Maybe Jamie’s dad was right.

Maybe it had been a bad idea to take a gap year after high school.

Maybe, just maybe, Jamie wasn’t quite ready to head out into the wider world on his own and a couple of years living alone at student housing or a nearby apartment to campus would have better prepared him for the realities of being an adult.

Maybe.

Of course, there was also every chance that Jamie’s father had just been spouting his usual condescending bullshit. In fact, that was the more likely explanation. Ever since his parents’ divorce when he was nine, criticism seemed to be the only thing that his condescending, deadbeat of a father had in spades.

Forget child support.

Forget school supplies.

Forget presents entirely. Christmases and birthdays, both.

Jamie’s father was not the kind of man that could be relied on for anything worth a damn for a growing child. On the other hand, if he ever needed to get his little heart and all his hard work trampled because a single B on a report card full of A’s was somehow this profound failure as an Asian-American man, his father certainly had no shortage of words.

Intense daddy issues and emotional baggage aside, Jamie really had to question what he was thinking. He’d been told, repeatedly that the area was famous for its unpredictable weather. Somehow, the message had managed to go in one ear and right out the other.

At the very least, Jamie was dressed warmly enough. He hadn’t managed to fuck that up. He wasn’t going to freeze just yet but if he didn’t manage to find some way to get out of the raging blizzard, he would, sooner or later.

The weather had been nice enough when Jamie set out. As it was wont to do during this time of year in Hokkaido, though, things changed in the blink of an eye.

Jamie still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to set out on a solo hike in an area he wasn’t at all familiar with, but he had his suspicions. It probably had something to do with his father, some sort of subconscious rebellion to prove the bastard wrong.

Alternatively, it was all Jamie’s fault for being reckless, thinking he was invincible, and ignoring the locals’ strong insistence that he at least take a guide. That didn’t feel quite as good, though, so he settled for blaming his father instead.

Jamie shook his head. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. At least he’d done the responsible thing and started heading down the mountain as soon as he noticed the storm gathering. It wasn’t his fault that the blizzard fucking hit full-force before he could take three steps down the slope.

"Ugh, this sucks!" Jamie groaned, under his breath, as he trudged through the blowing snow and tried to see past his frozen nose. He’d long since lost the trail he’d followed up the mountainside and the only reason he knew he was even headed vaguely in the same direction was that he could tell the ground was sloping down in front of him.

"I can’t believe it," Jamie muttered, teeth chattering. "This is it for me."

As if tired of Jamie’s bitching, the winds picked up, blowing more snow in his face and whistling through the branches of the bare, skeletal trees that surrounded him. "I’m 19! I’m too fucking young to die!" he screamed into the storm as it did its best to drown him out.

It was a bit of a cliché, but Jamie said it anyway. "I have so much to live for!" as he tripped over an exposed root half-buried in the snow and pitched forward onto his hands and knees.

Jamie would have continued and said that there were so many things that he wanted to do, but that would have been pushing the bounds of plausibility.

It was why Jamie had decided to take the gap year in the first place. He hadn’t had any idea what he wanted to do or who he wanted to be. He was supposed to be finding himself in the land of his ancestors but he had a big fat nothing to show for it so far.

Jamie crawled to a nearby tree and used it to push himself back up to his feet. His thick gloves kept catching in the coarse bark, almost as if the tree was trying to hold on to him, somehow. He snatched his hand back and stepped away, continuing to follow the slope of the mountain downward.

"I’m going to die," Jamie said, as he picked himself up off the snow yet again.

"This is it. I’m gonna freeze to death. I’m gonna fucking get buried in the snow. The cold’s gonna preserve my body."

Jamie stomped through the snow. The worst part wasn’t the cold. The worst part was the snowflakes pelting his face at 35 miles an hour. The next time someone asked him if he thought the snow was beautiful, he was going to chuck a snowball at their face with a cannon and see how they liked it.

Teeth chattering, Jamie rubbed his arms and continued his descent. "They’re gonna fucking send a team. They won’t find me for days. Then when they do they’re going to put me in some fucking museum or something as an example of what not to do when you’re some dumb American tourist on Hokkaido."

Jamie shivered. He couldn’t fucking see his hand in front of his face and he was pretty sure his eyelashes were starting to weld his eyes shut.

At this point, the only thing Jamie could hope for was that the atheists were right because he wasn’t sure he could live with himself in the afterlife as the eternal 19-year-old virgin.

"I knew I should have gone with that fucking daddy in Tokyo," Jamie grumbled under his breath. The only reason he hadn’t was because his friend, a local he’d met on an online game a few years back, had told him that the hot silver fox was a yakuza.

Jamie groaned under his breath. It was fucking impossible to keep his bearings in the blowing snow. Every fucking tree looked the same. The thick blanket of white covering everything didn’t help.

After God knew how long wandering aimlessly down the mountain, Jamie felt the wind letting up somewhat. It was still pretty bad, but he was willing to settle for slightly better.

