AN: Sorry for the wait. I was initially planning on continuing Drawn into Passion, but I found it difficult to write due to the game setting. I therefore decided to start a new series in a more traditional setting, which is easier for me to write and therefore quicker to update. I'll still continue Drawn into Passion at some point.
This series is set in the same general universe as Drawn into Passion, but with some differences that won't be apparent until later on.
~~~~
Mark stepped off the bus. Unlike most days, there was no one else on the bus, with the obvious exception of the driver. The others had all already got off to attend one of the several parties being held to celebrate the completion of their high school years. The drinking, dancing and other activities would no doubt continue well into the night, to the disapproval of their parents.
Ironically, Mark's own parents would have loved for him to be partying like the rest. A few years back, they would have been yelling at him to "go out and socialise" and complaining about his lack of friends. Now, when he walked through the front door, all he got were bored glances of acknowledgement.
Upon arriving home, Mark trudged up the stairs and headed straight for his room. He set down his backpack, pulled a bundle of paper out of a cupboard and returned to his daily routine of drawing.
Mark had covered hundreds of sheets of paper with his drawings. Some were black and white while others were coloured to varying degrees. Some depicted people while others depicted landscapes. The earliest ones were utter crap that were unrecognisable as their intended subjects, while the later ones could charitably be described as above-average. All of it revolved around one central theme -- "monster girls".
It had been about five or six years back. Mark was then just starting to migrate from reading any book he came across to reading any website he came across. He'd thought of writing a fanfiction and was browsing for things to include in it. It was then that he saw a picture of a woman with horns, bat-like wings and a spaded tail -- a succubus.
From that point, Mark had become absolutely obsessed with the idea of supernaturally-beautiful women with exotic, inhuman features. He'd scoured the internet for any monster girl media he could find and voraciously devoured it all. He'd incorporated several monster girls into his fanfiction, though that hadn't improved its abysmal quality. Every waking moment that wasn't devoted to school or family was devoted to reading, watching, drawing and -- in more recent years -- masturbating to all things monster girl. Every sleeping moment was spent dreaming of monster girls, being lost in a fantastic world where every inhabitant lusted for him.
Of course, Mark was fully aware of how silly it was. However, he reasoned to himself, it wasn't entirely pointless. Mark was planning on pursuing a career in art and, even if he didn't end up drawing monster girls, he believed that his experience would still be valuable. Recently, he'd been making an effort to improve the quality of his drawings and started doing serious research. For example, to make his characters look like more than disjointed and grotesque blobs, he'd read up on both human anatomy and the biology of many kinds of animals and plants.
While Mark was engrossed in his current task -- adding the finishing touches to a depiction of a lush forest -- he heard his mother cry out, "Mark, it's time for dinner!"
Mark fumbled his pencil in surprise, creating a blemish on his drawing. He cursed, but decided that he could always fix it later.
When Mark went down to the dining room, he noticed that the dinner was rather more lavish than usual. On top of that, his parents were waiting for him to arrive, as opposed to their normal routine of starting dinner without him.
Mark's father stood up from his seat and said, "Hey, Mark. Please, have a seat first."
Mark was slightly confused but did as he was told.
"Now, I won't beat around the bush -- we haven't been the best parents so far," Mark's father continued. "We've been trying to -- to mould you into what we wanted you to be, rather than let you be what you wanted to be."
"That's right," Mark's mother said, with a smile on her face. "After all, looking at things objectively, your grades are good, you don't get into trouble -- most parents would beg to have a kid with just one of those two things."
Mark blinked, unable to formulate a response.
"That's right," Mark's father said. "So, starting from tonight, the two of us would like to make it up to you. For everything that we've done wrong."
And with that, they started having dinner in a manner reminiscent of a normal family.
Of course, it wasn't that simple. In hindsight, Mark should have noticed something wrong at that point.
After finishing dinner, Mark's parents advised him to go to bed early, since he had to be tired from the day's exams. He decided to follow this advice for once.
Mark showered, brushed his teeth and changed into his pyjamas. While lying in bed, he went through a cycle of breathing in deeply, holding his breath for a few seconds, then breathing out -- a ritual he followed to help him sleep well. After that, he pulled out a sheet of paper from inside his pillow to perform the last element of his daily routine.
It was a drawing of a succubus who was one of his original characters. If he were a hack writer, he'd describe her in such terms as: "Her hair was like a thousand strands of gold spun into silk, her eyes like emeralds sparkling in the sun. The features of her face would make a master artist despair at trying to reproduce her flawless beauty. The bountiful delights of her hourglass figure would incite envy in a goddess of fertility." Her name was Serena.
