Alice woke against Makoto's chest. She had no idea how much time had passed.
Taking stock of herself, she puffed out her cheeks. "I hate you..."
"Hate me? You're the one who started it." Makoto smirked.
Under his thorough tutelage the previous night, she'd learned quite a few new things. A week of pent-up energy had left him more worked up than usual, and a high school girl this uninhibited was genuinely rare.
Mrs. Yukinoshita and Kayoko Akizuki both had her beat in terms of raw boldness, sure, but if you limited the competition to girls still in school, Alice was in a league of her own.
She shot him a glare, then noticed her cousin still fast asleep beside them. A smug grin spread across her face.
She cupped Makoto's cheeks, planted a kiss on his lips, and whispered, "From now on, forget Erina. I'm all you need."
"Is this about getting back at her?"
If it were Haruno Yukinoshita or Miku Nakano, he'd have assumed they were protecting a sister. But Alice was different. The fact that she'd insisted on doing this in Erina's room said everything.
"Everyone in the family has always loved her more." Alice pressed her cheek against his broad chest, mumbling. "When we were three, she took my toy, and Grandpa just gave her the doll. When I was four, I baked my first cake, and all she said was that it tasted bad..."
She rattled off grievances like items on a checklist, going all the way back to toddlerhood. Makoto could only laugh. Remembering grudges from age three took real commitment.
Alice cared about Erina. She treasured their bond. But people were complicated. Love and resentment could coexist.
She knew, rationally, that the family's childhood trauma meant they'd naturally tried to compensate by giving Erina more attention. She was still bitter about it.
The same way Aki Hayakawa understood that his parents favoring his little brother wasn't wrong, yet couldn't help resenting it anyway.
"Want to go again?"
Looking at that perfect body, paler than porcelain, crowned with close-cropped white hair and those ruby-red eyes, Makoto's interest stirred again.
As anyone knew, white-haired characters were every man's weakness.
Besides, it had been Alice's first time last night, so he hadn't pushed it too hard. Start to finish, warm-up included, the whole affair had lasted barely half an hour.
"N-no! No more!"
Alice nearly launched herself out of his arms in panic.
Makoto grinned. "And you want me to come to you exclusively from now on?"
"Then what about this?" He gestured downward.
Alice followed his gaze. Her face went pink. "W-wait... I read about this in a book..."
Some time later, Erina woke from her own deep sleep. The moment her eyes cracked open, still bleary, her nostrils twitched.
"What's that smell?"
Something strange hung in the air. She couldn't quite place it.
"Stupid Alice, making me drink so much..."
When she came downstairs, Erina found Makoto and Alice already eating breakfast with her mother and aunt. The sight of Makoto made her cheeks warm. She sat down on his other side and murmured, "About last night..."
"You passed out drunk. I carried you to your room."
Makoto bit into a slice of bread spread with house-made jam.
"I-I'm sorry..."
Guilt was written all over her face.
And now she's thanking us for it. Alice wore a cat-that-ate-the-canary expression.
"Alice, what are you smiling about?" Mana Nakiri sat across from her, freshly stripped of her sense of taste by Makoto, curiosity in her voice.
"I just remembered an old joke."
Alice's eyes squeezed into gleeful crescents.
Erina's quiet voice broke in. "So... maybe tonight we could..."
"Ah!"
Alice shrieked, yanking everyone's attention to her. Leonora, sitting directly opposite and looking like a larger version of her daughter, jumped in her seat. "What's with the screaming? Trying to give your mother a heart attack?"
Alice tilted her head toward Makoto with an innocent look. "You know, I haven't gotten to see any of this world's big cities yet. Makoto, would you take me out for a walk?"
"Makoto?"
The new, casual way Alice addressed him made everyone at the table stiffen. Erina, in particular, fixed her cousin with a sour stare.
"Sure."
He wasn't about to refuse. The girl had given him her most precious thing the night before. Turning down a request this small would make him a monster.
He suspected she had ulterior motives, though. And the moment he agreed, Alice flashed a triumphant smile and arched an eyebrow at Erina.