Now that the blizzard had let up at least a little bit, Jamie leaned against a nearby tree to take a moment and breathe. It didn’t help all that much. The cold stung in his lungs. He needed the break, though, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last if he just kept pressing through the storm without stopping.

Although he had no idea where he was, Jamie took the opportunity to think of what he was going to do once he got to the bottom of the mountain. He had no idea if he was going to survive the blizzard, but he wasn’t a quitter so at the very least he was going to give it his best shot.

Chances were, Jamie was far, far out from where he’d started his hike. It had just been too difficult to keep going straight down the mountainside, and he’d suffered a couple of tumbles already so it was unlikely that he’d miraculously stayed on the trail.

Jamie didn’t think he’d gone too far up the mountain before he realized that there was a storm coming in so he was probably going to encounter the foot of the mountain in the next couple of hours or so. In that case, he needed to focus on either finding a place to shelter until the blizzard blew over, or find some way to conserve his energy while he continued down.

The only things Jamie knew about surviving out in the wild came from watching Bear Grylls and he wasn’t sure how many of the guy’s tips had stuck around in his head. One thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t quite desperate enough to be thinking about drinking his own piss yet.

Just as Jamie was about to head off again, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Just up ahead and to the right, something was casting a bright, blue, flickering light onto the fresh snow.

Jamie rubbed his eyes. He didn’t feel too tired yet, but something was fucking off. He was starting to see shit. No way was that ball of blue flame flitting between the trees real.

For a hallucination, though, the wisp was remarkably stubborn. It refused to go away after Jamie blinked a couple of times. It was probably a super bad idea, but Jamie couldn’t help but think that maybe he should investigate.

Pushing away from the tree, Jamie stumbled in the direction of the wisp. He faintly remembered something about not following balls of blue fire in Japanese forests, but he wasn’t sure if that was an actual thing, or if his overactive imagination was just making shit up.

For a little while, Jamie felt like he was making some progress toward the ball of flame, but once he got within a couple of feet, it started darting away every time he tried to take another step closer. It stopped whenever he stopped and approached whenever he took a step back so he was pretty sure it was just fucking with him at this point.

Nevertheless, Jamie followed the wisp against his better judgment. It wove between the trees, making it difficult to follow at times, but he managed, somehow.

Jamie was engrossed. It was a really stupid thing to be doing but he just couldn’t stop. He felt like the wisp was calling to him.

In all honesty, Jamie knew that probably meant he should turn around and run the fuck away, but he just couldn’t help it. He couldn’t quite muster the will to stop what he was doing.

For a little while, at least, Jamie forgot all about the blizzard that was raging around him. He was still cold as fuck, but he didn’t quite feel it as much as before. He was so single-mindedly focused on following the flame that he couldn’t even spare a moment to think about anything else.

After what felt like hours, the forest of bare trees around Jamie gave way. The little ball of flame spun in place a few times before disappearing into dim blue embers.

Jamie blinked. He had no idea where he was or how far off the beaten path he’d gotten, but he knew it was nowhere near where he’d started.

Looking up, Jamie could only gawk. The skies had cleared and the blizzard had largely passed. The few trees that he could see around him had their boughs laden with thick clumps of snow. It was evening already, or at least quite close to it. The light of day was starting to leach out of the sky.

The mountain loomed overhead, the snowy peak in the distance seemingly crowned by the shimmering jewels of the first stars, but what truly took Jamie’s breath away was the building in front of him. It was beautiful in a homey, rustic sort of way. Warm light spilled out from the front windows onto the cozy little elevated porch in front and onto the snow on the ground some ways beyond the railing.

Jamie didn’t have a trained eye, but he’d seen enough of Hokkaido over the last couple of weeks to guess that he’d stumbled upon a little onsen up in the mountains. It helped that he could see steam rising from behind a wooden privacy fence that extended from the side of the building to the left. The faint sound of gurgling water in the air pretty much sealed the deal.

As cozy as the little ryokan seemed to be, Jamie had an inkling that it probably wasn’t prudent to walk in. He’d seen horror movies before. The owner was probably an ax murderer that would hack him up as soon as he let his guard down.

All the same, the warmth exuded by the building was all too irresistible. After spending hours in the middle of a bitter blizzard, he could hardly deny the temptation of some heat.

Against his better judgment, Jamie walked over. He hesitated for a moment at the base of the steps leading up to the elevated porch. Somehow, he knew that this was his last chance to do the smart thing and turn around.

Taking a deep breath, Jamie walked up to the front door of the ryokan. Sure, he could try and find his way down the mountain now that the weather was better, but it was starting to get dark and he had no idea how much further he would have to go.

If an ax murderer was hiding in the rustic little inn, then it was likely that Jamie was dead either way. As much as it scared him, if he was going to die, he much preferred getting backed to bits after relaxing for a couple of hours in a hot spring over freezing to death somewhere in the wilderness.

Having made up his mind, Jamie slid the front door open and poked his head inside. The balmy air inside the ryokan was heavenly against his skin and he couldn’t help but sigh.

The interior of the inn was every bit as charming as the exterior. The traditional genkan, the recessed section of the floor right in front of the door, was clean and empty. Jamie almost felt bad as he stepped inside, tracking snow in behind him.

