Behold heaven, and the highest heaven, and the abyss and the earth tremble at His visitation.

- The Book of Sirach (Ecclesiaticus) 16:18 (circa 180 B.C.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aika stood in the hallway dripping wet as Hank and Anna approached, both of them wearing clothes they'd borrowed from Sehrish. Aika wore two towels -- one around her body and another around her hair, wrapped up like a turban. She massaged her left arm with her other hand, acting as if it hurt. Hank was certain he knew the reason why. His butt was also sore from when she tackled him in her glade.

Anna kept her eyes cast down, bowing to show respect. "Sensai," she said and nothing more.

Aika wasn't interested in Anna. "You now know my true nature," she said to Hank. "I must let you further in."

As usual, she made little sense. "O-kay," Hank said, drawing out the word.

Aika stepped up close, leaving soggy footprints. "You are way too big to ever fit all inside of me. Oof," she said with a grin as Hank snuffled a laugh. "What?" she asked, laughing back, both serious and confused.

"Nothing, Sensai. You're just bizarre."

Anna nudged Hank with an elbow, imploring with her eyes that he show respect. "Sensai," Anna said again. "You called for me too?"

"Your day is done. Normal business hours have ended, and time to go home."

Anna swallowed hard. "But… Sensai. Hank-sama brought me here. I don't have a car."

"Hmm. There are other ways."

"But…"

Teek peeked out from the kitchen, eavesdropping on the conversation. "I can take you home!"

Anna seemed ready to cry. "But…"

Aika sensed Anna's dismay, but Teek was the one who took action. She was soon at Anna's side, looking up at her, as she stared down at her feet.

Hank eyes began to tear up as well. "Why do you do this to me?" he implored of Aika. "Please don't make her cry."

Anna wiped away a hot tear. "I'm not crying, sōshoku-kei. It's just… I can't go home. I still have no place to go."

Teek took Anna's elbow. "You can go with me," she said.

"No!" Anna said, "I actually right now have no home! My apartment… something terrible happened."

"There will be more," Aika said, repeating her ominous warning.

Anna carried on. "And I can't to my family. Sue Marie's working tonight, and my Fuji's laid up at a friend's house. So I have nowhere to go!"

"Sue Marie?" Teek labored to recall. "She works at a bar?"

Anna nodded. "She's a Tropical Bikini Girl. She works almost every night."

Teek perked up the instant she heard the word 'bikini.' "Oh! Let's go!" she said.

"Ah… aren't you underage?" Hank asked Anna.

"Tut tut. Squirrel Girl will get me in."

"That's kinda against the law."

"Not if I don't drink."

"She could get in trouble."

Anna fairly snarled. "Listen, I know how to get in and out of trouble without help from you, thank you very much. If worse comes to worst, I'll put on a bikini and be a dancer. Bikini Girls can be nineteen, you know."

That really got Teek's attention. She could no longer stand still. "Let's go, let's go, let's go!" she said, dragging Anna away by an arm.

Now alone with Hank, Aika led him through her bedroom to an attached master bath. It was functional and not much else. There was a toilet and stand-up shower behind a glass door. A wooden door beside a changing bench opened into what once had been a linen closet. Now it led to a room that had been the apartment's third bedroom. Like what Rio had done at her place, Aika had turned the room into a Japanese bath.

The tub was white and nearly square, with round corners and an ornate gold rim. Big enough to hold ten people, it took up most of the room. A thick tiled surface ran around its exposed edge, veined in gray and black, and looking sturdy enough to sit on. The tub was filled to overflowing with warm water and a mountain of bubbles. A mirror along the wall on one side had suds climbing up it like ivy, as jacuzzi jets frothed them further.

"Get in," Aika said, her back to Hank as she removed her towels.

Hank's throat closed while averting his gaze, figuring Aika to be naked. "Sensai, thanks, but no. I just cleaned up from the last time we were together, and…"

Hank stopped speaking and stared at Aika. She wore a muted one piece silver bathing suit, accented with razor blue highlights. It was athletic in design, covering the front of her body completely, but open far down the back.

