He waits another breath before he moves. <<else>> He pushes in slowly — so slowly it's almost worse than fast, because you feel every millimeter of him claiming the territory you promised. <</if>> 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 you, his weight along your back — he stays, letting you adjust, letting you breathe, and his hand finds yours on the sheet and holds it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpenalty-stage">><<include "AthPenalty06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepenalty/" "02">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> Then he moves. You shift your hips an inch and the new angle takes the breath out of you. He feels you tighten and holds there until you can speak. <<else>> Then he moves faster. His fingers dig into your hips. You grip the sheet to keep from sliding forward. <</if>> You hear yourself say his name. He finishes first and stays close, moving gently until you follow. He sinks onto the bed beside you, chest heaving. The belt is still on the floor. His breathing settles into four counts in, four out. Your ass aches. You feel the warmth run down your thigh and pull the sheet over you. “Stay,” he says, still looking at the ceiling. You put your head on his chest. His heart is still racing. You stay there until it slows. <<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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> The judges gave him the fight on points. He has the replay running on mute when you arrive. He paces between the television and the door. On the screen his opponent takes the last round again. “It’s on your record,” you say. “Shouldn’t be.” He stops pacing. “He outworked me. They gave me the call.” He hits the wall with the heel of his hand. “I can’t give it back.” You put your hand on his shoulder. He flinches and turns. He kisses you hard enough to catch your lip against your teeth. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "01">> His hands find the only exit they recognize: your clothes. Shirt off over your head without ceremony — and under it the red lace you wore for the after-party that isn't happening, bra and panties, the one extravagance in a week run on envelopes — and then his hand is on your shoulder, pressing you down, and his cock is out and hard and against your lips before the anger has anywhere else to go. You take him in. He gathers your hair in one fist — steering, not forcing — and takes your mouth in the short, vicious rhythm of a man working a heavy bag, and you take that too, hands on his thighs, throat opening on every third stroke, because this is what tonight needs and you're the only surface that will absorb it. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "02">> He pulls you up off your knees and bends you over the arm of the dark couch, and he tugs the red bra down in one motion, bunching the lace — and he takes you from behind, hard enough that you have to brace your hands on the cushions. One leg of the couch scrapes across the floor. Behind you, he still hasn't caught his breath. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "03">> Then he turns you over — lays you out along the cushions, your legs up and spread in his grip, his palms hot under your thighs — and it slows down and gets worse: deeper, heavier, his weight pinning you into the gray cushions while the anger pours through him into you at title pace. You wrap your legs around him anyway. Holding the shape of him together while the replay plays behind his eyes. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athcool-stage">><<include "AthCool05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletecool/" "04">> He comes with a harsh groan, deep, his whole weight dropping onto 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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> 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 — late in 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?” “You loaded the right in the first thirty seconds. I saw it.” He stops pulling at the tape on his wrist. “You saw that?” “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 through there.” <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpost-stage">><<include "AthPost02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepost/" "01">> The fighters' lounge behind the dressing rooms is dim and gray and private — one couch, one ice bucket, one door that locks. He locks it. Under your coat you're wearing what his text told you to wear: the neon green bodysuit, mesh, cut away at the sides — a corner flag of an outfit — and he takes you in with one long look before anything else happens. Then he stands, and you kneel up on the cushions, and he pulls the mesh aside rather than off — his whole philosophy in one gesture — and takes 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, 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 die in the little gray room. 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 wall, 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." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athpost-stage">><<include "AthPost03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletepost/" "02">> The adrenaline lies. It says it's done — and then he looks at you, kneeling on his couch in green mesh, and it isn't. "Round two," he says, and turns you around, and takes you from behind, standing, your hands on the couch back, everything still half-on and fully aside: no undressing, no ceremony, just the long muscle of him working the last of the fight out through you. The couch takes the count. The ice bucket sweats on the table. Somebody's music thumps two rooms away, and in here there is only breath and rhythm and the little locked door. This round he wins on points: patient, economical, the right hand loaded from the start. When it's over — really over — he sits down heavy beside you and wraps a towel around his fist like a corner man. He hands you a water bottle from the bucket, 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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> He wins the next fight on points. You wait for his text while the arena empties. He texts you the hotel, not the car. Room 412. “Not the gym kit this time,” he said. You bring the sheer green dress. 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/" "01">> He sits on the arm of the couch and you kneel up on the cushions in front of him — the green mesh he asked for, cut away everywhere a corner man would tape — and work 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 the fight purse doesn't cover. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "03">> A green neon sign buzzes on the wall: NO BULLSHIT. You laugh. “I booked for the sign,” he says. He stands at the black couch and you sit back on your heels and take him again, deeper this time, his hand cupping the back of your head while the sign throws green letters across both of you. You work him slowly. You hear him start counting his breaths again. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit04">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "02">> He pulls you up, turns you, bends you over the arm of the couch — the sheer green bunching at your waist, down off your shoulders, wherever his hands decide it lives tonight — and takes you from behind slowly. He keeps the pace steady. When his shoulder catches, he shifts his weight to his other arm. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athkit-stage">><<include "AthKit05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletekit/" "04">> He lays you along the couch and climbs over you. One green strap catches under your elbow. You pull it free as he starts to move faster. He comes across your stomach with a sound that's half groan, half exhale, and collapses beside you into the cushions, still breathing hard. The ice bag leaks onto the couch. He looks up at the ceiling. “Same seat next fight. You're my lucky corner.” You reach for a towel. "Get some sleep first." He takes the towel and closes his eyes. <<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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> 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. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna03">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "01">> Your foot shifts on the bench — an accident, then not an accident — and finds him already hard against the towel, which is its own answer. “Sorry,” you say, not sorry at all. “Slipped.” “You did it on purpose.” His hand closes around your ankle. Not stopping. Measuring. “That’s not in the gym curriculum.” “Consider it cross-training.” You work him with the sole of your foot, base to tip, slow, the way he taught you to work a bag — and his jaw does the thing it does at the top of a heavy set. The steam moves. Nobody hurries. <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athsauna-stage">><<include "AthSauna04">><</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 he goes over onto his back on the bench towel, and suddenly you’re over him, between his legs, 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 "AthSauna05">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "09">> He stands at last — to dip water, he says, which is a lie — and you kneel up on the warm boards and pull back 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 "AthSauna06">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "05">> <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>> You take his hand and show him where you want it. The bench creaks when you shift your weight; he braces a heel against the floor. <</if>> 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 "AthSauna07">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletesauna/" "07">> Then he does the thing nobody pays him for: he lifts you off his lap, lays you back on the bench, and puts his mouth between your legs — no plan in it, no trade, just a man's mouth in the steam while your head tips back over the wood and your eyes close on their own. The heat has been building the whole time; his tongue is what tips it. You come against his face with one heel braced on the top bench, and he holds you still through it with two hands on your hips, patient as a corner man between rounds. <<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/" "10">> He turns you onto your back on the low bench — your legs up around his waist, the cedar glowing behind him — and 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>>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> 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>

