The True Endgame

Kris didn’t know what to expect when his friend suddenly showed up at his place. However, what he didn’t expect even more than that, and never could have expected, was what was going to happen after his friend showed up at his place and met his girlfriends.

“Heh, and this picture here,” Lucy was interrupted by a hiccup, “is from when he was a little baby. Isn’t he just adorable? In his cute little shirt and pants.” She swayed from side to side the entire time that she was talking while Kris’s girlfriends looked at her cellphone from behind.

And on the cellphone was a gallery of baby pictures from Kris.

“How’d you even get those?” Kris asked.

“Ehhh? These? Uuuuhhhhh……………….. what? What’d you say? Hehehe… I forgot. No, I forgor! Hehe, you know, like that one meme? I forgor, hehehe.” Another hiccup.

“My baby pictures.”

“Ooohhhh! I came over while you were asleep, took out that picture book you showed me before, and took pictures! Hehehe, then I left before you could wake up! Like a sneaky little ninja! He, I’m sneaky. Sneeeaaaakkyyyy. Hehehe, hi sneaky, I’m Lucy!”

Iris leaned over to whisper into Rachel’s ear, “This woman may pose a security threat. Should we handle her?”

Rachel bit her lip as she thought about it. “Let’s… let’s wait. We should—we should find out everything she knows about Kris before we do anything. We have to gather evidence.”

“Good point. We’ll determine if she’s a threat or not after we’ve extracted as much intel as we can from her.”

Both women went back to looking at the stolen pictures on Lucy’s phone.

“Oh, hehe, this one’s embarrassing,” Lucy said. “I took a selfie with him while he was sleeping! Look at me holding up that little peace sign, hehe… I’m so cute. Can you believe he hasn’t fallen for me yet? Geez… I’m always being so cute and hitting on him and doing everything for him and he hasn’t even checked me out! Like the last time I invited him over to my place, I made sure to ‘coincidentally’,” Lucy used air quotes and everything to really get ther point across, “get out of the shower juuuuuuuust in time for Kris to come in! I was all wrapped up in a towel and everything! And I even made sure it ‘accidentally’,” more air quotes, “slipped off while he was looking at me! And you know what he did? He picked it up and wrapped it back around me while making sure to tighten it so it wouldn’t fall again! And don’t even get me started on the time that I came over here, acted drunk, stripped my clothes off, then pretended that I wanted to be a witch while he’s my flying broom!”

“I remember that,” Kris said. “I said you could do it if you really wanted to, but then you got upset for some reason.”

“Because you were supposed to get it! You were supposed to play along and act dumb and like a broom for me to ride! You weren’t supposed to actually not understand! That would’ve been rape! I’ll sneak into your apartment like a sneaky ninja but I won’t… hehe… ninja. I’m a sneeeeeeeaaaaaakkyyyyy ninja. Hehehe, has that word always been so fun? Ninja? Ninja! Ninja. Ninja. Ninja. Janin! Ajnin? Jinan? Ninja!”

Emily looked up from the phone and asked Kris, “Is she… always like this?”

“When she drinks, yeah,” Kris answered.

“You… don’t have a problem with her admitting to all this stuff?”

“What? She’s just drunk. Being drunk makes you lose control of yourself and you start to act in ways you wouldn’t normally and say things you wouldn’t, too. She’s just telling crazy stories because she’s drunk.”

“I… think she might be telling the truth about some things here.”

“Like what?”

“The whole sneaking into your apartment and taking pictures of your things while you’re asleep thing. She sounds like a stalker.”

“I’m not,” Lucy hiccuped, “a stalker! I’m a ninja! Ooohhhh, and here are the pics I took of him when he was swimming for a photoshoot in a pool he designed!”

Emily narrowed her eyes at Kris.

“What?” Kris asked. “A lot of journalists were there and taking pictures that day.”

“How do you even know her?” Emily asked.

“Uhh, she asked me out back in high school, but I was too busy focusing on myself to accept her, so I had to turn her down. I had a university I was trying really hard to get into and thought I might not be able to if I was busy dating somebody. Then it turned out that we got into the same university and were in the same classes. That was pretty surprising. Anyways, then—”

“He friendzoned me!” Lucy shouted.

Kris nodded. “Yeah. We became friends. We were always together in every class and she always wanted to partner up with me for projects, so we became friends. Then she kind of became my manager and handled all the boring stuff I don’t care about for me. And I pay her for it so she’s not doing that work for nothing.”

Lucy slumped over some more. “Do you see… do you see what I’ve been dealing with? For so many years… through all of university… I’ve been trying to get into his pants… but he just sees me as his innocent friend… even though I tried asking him out before…” Lucy sat up straight and glared at Emily’s chest. She then looked down at her own chest and groped her signicantly smaller breasts. “I get it now.” She then looked around at all the other maids. Emily was easily the one with the largest breasts, but everybody else was bigger than Lucy, too. Lucy wasn’t flat, but… as she groped herself, her hands were large enough to completely cover her breasts while she wouldn’t have even been able to get close to doing that with any of the maids. “It’s because I’m underdeveloped. Like a raisin that never got to grow into a grape. All I have… are raisins.”

Iris rose her hand and said, “I feel the need to point out that grapes become raisins, not the other way around.”

“Then I’m less than a raisin. I don’t even get to be a raisin because I never became a grape in the first place. I’m just a seed. I’m the pointless seed in the middle of a grape that nobody wants and everybody spits out. There’s only… there’s only one solution.” Lucy dropped her phone and grabbed Emily by her shoulders. “Please… share your boobs with me. You—you won’t be missing much if you donate some of them to me! And my brother-in-law is a surgeon! He can give us a discount!”