As he took his boots off, Jamie looked around. The front room was cozy and warm. There was a small couch in the corner, facing a coffee table with a pair of books and a vase with a beautiful flower arrangement on top.

To Jamie’s left was what he presumed to be the front desk. It was empty at the moment, so as he walked up, he looked for a bell of some description to let the staff know that he needed their assistance.

Jamie had no such luck. Apart from a couple of plants growing out of cut bamboo vases, there wasn’t anything on top of the desk. "Hello?" he said, looking down the hallway leading further into the ryokan. "Can anyone help me?"

"Hello," said a voice with a silky, masculine character that sent a shiver straight down Jamie’s spine to the tip of his cock.

Jamie jumped back from the counter, startled at the sudden appearance of a man that, mere moments ago, hadn’t been there at all.

"W-Where did you come from?" Jamie blurted out, as he held a hand to his chest, feeling his heart pounding under his fingertips.

The man merely shrugged, eyes glittering with mischief.

Jamie rubbed his temple. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Strange things had been happening all day and a man seemingly appearing out of thin air was just the icing on the cake of an already-weird day.

To top it all off with a cherry of weirdness, the man was in a peculiar get-up, too. He was wearing a pretty light blue yukata but that wasn’t the strangest part. The man was wearing a white mask, painted to resemble the stylized face of a fox. Blue fire-like lines of paint swept along the sides of the muzzle on the illustration, following the curve under the eye holes.

As his gaze traced upward and locked with the man’s eyes, Jamie blinked and took a half-step back. The man’s eyes were golden, slitted like a cat’s, and intensely piercing.

Doing his best to ignore the heat rushing into his cheeks, Jamie cast his gaze further up. The man had long silvery hair tied back in a ponytail draped over his right shoulder but, to make things stranger, there was a pair of fox ears perched on top of his head.

Jamie had to do a double-take as the ears flicked. He could scarcely believe his eyes. "H-hello," he stammered, eyes riveted to the furry ears poking out of the man’s silver hair. "T-those are animatronic, right?"

"A-ni-ma-tro-nic?" the man muttered, mouthing the syllables with a strange look—as if he’d never heard the word before.

"Y-yeah. Like… mechanical?" said Jamie, struggling to find the words to explain what he meant. He should have figured that the language barrier was going to prove difficult to overcome.

The man simply tilted his head and shrugged.

Jamie groaned. It was probably useless to ask anything more about the ears. "Um… It’s pretty bad outside… And it’s getting dark… So… Do you have somewhere I can stay?"

The man’s eyes twinkled. "Yes, of course," he said, turning and gesturing toward the hallway leading deeper into the ryokan. "If you would follow me, I could show you to one of our rooms."

Jamie pulled his hands out of his gloves and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The interior of the ryokan was warmer than he’d anticipated and he was starting to bake in all his layers.

Rummaging through pants for his wallet, Jamie looked up at the receptionist and said, "Uh, do you take credit?"

The receptionist half-turned toward Jamie and tilted his head. "Credit?" said the man, tilting his head. For a moment, it seemed as if he didn’t know the concept at all, but the confusion in his eyes passed soon thereafter.

Nodding resolutely, the receptionist said, "Matters of payment can be arranged at a later time. For now, we should see to getting you warmed up and comfortable. I imagine it was not easy to make one’s way through the blizzard that has only just cleared up."

Jamie nodded. It made enough sense and he didn’t really have any energy to argue.

The receptionist stepped out from behind the desk. "Come," he said, beckoning over his shoulder, as he made his way toward the hallway leading deeper into the building.

Jamie, on the other hand, was rooted to the spot. He gawked, unable to help but stare, attention riveted to the set of nine tails swaying lazily from side to side behind the man’s back.

"Sir?" said the receptionist. "Is everything alright?"

Jamie glanced up at the receptionist. He was about to ask what was up with the tails and the fox ears but he had no idea how to broach the topic.

In any case, as Jamie looked back down to where the tails had been, there was only the smooth unbroken cloth in the back of the receptionist’s yukata.

Chalking it up to tiredness, Jamie shook his head and said, "Y-yeah. I’m fine. I-I’m just feeling a little bit exhausted."

"I can imagine," said the receptionist, as Jamie caught up with him. "It seemed like quite a serious snowstorm from inside but it must have been profoundly worse for you to have come to us in the aftermath."

The receptionist’s English was impeccable, but the way that he spoke was rather odd. It was formal and, in some ways, quite archaic. "Y-yeah," said Jamie, trying to puzzle out who, or what, the man in front of him was.

"Were you at least able to find satisfaction in your hike before the storm came upon you, perchance?" said the receptionist.

Jamie wasn’t really in the mood to talk but the other man’s smooth voice made him feel a bit bad for even thinking about being snippy. With a sigh, he shrugged. "It was alright, I suppose," he said.

"Perhaps you were beset by the bitter cold and biting winds early into your journey?" said the receptionist.