She stepped into the bath and turned towards Hank. "Get in," she said again.

"I'm sorry. I seriously doubt it."

Aika sat in the tub and disappeared in the bubbles. "You don't often follow orders," the bubbles said to Hank.

He sat on the tiled ledge with his feet on the floor, to better hear her words over the roar of the jacuzzi jets. "Well, it's not that I don't follow orders. It's that you don't treat your guests very well."

The bubbles laughed, so quiet compared to the jets. "You think you're here for fun? That this is a social call?"

Hank didn't know what to think. Aika was too weird.

"You'll not be the same after this," she said. "I'll teach you how to spit. I'll show you how dreams fill the world, so many and so lovely. People laugh and cry. They love and hate each other each and every day, and at night put them on display." The bubbles parted to expose Aika's eyes. "You make people laugh and cry. They live their lives because of you, and dream your dreams without knowing why."

"Why would I make people cry?"

"You think people don't cry for you?"

"I think people don't know my name."

"They know you without knowing your name. You think people don't care about you, yet you care for them a great deal. You think about other people more than you do yourself, by a factor of…" Aika proved herself to be bad at math. "…a lot," she said after a pause, unable to come up with a more proper term.

That's true.

"Hank-sama, people cry at night for the love of a Dot. Especially now. Bad things happen all the time."

Hank blinked. "Anna says I'm not a Dot. That I need to take another test."

"What does Rio say? And her husband?"

"Milton?"

"Hai. What does Milton say?"

"Um… well, Milton is kinda missing at the moment, and he's also not her husband."

Aika acted surprised. "He's not? Huh."

"I thought his disappearance was why you called me here. That and the PEP Center attacks."

"There'll be more. Bad things are happening."

Hank became upset. "You say that all the time. How about doing something about it?"

The bubbles parted. A head appeared, then a hand. Aika turned off the jacuzzi jets, and the room fell silent.

"I am. I'm training you."

"For what?"

Aika slowly shook her head, fully, from side to side. Her indigo blue locks trailed in the water like snakes.

"If you don't know, then I can't say."

"Everyone I meet these days talks to me the same way. 'Do this! Don't do that!' It'd be helpful if I knew why."

"You know."

"No I don't! I don't know anything!"

Aika rose up from the water and threw herself at Hank, arcing like a dolphin. He reached out to counter her lastest attack, thwarting her grip but losing his balance. With no handhold in sight, his feet shot out in front of him and his arm shot out behind, submerging itself in the tub past his elbow.

Hank cursed. "Geez, Aika-cho! What the hell?"

She squealed, splashing about. "Come be with me and you'll see hell!"

The long sleeved shirt Hank had borrowed from Sehrish, having been worn for less than thirty minutes, was now soaked to its shoulder. Worse than that, the tub was deep. There was no way for Hank to right himself without falling in.

"Quit doing crap to me!"

Aika rose up to her knees, showing great concern. She assessed the chaos she'd caused.

"We got the floor wet," she remarked.

"Oh. Well, that is terrible."

Aika's body dripped globs of bubbles as she scurried back to Hank on her knees. Her mat of hair got suds on his face as she grabbed his submerged arm. With a mighty shove, she returned him to a seated position on the ledge of the tub. Once there, Hank stood up, and streams of water ran down his leg from the sopped sleeve of his shirt.

"Great," he said. "Another set of clothes you've wrecked."

"Get naked!" Aika said, flying up and backwards in her tub.

The antic sent more water Hank's way. It also revealed something else.

"Where's your swimsuit?" he asked.

The bubbles seemed confused. "I dunno. Somewhere. Why do you think I turned off the jets?"

He replied sarcastically. "Because you're naked of course."

"You should be naked too. It makes things easier."

Now somewhat agreeing, Hank sighed as loud as he could. He shed his wet shirt and sweatpants, still wearing the borrowed briefs, which mercifully were dry. "I'm not much for wearing clothes anyway," he admitted, folding a thick towel and placing it on the ledge. He sat on it to keep his butt dry. "But don't touch me again. Understand?"

Aika sounded sad. "Oh. Okay. I'm sorry."

Hank smiled. Despite her being older than him, she was such a kid at heart.

She cheered. "Now you look like me!"

"We are not alike."

"You're naked."

"I'm wearing briefs."

"Ah well. Close enough."

"Not even."

"You are wrong. I'll show you."

Hank stood up. "I said don't touch me."

The bubbles scarcely moved. "Are you perhaps like Rio? She has killed, you know."

I don't believe you.

"She'll kill thousands, many more, all dying in your name."

Hank felt close to tears. Somehow, in his heart, he believed Aika was right.

"Don't let people die because of me."

"They'll not die because of you. They will die for you."

"Then help me stop it. Please!"

"How many have you killed?"

"Me? What? No one!"

"So you're not like Rio. Perhaps Anna. Are you her?"

Hank blinked to calm his staggered mind. "I don't know. Maybe. I think so. Yes."

The bubbles fell silent.

"Aika?" Hank implored.

"Well, yes. You are like Anna. But she's still not you."

"How so?"

"You will save us. She cannot."

"I'm sick of hearing that. Exactly what am I to save? I can scarcely save myself. I don't have a place of my own to live anymore, or even a job."

Aika appeared in the far back of the tub. She organized her bubbles, stacking them while speaking thoughtfully. "Sometimes people suffer. Even very good people." she looked at Hank over the top of her bubble pile. "But good or bad, every dies."

"Stop saying that."

"People hurt. And so we die. You decide who cries and dies."

"Stop saying that!"

"I'm here, Hank-sama. Everyone is here. We want to be in your dreams."

"Yeah? Well, the last dream I remember having was during my second PEP test, and the people in it weren't happy."

Hank watched the waterbug as she stacked her bubbles. She seemed to be ignoring him as she crawled in careful circles on her hands and knees around her display. She chased the bubbles that strayed with her face, her long hair splayed out behind her, playing peek-a-boo with her butt.

For what seemed like the thousandth time, he marveled at how cute she was. "Am I in your dreams?" he asked with hopeful curiosity.

Aika giggled as she blew at some bubbles, to make them go where she wanted. "You are, but I don't know why. You are way too big to ever fit all inside me."

"What?"

She giggled again. "You could never fit." She painted Hank with her eyes. "You are very big."

Hank smiled. "Yeah. I'm getting a lot of that lately."

"No no no!" Aika said while laughing. "Your dreams are so big! You are a big vessel. You're hard to contain."

"A vessel?"

Aika closed her eyes and put her head all the way back, to float with her butt on the bottom. Along with her indigo hair, her soft breasts now trailed her face, bobbing with a mind of their own.

"I swim with your dreams in me," she said, as if talking to herself. "You visit me there all the time. They're warm and very still, and the sky is free of clouds."

Aika flipped onto all fours at some distance from Hank, her butt now sticking out completely from the water. Her pose and expression were like those she'd used while wearing her Neko cat costume during his first visit.

Hank reared back, expecting the worst. "Don't pounce on me," he warned.

"Grr," Aika said. She then hissed, but not at Hank.

Carolus had entered the room. "Nyah," the cat answered back.

Aika turned on her cat with force. "Grr! Hiss!" she said.

Carolus sat on her big butt and idly licked a paw.

"Grr!" Aika said again, splashing a bit of water.

"Nyah!" Carolus replied, retreating to remain dry.

Hank laughed at the antics. "You really are too much!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Book of Ecclesiasticus, also known as the Book of Sirach, is one of the oldest and largest books of wisdom completely intact. It follows no logical pattern, yet is filled with insight of merit, about topics such as Creation and Sin, and Honor among friends.

Sounds a lot like Aika, hey? Maybe someone should let Hank know that she's not so bizarre after all.

Her wisdom is just ancient beyond her human years. ❤

The Book of CHASTITY - Chapter NINE

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