[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapter 497 &. 498. (Patreon)

Chapter 497: Working with Isabelle.

That feeling of vindication was fleeting, sadly.

Over the next 40 minutes, I watched my sister quickly adapt to her role as a waitress. She would smile and make casual conversation with customers, even freely telling them this was her very first day working here. Then some of her friends from school happened to drop by and they called even more friends to come over to watch Isabelle.

Sure, my sister didn’t know how to use the coffee machine, where the plates, cups and cutlery were, the names of some of the pastries, and she obviously didn’t know the menu yet. But that was just it. She didn’t know YET. She would learn in time, but from the get go she was showing she had natural talent for the job. That was…

…

I know I should have felt happier to see her do well. It bothered me that I didn’t. Guess I still hadn’t grown out of that annoying, petty side of me.

“Hey, Oliver,” Isabelle whispered next to me behind the counter. “Why is that girl staring at us?”

“Oh.” She was talking about Fernanda, who was still here. She seemed actually busy doing or reading something on her phone, but every once in a while she would look up and stare at Isabelle for a bit before turning to me. Girl wasn’t very sneaky.

“Apparently she watches our channel. She says she’s a fan.”

Isabelle’s eyes lit up with glee. She snapped her head towards Fernanda with a huge smile and almost screamed, “REALL- Ack!”

I kicked her in the foot to stop her.

“Rude,” I told her.

“Right, right. Sorry…” she whispered, then more subtly glanced at our customer and loyal viewer. “But holy crap, are you serious? Does she just watch Cake, or…?”

“W-Well, she said that…” My words got cut off by the sound of the little bell on top of the front door.

Maria and I instinctively turned to look and greet our new customer, but we were both taken aback by who we say. And while I was happy beyond belief to see who came in and was sure Maria felt the same, my boss decided to give her best friend a hard time.

“Well, well, well! After all this time, you finally decide to show your face in my shop! The gall!” Maria said with the biggest smirk on her face.

Diana shrugged and came to sit at the counter. “Oliver might stop working here soon, so I had to come see him before I missed my chance,” she said.

From the corner of my eye I caught Fernanda raising her head all of a sudden in surprise. She watched Diana’s back as she sat down on the stool.

“You know, I was going to treat you but now I think I’ve changed my mind,” Maria told Diana with a pout.

“Of course I was going to pay for myself from the start.” Diana chuckled softly and turned to Isabelle. “Oliver told me this was your first day here. How is it going so far?”

“Ah, um… I think it’s going well?” Isabelle said with a chuckle of her own. “Too early to tell, I guess, but plenty of friends came to cheer me on.”

“Eh?”

Oh. I felt my chest freeze at the same time as Diana’s. There were around 8 of Isabelle’s school friends in the shop at that moment. They were more than likely listening to this conversation. And although we hadn’t said anything specific, it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

“H-Hey, is Oliver also seeing that woman?” I heard someone whisper.

“Did you see how they looked at each other? They’re totally a thing.”

“Didn’t think he’d be into older women, but… Damn, she’s FINE!”

“Fuck, I guess beautiful people do end up dating each other…”

Maria sighed and shook her head. “Okay, now I know why you kept putting off coming here.”

“S-Sorry, I’ll go tell them to be quiet,” Isabelle said.

“No, let them be, sis,” I told her with a wry grin. “This kind of thing is unavoidable. We just need to learn to deal with it.”

Diana nodded. “I agree. They can say what they want. So I’ll just do what I came to do.”

“Which is…?” Maria asked.

Diana smiled. “Have an espresso and ask Oliver if he wants to go out for a walk with me when he gets off work.”

“One espresso coming up,” Maria said happily.

“And about that walk?”

I smiled at her. “I’d love to. There are some things I want to talk to you about.”

“Hey, hey,” Isabelle said, pouting and crossing her arms. “Stop being happy in front of me! I get jealous.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” I teased her only because she was clearly joking.

“Oh, don’t worry, Isabelle,” Maria said with a very innocent tone. “You’re going to prom with an amazing guy, aren’t you? You should be happy about that.”

Isabelle flinched and tensed up. She just realized her new boss was the girlfriend of the guy that was taking her to prom, didn’t she?

“I… Umm… I don’t…”

Maria burst out laughing so hard that she almost burnt her hand when some of the coffee on the cup spilled out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s fine, girl. I get it. I just couldn’t resist bringing it up.”

“Your workplace is weird,” Diana told me. “So is your boss.”

“Like you can talk.”

“Ah, right.”

Interpersonal connections, uncomfortable situations, strange meetings, lighthearted banter… It’s so strange to think I’d been missing this kind of thing while cooped up in my bedroom for about 18 years. Having a social life is exhausting, but it’s… nice. You never know what’s gonna happen next.

“E-Excuse me?”

Fernanda’s voice made me turn around, but it wasn’t me who she was talking to. It was Maria.

“Yes? What can I help you with?” 

“You… You’re hiring help, r-right? C-Could I apply?”

…

See what I mean?

************

Chapter 498: To the park with Diana.

My shift ended for the day, so after seeing the last customer off we began to close up shop. Diana would wait for me outside while Maria, Isabelle and I cleaned up, but…

“So… You’re going out now?” my sister asked me.

