Since late spring, it wasn’t until days past winter solstice when Kagenori had finally reunited with the ever-elusive secretary. When he found her, it was an inconsequential evening where the sun took refuge just above the horizon. Shameimaru sat deep within the confines of the judicial chamber, staring at the partition doors in forlorn silence. That was until Kagenori joined her, where he moved to an uncomfortable corner in the tatami-padded room.

Coincidence would be their encounter, yet they found themselves silently transcribing reviewed writs assigned by their lord until sundown. Once dusk passed and the veil of moonlight shrouded the chambers, their furtive glances met each other; soonafter, they fell to lust. After many months’ passing without the touch of another, it was inevitable. And, as they succumbed to bestial thought, time passed—much too quickly for them to recover their reason.

That was why both the scribe and secretary sat in seiza for their pending reprimand the next day. Before them was a towering Great Tengu, Iizunamaru Megumu, whose face appeared polite until one noticed the irritation that stretched her brow.

“Do you even know what you two have done?” she asked, the anger that kneaded her brows trickling into her voice.

Kagenori remained unmoving and silent. He knew the extent of their faults. To answer Iizunamaru would be to acknowledge their negligence with their work, so he dared to not speak. With a curt nod to Shameimaru, he hoped that she would understand his intentions.

She, however, was fatally oblivious.

“Do not blame him,” she said, riled but unyielding. “The fault is my own. It happened only one time, and we deeply regret it, but we were sensitive to one another, and—”

“Sensitive?” Iizunamaru questioned.

Horrified, Kagenori’s eyes darted wildly to his accomplice. He broke his silence in desperation. “Secretary, stop—”

“—even though we touched each other, it was but briefly, and it isn’t as if masturbation is a sin, and we properly cleaned up after ourselves once the deed was done, and—”

“For the love of god, Secretary,” Kagenori moaned.

“You… what?”

“Oh.” Shameimaru’s realization came slow. She spared a brief moment to glance at Kagenori, who was busy prostrating himself in shame. “Was this about something else?”

“I was to reprimand you two for forgetting to complete the transcriptions, but…” The senior tengu blushed, covering her mouth with an embarrassed hand. “Now, I know the two of you are betrothed, however—”

The secretary corrected her. “We are not betrothed.”

“Lovers?”

“No,” Shameimaru said without a flicker of guilt.

Iizunamaru was stunned. “S-Surely, you two at least hold a flame for each other, but were torn apart by fate. Yes?”

“No.”

The indignation that had once sparked the Great Tengu’s gaze went dormant. Instead, a fearful curiosity grew in its place. “Then what?”

Shameimaru smiled—she had won her superior’s attention. “He and I—we are outlets. For each others’ lust. Time permitting, of course, but it has admittedly been a while since our most recent… ah, rendezvous. So last night was a mistake in our interpersonal management. To put it lightly.”

“Outlets,” Iizunamaru murmured.

“Though we’ve yet to cross the final, sinful line! But think about that. What we’ve done.” Shameimaru, now eagerly behind Kagenori, lightly massaged his shoulders, her smile growing evermore devilish. “Would it not entertain you? To use someone like the scribe—like a toy? Rubbing upon his member until his seed colored your belly and bosom?”

“...No,” the Great Tengu said, though the others in the room knew she fooled only herself. Her face was flush, and the pause in her weak voice betrayed her ultimate hesitancy.

“Is that so?” The secretary placed a gentle thumb just above the man’s groin. Carefully measuring out each centimeter, she stretched out her index finger up the man’s abdomen. And once her index finger could not reach any further, she resumed a gaze upon her superior. “Even if it was like this in length?”

Iizunamaru did not deny it. No, she could not. Instead, she countered. “So you mean to place me as an accessory to your crime?”

“It’s no crime to blunder. As a benevolent Great Tengu, wouldn’t it be okay to overlook our tardiness just this once? And should you do so, our humble scribe shall fairly pay you recompense.”

“...That aside,” Kagenori added before fully resigning himself to becoming the crow tengus’ plaything, “we can finish the transcriptions before the sun’s next rise. I’ll promise you that.”

Their superior, tempted by the perverse, finally relented. “You won’t be so easily released a second time. Understand?”