Even Mark knew that it was pathetic to depend on a fictional character to such an extent. Still, she kept him functional on a day to day basis, and nobody else knew about her, so what was the harm?
After burning Serena's appearance into his mind, Mark put the drawing back, turned off the light and closed his eyes. He allowed himself to slip from the world of reality and into the world of fantasy.
In his mind's eye, Mark pictured a beach in an unspecified tropical paradise. At this point, he couldn't tell if he was imagining it while awake or dreaming it while asleep. Either way, it didn't matter.
Mark was naked save for a pair of swimming trunks, allowing him to feel the warm sun and the soft sand directly. But he wasn't alone.
With foresight born of considerable experience, Mark reached out behind him and caught a bundled-up towel before it struck him in the head. Laughing, he turned around.
"Are you done gawking, idiot?"
The person who said that was a woman with blonde hair that reached her waist, green eyes, and a gorgeous figure that was barely contained in her flame-red bikini. Black wings extended from her back, while a spaded tail emerged from just above her bikini bottom and flicked about impatiently. The succubus had her hands on her hips and a peeved expression on her face.
"I was just taking in the scenery, Serena," Mark said.
Serena rolled her eyes. "Like
you
would be interested in that," she said. "So, what's it this time? Do you want to go swimming? Surfing? Do you want to tear off my swimsuit, push me down and fuck my brains out?"
"Actually, I was just thinking of making a sandcastle," Mark replied.
"Really?" Serena said, raising an eyebrow. "That's... childish even coming from you. Then again, I guess I should thank you for choosing that. This kind of bikini isn't made for any real physical activity -- " she demonstrated this by slightly pulling on her top to expose a nipple, causing Mark to blush, " -- and doing it on the sand wouldn't just be uncomfortable, it would be outright
painful
."
While grumbling in the manner that Mark had come to expect from her, Serena waved her arms and two oversized plastic spades appeared in her hands. She handed one of them to Mark and the two of them started digging.
It was odd, Mark mused to himself. When he'd first created Serena, he'd used her appearance to do something that most teenage boys in his position might have done. But around half a year ago, while he was immersed in dreams, he happened across Serena and she'd seemed... real. He never had any trouble distinguishing dreams from reality before that, but this Serena had an impression of colour and depth to her that confused him. And then there were her first words, which would forever be engraved in his memories: "Who are you -- wait, why the
hell
are you naked!?"
Incidentally, the answer to that question was: "Because I'm planning on getting laid with an imaginary monster girl." But he hadn't said that at the time.
Mark had been so shocked that he'd immediately woken up. It was some time before he was willing to try contacting Serena again.
Over the course of several nights, he'd learned more about Serena. As far as she knew, she had simply popped into existence one day, fully intelligent and with her current appearance. She could seemingly reshape the world around her at will, to the point that conjuring objects from thin air was a trivial task. But there were no other people in the world, except when Mark arrived. There weren't even any animals or plants -- the best she could manage was realistic-looking fake plants.
Interestingly, this strange world seemed to reflect the real world. When Mark read a book, Serena would be able to conjure it from then on, though she wouldn't know the book's contents until she read it herself.
It hadn't taken long for Serena to figure out the apparent cause of her existence. Between her appearance as well as Mark's during their first meeting, it was fairly obvious. After that, she behaved in an even more caustic fashion towards Mark than before.
But despite that, she had been subtly considerate towards Mark these past few months. For example, when he was struggling with one fiendishly-difficult assignment, she'd helped him organise his notes and think of the topic that had allowed him to score 88% on said assignment. Whenever asked about this, Serena would say something along the lines of, "Because you're the only person I can talk to, idiot. I would go mad in less than a week without your company. I can't afford to piss you off."
When his memories reached that point, Mark shook his head. It was just another aspect of his idiocy, Mark reasoned. Logically, Serena was just a figment of his imagination, an embodiment of his subconscious desires. Though, judging from the way she helped him keep track of the real world and the fact that Mark had never tried anything sexual with her from that first meeting, she was apparently his desires fused with his self-control as well.
Serena must have noticed Mark's odd behaviour, because she stopped and asked, "Hey, are you alright?"
Mark flinched and quickly replied, "I'm fine, it's -- it's nothing."
Serena frowned and put down her spade. "Listen, I don't have anyone else to talk to, so believe me when I say I know how you think. There's something wrong. Tell me."
Mark hesitated, then explained his parents' recent change of heart.
Once she'd heard the full story, Serena frowned. She said, "This might sound a bit weird, but I think something's wrong. The way you tell it, they were acting
too
nice."
