**1/2**
**12k preview chapter of my 140k book.**
——
Shin watched the sunrise behind the mountains.
Despite the sky being almost entirely covered in clouds, light still managed to break through and illuminate the city of Cloudhall. The city itself was massive, spilling outwards over the surrounding lands in every direction, and it was ringed with a stone wall that towered above most of the buildings. Its purpose to stop the mammoth-sized monsters that lived outside it from laying waste to the city whenever they grew too curious about the humans inside the settlement.
Occasionally one of the monsters would test out the city defenses and even smash down a wall or two. Still, the city was filled with heroes, adventurers, monster slayers, and even a monster response unit, so the offending monsters never lasted long against the response.
Shin himself was in training to join the Monster Hunters. This elite group would be sent out on missions to hunt down dangerous monsters for resources, to protect other settlements, or to remove the threats before they could become more significant problems.
He had begun the training almost three years ago, alongside his best friend Tato, and they had both shown a great deal of talent in both combat and magic, resulting in them being fast-tracked into the most intensive level of training, despite their young age. Shin knew that if his training hadn’t been put on hold for the week, he would already be there performing drills and training himself into the ground along with all of the others
The city of Cloudhall was the capital of the lands of Cloudvale and home to millions of residents. Human, Meld, and even some benign monsters that had slipped inside its walls. However, the population had taken a massive surge upwards recently. Hundreds and thousands of people all flocking to the city from around the world to witness the coming event.
The Tournament of Kings had come back to Cloudhall.
A tournament that occurred once a year in one of the five kingdoms, requiring each of the Kings or *Queens* as more recent history had come to allow, to play host on a rotating basis, and it had been five years since the last tournament was held in Cloudhall. Shin had been only thirteen-years-old back then, two years too young to be allowed into the Arena to watch, so he had missed the spectacle despite his best efforts of sneaking in to see. *This* time, now at eighteen, he was *more* than old enough to watch, and that’s *precisely* what he intended to do.
The preliminary rounds for the tournament had actually already started almost a week ago. Still, he didn’t have the money to pay for tickets for every single day of the tournament. Instead, Shin had every intention of making Mai help him drag Tato out of his captivity to watch the *finals*, which were now only hours away, and the only thing he had left to do was to go and find his two friends.
Shin stood up from his perch on the edge of the building and dropped off without fear before quickly making his way towards the healers building, and when he found it, he stopped on the roof across the road and peeked through the window of his friend’s now-permanent room. Tato was sitting up in his bed, as he usually was at this time, and Mai was also there, having come to visit Tato early, which was not at all unusual for her—Shin watched them undetected, and let his mind drift for a moment.
Shin had met Tato when they were both very young. They had both been born in a small city on the outskirts of Cloudvale before it had been wiped from existence by a very unusual monster invasion that they had barely managed to survive. They had fortunately managed to hide long enough to be saved by some passing Monster Hunters that had been sent out to investigate the reports of unusual activity. They had been some of the very few survivors, and along with the others, they had gathered up everything they could salvage and headed for the capital city of Cloudvale.
The monster hunters had actually gone out of their way to escort them to the capital, protecting the small caravan along the way, and it was lucky they did because they ended up being attacked no less than three times during the journey. They seemed perplexed at the strangely increased monster activity, but they were strong and more than enough to handle the threats with ease. The trip wasn’t short, and it had taken them almost a full month to travel to arrive at Cloudhall City.
Shin, Tato, and the other surviving orphans had all been placed into an orphanage, almost as soon as they had arrived in the city. Some of the children did have distant families that lived in the capital, and so they were only in there for a short while before they were taken. Neither Shin and Tato had anybody but each other.
The destruction of their home had instilled a sense of just how uncaring the world could be on them both, and they had developed a burning need to become strong enough to protect themselves from anything like what had taken everything from them.