Watching Erina grind her teeth, Alice's grin widened.
The atmosphere in the room grew delicate.
"Ugh... my head is killing me. Leonora, make me something for this hangover."
Sōe crawled up from the floor, clutching his skull, startling Erina as she came back through the living room.
He'd slept on the floor all night. Of course he had.
Makoto smiled. "Mr. Nakiri, are we still honoring last night's bet?"
Leonora's hand jerked. The bowl nearly hit the floor.
Alice's face flushed, and under the table, she pinched Makoto's thigh hard enough to bruise.
"Bet?" Sōe looked utterly blank. He had zero memory of any wager.
But Makoto was the most powerful esper in the real world and the family's protector. Sōe wasn't about to go back on his word.
He forced a grin. "Of course, of course! A bet's a bet. Whatever it is, it's yours, Mr. Nishikado."
He assumed the stakes had been his property, maybe some inheritance rights. Important things, sure, but if Makoto wanted to take them by force, there'd be nothing Sōe could do about it anyway.
Besides, Makoto was probably joking. Teasing him. He wouldn't actually collect.
BANG.
Leonora smashed the hangover soup, bowl and all, over her husband's head.
He crumpled. Out cold again.
Well, at least he didn't need the hangover cure anymore.
In his final moment of consciousness, Sōe's only thought was: Why did she hit me?
After breakfast, Makoto took Alice into central Tokyo.
This world was set in the 1980s, but it didn't look much different from modern Japan.
Unlike a certain country famous for infrastructure obsession, Japan hadn't really changed its look in decades.
Anyone who'd watched anime from the '80s alongside shows from twenty years later would notice: the backgrounds were practically identical.
"You've got a thing for my mom, don't you?"
Evening. They'd just finished watching a movie, and Alice was pouting at him, arms crossed.
"What are you talking about?"
Makoto swatted her backside.
A "thing" is putting it mildly.
"Hmph!" Alice huffed, then spotted a hair salon across the street. Her ruby eyes lit up with an idea. "Go to the hotel first. I'll catch up."
"Why?"
"Just go!"
She stomped her foot and shoved him bodily toward the hotel entrance.
About two hours later, a knock came at the door.
Makoto opened it to find a stunning figure in a purple evening dress and red heels.
"Mrs. Leonora? What brings you here?"
His eyebrows rose.
The woman smiled without a word, took his hand, pulled him inside, and kicked the door shut behind her with one stiletto-clad leg.
Makoto glanced at their linked hands. "I'm the creditor here, and I wasn't even rushing to collect. Yet the debtor shows up on her own?"
Before he could say another word, she pushed him onto the bed and climbed on top of him.
That caught him genuinely off guard.
European women are this aggressive?
A certain collection of dirty jokes he'd heard flashed through his mind.
Maybe it was the first time she'd ever seen that expression on his face, because the woman hovering over him suddenly burst out laughing. "So, Makoto... is Auntie pretty?"
The voice gave it away instantly. Compared to an adult woman, a high schooler's voice still carried a telltale softness. Makoto stared for two seconds, then reached up and tugged at her hair.
The wig came off, revealing Alice's cropped white hair underneath.
"This is what you were doing?"
"How was it? I look just like Mom, right?" Alice put the wig back on, stood up, held the hem of her dress, and twirled for him.
Makoto looked her up and down. He nodded. "Close, but your voice is a bit too soft. And your mom has that weird foreign accent."
It was true. Leonora had a heavily accented Japanese.
"I went to all this trouble to indulge your perverted fantasy, and you're nitpicking." Alice smacked his chest.
"Fair enough. My bad."
He pulled her into his arms.
"Makoto, lick Auntie's foot!"
"..."
Give this girl an inch and she takes a mile.
He flipped her over in one motion.
"Kyaa! Auntie's sorry!"
Still in character. Incredible.
Makoto headed out again the next day. He went out every day, in fact.