"Something like that," said Jamie. Looking around, he noted that the ryokan was built in such a way as to be quite mindful of traditional Japanese design. Not that he knew enough about Japanese architecture to say for sure. In truth, it was more that the paper walls and sliding paper doors felt like the traditional Japanese style.

"I’m glad, though," Jamie continued, scratching the back of his head as they passed a few rooms without stopping. It was strange. Somehow he felt as if the ryokan was much larger on the inside than it was on the outside.

Trying not to focus too much on where they were going, Jamie turned his attention forward to the receptionist walking ahead of him. "I don’t know if I’d still be alive if it had caught me further up the mountain."

"Perhaps you would have met an untimely end," said the receptionist. "Or perhaps you would have encountered a kind soul to help you to safety."

Jamie chuckled and scratched the back of his head again. "With my luck, I doubt it," he said.

The receptionist had stopped in front of a door.

"Honestly, I’m a lot more likely to meet some sort of evil spirit that would eat me—or something," said Jamie.

The receptionist chuckled as he slid the door open. "Perhaps," he said. "Once you have had a moment to catch your breath, could I, perhaps, interest you in partaking of our onsen? It should help ease the exhaustion from your shoulders with great efficacy."

Jamie stumbled into the room as the receptionist stepped to the side. Before he could even think twice about what he was doing he’d already slung his backpack off his shoulders and set it down by the door.

Under his breath, Jamie hummed. He was seriously considering what the receptionist was saying, but there was something that he had to find out, first. "I-is that going to cost me something extra?" he said.

"Not at all," said the receptionist. "A soak in the onsen comes with the privilege of staying with us."

---

Jamie was out like a light as soon as his back hit the bed. He’d been running almost purely on adrenaline by that point and as soon as he was in a comfortable and sufficiently safe-seeming place, the energy that had been left in his body drained out of him in its entirety.

When Jamie came to some time later, he had no idea how long he’d been asleep, only that it had been the best nap of his life. He sat up in bed and looked around the room. It was well-furnished and cozy but it didn’t have many of the amenities that were afforded to the average modern ryokan. There wasn’t a single electronic device in sight—not even a radio.

Jamie was just glad that there were at least a handful of wall-sockets. He’d fished his phone out of his pants and realized that it was completely out of juice. Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to bring a charger, even if he hadn’t had the wisdom to check the weather forecast before setting out on his hike.

As soon as he’d plugged his phone into the wall, Jamie got up and stretched. The screen didn’t immediately come to life so he waited until it did. The estimate for how long it would take to fully charge his phone didn’t inspire much confidence.

With a sigh, Jamie cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. His whole body felt stiff and achy and, for some reason, his fingers, nose, and the tips of his ears felt all tingly. Soaking in the onsen felt more and more tempting the more he thought about it.

Jamie didn’t think any harm could come of it, especially if the use of the onsen was complimentary. It didn’t look like there was much of anything else to do in the ryokan to pass the time while his phone was charging, anyway. Hell, he didn’t even know if there was any reception or wi-fi where he was.

Since he had no idea where to go to get to the onsen and the last thing he needed was to get lost again, Jamie stepped out of his room and made for the front desk. Luckily, he bumped into the receptionist halfway there.

"Might I be of service, sir?" said the receptionist.

Jamie felt a strange heat pool in the pit of his stomach. He blushed almost bashfully as he met the receptionist’s eyes. He averted his gaze and said, "Um, yeah… I was wondering if you could show me to the onsen?"

The receptionist’s eyes gleamed. As embarrassing as it was, Jamie couldn’t help but look into them. He’d given up on trying to keep his gaze off the man’s beautiful eyes almost as soon as he’d averted it. "Certainly, sir. Follow me."

Jamie quickly lost track of where he was supposed to go. The ryokan was even more mind-bogglingly large on the inside compared to the outside. Trying to keep his bearings in the crossing corridors was outright an exercise in futility. He had to give up. It was giving him a headache.

Before too long, the receptionist slid a door open to reveal a small changing room with several bamboo lockers. Jamie stepped inside just as the receptionist said, "Please watch your step around the bath. The stones are wont to get slippery—especially after a major snowfall."

Jamie nodded. He’d learned that lesson quite well after a friend who’d been showing him around Tokyo took a big tumble when they visited an onsen. There would have been blood if not for one man with lightning-fast reflexes.

"Thank you," Jamie mumbled, as he received a neatly folded towel in his hands. The receptionist had pulled it out of a set of cabinets on the opposite side of the room from the lockers. A second, smaller towel was placed on top of the bundle in his arms shortly thereafter. "Um… I think I can manage from here."

"Very well. I shall be taking my leave, now. I hope you find your bath satisfying," said the receptionist, eyes twinkling with something Jamie couldn’t quite put a finger on. There was just something so simultaneously off-putting and alluring about the man.

Jamie took a breath as the door slid shut behind him. It was stressful, speaking to that man. His cock was half-hard in his pants and he didn’t even exactly know why.

