Enlightenment Through BDSM

“Mai, that’s really not how things work here,” Kalia said. 

“But they’re people, right? People’s souls?”

“Yes, but—”

“Okay, spill it,” Emi said, planting her hands on her hips and squinting at me. “You Reborn are from before all this Demon Lord nonsense, but you still should know how dying works. You did it!”

“Wha— I know how dying works,” I said, holding my arms up. “You hit your head, things go black, and… you wake up naked in a field!”

Emi blinked, shaking her head. “Don’t talk about you being naked to distract me!”

“Hey, drop it,” Kalia said, stepping in front of me. I peaked around her though, seeing Emi scowling at me. “Dying isn’t exactly a fun time, you know? Making her relive it is just cruel.”

Emi stared at me, eyes squinting for a while before huffing and walking past us. “Just a note, hitting your head isn’t going to kill some great hero, you know? And talking about ‘how things work here’ doesn’t help either! Better polish up your story if you want to keep fooling people.” She kept walking, footsteps echoing of the rocks as she plunged into darkness alone.

“Can’t we just tell her?” I eventually whispered to Kalia, heart pounding. Was this really a good idea?

“No. It’s just not what you do.”

“Why not though? She already knows something’s up. Isn’t it better for her to trust us? If we’re going to really try to make this work?”

“It’s just… how it is, I guess. The isekai heroes never tell anyone they’re from another world, not unless they’re really close, like marriage close,” Kalia said, starting off back up the cave after Emi. “And maybe it’s just not meant to be. This was always a trial run anyway.”

I started following along, staring at the sparkling veins of goldfire on the floor as I did. “Just cause it’s how it goes in the books or tv shows doesn’t mean it has to be that way for us, you know?”

“It’s for the best, trust me.”

That was the thing. I did trust her, trusted her, but Kalia was just copying what others had done before her, right? She said before that some people had tried telling the truth and no one understood, but had anyone tried telling Emi specifically? 

“You know the thing about a pan, or a pot I think, and your grandma says to cut the end of the roast off when you’re cooking?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kalia said. “Everyone listens and cuts the end of the roast off. But doesn’t know why, and it turns out it’s just cause great-granny had a small pot?”

“Maybe Emi’s the big pan! Or, big pot? Wait, that sounds illegal…”

Kalia laughed at that, and I was happy she couldn’t see me hiding my blushing cheeks. “Let’s try and get through this mission, and then we can… think about it, I guess. No need to explain the multiverse now and break her mind when she should be focused on other things.”

“Okay,” I muttered. My heart was still racing, but that had gone better than I thought. I didn’t get yelled at, called stupid, anything like that. She still wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but I felt good for having said something at least, a lot better than I usually did in situations like that.

It was only a little ways past the end of the goldfire rocks that we found Emi sitting on the ground in the dark, squinting at set of vials she had on the ground. “Bout time you two showed up.”

“Just thought you might’ve wanted some space,” Kalia said, sitting on the ground a bit away from Emi’s materials.

“What I want is light. Can you hold that a little closer?” 

“Oh, sure.”

Kalia scooted up to Emi’s workspace, and I sat down next to her, watching as Emi pulled a few more things out of her pack. All in she had quite a few things laid out, a mortar and pestle, various sacks holding what looked to be twigs and grass and flowers, a couple of glass tubes holding more exotic plants like a piece of vine that looked to be oozing green sludge, a couple colored liquids, and finally what looked to be plain old water.

“What’re you thinking of making?” I asked as Emi puts on a pair of leather gloves and tossed some plants into the mortar. Or was that the pestle?

“Non-harmful corrosive acid,” she said as she started grinding away with the grindy part. “It’ll take a little while to get through rock that thick, but it should work. Not my specialty though, so don’t blame me if it doesn’t.” 

“Uh, don’t mean to doubt you,” Kalia said, immediately drawing a look of ire from Emi, “but how is corrosive acid supposed to be non-harmful?”

“Won’t hurt living things,” Emi replied as she returned to her work. “It’ll eat right through rock though, hopefully enough that we can move anything left over by hand. Course, I don’t know exactly how much rock is blocking the path, so no promises there.”

“Right,” Kalia said, looking down. 

“Don’t go sulking on me, ya hear?” Emi said, putting the pestle down and picking up the vial with the slimy vine. “We’ll deal with that nonsense later. Sorry for bringing it up now anyway.”

Kalia nodded, but I wasn’t sure if Emi saw. She put the vial back down and reached into her pouch for two more vials, a deep, blood-red one and a light blue one, more Gatorade tones. And then, for some reason, she handed them, to me. 

“Mix those and shake ‘em up,” she said, moving back to her own project. 

“Excuse me?”

“Go on, it’s not dangerous.”

I looked between the vials and Emi a few times, the vials and Kalia a few times. Kalia looked like she wanted to protest, but eventually she just shrugged, closing her eyes and scrunching her face.

“Alright,” I said, pulling the stopper out of the yellow one and giving it a sniff before recoiling. That was definitely pee, and any doubts I had about Emi’s hangover cure composition were quickly dispelled. The blue one I didn’t smell, but that was definitely the one I tipped over into the other one.

Once they combined I started swirling, very gently. “Put the stopper on and shake!”

I didn’t need to to see the results though. Somehow the blue and yellow liquids were combining into a bright orange color, literally bright. Once I followed Emi’s instructions and started shaking the light grew ever stronger, a strangely luminescent glow that filled the cave much further than the torchlight did.

“Could you have done that the whole time?” Kalia asked.

“Yeah, but unicorn piss is expensive. Better than carrying that torch around through all that goldfire though.”

“What was the blue stuff?” I asked, scrunching up my nose and wondering if I really wanted to know. 

“Unicorn piss; I just said that.”

“Wait, then what’s…?” My question trailed off as a new one formed in my mind. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing past Emi as the orange light continued to expand further, finally fully illuminating a crouching, snarling Cave Goblin with beady eyes. Just sitting there, watching us.

“Hi,” I said with a wave, and then it began to shriek.