Emily, while being shaken and begged by Lucy, could only stare forward with dead eyes before saying, “I know I joke about wanting to get rid of these things, but if Kris is interested in these like you think, then they’re staying.”

Lucy, needless to say, began crying. “I’ve been forsaken. I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but now the tunnel caved in and blocked off the light, and I can’t go back… I’m running out of oxygen… I’m going to die from carbon monoxide poisoning or oxygen deprivation… whichever comes first… or maybe I’ll just die from dehydration…”

“I… I feel kind of bad for her,” Rachel said.

Kris shrugged. “She’s always like this when she’s drunk. Here, this is how you cheer her up.” While Lucy cried to herself, Kris walked up to her, poked one finger against her forehead to tilt her head back so that she would be looking at him, and then he said, “Good job. You’ve tried your best.”

His girlfriends might not have understood what about that was supposed to help given the context, but…

Lucy’s entire body spasmed as she let out a sultry moan. Her face’s expression went from one of pure sorrow to one of pure pleasure in an instant.

“See?” Kris asked. “I don’t know why, but all you have to do is give her a compliment or praise her and then she cheers up.”

Lucy grabbed onto Kris’s wrist and whined, “Moooooore! Praise me moooooreee!”

Kris shook his head and sighed. “Even though you didn’t get an A, you still showed a unique understanding of the concept and created a genuinely interesting design despite its flaws.”

Lucy moaned and trembled even more, drool dripping down her chin at that point.

“What… kind of praise even is that?” Emily asked.

Kris shrugged. “It’s what I used to say to her during university. It’s how I discovered that she reacts like this. So, I’m just saying what I used to say back then.”

Anastasia, smiling with intent that nobody else in the room could pick up on, reached forward to place a gentle hand atop Lucy’s head.

Lucy froze as soon as she felt it.

“You are such a good girl for always trying your hardest, aren’t you?” Anastasia asked, bringing out the most motherly tone of voice possible.

Lucy slowly turned until she was looking up at Anastasia, eyes full of awe, and nodded.

“Yes, that’s right. Who’s a good girl?”

“M-me!” Lucy shouted out. “I—I am! I’m a good girl!”

“Yes, yes you are. You are a good girl who will no longer stalk Kris without his permission and will delete any and all pictures you have taken without his consent, aren’t you?”

“I—I am! I want to be a good girl! I’ll do it!”

“Such a good girl. How many spare keys have you made to Kris’s apartment?”

“Tw-twenty-seven!”

“Goodness. That does not sound like very good girl behavior.”

“I’m sorry! What—what can I do to be a good girl?”

“You have to bring them here so that we may handle them. Once you have sobered up, of course.”

Lucy nodded. “I’ll do it! I’ll be a good girl! The best girl!”

Anastasia slid her hand down from the top of Lucy’s head to underneath her chin, scratching the underside of the girl’s chin as if she were a dog. Lucy, meanwhile, was more than happy to press against the scratching hand while closing her eyes to enjoy the pleasure to the best of her ability.

“U-uh… Kris,” Rachel said. “Are you sure she’s a human and not a dog? Or a dog wearing a human suit?”

“She’s just Lucy,” Kris answered. “And I’m pretty sure she’s a human, but… I guess I’ve never confirmed that?”

The next thing everybody else knew, Anastasia was sitting on the floor while Lucy curled up on the ground next to her with her head on her lap as she purred.

“Looks more like a cat to me,” Emily said.

Iris held her hand against her chin and said, “Now that I look at her again… she is rather cute and has an… endearingly fluffy hairstyle. And considering that she is clearly in love with Kris, she must have excellent taste and be a good person. Even when it comes to the stalking, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that we would not do the same had we been rejected.”

“But if he rejected her… we shouldn’t pressure him into accepting her now,” Rachel said. “No matter how cute and relatable she might be, if he doesn’t like her, then he doesn’t like her.”

Abigail, who had been reading enough of their lips to understand the situation, signed to Kris, “Is there any reason why you did not go out with her after you were done with university?”

Kris signed back while saying, “She didn’t ask again, so I thought she didn’t care anymore and just wanted to be friends.”

“If she had asked you out again before you met us, would you have accepted her?”

“Probably.”

Rachel, Iris, Emily, and Abigail nodded to each other before huddling together with their arms around one another’s shoulders, their heads low and together as they whispered.

“We’d have somebody else to clean up after,” Rachel said.

“And think of everything we could learn about Kris’s younger years from her,” Iris added on. “Plus, she’s cute.”

“We don’t have any plans for living together long-term yet,” Emily joined in, “and we’ll be going back overseas… if we bring her in, then since Kris trusts her, we can trust her to keep an eye on him and to help him while we’re gone.”

“That’s true. She can make sure that Kris is eating healthily and not… potentially harming himself with the food he makes.”

Abigail took her hands off their shoulders to sign, “If we can get her to move in with him, then she can be here for him to take care of him when he is sick, to comfort him whenever he may feel lonely, and to take pictures of him sleeping to send to us.”

“I thought Anastasia just scolded her about doing that?”

“But it is okay if she is his girlfriend who lives with him. And since we are also his girlfriends, it would be acceptable for her to share such pictures with us.”

The woman nodded at each other.

“I know what it’s time for,” Iris said. “Our lady often talked about how whenever her boyfriend came up with a plan, he would call it an operation and give it a name. Those operations always turned out successful, I think, so let us do that as well.”

The women nodded some more.

Rachel then said, “How about… Operation: Love?”

“Too simple,” Emily said. “What about Operation: Saving Childhood Friend?”

“Are they really childhood friends though?”

“They met in high school. Close enough.”

“I like it!” Abigail signed with extra enthusiasm.

The rest of the woman nodded once more.

With that, it was time for Operation: Saving Childhood Friend.