But what truly irritated Erina was that over the past several days, every time she worked up the nerve to hint that they could finally spend the night together, Alice would swoop in at the last moment and steal Makoto away with some excuse or another.
Sometimes Alice needed him to taste-test a new dish. Sometimes she wanted to play cards.
The previous night, all three of them had sat down for a game called "Fight the Landlord," and partway through, Erina had fallen asleep at the table.
She didn't know why, but she'd been so drowsy lately.
And every morning, she woke up back in her room with that strange, unidentifiable smell lingering in the air.
At first, Erina had managed to drop subtle hints. But after failing repeatedly, she gave up. Her pride and shyness only stretched so far. Inviting a man once or twice was one thing. Doing it over and over again, only to be thwarted each time, was more than her dignity could bear.
What confused her most was: didn't Makoto want to? Was she not attractive enough?
The thought gnawed at her. It might have been the first time in her life she'd doubted her own appeal.
Following his usual routine, Makoto waited until Denji's father left to gamble, then set a bowl of food at the shack's door.
This is starting to feel like feeding a stray dog.
He'd considered killing the man. Thought about it more than once. But in the end, he held back. Worthless as the bastard was, he was still Denji's father. If anyone was going to do it, that should be Denji's choice.
After his daily training, Makoto resumed wandering the outskirts of Tokyo.
"Maybe I should try looking around Yokohama."
The idea struck him. News of the Gun Devil's global massacre had been all over the broadcasts for a while now. According to official reports, the Gun Devil had descended on Yokohama, then sprayed destruction across the entire planet. And the one who'd stopped it, almost certainly, was Pochita.
Which meant Pochita had likely killed the Gun Devil in Yokohama, then spent years drifting until he eventually ended up in the Tokyo suburbs, where he met Denji.
The logic checked out. Makoto set off for Yokohama immediately and began scouting the routes between the two cities.
Two months passed.
The distance was barely thirty kilometers. Back in his previous life, that was the span of two city districts. How Pochita had turned a thirty-kilometer trip into a five-or-six-year odyssey was anyone's guess.
Maybe he'd wandered in circles after the fight, maybe he'd collapsed somewhere for a long stretch. Hard to say.
Then, as winter drew to its end, Makoto found what he was looking for.
In Kanagawa, a city halfway between Yokohama and Tokyo. The very same Kanagawa that housed Rikkai Dai from The Prince of Tennis and Shohoku from Slam Dunk.
On the outskirts, he spotted it: a small, orange-red dog, drenched in blood, with a chainsaw growing from the top of its head.
"Woof! Woof! Woof!"
Pochita's eyes went wide when he noticed Makoto staring straight at him. He'd never encountered a human who didn't run at the sight of a devil.
Recovering, Pochita barked, trying to scare him off.
"Hurt pretty bad, huh?"
Makoto ignored the barking. He walked right up to the dog, pulled out a Flying Thunder God kunai, and, to Pochita's shock, sliced open his own palm.
"I heard devils can heal by drinking blood. Have some of mine."
He held his hand out. Pochita hesitated, but the scent of human blood was impossible to resist. He padded over on stubby legs and began to lap at the wound, one small tongue stroke at a time.
"I love dogs," Makoto said. "I had one once. Drove him back to my hometown for the holidays. But that night, he started seizing. Just like that. It was New Year's, and every vet clinic was closed. I never found out what killed him. He'd been fine on the drive. Happy, even."
Pochita looked up, round eyes full of curiosity.
"I still don't know how he died."
Makoto met the little chainsaw dog's gaze. A quiet smile crossed his face.
"But a devil only needs blood to survive, right? Which means you'd never just... disappear like that."
The blood on his palm had dried. Without hesitation, he drew the kunai across his skin again. Pochita flinched in surprise.
"Would you take his place? Be my new family? That's the only contract I need. Come with me."
Something in his voice must have rung true, because Pochita's large eyes softened into warm slits.
A single bark. An answer.
Then the small tongue returned to his palm.
The contract was sealed.
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EVERY 25 POWERSTONES = 1 BONUS CHAPTER