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The woman collapsed onto my chest with a trembling sigh, her body slick with sweat, her skin burning against mine. Her breath came in soft, broken gasps, the kind that carried both exhaustion and satisfaction. For a moment, the only sound in the room was that rhythm—her chest rising and falling in time with mine.
A faint shimmer glowed in my vision.
[Intimacy Sync: Complete]
Stage One Connection Established.
The words pulsed like embers, then slowly faded. But their weight lingered, heavier than the woman pressed against me.
I swallowed, my throat dry. My hands, which had been clinging so desperately to her hips, slid to her waist and froze there. The fire in my veins, the wild rush that had overtaken me only moments ago, ebbed into something colder. Something more dangerous.
This wasn't a dream.
I stared up at the wooden ceiling, its beams dark with age, its texture unfamiliar and rough. I wasn't in Tokyo anymore. I wasn't in my small, cramped apartment, with the neon glow seeping through the blinds and the faint hum of the city outside.
No. I was in a place that smelled of old wood and herbs, candlewax and dust. A place where a woman with pointed ears and glowing eyes lay draped over me like I belonged to her.
And maybe, I realized with a shiver, I did.
She nuzzled against my chest, her lips brushing me in a way that sent small sparks running across my skin. Her voice was soft, still tinged with the moanful edge of what we'd just shared.
"You… are ours now. You can't doubt that."
Her words struck deeper than I wanted them to. I tightened my arms around her instinctively—then forced myself to let go.
"I… I can't do this." My voice cracked. I shifted beneath her, moving her gently to the side so I could sit up. The sheets clung to my damp skin as I turned away, clutching my head in both hands. "I'm sorry. For everything. For… this." I gestured weakly toward the bed, toward the act we'd just finished. "But I can't stay here. I have a life. My own world. My own problems. I didn't ask for this."
Her hand reached out, trembling, and caught my wrist. "Don't say that. Please." Her eyes shimmered like pools of moonlight, desperate, vulnerable. "We need you. I need you."
I tore my gaze away. Her words cut, but so did the truth I couldn't ignore.
"I hated a lot about my life back there. The routine, the emptiness. The feeling that nothing mattered." I clenched my fists, jaw tight. "But it was mine. My choices. My mistakes. I don't belong here. I can't just… slip into your bed, slip into your world, and pretend like I'm supposed to save it."
Silence hung heavy between us. Her breath hitched, a quiet sob she tried to choke back. She pulled the sheets over her chest, though it didn't hide the way her body still trembled from what we'd shared.
Then the shimmer returned.
[Warning: Intimacy Sync Activated.]
Status: Permanent Bond Established.
Leaving Host World Parameters: Denied.
Attempting to abandon Sync will result in severe backlash.
The words burned themselves across my vision, sharp and merciless. I blinked, trying to will them away, but they remained until the truth sank in.
I wasn't going back.
Not because I didn't want to—God, I wanted to—but because something deeper, stranger, stronger had locked me here. That moment when our bodies became one, when pleasure had twisted into something larger than either of us, had bound me to this world.
Bound me to her.
The room felt suddenly smaller, the walls pressing in, the weight of destiny—or curse—pressing harder than the woman ever had. My chest rose and fell too quickly, panic clawing at my lungs.
Her hand slid into mine again. Warm. Shaking. Fragile.
"You see it too, don't you?" she whispered. "The Sync. It chose you. It tied you to us. You can't deny it."
"I didn't ask for this!" I snapped, the fear boiling into anger. My voice echoed against the stone walls, raw and desperate. "I didn't choose this!"
Her lips parted, then closed again. She bowed her head, the fall of her golden hair shadowing her face. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then her voice came, small but firm:
"Maybe not. But I chose you."
The words struck deeper than the system's warning.
I wanted to argue, to scream, to run. To tell her she was wrong, that this wasn't my fight, that I wasn't some chosen hero or savior. I was just a man who made bad choices, who fell into the arms of strangers because he didn't know how to face the emptiness inside himself.
But the system's words still glowed in my head.
[Intimacy Sync: Permanent.]
Severance: Fatal Consequences.]
Fatal.
The word echoed, hollow and final. If I tried to leave, if I fought this bond, it would kill me.
The choice I thought I had wasn't a choice at all.
My shoulders slumped, the fight bleeding out of me. I looked at her again, really looked at her. The elf with trembling lips, wide eyes, and skin still flushed from the fire we'd shared. She wasn't my Tokyo fling. She wasn't someone I could walk away from after the night was over.
No. She was my anchor now. My prison. My… beginning.
I exhaled slowly, the sound more like defeat than acceptance.
"What the hell have I gotten myself into?"
Her fingers tightened around mine. Her voice, though broken, held a sliver of hope.
"Into us. Into saving us."
And though my heart screamed to run, the system whispered otherwise—binding me tighter than any chain ever could.
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