<div class="media-container dl-client-portrait"><img class="game-media" src="img/characters/athlete.png" alt="The athlete"></div> 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. "I win," he says again, quieter. "I get a prize." <<linkreplace "Continue">><<replace "#athmat-stage">><<include "AthMat02">><</replace>><</linkreplace>>

<<vid "scene/athletemat/" "01">> 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 "AthMat03">><</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: the orange set, 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. Each time the bag swings back, he hits it before it reaches him. 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. You’re still in the pink tank you trained in, on your knees on the old gym floorboards, and 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, puts you on your hands and knees on the floorboards — and for a moment he’s inside you instead, your thong dragged aside, hard, brief, like a punch compressed into a single deep stroke that makes your arms buckle. One thrust. Two. His hands grip your hips like grips on a bar. 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>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "01">><</if>> This time the invitation has a letterhead. PARTICIPANT REQUESTED — STUDY NO. 7: PARTICIPANT 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. The clinic's stamp is still legible beneath two strokes of black ink. Compensation: $500, payable at the end of the session. You read it twice at the kitchen table. The second time, you initial each page. The last page has a space for a witness. You leave it blank. 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. “Variable B,” he says, and buckles the gag. He checks the strap with one finger before making a mark on his clipboard. 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "02">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "03">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "04">><</if>> 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, <<if setup.sceneHasPenis()>>the muscles tightening around the toy as he asks you to name each sensation<<else>>your cunt clenching on the toy while you say cunt because he asked for precision<</if>>, 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "05">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "06">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "07">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "08">><</if>> 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>>

<<if setup.resolveBodyArt("img/client-approach/scientist-01.png") isnot "img/client-approach/scientist-01.png">><div class="media-container"><img class="game-media" alt="The Chair" src="img/client-approach/scientist-01.png"></div><<else>><<vid "scene/scichair/" "09">><</if>> 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>