Kagenori breathed a sigh of relief—a temporary respite, at least. But he straightened his back once metal dropped to the floor with a dull echo. Both the secretary and the scribe’s eyes followed the floor: A golden pauldron now rested by Iizunamaru’s side. The scribe begrudgingly looked up.

The pauldron’s owner was daintily lifting up her dress.

“...Must we do this, ah, now?” Kagenori said, complaint evident in his tone. “Couldn’t we postpone this until the next day? Or at least after the transcriptions?”

“Don’t say you weren’t expecting this,” Shameimaru whispered from behind. She pressed against him tightly, the soft fabric of her garments outlining the shape of her body on his back.

“But the promise! The transcriptions!”

“Worry about your work afterwards. You have more important concerns facing you. Namely, me.” From the man’s front, Iizunamaru had already loosened Kagenori’s sash and now pulled on his trousers, uncovering his already-erect length. “Oh!” she gasped. “You protest, and yet you favor me this much?”

The scribe looked at her with deadened eyes.

Despite her being his superior in age, rank, and clan, Iizunamaru lowered her head. “You insult me with that much reluctance in your gaze.”

Though embarrassment colored her cheeks, the greater tengu unclothed herself, starting from her dress. Her naked chest, ample enough for Kagenori, naturally drew in the man’s eyes. Such was her sole encouragement. She slid off her panties and raised her hips to straddle Kagenori’s lower body. Just the mere thought of playing with the scribe’s member bothered her to the point that she felt apologetic towards him. Be that as it may, she spread herself with her fingers, revealing modest pink as her lower lips brushed against the man’s exposed cock.

Iizunamaru, though she had braced herself, let out an uncharacteristically girlish yelp. She had expected the pleasure, yes, but she didn’t anticipate herself being this sensitive—and how. As indecent her tastes were, the Great Tengu had been without a man for as long as Lord Daranibō had ruled. And once she touched Kagenori, all sensible judgment was then reserved only after her personal satisfaction.

Kagenori was much larger than she had expected. Though she carefully measured the distance between Shameimaru’s thumb and index finger with her own eyes, seeing him in the flesh was incomparable. She gripped the man’s shaft and held him in place, wetting his cock with her grinding.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Shameimaru pointed out, still nestled against Kagenori’s back, though the lesser crow tengu moved to let him use her as a rest cushion.

In a dizzying heat, Iizunamaru panted out. “Are you worried that I’m mishandling your ‘toy’?”

The secretary scoffed, disappointment filling her crimson eyes. She stroked the scribe’s head in pity. “Nothing of the sort. Though, maybe you should ask the one more involved in this, hmm?”

“Tell me then.” Iizunamaru continued, teasing herself with the entirety of the scribe’s rigid member. “Does it feel good, wolf?”

Kagenori, who had previously vowed to remain silent until the end, spoke. “May I be honest?”

“I suppose,” she said, taken aback by his question. She had been expecting a favorable response—‘Yes’ being the only answer she had in mind.

“And with no repercussions if I am?”

Iizunamaru slowed herself. “...What?”

“I apologize. I’m not feeling it. Though it does feel nice at times…” He winced. “You’re straddling me using all your weight to lean directly against my length. Any further, and I fear it’ll snap in half.”

Shameimaru said nothing, but the corners of her mouth started to twitch upwards, her shoulders quivering in mirth the whole time.

“Don’t you dare laugh, secretary.” Embarrassment had long since settled on Iizunamaru’s cheeks, but now it tinged her ears with red. “I can do it right.”

The secretary brushed a finger across her superior’s hand. “Then, first of all, stop grasping his penis as if it were trying to run away. You look like you’re trying to hold onto a writhing fish with your bare hands. And don’t just sit on him and pretend like you’re a waterfall. Rock your body along his entire distance. Softly. Not like you’re trying to crush him with your hips.”

“Fine.” Iizunamaru obliged to all of her subordinate’s requests, paying careful attention to the scribe. Gently, she pressed against him and slid across the entirety of his member. With her hands, she held onto him softly, no harder than she would a caress. The man relaxed—Iizunamaru had finally stopped sexually bludgeoning him. Soon after, he stroked her thighs with his hands in want of more.

