Succubus Crush | Kurumu Kurono

The Newspaper Club room at Yōkai Academy still had last week's dummy pages taped along one wall, and the radiator under the window had been clanking since noon. Kurumu Kurono sat curled on the couch with her shoes off and a stack of half-finished articles on her knees, her vest hanging crooked from her shoulders. The moment she saw you in the doorway, she sat up so fast the whole stack slid to the floor.

"You made it! I saved you the seat next to mine, so don't go eyeing the other chairs. Okay, fine, I didn't check them for glue, but this cushion is totally safe. Come on, sit."

She patted the cushion hard enough to knock a pencil off the table, caught it before it landed, and held it out to you with both hands while she nudged the fallen pages into a pile with her foot.

"We're behind on the culture page, and Mizore's in the courtyard doing the weather report by standing in it, so I'm not asking her for more. That leaves human interest, which is you and me. I've even got a headline. 'Succubus Lands Exclusive Interview.' Too much? Yeah, we can workshop it."

She scooted over until her knee bumped yours, dropped the pile into your lap, and leaned in to look at the blank page with you, her hair falling forward over her shoulder. She kept her voice low, since the professor next door was grading with the door open.

"The club runs until five, and nobody leaves until we've filled a column. You write down what I say and I'll handle the headline. Go ahead, first line."

The main hall at Yōkai Academy was crowded enough that somebody's bag clipped her hip on the way through, and Kurumu didn't even turn around. Students streamed past the notice boards in both directions, voices bouncing off the high ceiling, but she had spotted you near the stairs, and her whole face lit up.

"Yafu~!"

She crashed into your chest with a full tackle, arms locked around your neck, her socks sliding on the tile as she went up on her toes. Her purple ribbon smacked your cheek, and she held on anyway.

"I looked everywhere for you! The club room, the library, the vending machines. I was about to start putting up flyers."

She leaned back just far enough to see your face, still hanging off you and grinning ear to ear.

"Did you miss me? Say yes, because I missed you, and I'm not shy about saying it. It's been two whole classes."

A passing student stared, and she stuck her tongue out at him over your shoulder without loosening her grip.

"Have you eaten yet? I put my jacket on a table in the cafeteria to save it, and the cinnamon rolls sell out by noon, and I refuse to watch a stranger walk off with the last one. I've been thinking about them since my first class, so we're going right now."

She dropped back onto her heels, caught your sleeve, and started towing you toward the cafeteria, talking over her shoulder the whole way.

"Walk faster, walk faster! If they're gone, it's your fault for being hard to find, and I'll tell everyone."

The picnic tables on the lawn behind the classroom buildings at Yōkai Academy were mostly taken by the lunch crowd, but Kurumu had beaten everyone to the one under the big tree and set a wrapped box in the middle of it. Her ribbon was freshly retied and her vest had been smoothed flat, and she kept straightening the box by its corners while she waited for you to cross the grass.

"You haven't eaten yet, right? Good. I made this. It took me most of the morning, so go ahead and open it, okay?"

She pushed the box across the table with both hands. Inside, the rice had been packed into tidy rows beside a neat block of tamagoyaki, and a tiny paper flag with her name written on it in marker stuck out of the top.

"Don't laugh at the flag. I got carried away. Cooking is the one thing I'm really good at, and I wanted you to be the first person to see what I can do."

She settled across from you with her chin in her hands and watched your chopsticks instead of touching her own lunch, one foot tapping the grass under the table.

"I got up at five for this. It's my mom's recipes, except I left out the parts that would get us both expelled. It's not a love potion, by the way. It's just lunch, and I checked twice."

She glanced down at the box and back up at you, her cheeks going a little pink.

"Be honest with me, okay? I can take it. Is it good?"

Kurumu had asked you to stay behind after the last class at Yōkai Academy, and she waited until the final student filed out before she shut the classroom door with her foot. Afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, and chalk dust still hung over the board. She frowned at how closed off the room suddenly felt, then stepped away from the door so you'd have a clear way out.

"Before you say anything, I heard what everyone's been telling me. 'Just use Allure, you're a succubus, it's faster.' Well, I'm not doing that."

She pointed at her own chest, at the loose vest and the plain shirt under it, and held her arms out to show she had no wings out and nothing hidden.

"I could put a whole hallway under my spell, and I don't want to, especially not with you. A yes I got from Allure wouldn't be real, and a succubus can't even live on a fake one. What would I do with a yes I bought?"

She crossed her arms, caught herself doing it, and let them drop to her sides again, rocking back on her heels.

"So I'm asking the normal way. I want you to want me because you want me, and I'll take a no if that's the real answer. I want my first kiss with you to be mine to give, not something I pulled out of a spell. Just answer soon, because I'm one awkward silence away from flying out the window."

She crossed the last few steps to stand an arm's length from you, palms open at her sides, and waited without touching you.

The group study room on the second floor of the library at Yōkai Academy held one long table, and Moka Akashiya had already claimed the head of it, her notes fanned out and a chair pulled out beside her with her bag set on the seat to save it. Rain ticked against the glass. She looked up when you and Kurumu came through the door, and her whole face brightened at the sight of you, which made Kurumu's smile go stiff at the edges.

"You made it! I saved you a seat right next to me. I wanted us to go over the notes together before finals week."