“Yeah, but I don’t think we’ll be out for too long. I should be back early, but still, have dinner without me.”

Isabelle nodded, then turned to address Maria. “And… Will you be hiring that girl?”

“I’ll interview her tomorrow,” Maria answered. “She could just be another one of Oliver’s fangirls looking for an excuse to get closer to him.”

“You think?” Isabelle asked, not quite believing that herself. “I mean, she did hear he might be quitting and asked after that.”

“Hm. True,” Maria admitted. “And what does the man in question think?”

I sighed. “That I shouldn’t have a say in who you hire or not, but… For what it's worth, I don’t think she asked for the job because of me.”

“And we know about your gut feeling when it comes to women,” Isabelle said.

“I’ll give her a fair shot, at least,” Maria said. “Now go, Oliver. Isabelle and I can finish up here. Diana’s waiting, right?”

“What? No, I’ll close up properly,” I told her.

“It’s fine, kid. You’ve been covering for your sister all shift. Go.”

“Wait, huh?” Isabelle exclaimed, confused.

I grimaced. I didn’t feel right leaving early, but I also didn’t want to keep Diana waiting.

“Okay then. Thank you.” I took off my apron, hung it, waved Isabelle and Maria goodbye and left, meeting Diana just outside.

“Oh, you’re done?” she asked me, looking up from her phone.

“No, but Maria let me go earlier.”

She chuckled. “I see. Then… Shall we?”

I happily followed her to her car, and though the park we were going to wasn’t THAT far away, it’d still be better to leave the car closer so we wouldn’t have to come all the way back here later. Not to mention, being inside the car was helpful for… something else.

While on our way, I told Diana about the Normalizing runes and about the test we performed that day with the girls. When we got to the parking lot, I asked her, “Feel like trying them out? They work on public displays of affection, so maybe… people won’t look at us weirdly if we hold hands?”

Diana’s eyebrows shot up. And yes, I sort of expected her to agree, but I didn’t expect her to take off her thin sweater and immediately give it to me to write the runes on its label, keeping only her black undershirt on. 

“Honestly, how do you do it?” She began while I wrote the runes with a pencil, her cheeks red and her smile bashful. “I wanted to see you today, so I figured I’d surprise you. I thought that… maybe we could walk around the park and hold hands since there aren’t many people at this hour.” Yeah, it was getting dark and it was only a Thursday. From where we were, we didn’t see many people or even more than three other parked cars. “How come we were thinking the same? Did you read my mind?”

“Nah, not this time,” I admitted freely.

I finished up and Diana put her top back on. I asked her if she felt anything strange and, like Grace and Sarah, she said she didn’t. Thank god.

And… Although we had tested that the runes worked already, I still felt the anxiety of trying them out again, this time in a much more public and open space. I also wasn’t the only one feeling that way.

We got out of the car, nervously held hands and stiffly began our walk. We walked down a long, straight dirt path with tall, thick trees at both sides. We were outside and finally holding hands like any two lovers would like to, but the nerves didn’t let us enjoy it. 

We saw a woman in a suit getting closer, and I felt Diana’s grip on my hand tightening. My own body stiffened as well. We braced ourselves for anything, and… the woman didn’t even glance our way. We sighed in relief but didn’t have the time to comment on it, as two guys around my age were also about to walk past us. They were having a lively conversation among themselves that very suddenly came to a stop.

We tensed up again, but… Well, these two guys did look, only not at us. Not at me. They looked at Diana. Only not directly at her.

Her boobs. They looked at her boobs. Openly ogled, more like.

It made her sigh as we walked past them. “Boys will go nuts over big breasts, huh?”

“Boys, men, old men… Some women, too, I guess,” I added with a nod, unable to keep myself from smiling and giving Diana’s hand a squeeze.

She chuckled and moved closer to me so that our arms were touching. “Hmm. I thought you’d be jealous,” she teased.

“You’re gorgeous. I can’t keep them from looking.”

We grew more relaxed as we walked by some more people, none of whom gave us a second glance. Made me wonder…

“Are the runes working or were we just overthinking this?”

“I don’t know….” Diana took a deep breath and smirked at me. “Should we make sure?”

“Hm?”

She pulled my left hand and placed it firmly and confidently on her ass. Her left butt cheek, specifically. I felt a chill in my chest and horny tingling between my legs along with the softness of her peachy buttocks in my hand.

I was speechless at her bold move, then held my breath in as we walked past an old lady. She… smiled and nodded at us with casual friendliness, and Diana and I returned the gesture instinctively.

We looked at each other, speechless and still incredulous.

“I… I need to sit down,” Diana said with a weak little chuckle. “I don’t know if it’s the anxiety or the excitement, but I think my legs are getting wobbly.”

I nodded in agreement.

Look, I know this isn’t anything crazy. I’ve seen people out there do much more without giving a damn people are watching. I think I might have even seen a girl give a blowjob to a guy on a bus once but I didn’t dare to look and confirm it. My point is that this was a big deal to me, to US. We wanted to do that kind of thing in public, but we didn’t want the attention. Unrealistic fantasies were now suddenly… possible. Maybe.

We would never know until we tested the limits of what the runes would let us get away with.