Jiran arrived at the inn before First Father kissed the horizon. He had left the academy immediately after Sophia had released them from The Garden. The fervent attention from so many eyes and the constant barrage of questions had been far too overwhelming.

I don’t owe them anything other than what I have to teach. There are many more exciting things I would rather do with the rest of my day.

Jiran chuckled to himself remembering Mayalyn’s frazzled appearance after her first use of the weapons he had made her the day before.

It sure doesn't feel like that was just yesterday. What a long day.

He saw them with his aura long before entering the inn. Mayalyn was sitting in Miila and Niila’s room, the three girls in a line. Miila was braiding Mayalyn’s hair while Niila was using flashcards to teach Mayalyn how to read Imperial.

That is so ridiculously wholesome.

His chuckle transformed into a wide smile as he watched the three girls giggling and enjoying each other's company. Jiran entered the inn and went straight to the room they were in and then softly knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Niila was the first to spot who was intruding on their girl time, she playfully stuck her tongue out at him with squinted eyes. Miila greeted him with a happy smile but immediately returned her attention back to the complicated braid she was weaving.

Mayalyn’s response was the most interesting to Jiran, she looked completely shocked to see him. As if he was the last person in the world she had expected to walk through the door.

“Hi, Mayalyn. You appear to be enjoying yourself. How was your day?”

She must be focusing on hiding her ears and nose and didn’t notice my aura like usual.

Thinking he could help her relax a bit, Jiran stealthily activated his usual obfuscation on her ears. When she felt the mana coursing over them, Mayalyn’s open-mouthed stare finally vanished, replaced by a furrow-browed consternation.

“You aura bad, change why?”

It was Jiran’s turn to be confused.

“My aura is bad, what do you mean?”

Mayalyn sat quietly for several seconds searching for the correct words in Imperial.

“No more tiparaha in aura, I don’t know word. Like strong heart, laugh, cry, all tiparaha.”

“Oh, emotions,” Jiran understood instantly.

“You aura no emotions, change why?”

I’m not using my aura to project emotions like I was in The Garden, that’s just something I learned today. So why is she now wondering why I’m not doing it? Does that mean I have been previously but didn't realize it?

She must be more sensitive to aura emotions than a human, so she was able to pick up on my emotional state.

All this time, she’s been able to read my emotions…

Well, that explains a lot. Not that I would change anything I’ve done, but that must have been difficult for her at times.

“Is it really bad that my emotions are no longer being broadcast through my aura?”

“Yes! Aura bad, please fix,” Her lips turned down into a pout as she lightly smacked her knee with a fist.

“Okay okay, I’ll fix it. I just need to figure out how. Give me a minute,” Her suspicious, half-closed eyes continued to glare at him while he connected with his aura.

He remembered the feeling of projecting his emotions through his aura. It had come as naturally as breathing on purpose. Not something usually done, but with a flicker of thought, instinct takes over.

Now that the doorway to the technique was opened, Jiran realized he had a much tighter grip on what he allowed to leak through. Like a doorway in his house he never noticed, that had been slightly ajar. He now gripped that doorknob tightly and only opened it when he actively willed it.

Jiran took a deep breath and tried to relax the control but it wouldn’t budge. Now that he knew about the connection, he couldn't release it.

“I don’t know how. Sorry, Mayalyn. I’ll keep trying.”

Jiran bundled his affection for all three girls and his joy at seeing them happily enjoying each other’s company, along with his relief to be done with the hectic school day. He gingerly pushed those emotions out through his aura.

Mayalyn sniffed the air cutely and narrowed her eyes at him again before giving up on the conversation and relaxing into Miila’s attention.

I guess that means, “acceptable for now.”

Jiran plopped down on the bed next to Miila and entertained himself by occasionally poking her in the side while she was trying to finish Mayalyn’s hair. The giggles and laughter of the atmosphere soon erased the tension of his day.

The fun didn’t last long as Alatha called the twins to start their nightly kitchen duties. Jiran stopped Mayalyn in the hall with a light touch on her elbow after they left the girls’ room.

“Do you want to go for a hunt? I need to find a new material for your armor. Something to protect you from the tonfas so you can use them safely.”

“Yes, hunt sound fun,” Her eyes lit up at the prospect of doing something exciting.

She must have been a little bored today without our usual routine.

They both changed clothes and then grabbed a quick meal before heading out of the city. Cruex had already calmed down to a more normal state just a day after the festivities ended. The line exiting the city being longer than normal was the only indication that a three-day festivity had concluded.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The minute they were outside the wall, Jiran masked them and then picked Mayalyn up and took to the air. He pushed his aura to its maximum speed and even added a slight shaping to boost them quickly toward the nearby forest.

Mayalyn hooped and hollered as she enjoyed the incredible rush of flying through the air faster than a jet. In only a few seconds they had arrived at the woods which usually took them an hour to reach while running.

As soon as they landed, Mayalyn took out her tonfas in preparation for the coming hunt. She buzzed with excitement after their rushed flight. The anticipation of getting to fight with her new toys had her completely worked up.

Jiran was oblivious to her mood as he focused on his task. He walked from tree to tree, knocked several times on each one, then moved to the next.

When she realized they were going to be hunting for trees and not beasts, she stamped her foot in frustration and put her tonfas away. Only to immediately get them back out and start swinging at the air and any bush or branch that dared look at her wrong.

It wasn’t long before she got bored and started talking.

“How day academy?”

“It was intense. I had to deal with that annoying girl who messed up my uniforms. Then I got into a fight with a teacher, which made me a lot of enemies. But after that I got to meet a couple cool brothers, like big, up-tight versions of Miila and Niila. They’ve got potential, I like them."

Jiran continued moving between the trees while he talked, still not finding what he was looking for as they moved deeper into the forest.