With a sigh, Jamie walked over to the side of the room with the lockers and set the towels down on the small bench beside him. He stripped his clothes off, having learned previously that it was customary to wear only one’s skin when visiting an onsen. He’d been quite surprised to see the number of penises dangling about the first time he’d gone to one.

Once he was bare, Jamie walked out of the changing room and into the open-air bath that he’d spotted from outside. Even though he could tell that it was absolutely frigid, steam rising from the surface of the natural spring, combined with the heat of the water, helped warm the air to a bearable temperature.

Jamie went up to one of the stools and wooden basins just outside the bath. He sat down and washed his lower body, blinking in surprise at just how soothing the water felt against his skin.

Once he was finished, Jamie walked over to the submerged steps leading into the hot spring. As soon as he stepped a foot into the water he couldn’t help but sigh in contentment, eager to experience the warmth all over his body.

One by one, Jamie descended the steps, body tingling as the warmth enveloped him. The spring was deeper than he expected, coming up almost all the way to his armpits.

As soon as his feet touched the bottom of the pool, Jamie waded over to the side. Resting his back against the side, he sank down until the water was lapping at the base of his jaw. It felt so goddamn good he had to fight down a quiet little moan that was threatening to spill out of him.

The heat was heavenly. It suffused every inch of Jamie’s skin and soaked into his weary muscles and bones. The steam rising from the hot spring in wisps and curls made the air close to the surface hot. Every breath warmed Jamie’s chest from the inside and the outside.

Leaning his head back, Jamie closed his eyes and sighed. Part of him didn’t want to leave the bath ever again. It was, hands down, the best onsen he’d ever been to. It was so relaxing that, for at least a little while, all the thoughts that were usually racing through his head at a thousand miles a minute were nowhere to be found.

For the first time in his life, Jamie truly lived in the moment and no part of him would have preferred it any other way.

Some time passed as Jamie sank deeper and deeper into his tranquil Zen state. Every breath that he took, every whisper of warmth across his skin from the eddies in the water, made his thoughts fade more and more.

Even the sensation of something brushing against his thigh wasn’t enough to jostle Jamie out of his trance. He assumed it was a fish of some description and the glint of something ruby-red in the water that he saw out of the corner of his eye seemed to confirm it.

As he sank into that deep state of relaxation, Jamie felt a stirring in his groin. He couldn’t help but moan this time, lacking the willpower to resist the sound as it bubbled up his throat unbidden.

Until now the heat had felt rather pleasant around Jamie’s half-hard cock, but not in an arousing way. For some reason that he didn’t have the lucidity to discern, the water around his crotch had gotten significantly hotter, and he could feel a strange sort of suction on the head of his cock.

Jamie moaned. This felt like what he imagined a mouth on his cock would feel like. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that he could feel a tongue lapping at the head of his cock, swirling around the sensitive glans and sending tingles up his spine.

"Fuck," Jamie grunted, as what felt like fingers pressed into the meat of his thighs. He thrust his hips up into the water. He couldn’t help it. It felt so good and all he could think of was getting more of it.

Jamie felt no small measure of surprise when he felt his cock head push into something strangely-solid in the water but the warm fuzziness that the hot spring had infused into his mind and body made it difficult for him to feel any alarm. In any event, he dismissed it, largely, as yet another strange thing in an already-strange day.

As he thrust his hips wantonly into the water, Jamie hardly noticed that he’d started to drift away from the wall that he’d anchored himself against earlier. On any other day, this would have caused some concern but his body felt so light and the hot, wet tightness wrapped around his cock was so good that the only thing he could think to do was giggle quietly.

Reaching into the space between his legs, Jamie felt a strange solidness to the water right above his crotch. It almost felt like a head, bobbing up and down on the length of his shaft at the same pace as the tightness that was wrapped around him.

It was almost as if the hot spring itself was giving Jamie a blowjob. It was amazing. It was intense. Jamie had never been harder in all his life. It was beyond anything he could have imagined.

The warm fuzziness that Jamie felt in his head continued to thicken. He couldn’t help but giggle, his thoughts feeling floaty and disjointed. One thing occurred to him and he couldn’t help but fixate on it.

Jamie was getting blown by an onsen.

Jamie was going to lose his virginity to a hot spring.

It was the strangest, most ridiculous thought that Jamie had ever had the privilege of thinking and the only thing he could do was laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. And yet there was no denying that, as outlandish as it might have seemed, it was exactly what was happening to him right then and there.

Jamie moaned, pumping his hips into the water in earnest. Let it never be said that he lost his virginity in a boring way. If anyone would even believe his story.

It didn’t matter.

The negative thought washed away in the heat of the onsen and the pleasure of the tightness wrapped around Jamie’s cock.

Before the thought could even get a chance to taint his happy, fuzzy, hazy trance, it dribbled out of his mind like water through a sieve.

A low giggle bubbled up out of Jamie’s throat as he felt fingers rubbing his flat stomach. He could feel a hand slide up behind his ass, fingers splaying apart to spread his ass cheeks. He could only moan, not understanding but also not caring as he felt something probing at his hole, tracing slow circles around the quivering entrance.

