Summoning Our Country - NHS Kai

Chapter 23: My Resolution

NOTE: This is rose. Just as mentioned last chapter, we will be announcing something for this one. First: we will be taking a break from releasing NHS Kai main story chapters. We have yet to completely plan what's going to happen in the next arc as it's going to involve a lot of conflict. Taking notes from your feedback on the GVE introduction arc, we'll make sure to make them a bit more concise while maintaining the engagement factor. Second: in the meantime, as Team Kai plans out the upcoming arc, I will be releasing a 9-chapter long side story called "Emissaries". This has already been planned out, so I will be releasing those chapters in place of the main story ones. Expect the first chapter by next week.

Discord: discord.gg/p7NJppEjza

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Central Calendar 1630 (9 years ago)

When people remember the things they did in the past, they often are overcome by a single, powerful emotion–embarrassment. These memories of past acts or events, which could either be monumental in one's life, such as graduating from university, or as mundane and ordinary, like stammering when greeting your neighbor "good morning", stick around with us, and it is the immense feeling of embarrassment or cringe that helps them linger for even longer. Every person is bound to have experienced this kind of mental and emotional torture.

For me, I get this feeling every time I remember or am reminded of the year 1630. It was a very important year in my life, one which I considered to be a pivotal turning point, although it will not be the last. This was due to one person–Ludius.

Ever since that first night when I realized that one of the weird regulars who hired me was him, things have never been the same. He still continued to make do on his punctual schedule when it came to hiring me, and he still offered me 150 pasos in extra fees after our time, but it just was never the same experience as before. On top of the inherent feeling of doing something malign and forbidden whenever we sexually pleasure ourselves off of one another despite being cousins, my heart was assaulted by all sorts of emotions. Most of these were feelings I've never explicitly felt for anyone before, and some I've not felt in decades.

In a sea of strangers and equally numerous potential enemies, I felt comfort in knowing that I know someone. I felt assured by the fact that he was consistent in his schedule to see me and entertain my feelings and thoughts, almost as if he had become a shoulder to cry on. Different from the real, concrete feelings I feel in my abdomen when he feels it up with his manly effects, these so-called "butterflies" in my stomach were excessively powerful. Before long, they got to my head and by extension, my perception of the man.

Today, I cringe at this looking back; oh, the vices of hindsight! However, at the time, it almost felt as if I really did have a chance at genuine satisfaction with my life, the happiness I could reliably seek out to give my life a sense of direction. My current circumstances in the Petunias of Esthirant were nothing but a dead end, and with the near unreachable position of the management, there was little I could do to force my way out of this life, let alone pursue legitimate means of freeing myself. The only thing I had built in the 12 years I had been offering my body and services was a wide-ranging rumor network that encompassed the girls from different establishments in Esthirant's red-light district. This, somehow and at least, allowed me to maintain sufficiently informed on what was going on in the rest of the empire.

"Here."

He handed me three clean, almost untouched 50 paso bills after we calmed down from our session, just like always. Unlike before, however, I could feel my cheeks turn hot red and, for reasons different from the high I got from his relentless pounding. I became conscious of the places where my eyes landed, and soon I found myself darting my line of sight all over. Remembering these little things makes my skin crawl from the cringe, the pain given by the embarrassment on a similar level to hearing the screeching of nails on a chalkboard.