They harassed everyone they could until they were finally let into one of the young fighting schools. Well, *Shin* hassled, yelled, and punched people while Tato just nodded gravely and stared at them until they finally cracked.
They had both taking well to the fighting, rising quickly up to the top as some of the most talented to have joined in many years, both seemingly having a well of talent in combat, albeit different types. Shin had turned out to be a genius at hand to hand fighting, learning new moves far quicker than the average child his age, and performing *well* above his class. Tato, on the other hand, had discovered a *prodigious* skill in magic that far exceeded even that of the oldest students at the school.
They fought, they learned, and they grew together, and when they had both turned fifteen, they managed to drag themselves away from peeking on the girls long enough to take and pass the exam to join the actual Monster Hunter training.
Which was when they both met Mai.
Mai had joined, completed, and passed the same exam they had with better marks than the vast majority of the other students. Still, she was shy, nervous, and easily embarrassed, all things that made her fade into the background despite her exceptional skills—she had taken to following the both of them around, and neither of them minded.
Mai *was* a pretty girl after all, but they soon found that she was intelligent, sneaky, and strong in a way that neither of them could quite match. She was a genius at learning how to use weapons and learned even more quickly than Shin did, at least in that area. It made her a menace to fight—she was small, fast, and could perform feats of agility, flexibility, and balance that were astounding to watch.
The teachers often spoke of how she learned weapon techniques faster than anyone had ever seen before and had easily surpassed every other student in the subject within *weeks* of picking up her *first* weapon. Shin took every chance he could get to stir her up enough to fight him, and the three of them grew in leaps and bounds together.
Shin had fallen entirely in love with fighting.
He often found himself falling into a fugue of adrenaline and exultation that lasted *long* past the spars. Soon almost every fight brought out that same feeling, it fueled him to train more, fight more, and learn as much as he could, and towards the last year of their training, Shin had grown skilled beyond all of the other trainees, and even some of the instructors held back only by his lack of attributes.
Mai was one of the few who could actually keep up with him in spars and learned at almost the same pace he did, and besides—wrestling with a cute girl was just a bonus and one which led to several embarrassing moments for them both.
Tato, unfortunately, couldn’t keep up with either of them in the physical areas. Still, he completely dominated them both in *anything* magic, academic, or strategy related, his mind seemingly capable of creating complicated plans on the fly that would leave him in the perfect position to take advantage of them.
Shin and Tato found something else in common with Mai, once they had all grown close enough for her to reveal it. After a particularly hard-fought spar that left the three of them beaten, bruised, and burned, Mai told them how she had been abandoned by parents outside the walls of Cloudhall when she was very young. She mentioned how she had been picked up and taken in by a kind old lady who had run another of the many orphanages within the city.
Which brought him right around to thinking about how they ended up where they were now, nearing the final exam of their training for Shin and Mai to gain the license needed to become fully-fledged Monster Hunters.
But not Tato.
Two years into the training, Tato’s health had started to rapidly decline with no apparent cause. They had ended up taking him to every single healer in Cloudhall, and even some far outside of it but, not a single one could cure him with magic, herb-lore, or conventional means. Tato had grown progressively worse to the point that he had been stuck in bed for the last two months, unable to move around much with his body rapidly deteriorating.
Shin felt his eyes start to water at the thought and roughly scrubbed them with the back of his hand.
Everyone they had talked to had said they didn’t expect for him to live longer than the year at the rate he was declining, and that was with Shin and Tato secretly doing everything they could to stop it with their own *illegal* methods.
Shin felt a hopeless pit in his stomach at all of their failed attempts. A wretched feeling tried to wrench its way up to his chest. He fought it down and did his best to calm himself, but it took a great deal of effort, and after several long minutes, he finally opened his eyes once more, now settled.
Shin glanced back down at the window before he stood up and leaped from the roof, across the road, and landed on the windowsill of Tato’s room with nary a sound. Mai had still easily spotted him mid-leap despite his attempt at stealth and rushed to open the window.