Between his legs, Jamie managed to sight the strange glittering red object that he’d noticed before. It bobbed up and down in the water in time with the sensations he felt on his cock. Had he been possessed of his faculties he might have imagined it had something to do with what was going on but the thought never once occurred to him.

Jamie leaned his head back, hair soaking in the hot spring water as he let out a moan and hiked his legs apart. He was floating, now, suspended by something that felt strangely solid underneath him.

Just as Jamie was about to spill, the not-mouth wrapped around his cock pulled away. All he could do was groan in disappointment, thrusting his hips fruitlessly as the water around his cock seemed to return to its normal form.

Between his legs, Jamie watched in wide-eyed astonishment as the water buckled upward. What at first seemed to be a misshapen blob of water rising from the depths of the hot spring took on the form of a man with the ruby-red orb suspended in the middle of his body.

"Hello, friend," the young man made of water said, with a quiet, almost-bashful giggle. "It’s been so long since someone played with me. Did you like it?"

Jamie’s mind had short-circuited the moment the water came to life in the form of someone probably not much older than him. All he could do was stammer, "Y-yeah," even as his rock-hard cock throbbed desperately in the hot water.

"I’m Mizu!" said the boy. "Who are you?"

"I-I’m Jamie," Jamie mumbled. He was so fucking close to blowing. He could feel it. Just one more tug and he was done.

"Hi, Jamie! It’s so nice to make a new friend after all this time! You don’t look like you’re from around here. Where are you from? said Mizu, words coming at a rapid-fire pace that left Jamie little time to think about what was being said and even less room to consider how to answer.

"I-I’m from America," Jamie said, stumbling over the words as he briefly contemplated reaching down between his legs to finish him off. "I-I got lost and stumbled upon this place."

"Oh," said Mizu, expression dropping. The red orb in his chest seemed to lose some of its luster. "Does that mean that you’ll have to leave?"

Under normal circumstances, Jamie would have answered in the affirmative without a second thought but the warm fuzziness he felt in his head and his body made him hesitate. "Y-yeah, probably…" he sighed, the heat soaking even deeper into his weary body.

Mizu frowned. Jamie felt a little bad, but there wasn’t any other way he could have responded. He had meant to get away from his life for a little while but he’d always known that he would have to go back eventually.

It wasn’t like Jamie had much of a choice in the matter, anyway. He was in Japan only as a tourist. He didn’t have unlimited money. Sooner or later he would have to go back if he didn’t want to end up on the streets, or worse.

The clear, flowing water that made up Mizu’s mercurial form surged closer to Jamie. So close, in fact, that Jamie could feel the heat radiating from the water.

"But it’s so lonely here," said Mizu, eyebrows—or at least whatever passed for eyebrows on his watery form—knotted.

Jamie’s cock pulsed. His head throbbed. It was hard to think. So hard. All he wanted to do was lie back and enjoy the heat and pleasure his cock but he couldn’t. Not when Mizu’s face was barely an inch away from his. Not when the heat of Mizu’s body filled his lungs. "I’m sorry about that…"

"No one’s visited me in a very long time…" Mizu complained, lip quivering as if he was about to cry.

"I’m—" Jamie started. He never finished.

"M-maybe I can convince you to stay!" said Mizu. His expression visibly brightened as something occurred to him. What it was, Jamie couldn’t say.

Jamie was sure whatever it was couldn’t be good for him but that particular train of thought was derailed as soon as what felt like fingers wrapped around his straining cock. Before long the heat had flooded back into his head and there was little hope of rescue. Not that he wanted to be rescued, anymore. It felt so goddamn good.

A moan slipped from Jamie’s lips, making Mizu’s expression brighten even more. The ruby-red sphere embedded in the water boy’s chest sparkled happily.

Jamie’s eyes fluttered half-closed as Mizu’s fingers deftly worked his cock under the water surface. They were hot. So hot that the hot spring water felt cold against parts of his cock as Mizu stroked him up and down.

By all rights, the temperature should have scalded Jamie. However, it didn’t feel unpleasant at all. Instead, it was unlike any pleasure he’d ever felt before. He could only moan and uselessly thrust his hips into Mizu’s hand, thoughts of leaving here and going back home to his old life lost in the wild haze of ecstasy that had soaked into his mind.

"Are you sure you have to go?" Mizu murmured, as the pleasure wracked Jamie’s body.

Purely out of instinct, Jamie nodded. Deep down, he knew he still had to go. Even if, at this point, much of him didn’t want to.

Mizu’s grip tightened as the crystal in his chest darkened to an almost menacing shade of red. "Are you sure?" Mizu spoke, voice low.

Jamie whimpered. The pleasure was too much. He was so close. He thrust his hips, cock throbbing, pulsing, and quivering. He was so fucking close.

"P-please," Jamie croaked, after a few minutes of the most exquisite torture of his life. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how tight Mizu’s grip got, all he could do was get right up to the edge. Somehow, he just couldn’t quite get all the way there. "I-I want to cum. I-I need it. P-please!"