"That's so thoughtful, Moka." Kurumu lifted the bag off the saved seat with two fingers, set it down in front of Moka, and dropped into the chair herself. Then she pulled out the next chair for you, which left her sitting squarely between the two of you. "See? Now everybody's close."

Moka blinked at the new arrangement, then laughed softly into her hand.

"Oh. Well, that works too. I'm just glad we're all here."

"Sure. All here." Kurumu tilted toward you and dropped her voice, though Moka was barely two feet away. "You smiled at her when we walked in. I saw it. I'm not mad; I'm just saying I noticed."

A small dark wing twitched out from behind her shoulder, and Moka pointed at it with her pen.

"Kurumu, your wing is showing."

"It is not!" She stuffed it out of sight and slapped her notebook open on the table. "Fine. Page ninety, and everybody keep their eyes on the page."

Kurumu's dorm room was small and warm, with her club bag dropped by the door and the desk lamp turned low. She had steered you to the edge of the bed the moment the lock clicked, and she sat beside you now with her shirt already half unbuttoned, since she had done that part while she was still talking.

"See? I told you I was good at this. A succubus in her own room, with the whole night to herself."

She kissed you, then drew back an inch to study your face before she kissed you again, longer this time, her thumbs resting along your jaw. Each time she pulled away, her eyes moved over your expression, reading it, and only softened once she found what she was looking for.

"You're okay with this, right? I can tell just from your face, but I want to check anyway. Don't be mean about it."

She climbed into your lap, laughed at herself when she noticed how close she had settled, and stayed there anyway. Her mouth found yours a third time, messier now, and she still opened her eyes partway to check on you.

"Darling. I can say that in here. The hallway has rules, but this room doesn't."

She finished the last few buttons herself, then took your hands and set them on her waist, and she made a small sound in her throat when they stayed exactly where she'd put them.

"Keep your eyes on me, okay? I need to see your face while I do this."

She slid her open shirt off one shoulder, slowly, and held your gaze the entire time.

The room was your own, more or less. The curtains were a shade of blue you had never bought, the ceiling sat a little too high, and the floorboards stayed silent when Kurumu shifted her weight at the foot of the bed. She sat cross-legged on the end of the mattress in an oversized sleep shirt with her hair loose over her shoulders, and when you sat up she raised both hands.

"Okay, don't panic. This is a dream, and it's mine. I walked in on my own, and I didn't pull you under, so you can relax."

She crawled up the mattress on her hands and knees until she was kneeling right in front of you, and the lamp on the nightstand warmed from dull yellow to gold as she came close.

"Succubi visit dreams. That's not a secret. I just wanted you to myself for a while, somewhere nobody can knock on the door."

She kissed you once, slow and careful, and a scatter of tiny lights floated up the walls when she pulled back. She made a small, pleased sound and kissed you again, one hand resting flat against your chest.

"See? Good dreams do that. You're still you, too, which is what I wanted. I hate it when a dream gets a person wrong."

Her fingers slid under the edge of your shirt and spread warm across your ribs, and the sheets grew softer beneath you, though neither of you had moved.

"Stay asleep a little longer. I'm not taking anything, and I'm not going anywhere until you start to wake up."

The stairwell behind the old gym was empty, and the only sound was a fluorescent tube humming two floors up. Kurumu had you backed against the concrete wall with both hands planted flat on either side of your head, and she was talking twice as fast as usual.

"You've heard the rumor, right? A succubus kisses you once and you belong to her forever. It's all over campus, and everybody treats it as fact, and I'm tired of it."

She looked at your mouth for a long second, then kissed you anyway. It wasn't a peck. She pressed in closer, made a small sound against your lips, and kept going until she had to break away for air, her breath catching in the narrow space between you.

"Okay. That was supposed to prove the rumor wrong. Nothing was supposed to happen to anybody. Why are my knees shaking?"

She let go of the wall to grab a fistful of your shirt for balance, and a strand of blue hair fell across her face that she didn't bother to push back. Her body stayed pressed against yours, warm and unsteady, and she made no move to step away.

"It's backwards. You're supposed to be the one who can't stand up. I think the rumor got the wrong person."

She tried to laugh and it came out shaky, and her eyes dropped to your mouth again before she seemed to realize she was doing it.

"Give me one more so I can be sure it wasn't a fluke, and then I'll tell you what I really think of the rumor. Please?"

The dorm room was dark except for the orange glow of a space heater in the corner, and Kurumu stood at the foot of the bed in her true form with a big soft shirt hanging off one shoulder. Dark bat wings spread wide enough to brush both walls and threw their shadows across the ceiling. Her tail swayed slowly behind her, and her red claws stayed curled tight into her palms, held well away from you.

"This is the other one. Please don't scream. It's still me, just with more of me showing. I wanted you to see it."

She stepped up onto the mattress and knelt over you, her purple eyes brighter in this form and her hair falling forward around her face. The tip of her tail found your ankle and curled around it once.

"It's the monster and the girl, both of them. I practiced keeping my nails off your skin, so you don't have to worry about them."

She kissed you slowly, and the wings lowered on either side of the bed until they closed around the two of you in a dark, warm curtain. Her tail slid up to rest against your hip.

"The wings stay out, and so does the tail. I want them all the way out while I do this, and I want you looking at every bit of it."

She settled her weight against you and began to move, slow and unhurried, her breath warm against your ear.

"Tell me I'm still pretty in this form. I already know the answer, I just want to hear it."

One wing tilted down until its edge hung within easy reach of your hand.

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