Shin ducked down to slide inside before taking a moment to pull Mai into a friendly headlock and kissed her on the top of her head in greeting, leaving her bright red and making muffled noises into his chest.
Mai’s hair was long, straight, and pitch black, and her skin was a pale white color despite all of the time she spent outside. However, it was a common feature amongst those in Cloudvale, a kingdom seemingly forever covered in clouds. Mai wore a black shirt with long sleeves that reached her fingertips. A black skirt that reached midway down her thighs, with black tights underneath. All made of a thin and stretchy material that reached down to her toes. She wore a pair of thick black combat shoes that were lined with steel.
Shin let her go after a moment before turning to find Tato smiling brightly at them.
“Hey, Shin. You’re early today.” Tato said with a smile.
Tato was in a standard hospital gown, dyed a pale blue color, with legs covered by the sheets on the bed, he had short, dark brown hair, a lithe build, and despite his slowly weakening body, his eyes were sharp and glittered with intelligence.
Mai climbed back onto her chair by Tato’s bed, and Shin laughed at the comment.
“I didn’t interrupt the, you know?” Shin pressed his tongue against his cheek three times and smirked.
Tato flushed at the lewd comment, and Mai’s face went bright red.
“I didn’t!” Mai said, wholly embarrassed, and pulled her knees up to her face.
Shin just laughed again at their reactions.
“It’s not funny,” Mai mumbled into her legs, but it came out muffled.
“It’s a little bit funny,” Tato said with a quiet smile, after taking a moment to recover.
Mai shot him a betrayed look, and Shin grinned before stepping towards the bed.
“Tato! What are you still doing lazing about in bed? Don’t you know we have a big day ahead of us?” Shin said leadingly and held out his hand to Tato.
“A big day?” Mai said quietly, her still muffled voice filled with curiosity.
Tato raised an eyebrow at him and glanced out of the window in thought, but not even a moment passed before he turned back and took Shin’s hand.
“The finals?” Tato guessed amusedly.
Shin nodded before glancing over at Mai.
“*Three* tickets,” Shin said quickly.
Mai’s face lit up behind her knees, and she lifted her head to respond.
“Thanks, Shin. I’ll pay you back, I promise.” Mai said quietly, sounding quite happy.
Shin looked back down at Tato and found the other man already rolling his eyes at the impending joke.
“I think we can come to an agreement,” Shin said lecherously and waggled his eyebrows.
Mai squeaked before immediately diving back behind her knees, and Shin just laughed at her embarrassment.
They helped Tato get dressed in his old training clothes, long black pants covered in pockets that were held tight against his skin. A black shirt with long sleeves, and the same type of combat boots Mai wore. It was the standard training equipment they were expected to wear while undergoing monster hunter training. Shin was dressed much the same as only *his* pants had no pockets to avoid giving anybody something easy to grapple during a melee.
All of their training gear was made of a durable and stretchy fabric designed to survive as many spars and training exercises as possible before needing to be replaced. Even so, they had all gone through many sets each.
Mai helped Tato up onto Shin’s back, stealing the bedsheet to tie the man’s legs together to alleviate some of the difficulty in being carried. Once he was adequately secured, they escaped from the room’s window, leaping back to the building Shin had hidden on earlier.
Shin maintained a calm pace across the city and made sure to keep the jostling to a minimum, using smaller smooth jumps to cross to nearby buildings. Mai followed closely at their side, whispering with Tato.
Shin found himself thinking of the size of the city. It indeed was massive, especially compared to where he had grown up, and he couldn’t help but notice that despite its sheer size and the width of the roads, the number of people packed together down on the streets of Cloudhall was *ludicrous*.
Every street Shin had checked absolutely filled. The real reasons they held this tournament were easy to see. The amount of business brought into the hosting cities every time this year was insane and boosted the economy of the kingdom as a result. People didn’t just come for one day and then leave, they stayed for *weeks* before, and the city did its best to keep up with the surge.