The ruby-red orb glimmered. It was a dangerous kind of glimmer. "I won’t let you cum until you promise not to leave," said Mizu, voice taking on a predatory tone that sent a shiver down Jamie’s spine.

"I-I can’t," Jamie panted. The heat was getting to be too much. It filled his lungs, his nose, his entire body. He could feel his resistance melting away, his thoughts fading into the pleasant static haze in his head.

"Oh, well…" murmured Mizu, in a low, sing-song voice that made Jamie moan. "I guess I’ll just have to play with you until you beg me to stay," he said, brightly.

A quiet whimper escaped Jamie’s lips. What felt like tendrils made of water slithered around Jamie’s body. He could feel them against his skin, hot and tingly. The thin, tapered tips rubbed at his nipples, flicking at the sensitive nubs and eliciting yet another moan.

"Won’t you stay?" Mizu whispered, leaning in to press his lips against Jamie’s shoulder. Hot, wet kisses traced the curve of his neck, his tongue tracing a single tingling stripe right from Jamie’s collarbone to the base of his jaw.

"I-I… P-please…" Jamie stammered. Sparks were flying in his head. He couldn’t think. It was hot. Too hot. His thoughts were melting before they could even come together.

"Aw, come on… Please…" Mizu whined, sucking on Jamie’s collarbone. "Won’t it just be easier to give in?"

It would be. Jamie bit his lower lip and moaned. It would be so much easier to just give in. It was so hard to try and think through the hot, pleasant haze in his head.

Whatever resistance Jamie had left was rapidly diminishing. Between the heat and the pleasure, he felt like his mind was just melting away. He couldn’t think. Didn’t want to think. Not now. Not anymore. It would just feel so much better if he gave in and let go so he did.

"O-okay," Jamie whispered. His cock was so hard. His body was so hot. He was so close to the edge it was driving him crazy. He wanted to cum. Had to cum. It was the only thing he could think of as his thoughts drained out of his head, melting and burning away in the heat of the hot spring.

"You’ll stay?!" said Mizu, the ruby-red sphere in his chest practically incandescent with how bright it seemed.

"I-I will," said Jamie. He didn’t know better. Not anymore. His head was full of heat and steam and cock. "P-please let me cum!"

Jamie’s moan was cut short by the feeling of Mizu’s hot mouth pressing against him. A shiver traced the curve of his spine as he felt something veiny and thick rub up and down the cleft of his ass.

Eyes shooting wide open, all Jamie could do was shift his legs apart as the thick piece rubbing up against his ass did so with greater insistence. He moaned into Mizu’s mouth, body and mind melting into the heat as he felt the blunt end of what he assumed was Mizu’s cock press up against his quivering hole.

This wasn’t quite how Jamie thought his first time would go but he wasn’t complaining. He was beyond complaining, now. His hole itched and twitched as Mizu’s hot cock rubbed up against him.

A long, low groan escaped Jamie as Mizu’s cock slid into him. The pressure built and built and built until his hole could take no more. The fat head popped in and elicited a gasp from Jamie but he’d had little more than half a heartbeat to adjust before he felt the rest of the thick piece working its way inside of him.

The heat was intense, and the pleasure more so. Until now Jamie had only felt the heat of the hot spring soaking into his body through his skin but now that Mizu’s cock was buried in him, he could feel it spreading through his insides.

It was unlike anything Jamie had ever experienced before and the pleasure of it was mind-blowing. For a precious few seconds, his mind went blank as Mizu’s cock head grazed his prostate, the heat sending waves of ecstasy crashing through his body.

Inch after sizzling inch of hot water boy cock slid into Jamie’s guts and he didn’t think it was going to stop. His hole had stung around the sizable girth, at first, but the heat of the hot spring had turned the pain into little more than a pleasurable buzz.

Tongue lolling out as he tried his best not to pass out from the pleasure, Jamie rolled his hips onto Mizu’s cock. He wanted more. Needed more.

Somehow, this strange young man made of water had awakened something inside Jamie that he’d not even known was there. He wanted cock. He craved it. But more than that, he wanted Mizu to breed him and fuck him and fill him up until he was bursting at the seams.

The heat from Mizu’s cock continued to spread through Jamie’s insides, making him feel like he was melting from the inside out. It tingled as it slowly washed over him, threading through his middle before rising into his chest and making every breath hot and intense and so, so good.

Jamie’s cock throbbed as the heat climbed into his neck. It washed over his jaw, making his cheeks tingle. He whimpered, eyes closing, as the heat overtook his head. It seeped into his skull, made his overheated brain even hotter. He could feel his thoughts melting away, dripping out of his ears as Mizu’s cock settled inside of him.

Thoughts of going back home to see his father and start college and go to work and spend the rest of his life wage-slaving just to get by were the furthest thing from his mind. Only one thing remained, and that was getting his ass fucked seven ways to kingdom come by Mizu’s thick, fat, water boy cock.

Over and over again, Jamie moaned as his tight virginal hole was speared by Mizu’s cock. The water boy was an expert at working his endowment, angling every stroke in just such a way as to graze Jamie’s prostate with every thrust.