As she rode intercrural, Iizunamaru had finally discovered her rhythm. She slid up from the base of his dick in one beat and down from the shaft in the next. Her lust enflamed her sensitivity, and she felt a perverse feeling that welled up between her thighs. But just as Kagenori felt the first vestiges of pleasure, Iizunamaru tensed her legs. Pitifully, she climaxed. Iizunamaru let cheap satisfaction fill her, though that satisfaction soon turned to more unpleasant emotions as she disgracefully fell, and quite sharply at that, from momentary bliss.

Many thoughts spun around Kagenori’s head as he watched his superior orgasm so easily before him. Her slightly unfocused eyes, her hands that now cupped her most precious place in mortification, and her thighs that were spread before him—it painted an obscene picture in his mind. Did he really make her feel that good? It lifted his pride to think so.

Yet Iizunamaru, her own thoughts muddied with pessimism, ascribed the look he gave her as pity.

“I can continue,” she said. Her mind convinced her body, and she moved her hands away, exposing herself to him once more.

“That’s the spirit,” the secretary said, voice tender. She wrapped her arms around the scribe’s waist, holding him tightly. “Keep going.”

Iizunamaru rubbed Kagenori’s cock with her inner thighs, and in between her soft legs, it slid perfectly into the folds of her labia as if it were meant to fit. As she rocked up and down, her pussy teased his entire length, wetting it with a slow kiss. Iizunamaru quickened in pace—her partner’s penis started to throb, and she wanted him to release on her—to relieve the burden of cumming so quickly, if anything.

Yet tragedy struck the Great Tengu twice, and she was ambushed by another climax, sensitivity being the death of her. Slight tears in her eyes, she resolved to keep moving until Kagenori finished with her. And that she did: Iizunamaru embraced the man’s length between soft flesh as she coated him fully with her juices. Twofold did she climax, and twofold was her tenderness. Every movement elicited a soft whimper from her. Eager was her body to respond, and faster did she rub against him until he was ready to finish.

The wolf, reticent until the end, did nothing except growl and lightly slap her thigh when he came—no, erupted. He painted her stomach in spots of clear white until he was spent.

It was merely Kagenori’s seed… Iizunamaru, however, was strangely entranced. Nothing could explain why she swept a finger through Kagenori’s traces and lifted it close to her lips.

The still-forming question in the tengu’s head would remained unanswered as the secretary, who had crept up to Iizunamaru’s side, sucked clean her superior’s sticky, dripping finger. Iizunamaru questioned the other tengu with a pleading glance, but Shameimaru didn’t answer. Instead, she allowed herself a knowing, victorious smile and moved her tongue to Iizunamaru’s stomach. She lapped up the rest of Kagenori’s cum diligently, tracing little swirls of saliva across her soft skin. As Shameimaru finished, she left her superior ticklish and confused.

“Well.” The secretary clasped her hands. The look she wore was purely commercial—polite and unassuming, contrary to her prior, self-satisfied smile. “I trust that we now have your cooperation?”

It was a harsh return to reality. Iizunamaru, who now felt guilty by the mere sight of Kagenori, nodded slowly. “Should the transcriptions be at my chambers by the end of the day, I’ll be none the wiser when they were finished. Though… I initially aimed to tell you two that I would have been that lenient even without your strange persuasions.”

“You don’t say,” said the wolf. “So this was all done to no purpose?”

“I wouldn’t say no purpose, but…” Iizunamaru’s stiff face hid her shame. “That aside, I’ll keep you no longer. You two may go.”

“With grace,” Shameimaru replied, mischief absent in her tone. Her business now complete, she left without further prompt or nonsense.

Kagenori was ill the same. He dressed himself diligently, being particularly meticulous about retying his sash. Iizunamaru’s eyes wandered to the man. As he finished, he gave her a light but slightly forced smile.

How thoughtless he was to smile at Iizunamaru like that—it stirred an uncertain emotion which compelled her, though for no real cause, to speak. “Wait,” she said.

“...Yes?” he answered.

“It’s…” Her words followed her mouth before her mind. Iizunamaru, her intentions struggling to catch up, shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

But Kagenori, historically a scribe of taciturn disposition, offered her a rare gift of extended conversation. “Lady Iizunamaru, if I may speak openly,” he said.