The King’s Arena was the largest building in the city, located right in the center of the town, and it absolutely dwarfed everything around it. Funnily enough, it was only the third-largest stadium in the world. It held just over five-hundred thousand people at maximum capacity. The top spot went to the Arena in Aegis City, which was the capital of Solarvorn, the largest landmass in the world. Aegis Arena was said to hold eight-hundred thousand people and was rumored to be undergoing a renovation to increase it *even* more.
Either way, the sheer size of it made it easy for him to locate, and Shin angled towards it. As they got closer, it grew in size until he had to crane his neck right upwards just to see the top. The noise generated by the crowd was incredibly loud this close, with so many people were making their way into the many entrances that lined the bottom of the building.
Tato raised his hand and pointed to one in particular. Shin saw what he meant because of the street stalls in the way. Fewer people were heading towards that entrance, unable to see it until they had already passed it in search of the other more visible gate nearby. Shin stepped off the roof, pushed off an awning, and then a street post to get to the ground, and Mai followed his exact path without issue.
They pushed through the crowd, and Mai kept close behind them to shield Tato from anyone bumping into them. Despite the fewer people there, they still ended up standing in the queue for almost twenty minutes before they even reached the gates.
“Mai, can you get the tickets?” Shin asked easily.
Shin still had his hands curled under Tato’s legs and couldn’t reach down without letting go to get the tickets from where he had stuffed them in his haste. Mai stepped closer and looked down at the complete lack of pockets he had in his pants. Mai looked helpless for a moment, having no idea where the tickets were before Tato took pity on her.
“I saw Shin stuff them down the front of his pants earlier,” Tato said wryly.
“I don’t remember that at all.” Shin lied, trying not to laugh.
Mai’s cheeks heated up a bit, but she stepped forward bravely until the top of her head was tucked under his chin and stuffed her hand down the front of Shin’s pants without a comment. Mai found the tickets almost immediately but pretended to be struggling to find them before she wrapped her hand around him to give him a couple of gentle tugs, and now it was Shin who was turning red.
Tato noticed his embarrassment straight away.
“Serves you right, idiot.” Tato managed between laughs.
Mai made a show of discovering the tickets before dragging her hand along his length as she slipped her hand out of his pants and let his waistband smack back against his stomach.
“Found them,” Mai said quietly, but looking remarkably pleased with herself.
Mai giggled and hid her face behind the tickets as Shin bent forward at the waist, moving towards the gate while awkwardly trying to hide his reaction. Tato just laughed louder at his ridiculous posture, Shin hadn’t heard Tato quite so happy for a long while, so it made his embarrassment totally worth it in his mind. They handed over the tickets, and none of them mentioned to the guard that tore off a section of each ticket, just *where* they had been stored a couple of minutes prior.
The trio climbed the staircase up into the stadium, taking a brief moment to speak to one of the guides at the top of the stairs, who happily pointed them in the direction of their seats. They found them quickly, only two rows back from the front of the stadium, and when they arrived, Mai helped Tato off Shin’s back and into his seat.
Shin sprawled in his seat and watched as Mai helped Tato get comfortable before she sat down between them. Tato was looking around the stadium with excitement that Shin hadn’t seen on his face for almost a year, and he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips.
Shin and Tato had decided to search for a cure of their own, after the healers had finally given up and had written everything they needed inside a thick book that they had dubbed ‘Tato’s List.’ They had researched every single monster that had curative properties, even those only *rumored* to have them. When he was still able to move properly, Shin and Tato had *both* left the city hundreds of times on illegal hunts to find them, hunts that required the proper license even to attempt. When Tato had gotten too weak to keep going, Shin had simply gone alone.
Even after all this time, they had only found less than a third of the monsters on the list, and nothing had worked for long. There were one hundred and seventeen different monsters on the master list so far, and they had only caught, captured, or killed forty-three of them.
