[Book of Eros] Chapter 51 - One issue resolved, but there’s much more to take care of. (Patreon)

“Alright, so we’ll just have to accept that we can’t count on occult bullshit to take away our jealousy like we first thought, huh?” Angela said, wiping her mouth with a napkin after finishing her lunch. Leo barely had any appetite after the new revelations. He didn’t understand how Angela did.

“I just confirmed that I’m okay with you two being together,” Reiko said. “But are you okay with seeing me with him?”

“I was kind of counting on the book to take care of that eventually, but I’ve said before that it still doesn’t bother me as much,” Angela answered, then hummed to herself for a moment. “I told him this last night, but I’m tired of being a third wheel here. I want him to be my boyfriend with all that entails.”

“And the only thing I really fear about you two being together is that you’ll eventually cast me aside.” Reiko’s words were sudden. It was like the urgency of the situation left no room to feel ashamed to speaking the truth. “I’m not a bombshell of a woman like Angela, after all. Nor do I have incredible talents.”

Leonardo frowned. “I beg to disagree.”

“Eh?” Reiko blinked.

“You’re sexy, cute, smart and have a talent neither Angela nor I have. Not one that can be taken away from us, but one you’ve honed yourself. We might have to worry about all this occult stuff, but I’m still not gonna let you look down on your drawings.”

Reiko was taken aback, her eyes wide and her lips parted. To Leo’s and Angela’s surprise, tears started forming in the corner of her eyes as she smiled and giggled. “Sorry,” she said, wiping them away. “I know it’s weird, but… that actually means far more than you think.”

“You heard the man. You have little to worry about on that front,” Angela chuckled. “The real issue is that, according to Mrs. Wisler, just two of us isn’t gonna be enough.”

“Mrs. Wisler!” Leo’s eyes shot open at the name and he smacked his forehead with his palm. “Why didn’t I think to inform her of this the minute it happened!? She made the damn book. She has to have an idea of what’s going on.”

“Can you contact her?” Reiko asked.

“She told me to send her an email if anything came up,” he answered, quickly typing on his phone. Reiko and Angela waited patiently as he wrote the email explaining every last detail and even attaching a picture of the blank page where the polyamory gift used to be. “I don’t know when she’ll answer, but at least she knows now.” He sighed. He didn’t really expect it would solve all their problems, but it should help in some way. Hopefully.

“Anyway, returning to what I said previously,” Angela spoke. “Even if we get to the point when we can have sex, Mrs. Wisler said that you’d need many women, right? Reiko and I won’t be enough, much as that annoys me.”

“That’s my biggest issue here,” Reiko said. “I may be okay with you two, but that’s because I know you and I like you. I don’t know how I’ll feel about Leo fucking random women.”

“But can we really afford to be picky?” Angela asked. “I mean, I agree with you, but if it takes him a month to get to know a girl then there’s no way we’re ever getting rid of the curse.”

“Should we look for candidates ourselves, then? It would give us an early idea of who we’ll be dealing with.”

“Hmm. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Though Mrs. Wisler said she was bringing another girl here, another clan member. It doesn’t take a genius to know what she’s bringing her here for.”

Leonardo could only watch as Angela and Reiko bounced ideas off each other. It made him feel inadequate. They were acting far more quickly than him. He was still sort of stunned by the whole ordeal.

He grit his teeth. He needed to step up. He needed to stop hesitating and do the things that needed to be done. It was a little late to change who he was, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use what he knew, what he was already capable of, to reach his goals. It didn’t mean he couldn’t learn new things, either.

His goal was the removal of the curse that made the Tensai clan unable to feel pleasure during sex. The way to do it was to fill the Book of Eros with sexual energy. All he knew was that a vast amount of it was needed, and that the energy produced by one woman alone wouldn’t be enough. To make things more complicated, the entity responsible for the curse was watching and made things harder by giving him a time limit and removing the one supernatural gift that most would’ve helped.

How would he approach this, then? He needed to gain the trust of people. Just like how Reiko and Angela trusted him enough to accept him dating them both, he needed to be a person who others also trusted in the same way. Could he do that? He’d either have to do it or turn to… less savory means. He didn’t want to think about it, if possible.