“Ahhh—” The crow was wholly unprepared for any further response and answered with a witless drawl. “...Go ahead.”

“I didn’t mean to dishearten you when you asked for my thoughts,” he said, his gray ears falling to his hair apologetically. “By the end… were we not so short on time, I would have asked for more. And, ah, your hips are rather striking. I mean it. Truly. I couldn’t get them out of my mind the entire time.”

“Enough,” she huffed. “Just go already.”

“By your leave,” he said, bowing. And without further delay, he left.

Iizunamaru kept him in her thoughts for a moment longer. His brownish-gray hair. His sharp, golden eyes. His carefully maintained scowl. The way he touched her… slightly as it was.

To lust after her junior like an animal in heat, she was foolish. But foolishness coaxed action, and that was a promise that she silently held for another moon.

[ ] On the same moon, Kagenori was ambushed by the secretary in his chambers.
[ ] On a later moon, Kagenori met with an old friend of kin.

Time marched on—though Kagenori would’ve much preferred if it had hastened its steps. The days, however, maintained their uniform and, in similar consequence, grueling pace. In those languid moments, the wolf found himself falling to a routine: He worked for the judicial branch from sun-up to sun-down until the days reached weeks after, and then, on nights of the new moon, he would meet with Shameimaru, who was ever-elusive on other days, to spend the night together.

Despite working in the same branch and field, they seldom saw one another. The wolf surmised it was the nature of his work—though a scribe, Kagenori was more a ferryman of documents, moving papers from one branch to another. Only when deadlines drew near did he sit down at the chamber to transcribe writs requested by the Daitengu.

Shameimaru was likewise the same. And such was coincidence when they first met each other, sitting across from one another at the otherwise empty judicial chamber, transcribing into the late night. Chance was also their second encounter. But by the third…

Their relationship inexplicably devolved to placating each others’ carnal lust. Yet, with every meet, their want only enflamed. But that was all—private affairs only extended to private matters. Even in their brief but turbulent bout with their crow superior, they talked to one another about it for no longer than a fraction of a day, sooner drowned out by physical intimacy.

So Kagenori expected their circumstances to remain in perpetuity… until a patrol guard paid him a visit at his quarters—and unannounced, at that.

He had little time to mask his surprise when Momiji Inubashiri slid open the door to his room and towered over Kagenori, who was reviewing documents over at his study and without so much as a warning, she slapped two concerned, yet painfully stocky, hands onto his shoulders.

“I don’t think you should associate with the crow tengu anymore,” she said.

“Yes, well, good evening to you, too. So what prompted this, exactly?” Kagenori asked. It was a measured response: Momiji took every opportunity in passing to tell him about her woes with the other tengu, though this was the first that she searched for him in his living quarters. Wolves—other than Kagenori—dared not step foot in Daitengu territory, and his chambers were at its heart.

The white wolf released her grip on him. “I’ve heard what you’ve done with the great tengu and Aya,” she said, her expression souring quickly at her mention of Shameimaru’s name. Momiji paused to gather her words. “I don’t like it,” she eloquently put.

The scribe twitched, though he salvaged his composure otherwise. “From, ah, whom, exactly?”

“From the secretary herself.”

“...About what we’ve done, you said? In detail?” Dread filled Kagenori’s veins. At first, he played ignorant. But the creeping blush that filled the guard’s cheeks was confirmation in itself.

“Yes. More than I ever needed to know,” she admitted.

“Well.”

“...Well?” she parroted back.

“I understand why you’d think that the crows may be… unsavory, let’s say. But those matters are purely interpersonal and not related to their hierarchy. You’ll… just have to trust my word on that. That aside, I’m not interested in moving back to wolf territory only to be subject to the white wolves and their prejudice again. To be frank, I would rather be buried alive than experience it a second time.”

It was a rehearsed response, and yet it weighed poorly on his mind when the white wolf looked at him with a rather delicate and pained expression.

“...I apologize. I didn’t mean you in particular. But I’d rather keep company with those that only passively scorn me.”

“I wouldn’t—!”