Tato had planned out a search pattern for those monsters, ordered by distance and difficulty, those quick and easy to find and defeat, at the start to those that would take *months* to find and entire *teams* of S-ranks to take down at the bottom. Each of the monsters had an optimal strategy of attack that Tato had devised, and each listing held a plethora of useful information about them.
Tato was in a league of his own here, having completed the bulk of the research almost entirely on his own, with Shin simply bringing him requested books and writing tools when he had become bedridden.
The first they had sought had been an ‘Ammit.’
The Ammit was a chimera type creature, which was partially sentient; it would trade an object with a person once defeated in combat, and the object would increase the health of the user once consumed *or* worn.
Shin and Tato had taken two flasks of water with them, dismantled the creature with their full strength, and then gave it one of the flasks of water freely. The Ammit quickly got the picture, and they traded the two flasks, back and forth several times, before giving one to Tato and one for the creature to drink. The Ammit had been healed, but only slightly, and it had glowed as it swallowed the water. Tato, after a similar glow, had reported that he felt noticeably better, and his health had improved. Still, after several more Ammit hunts, the healing effects had stopped working almost entirely.
Whatever his illness was, it seemed to adapt to any method used to heal it, and each subsequent type of healing would quickly lose its effectiveness over a few days to a month at most. They were left fighting an increasingly difficult battle against stronger and harder to find monsters to find something to cure the unknown illness.
The most recent monster that Shin had hunted on his own was a Banshee, whose saliva had been required for a mixture that was rumored to have positive effects on a person’s vitality attribute. While it had been a fun mission for both Shin *and* the Banshee, the healing itself was less effective than the last attempt they had made, as seemed to be the ongoing theme.
They were running down the clock, and Shin was starting to get desperate; the monsters on the master list were becoming further and further away from the city and were growing exponentially in strength with each number on the list. Soon he was going to reach a point where he wouldn’t be able to even *travel* to the monster before Tato’s health worsened too much. Shin’s fist clenched tightly by his side, or he would no longer be strong enough to beat the monsters on his own.
Tato pulled Shin out of his dark thoughts a moment later.
“This is amazing. I’ve never seen so many people in one place.” Tato said honestly, “I don’t remember the city being this full last time.”
“Mm,” Mai said softly, looking around with a smile. “Aegis Arena is supposedly even bigger than this too.”
Tato glanced at her and smiled.
“Nightfall’s too, though it’s not quite as big as the one in Aegis,” Tato said pleasantly.
Shin nodded, thinking of Nightfall, the capital city of the Darklands. The city was carved into the walls of a massive rent in the earth that was called the ‘Moonscar,’ it was supposedly so deep that the bottom hadn’t been fully explored. It was one of the oldest cities in the world, created in some calamity in a time long since passed.
It was home to millions of people and was called the city that never slept, its nightlife even more active than the city was during the day. Shin would have to use it as a waypoint for monster number sixty-four on their list and had been looking forward to it.
Tato opened his mouth to say something, but the crowd suddenly cheered.
Shin looked up to the massive pane of glass that hung over the top of the Arena, and a man’s face appeared on it with perfect clarity, the viewing angle shot backward, and more of the man’s surroundings were revealed.
It was the King of Cloudhall, Victor Cloudhall.
King Victor stood before the enchanted glass. His hair was a faded golden color and was cut *very* short; quite slender for a man and wore a severe expression on his face—he was forty-five years old as of this year.
Victor never made an effort to hide his dislike for the commoners in his kingdom or his prejudice against the Meld, and he wasn’t well-liked because of it. Behind him, off to the side of the glass, King Victor’s wife, Queen Hannah Cloudhall, could be seen smiling beautifully.
Hannah had long golden hair that reached down to the back of her legs, and she was twenty years younger than Victor at twenty-five. She was easily the second most beautiful person in this very Arena, second only to one of the other pictures on the glass.