“Let’s see. Then I had lunch and took a bunch of brats through a tour of the training grounds. This crazy girl I used to know tried to mess with me but then Professor Sophia threw her super far which was pretty funny thinking back on it.

“After that, I got a bit mad and yelled at everyone who was being stupid and that was pretty much the end of the… Why are you looking at me like that?”

Mayalyn had closed the distance between them and was centimeters from his face. She was sniffing at him furiously, her little whiskers dancing up and down. Jiran’s heart rate spiked as her eyes swallowed his focus. The surrounding trees and wildlife faded into non-existence as he swam in a sea of chocolate brown.

“Tell me more crazy girl, why you aki lu her?”

“Aki what, who?” Breathless, he shook his head and took a step back, struggling to regain his focus.

Mayalyn glared at him with the same suspicious pout she had back at the inn.

“You aura, eemootioon could feel when talk crazy girl. You aki lu her?”

“What does aki lu mean?” Jiran was pretty sure he knew what it meant. However, it was always best to be certain in these kinds of high-stakes, life-and-death situations.

My emotions must have slipped into my aura again. So I lose control when I get distracted?

Mayalyn’s claws were slowly extending and retracting in and out of her fingers as she pressed closer to him again.

The look on her face had shifted to one he had never seen before. The suspicion was still there, but instead of a pout, there was a bubbling anger he knew was a bad sign for him if he did not resolve things correctly, and quickly.

“First come aki lu, then come matani lu, then come ranpana lu, then babies. You understand?” Her sing-song tone as she recounted what sounded like a nursery rhyme was juxtaposed with a dangerous glint in her eyes and claws that were no longer retracting.

Double crap.

Okay yeah, Olive is gorgeous. Who wouldn’t be attracted to her? The girl is a twelve on the Richter scale. But she’s also around a fifteen on the FAFO scale.

Mayalyn saw the gears spinning at the speed of light in Jiran’s brain and advanced another step. Her lips parted slightly as she bared her teeth and a primal growl erupted from deep in her chest.

Focus, Jiran! One crazy at a time, how do I calm Mayalyn down? I didn’t think she would get this jealous. It's flattering to have her react this way. I just wish it wasn’t so dangerous!

Jiran knew she wasn’t going to give him time to figure out both his feelings and the perfect approach, so he followed his gut.

Far faster than she could react, Jiran closed the distance and wrapped his arms around Mayalyn in a soft embrace. Her body went rigid against his. Her breath was trapped in her lungs as her brain sluggishly tried to catch up to the rapidly altered situation.

Jiran breathed deeply, enjoying the smell of the perfumed mineral oil that had been rubbed into her hair. Her natural scent and a light tinge of sweat layered perfectly with the oil, creating an intoxicating aroma that temporarily overloaded his brain.

He clawed for control over his teenage body as the rounded and supple parts of her pressed against him. Combined with the smells assaulting his senses, Jiran almost failed.

She’s so soft!

Jiran felt her relax into the hug a few seconds later, he saw through his aura that her claws retracted and a soft, delicate smile fell over her face.

If I let her go, she might go right back into animal mode. I guess I’ll let her know how I feel so she stops being so jealous.

Jiran wrapped up most of his emotions for Mayalyn into a little bundle and pushed them through his aura.

Acceptance, respect, satisfaction, contentment, joy, and about one-fifth of his feelings of attraction flowed into the unsuspecting girl.

Her body jerked like he had hit her with an electrical shock. He immediately let go and took a step back.

Her face and the little brown ears on top of her head had turned completely crimson. A small coil of steam was escaping from each of her ears. A tiny trickle of blood leaked from her left nostril, the little stream of red sliding down to drip off her chin.

Whoops?

She stared blankly into the distance. Jiran waved his hands in front of her face and called out to her, but she remained catatonic. For several seconds she remained unmoving, not even breathing, until suddenly a sharp intake of breath brought her back to reality.

Frantically turning her head from side to side, she looked for Jiran. She sighed in relief when she found him standing next to a tree a short distance away, knocking on it as though nothing had happened.

Mayalyn quietly watched Jiran work as they moved forward. He could tell she was deep in thought and decided not to interrupt her. An hour passed before he finally found what he had been looking for.

To Mayalyn, the tree looked like any other. The thick off-white bark was the only thing that marked it as any different from the thousands of other trees all around them.

She watched as Jiran rested his palm on the tree for several minutes with his eyes closed. He then slowly peeled back a layer of the bark to reveal a thick milky substance that he collected in an empty water skin.

As Jiran was filling his fifth skin with the milky liquid, the ground began to rumble and shake.

Jiran didn’t look away from his methodical and deliberate task as he spoke loudly enough for Mayalyn to hear him.

“Can you handle that, please?” She immediately understood. Her tonfas were released in a flash of movement and while a wild, sadistic grin split her face.

The rumbling continued to intensify until it suddenly stopped. Ten meters away, the ground exploded as a thickly-furred head larger than Mayalyn’s entire body breached the surface.

The beast had a long but thick cone-shaped snout that split in four directions like an origami fortune teller.

Each of the four folds of its face had two sets of long crooked tentacle whiskers that tasted the air.

There were no eyes or ears to be found on the beast, just a gaping diamond maw full of arm-length teeth. Each individual tooth had a hole at the tip which dripped with acidic saliva that melted the dirt and rocks beneath it.

As the beast faced Mayalyn, a jet of acid sliced through the air from one of its pointed teeth. She wisely stepped to the side as the spray of green liquid melted through rock and tree with equal ease. Without hesitating, she charged right for the massive monster easily a hundred times her size.

Her scream was full of fury and pent-up frustration as she charged into battle, tonfas leading the way.