[Book of Eros] Chapter 36 - Reiko’s room. (Patreon)

“That… went a lot smoother than I expected,” Leo admitted, gently closing the door to Reiko’s room.

“You’re telling me!? They haven’t been this accepting of someone I introduced them to since middle school!” Reiko groaned and threw herself face down on her bed out of pure frustration.

The two of them had been exceptionally nervous when going to Reiko’s house right after school. Leo was worried about making a good impression while Reiko feared her parents wouldn’t like him when seeing him for whatever arbitrary reason they chose. But it turned out that both of her parents looked at him, commented on his ‘exotic foreign looks’, asked him to take care of their daughter and kept on excitedly asking questions about Leo’s life as if he was already part of the family. That led to Reiko taking him to her room after 30 minutes, just to have some privacy. Something that surprised Leo was how fluent her parents’ English was, though since they were apparently the ones who taught Reiko, it shouldn’t have been a surprise at all. Something about preparing oneself for any business opportunities, they said, and praised him for learning Japanese on top of English and his native language.

“I don’t get my parents,” Reiko complained against a pillow. “It’s either zero or one hundred with them.”

“Ahaha…” Leo laughed awkwardly, unsure of how to respond. So he did the sensible, smart thing and changed the topic, looking at his girlfriend’s desk. It was clean and all the utensils were neatly arranged in their cases or in bamboo pen holders. “So this is where the magic happens?” he asked her.

Reiko’s head rose hastily, face blushing madly. “D-Don’t look inside the drawers!” she nearly yelled, causing Leo to burst out laughing, throwing his head back.

“Okay, now I know where you keep your stuff,” he said, and Reiko face-palmed. “Don’t worry, I won’t look without permission.”

“Thanks…” she said, but the contrast between her gentle tone of relief and the red spot on her forehead was still too funny to him, so he couldn’t stop laughing. Thankfully, his girlfriend had a sense of humor and laughed along with him. “It’s not fair, though. I bet you don’t have a porn stash I can find.”

“Even if I did watch porn, which I don’t for obvious reasons, I’d do it in an incognito browser window,” Leo answered.

“So you’ve never watched porn in your life?” she asked, curious. Leo noticed that talking about this sort of stuff wasn’t as embarrassing as it should, but then again, she’d blown him and he’d fingered her on the rooftop of the school. It felt liberating to talk to her freely about it with her, and she seemed to feel the same.

“I did when I hit puberty, of course, but after realizing it did nothing for me, there was no reason to. I got my sex ed. the boring way, with actual reading.”

“Better that way,” Reiko giggled. “Sometimes I think porn rotted my brain.”

“Well, you are somewhat of a perv,” Leo grinned.

“S-Shut up. You’re the one who’s being too conservative,” she argued.

“Am I?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “A girl likes feeling wanted, okay? You could stand to be a little more aggressive.”

He sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “I just don’t want to screw things up, you know?”

Reiko smiled and sat at the edge of her bed, patting the spot beside her to have Leo sit with her. When he did, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m scared of screwing this up, too.”

“You don’t look it,” he chuckled.

“I’m more scared of losing a friend because I did nothing,” she admitted. “I… I was really close friends with a girl from this town up until middle school. Then we just... drifted apart and I did nothing about it. When we got into different high schools, it sealed the deal and we haven’t even spoken in two years. I don’t want something like that to happen again because I was too afraid of saying the things I felt.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “And I appreciate it.”

Reiko smiled and went for a kiss. She slipped her tongue between his lips and put a hand on his cheek. It felt too good not to reciprocate, but the act of kissing made him remember the Book of Eros.

“Oh!” he exclaimed.

“W-What? Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“No, no! Sorry,” he laughed awkwardly. “I just remembered that… I wanted you to have a look at this,” he said, taking the book from his pocket.

“You’re always carrying that?” she asked, blinking.

“I don’t dare have it out of my reach,” he explained. “But that’s not important. When I let you look at it, how much did you see?”

“Only the first few pages,” she answered.

“Here, read from this page forward,” he said, giving her the book, opened at the page where he’d started reading the other day. “Since we learned the powers of the book are real then… are the rest of these real as well?”

Reiko read the pages Leo suggested as he waited patiently. Reiko was a faster reader than he was, so it didn’t take her that long. “W-What on earth!? These are just… uh… I don’t know! P-Pleasure enhancements, sharing sensations and even f-fertility control?”

“What do you think?”

“…” Reiko pursed her lips and frowned. “I’m… curious.”

“Right?” he sighed. “You can’t really read this and go ‘yeah, whatever’.”

She nodded in agreement. “Many of these have conditions where you have to do it with more women, though.”

“It’s why I showed it to you,” he admitted. “I’m not going to hide things from you. Instead, I’d rather we figure things out together, if that’s okay with you.”

Reiko blinked at him, cheeks slowly reddening before she smiled. “Okay.” Her eyes turned to her desk, and Leo followed them to notice they were looking at the drawer she’d prevented him from looking inside. She sighed. “I wanted to talk about this after I had sorted out my feelings some more, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

“Eh? What do you mean?”

Reiko stood up and opened the drawer, taking from it a sketchbook which she held to her chest. “Look. To me, drawing is as much a hobby as a way of self-expression. When I don’t understand something about myself, I start drawing and it helps me realize my own feelings on something.”

“Okay…”

“Knowing that…” She swallowed and handed him her sketchbook with shaking hands.