“Momiji,” Kagenori said wearily, “You are but one wolf of many wolves in the clan. Even if the white wolves were to set aside their differences with the gray wolves this very day, I wouldn’t even consider returning. I’ll leave their petty infighting to themselves until their clans dissolve to dust.”

“Then… do the crows treat you any better?” she asked. And despite her usual grievances against crow tengu, this was a question asked forthright.

“More than the white wolves ever did. At least, the Daitengu and Lord Tenma are in favor of bringing the wolves and the crows together amicably.”

“This is excluding your, um, escapades, y-yes?” Her eyes flitted downcast, and she rubbed the back of her neck—as was her habit when she was embarrassed.

Kagenori raised an eyebrow. He never thought that Momiji would—and willingly so—reintroduce said topic to their conversation. “It’s not like not like that at all. I’d never dare to bring something so frivolous to the board—let alone convince the great lords to participate in such a thing.”

“Is that right?” she said, worry still aflame in her eyes.

“That’s right. They are private matters, after all. But…”

[ ] He asked her, earnestly, if she were interested.
[ ] He asked her, in half-jest, if she wished to join them.
[ ] He refrained from asking her. He didn’t trust his own judgment on this matter.

“Then,” he suggested, in half-jest, “Would you like to join us?”

Many a time in his younger years did he find himself thinking about Momiji’s undue sentiment and sincerity towards him. Perhaps that’s why he even offered in the first place. The moment those words left his lips, however, the gray wolf was awash with sheepishness and told her to “forget the suggestion.”

Straight-laced as she was, surely she’d never agree to the notion of—

“...I’ll join,” Momiji answered, matter-of-fact.

Kagenori gurgled, choking back a grunt of surprise. “Sorry?” he stammered out, though that too came out strained.

“But,” she accented, pointing a sharp finger at him. “I’d sooner break this agreement and die a grisly death than to do any of…that with Aya.”

The scribe was still processing the whiplash that the white wolf threw at him. Frankly, he hadn’t expected, if at all, for Momiji to accept so readily, however cold a gaze she was currently staring at him with. But the man did as he has always done and took the whole matter in stride.

“Just us two, then?” he said.

“...Is that confirmation, or did you have someone else in mind?”

“Just wanted to ask,” he answered, sighing. “Though, it’s not so much you joining as you inserting yourself in-between.”

“Oh, quiet. I myself was always curious about your escapades—just not to the point where I want to be in the same room as Aya, let alone do anything to her.”

“...Right.” He said no more about the crow. Kagenori knows this well: Any more than a minute interaction between Momiji and Shameimaru was… explosive, at best. “I’ve a very small list of people I interact with. And in that list, an even smaller subsection of those that I prefer to be… ah, intimate with. You included in there, of course.”

“Hmm,” she replied, non-answer as that was, though it was not what she said that prompted a sharp response from Kagenori.

“You—what are you doing?”

“I’m undressing.” she said, halfway through pulling off her loose, white top. Her modest chest spilled from the underside, its majority hidden behind still-lifting fabric. “What else would I be doing?” she added. Still, level-headed as her voice was, Momiji could not hide the healthy fluster that tinged her cheeks.

“You mean we’re doing this now?” Kagenori thought, or so he had assumed, that Momiji was a meticulous person. He supposed he didn’t clarify the time nor the place, but to act moments after their agreement was nothing short of impulsive.

She neatly folded her shirt and placed it directly over his documents. Her half-bare figure swayed directly through his line of vision as to tempt him directly. But his eyes lay elsewhere: They quickly flitted to the strewn paper records spilling across the tableside.

“If not now, then when else? It’s a quiet night and, by chance, we’re here together where no one else will bother us. What more opportune time could we have?” In the meantime, Momiji stacked a folded skirt over the now-blanketed documents and placed a hand to his shoulder. “So those papers can wait.”

“Those papers,” he emphasized, “need to be submitted before the end of tomorrow. Or the Daitengu’ll have my head. And yours, too, by accessory.”

“Then finish tomorrow, and the world’ll continue to turn,” she replied, claiming no responsibility.

“You don’t say.” Kagenori did his best not to let his irritation get the best of him.

[ ] In the end, he made her wait.
[ ] He gave into his—but mostly her—urges.