"THIS FUCKING WHORE!" Trin slams the beer mug against the table with a loud thud.

"What happened between the two of you, anyway? I'm missing a lot of context," I ask, taking a sip of my apple juice.

"Technically nothing. 'To each their own' and all that. That's a saying for 'don't fuck with other succubi's target' but also 'respect whatever BULLSHIT strategy other succubus uses'," she taps the table impatiently, waiting for her next drink, "So, succubi need two things to get the soul of a target, consent and love, technically sex is also there, so if your target is asexual, you're shit out of luck. Now, love is vague, but it's more of a multiplier on how much soul and experience you can suck up out of someone. Consent is another beast entirely, if there's no consent you get nothing at all. Now, how would you define consent?"

"Ha, they need to be in a state of mind where they can properly agree to something like that, right?" I shift uneasily in my seat, this is bringing back bad memories that I thought would be blocked at my current sanity.

"Pretty much, the system counts sex as consensual if both parties agree, are not under the direct influence of things like enthrallers or drugs - including alcohol -, you can't deceive the target by making them think you're someone else they actually love, and they must have the mental age for it, so no children."

"That sounds...pretty fair?"

"Ho it is fair, the issue is there are loopholes," when the waiter delivers her next drink, she drinks all of it in a few seconds before emitting a short burp, "Anyway, while you can't get consent from a child, for some fucking reason, you can groom a child into liking you when they are at their most vulnerable, and when they reach adulthood it's suddenly okay!"

"Is that what Listra did?"

"You have no idea, this cunt is a professional groomer. She takes the appearance of a child and acts as the close friend of the richest heir she can find, now you may think that no one would allow some random brat to marry themselves into their glorious bloodline, that's not how arranged marriage usually work. But this bitch has enough paperwork and double agents to get away with it. As far as anyone knows, this random little girl that came out of nowhere is actually from a mysterious prestigious family, and the official papers confirm it was always there."

"Didn't you also do the 'childhood friend' act?"

She glares at me, clearly insulted at the comparison, "It's not the same, I don't manipulate you when your brain is still forming. That was a type, I'm a personality that you can be into or not, even if that personality is not the 'real me'. The truth is people always wear masks when interacting with each other anyway, it doesn't help that..."

She breaks eye contact with me for a moment, opting to look at her drink instead.

"Succubi don't have the best reputation," she continues, "We can actually take part of people's soul without killing them or even really impairing them, it's not as nourishing, but it works. Yet, people always assume that we'll kill them first chance we get, that we're unfeeling golems that don't know what the fuck empathy is," she stares at her empty mug with dead eyes, "It's the opposite actually, succubi are some of the most empathetic creatures, we need to be in order to understand people. So it's very common for succubi to genuinely fall in love with someone, but that never ends well."

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The waiter gives her another beer, and she chugs her 7th drink of the evening. I have no idea how much is too much to drink for her, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.

"Hey, drink with me," She suddenly asks.

"If you're trying to get me drunk, won't that-"

"Yup, you won't be able to consent, this is why offering a drink is considered..." she mumbles something about "trust" under her breath.

I just order a beer and try to drink it all at once like she did, it tastes awful, and I end up coughing out half of it. She just laughs and order another beer for me, even with my endurance, I can't help but feel sick as the alcohol mixes with my blood. I don't like not being in control, so I'm entirely dependent on my menu automatically stopping me if I do something terrible under the influence.

We end up talking about random things that don't matter, how she'd like to set up a shop if she ever got the chance, how I once made a sandcastle with some kid in one universe and that was the most fun I had there, about the stupid things we did when we were younger.

"Are you madly in love with me yet?" she asks.

"I'm getting there," I answer with more clarity than I expected. I think my endurance is fighting the effect of alcohol a little too well.

"I- I was madly in love with a guy once, we traveled together for teeeen whole yeaaaars," she slams her fist on the table, "And when he learns I'm a succubus? He tries to kill me in my sleep first chance he gets! That's why being a monk's great, you're ready to fight back at any moment!"

"He doesn't sound like a great guy."

"It was three hundred years ago, and I still feel like I can't get over him. His family was killed by demons, so I get why he reacted the way he did when I told him my race."

"You told him?"

She just laughs, "Yeaaah, I was a dumbass, wasn't I? He was a great guy, always helping people in need and never asking anything in return, so I thought-" her rant is interrupted by a hiccup, "But really? Killing me in my sleep? Not even trying to kill me the honorable way? What a-" she slams her head against the table.

"What a?" I ask, flinching from the sudden noise.

"Fuck you, it's your turn to tell me about your first crush, it's only fair," she looks back at her empty mug, and orders another refill, I've stopped counting at this point.

"My first crush was..." I wait a few seconds, wondering if my mind will forcefully block that memory, but it does not. I think my sanity is mostly back to normal, that or the alcohol is messing with it somehow, "She picked me up when no one else noticed me, I was basically an empty shell before I met her."

"Did anything spicy happen?" She asks, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

"I didn't even know what love was at the time, I didn't even know what having a friend felt like," I sigh, "Stuff happened, and I left, I do that a lot."

"How do you deal with having to leave people behind all the time?" She asks.

"I try to not get attached, I've developed tolerance to too many horrible things, I don't want to trivialize relationships too."

"Coward," she gets up from her seat and flicks my forehead, "There's a children's story like this, it's a succubus who falls in love with a guy, and then he dies, and she gets depressed and whatnot. So she swears off relationships and dies of loneliness. Although it's more accurate to say she died of starvation, considering our diet."

"That's a messed up story to tell to a kid." I stifle out a yawn, how long have we been drinking?

"The morale of that story is that no relationship last forever, and you'll make yourself miserable if you just try to not get attached to anyone just because it might eventually end. This applies to friendships too, not just romance. In the end you'll always be your only soulmate, you'll be the only person that's with you till the very end. But that doesn't mean you should only spend time with yourself, it's not healthy."

"It's not like I have a choice," I shrug.

"I think you're just scared of choosing at all," she answers. She then stumbles her way back to our room, bumping into a few other drunkards who are somehow still up this late into the night. I don't immediately follow her this time, opting to simply stare at my empty beer mug, the mug stares back, as if it knows something I do not.