Jamie was going crazy. He was losing his mind and he didn’t care if he actually did.

The heat suffused him, every inch of his skin, every pound of his flesh. It wasn’t just his mind that he felt was melting away with every gentle slap of Mizu’s fat cock into his cherry. As he sank into the trance of pleasure, he felt as if his own body was becoming indistinct, the line between his skin and the hot spring around him blurring until they were nigh indistinguishable.

Jamie tossed his head back and cried out as Mizu’s thrusts picked up their pace. His entire body shook with the intensity of their lovemaking. His shoulders trembled. His back arched. His toes curled in the water of the hot spring.

A low, wordless howl escaped Jamie’s lips as he hurtled toward his climax. Mizu’s heat continued to rise within him, almost suffocating him as it filled his ass, his lungs, his throat, and his head.

Tenuous thought strands spun together and whirled apart in the storm of ecstasy in Jamie’s mind. His brain was melting, turning to mush. Every jostle of Mizu’s cock against his prostate made it more and more difficult to think until Jamie gave up altogether and surrendered himself to the pleasure.

Moaning deliriously from just how fucking good it all felt, Jamie begged: "P-please let me cum, Mizu!"

Mizu, groaning against Jamie’s shoulder, muttered, "Y-you have to promise y-you’ll s-stay…" He grunted, hips snapping upward, thrusting his watery cock further inside Jamie’s tightly gripping asshole than it had been before. "…y-you have to promise you’ll stay forever…"

The notion of having a life to go back to, a family that was waiting for him, never even occurred to Jamie. He was too far gone. His mind was in a puddle, rendered down by the heat of Mizu’s rough, passionate fucking.

"Y-yes," Jamie mumbled, eyes squeezed shut. "I-I’ll stay forever. P-please. L-let me cum."

Then, more quietly, "I-I want to feel like this every day," Jamie moaned.

All this time, Jamie had been looking for an answer to what he wanted to become, to the question of what his future would look like. He’d struggled with finding his own way, figuring out where he would fit in and what he could do to make the world a better place.

As the last dregs of whatever bright future Jamie had had in front of him dribbled out of his mouth in a string of drool, he’d finally come to realize one thing he’d overlooked: he didn’t have to make the world a better place. He didn’t have to put his talents to any good use. He didn’t have to spend every waking minute applying his intelligence to figure solutions out to problems he didn’t even know about yet.

Jamie could just… stop thinking. He could just be like Mizu. Happy. Horny. Stupid.

"Y-yes!" Mizu groaned, thrusting one final time into Jamie.

Jamie’s entire body seized up as he felt Mizu’s climax hit. Heat, molten and vicious, flooded into him, searing his insides with what felt like raging fire. It didn’t hurt. It was the furthest thing from pain. It was ecstasy, unlike anything Jamie had ever experienced before.

As the heat threaded itself through his guts, Jamie felt his own orgasm hit. His mind blanked from the pleasure and the intensity of it all, his cock pulsing, throbbing, and spurting into the water at the rhythm of the waves of heat rocking into him through his ass.

In the moments before he lost consciousness, Jamie felt as if his whole body was dissolving into the hot springs. He could feel his arms and legs losing definition, his chest tingling as it melted into the water around him.

The last thing Jamie saw was the bright ruby-red glow of Mizu’s orb as he felt a hand on top of his head pushing him down into the hot water.

---

The fox-faced man slipped into the changing room just before the onsen, making nary a sound but for the rasp of the door sliding open. He retrieved his newest guest’s clothes from the locker they’d been placed in and folded them neatly before taking them into his arms.

Curious as to what had become of the erstwhile adventure-seeker, the fox-faced man crept toward the entrance to the onsen and peered out.

Though a sight that would have alarmed most people greeted him, the fox-faced man merely smiled. It seemed, at first glance, as if some of the water of the hot spring had sloshed over the side, onto the rocks that bordered the natural pool. The strange thing was that the water did not spread out like water was wont to. Instead, it had taken on the form of two young men in the heated throes of lovemaking.

The fox-faced man ignored the stirring in his loins. It was sorely tempting to join the two water boys, one with a ruby-red core pushing into the other with a sapphire-blue core, but there was time enough for that later.

For now, the fox-faced man had some loose ends to tie up, including, but not limited to, the bundle of clothes he held in his arms. They were going to go straight into the incinerator. It wasn’t like the newly minted water boy would have any need for them in the future, in any case.

As he left the changing room to leave the two water boys to their frantic fucking, the fox-faced man chuckled. Sexual energy suffused the air of his abode, feeding him in a way that centuries of dwindling worship had failed to do. He supposed he owed the Fairies for showing him how much better life could be.

Humming a quiet little tune as he walked down the hallway, the fox-faced man couldn’t help but grin under his mask as he pondered how it would be once he was strong enough to return to the mortal world.

Soon, the fox-faced man reminded himself. He felt stronger every day. With the addition of Jamie to his little stable, he was one step closer to making his triumphant return. And to think he’d come so far just because of a one night stand with the cutest twink in pink he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing.