Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 985: Honored Guests

Dinner arrived at seven, and then it kept arriving.

The dining hall held Kaiden’s whole inner family plus three moderators with room to breathe, lantern light warm on the lacquer.

Along the far wall, behind a counter of pale cypress that had not been there at noon, a full sushi brigade worked in silence. The gray-haired master directing them had, according to the staff’s whispers, come out of retirement for this one night.

Partway through the third course, the far door of the hall slid open with no announcement at all, and the High Shrine Maiden of Japan stepped inside alone.

The room noise died mid-plate-war. A server froze with a bottle still tilted.

Kaiden lowered his chopsticks. ”Lady Yunohana. Is something wrong?”

”Forgive the intrusion.” She bowed to the table, low and held. ”I only hoped to see that your needs are tended to. Please, do not stop on my account.”

”Everything’s perfect,” Kaiden said. ”Your people have outdone themselves.”

”I am glad.” She rose from the bow with her hands folded, warmth plain in her voice. ”Then please enjoy the rest of your evening.”

She had made it two steps back toward the door when Alexandra stood up so fast her cushion skidded.

”W-would you like to eat with us, Lady Yunohana?”

The table went silent for the second time in a minute, and this time Yunohana was part of it. Her lips parted a fraction; for one heartbeat, the most graceful woman in Japan looked entirely caught off guard, in the most ladylike way imaginable.

”I... could not possibly impose on your family’s evening,” she said softly.

”It would be our joy,” Nyx purred, already scooting sideways to open the seat between herself and Kaiden. ”We insist.”

The staff had a full place setting on the table before their lady finished forming her refusal, which settled the matter of whose side they were on.

”...Then I am in your care,” Yunohana said, and sat where she was given, smoothing her sleeves, looking quietly delighted about the whole affair.

The teapot reached Kaiden’s cup before any attendant did. Yunohana poured for him herself, one sleeve gathered back, the stream thin and steady, and set the pot down without a sound.

”Thank you,” Kaiden said.

”It is my pleasure, Lord Grey.”

Aria followed the pour all the way down. Then she looked at her own grip on her own cup and quietly adjusted it.

Alice had claimed the seat against Kaiden’s side before the meal began and defended it through every course that followed.

Aria, in a shocking act of self-restraint, had taken the seat directly across from him instead, where she could watch his face for the whole meal.

Alexandra tried twice to help the staff clear plates, and was twice, very politely, prevented.

”Nine!” Luna announced, stacking her latest plate on the pile. ”Where are you, horns?”

”Eleven!” Calypso boomed, holding her plate out to the nearest server, who refilled it, openly proud to be arming her side.

”The kitchen is cheating for her!”

”The kitchen has chosen its queen!”

Across the table, one of Bastet’s ears swiveled toward the claim, and she generously let it pass.

”Gremlin bestie, have you taken a look at yourself?” Nyx said into her cup.

”...What?” Luna’s eyes narrowed.

”Just take a look at your little belly,” Nyx sipped. ”You’re trying to out eat our resident glutton? You?”

”Did you call me fat?” Calypso raised an eyebrow, munching on three different pieces of sushi nigiri at once.

”...Gulp and wipe your mouth before you speak, dear,” Nyx giggled.

”Darling, this one melts,” Calypso shrugged and reported to Kaiden, holding out the empty plate as evidence.

”Last time you demanded cooked meat, but now you’re eating raw fish so jovially...” Bastet muttered under her breath, enjoying this otherworldly sashimi offering.

”My palate has grown!” Calypso decreed proudly.

”The demonic beast is evolving at last,” Bastet shook her head.

Scarlet had discovered the cellar. ”This bottle is older than me and twice as smooth,” she declared over the table, already pouring. ”The cellar is under this loyal warrior’s management now.”

Their hostess, meanwhile, simply hosted.

Yunohana had cups refilled while their owners were still mid-sentence, and she thanked every server by name.

She asked Calypso a question about axe maintenance, then listened to all four minutes of the answer with her hands folded, as if it were an affair of state.

”That woman,” Bastet murmured to Leia, her eyes never leaving the exchange, ”has been trained since birth.”

Alexandra had given up pretending not to take notes. The napkin beside her plate now read serve from the side, then never reach across, then, underlined twice, how is she quieter standing than sitting.

”We’re getting washed,” Luna reported to Emily under the noise. ”She poured tea one time and Aria’s been in crisis since.”

”I saw,” Nyx said, deeply content. ”Best dinner of my life.”

”I am not in crisis,” Aria said pleasantly. On her next pour she gathered her sleeve back, the technique freshly stolen.

Then Yunohana laughed at something Scarlet said, soft, unguarded, and lovelier for it. Aria’s smile stayed exactly where it was, and the stolen pour wavered off center by a hair.

Aria was used to being the one other women measured themselves against. The reversal stung more than she would ever admit out loud.

Halfway through, the head cook of the estate came out in person, knelt across the table from Bastet, and lifted the lid off a covered dish himself. Grilled fish in a gold sauce, dressed exactly as she ordered it on stream.

”For the Lady of Dominion. We studied what you favor.”

Bastet’s tail, which had been swaying with the evening, went still. For half a breath the queen slipped, and the smile underneath was simply a girl’s. Then her spine righted itself, and she accepted the plate with a graciousness that made the man’s whole year.

”It is perfect,” she informed him after one bite, and the bow he gave her in answer nearly touched the floorboards.

The plates kept coming, each one announced by the master in two words or fewer. ”Winter yellowtail.” ”Sea bream.” Then, set down with visible ceremony: ”Tuna.”

Luna looked at the plate and stopped talking mid-taunt.

Then her eyes welled up, with no warning at all.

”Luna?” Kaiden was leaning in before anyone else had even noticed, plate forgotten. ”Hey. What’s wrong?”

Half the table stopped chewing.

Nyx reached over and patted Luna’s back, slow, unsurprised. ”It’s cool, isn’t it,” she said. ”How far we’ve come.”

”I’m not crying.” Luna scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes. ”The wasabi’s too spicy.”

At the counter, the master’s hands went still over his knife. Two waiters traded a look of open terror, and Yunohana sat very straight, perplexed, her serenity suddenly rigid. Their wasabi had hurt the guest?

Luna lowered the sleeve, took one look at their faces, and went red.

”It’s good wasabi! It’s tasty, okay?! I just got emotional, damn it!”

Every waiter in the room quietly returned to life.

”Even the gremlin can be honest,” Alice giggled from Kaiden’s side.

”Shut it, little sis!”

”No. Hehe!”

The first restaurant the four of them had ever shared was a running-sushi place, back when five thousand dollars had sounded like life-changing money worthy of throwing their dignities away for.

They had decided to become his Valkyries at that table, before a single one of them was his girlfriend.

Kaiden had rebuilt that dinner once already, in a private room with five master chefs, to celebrate how far they had come.

Tonight, a country had set the table.

Nyx turned her cup slowly, smiling down into it. ”A conveyor belt near your dorm,” she said. ”That’s where we signed up for all of this.”

Kaiden looked at his first three over his cup, and the tea went down warmer than it should have. For once, the grin arrived second.

”I remember thinking the miso was a splurge,” he said.

”Oh my god, don’t you two fucking start,” Luna muttered, and ate on with sudden focus, ears pink.

Aria leaned across the table with a nigiri in her fingers, no soy sauce, and lifted it to Kaiden’s mouth. ”Say aaa~”

He said aaa.

”Only normies eat sushi with their hands,” Luna recited, on schedule, the same tease she had fired at that original table.

The master looked up from his counter and spoke his first full sentence of the evening. ”The lady eats correctly.”

”She what?!”