Directly behind, Victor sat five thrones, four of which were currently occupied, and the fifth was obviously his own, but Shin could only name three of the Kings and Queens behind him.
King Alexander was the easiest to identify, an absolute giant of a man with long red hair and a full beard that reached down to his chest, his expression was set in a grin, and he looked as happy as any other person in the stadium with a large mug of something in his hand. Alexander was the ruler of Solarvorn, the largest of the kingdoms, and he ruled from their capital, Aegis City.
Queen Maka of Meldhaven was the next he recognized, the elected ruler of the Meld lands. She was strangely beautiful in a very exotic way, with two silver canine ears sticking out of the top of her head and a matching tail that curled under her arm and onto her lap that her hands were playing with. Her hair was the same silver color as her Meld parts. Still, she was young for a ruler, looking not a day over twenty.
Cynthia, Queen of Nightfall, was the person who took the prize for the most beautiful person in the Arena. The ruler of the moon lands and ruled from Moonscar and easily the most beautiful person Shin had ever seen, and there was no way that it was natural. There had to be some kind of power at work there because nobody even came close. If her reputation was anything to go by, she was supposedly as dangerous as any of the King’s Guards because she had supposedly killed the previous King of Nightfall and took possession of the kingdom through force.
The last person on a throne, Shin could not identify, he was short, slender, and had a head full of mid-length black hair, with a few noticeable scars covering his face, pale against his otherwise tanned skin.
“Why is there a fifth throne? Who’s the short guy?” Shin asked curiously.
Mai glanced at him before pulling her legs up onto her chair and ducking down lower so he could look over her head at Tato, Shin grinned down at her, and she went faintly red at the attention.
“He’s the new King of Sigra. This is the first time they are participating in the tournament. His name is Grimmur.” Tato said easily, “He supposedly been campaigning across the clan-lands for the last ten years, and about four years ago, he managed to unite about sixty percent of them under his banner.”
Shin raised an eyebrow with interest. That was some feat; Sigra was a violent place, to be able to unite those savages even if only partially was incredible.
“They took over Sigra and have been pouring all of their resources into turning it into a capital city to rival any of the other kingdoms,” Tato said idly, before trailing off as King Victor’s voice filled the Arena.
The King’s voice was being projected with some form of magic to reach everybody.
“People of Cloudhall, and all those who have come to the heart of Cloudvale, I welcome you,” Victor said sternly, his voice cold and even.
He certainly didn’t *sound* thrilled, despite his words, but he had to have been at least pleased about the money flooding into his city.
“The Tournament of Kings has been a tradition that has lasted for thousands of years. It has and will continue to grow ever larger, bringing in more participants from around the world.” Victor said evenly before taking a moment to catch his breath. “Today, we have once again reached the final stage of the Tournament of Kings.”
Victor lifted both of his arms and shifted them out as if to encompass everything in his sight.
“The strongest and most capable of all the Kingdoms are gathered here today, to fight each other, to defeat each other, and to attain the King’s Wish,” Victor said evenly.
Victor lowered his arms before reaching out towards the view and slashed his hand to the side in a faster movement, and the gates lining the bottom of the Arena opened.
“Please welcome those strong few who have fought, bled, and endured to be here today, to stand before us all,” Victor said coldly.
Five figures strode out of the gates on each side of the Arena to meet in the middle, and the crowd made known their adoration with a deafening roar that rose to a crescendo as more and more people joined in. Shin met Tato’s eyes again, and together they each grabbed one of Mai’s hands and rose to their feet, roaring along with them. Mai squeaked and then joined in a second later. The cheering went on a couple of minutes before it finally started to die down. They sat back down completely out of breath, faces flushed.
The five champions bowed before they headed back to their gates and vanished once more.
Shin watched as Tato coughed into his fist for a moment before he sat back, and the smile on his face transformed him. Mai was panting from the yelling, her skin completely flushed, and Shin thought he had never been more attracted to her.
Shin burned both of their expressions into his mind, unwilling to ever forget this moment.
Even the King’s cold voice could disturb the image.
“I now hand the floor to our commentator, Chamada,” Victor said coolly, before turning and walking back towards his throne.
The video feed winked out for a moment before being replaced with the face of a short man with a large, wide-mouth and absolutely no hair to be seen anywhere, not even eyebrows.
“Welcome! Welcome! People of the world!” Chamada’s voice was loud and clear. “The first fighter of today, the magic-wielding sword-swinging prodigy! A noble-born hero who hails from our very own Cloudhall city! He is known all around the world and has *dominated* every single round he has participated in! *Claire Aristide*!’
Chamada’s voice rose until he finished by shouting the fighter’s name, while the glass panel glinted once and then showed a different scene. A gate slowly opened, and the crowd roared as the man that could only be Claire Aristide stepped out onto the sand.
Claire strode back towards the middle of the Arena waving and smiling at the crowd, his expression serene on the monitor, he was young and handsome; with a head full of bright blonde hair, and he possessed a slender build, he wore a set of blue leather armor, trimmed with gold and had a very thin longsword hanging at his side.
Shin had heard of him before. Claire was a famous hero, known for helping to fight off a dragon attack from a border town within Cloudvale. He was supposedly a genius of magic and an incredibly sharp mind.
“Yes, yes! Our second fighter, a monster slayer known worldwide! Hailing from the lands of Solarvorn, he has killed most of the monsters in the book, folks! *Gregor,* the *Bold*!” Chamada howled out the man’s name.
The crowd cheered again, and the panel showed him step out onto the sand. Gregor was *gigantic*, easily seven feet tall, and he held a massive pillar made of metal in his left hand like it weighed nothing at all. Gregor held his bizarre weapon above his head and tossed it into the air, it flipped several times before he caught it without a hint of effort, and the crowd cheered.
Shin stared at the pillar—why on earth would you use that as a weapon?
He hadn’t heard of this man before, but he *looked* strong, and he glanced at his friends to see what they thought and found Mai staring at him from the corner of her eye, but she looked away as soon as he met her gaze.
“Who do you thinks going to win?” Shin wondered while squinting down at Mai in suspicion.
Mai immediately reached up and pulled her hair out of its wrap, and it fell in a curtain around her face to shield her from his gaze. Shin pouted at her underhanded escape and glanced up to Tato.
“Claire will likely win this,” Tato said thoughtfully, and Mai turned to him.
“Look at that thing Gregor is holding, though; he can’t even wrap his hands around it,” Mai said, smiling and then froze.
Tato met Shin’s gaze and grinned.
“I have something you can hold, although I’m not sure if you could fully wrap *your* hands around it, given how small they are,” Tato said casually.
Shin laughed uproariously at the usually polite man saying something so lewd, and Mai looked absolutely shocked that *Tato* had been the one to say it.
“That’s not fair, Tato!” Mai huffed before glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t think you would double team me like this.”
Mai forced herself to wink, and this time it was Tato who found himself red-faced and embarrassed. Shin couldn’t help but laugh louder, and the people around them started to stare at the noisy trio. Mai quickly lost her composure at all of the attention and hid behind her knees again.
“This is your fault, Shin; you’re a bad influence,” Tato said embarrassedly.
Shin’s laughter trailed off after a moment, unable to stop himself from picturing the sight.
“I’m sorry, Tato,” Shin said, amused, not sounding apologetic at all. “I guess Mai is the only one who could *come* *between* *us* after all.”
“Oh my god!” Mai said, mortified, at the same time that Tato yelped, “Shin!”
Shin just laughed louder.
**1/2**
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/kszf4a/tatos_list_by_elbowsnapper_nsfw_threesome