Alex stepped out of the shower, shaved his beard clean, and took a proper look at himself in the mirror. He was much thinner than before, but his muscles were still well defined. His strength hadn't noticeably decreased, so it seemed to be more of an aesthetic change than anything else.
His hair had grown all the way to his shoulders, and he would need a haircut. Vera usually took care of that every month or so.
The bathroom door opened, and Vera walked in carrying a grooming kit.
"I figured you'd want a haircut," she said as she approached him from behind.
"Thanks," Alex replied, grabbing the chair they usually used.
"I heard from the girls that you'd been gone for a year," Vera said as she began cutting his hair. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Never better, actually."
"Then what's wrong? Something's bothering you."
Alex considered how to approach the topic, then decided to be blunt.
"While I was in Hisui, I met Mesprit. She taught me a method to feel love."
Vera froze, scissors hovering midair, before quickly regaining her composure and continuing.
"And?" she asked. "What seems to be the problem?"
"Should I?"
"Should you what?"
"Should I use that method to fall in love with you?"
Vera smiled faintly and kept cutting his hair. "First of all, forcing love like that is disingenuous. It doesn't come from a place of sincerity and would always feel artificial. Are you really in love with me, or are you forcing yourself? Who else would you use it on? Anyone you've slept with? Anyone you're physically attracted to? Love is usually a mystery, and that's what makes it romantic when it happens. There's no logic to who someone should fall in love with."
She paused to brush loose hair from Alex's shoulders, then met his eyes in the mirror. "You need to take this seriously. Once you use that method on a girl, that's it. It's the ultimate form of commitment. It would be no different from marriage, because you'd be giving yourself to her whether she reciprocates or not. As beautiful as love is, it's also a shackle. If you use it on the wrong person, she could use it to turn you against everyone else."
"What about you?" Alex asked. "We're already married and have a child together. If anyone deserves my love, it's you."
"Are you sure?" Vera asked. "I might get selfish and take you for myself. You'd be inclined to break up with the other girls, and I'd have you all to myself. Do you really trust me to be selfless enough to share my husband with other women?"
Alex wanted to say yes immediately, but he stopped himself and thought it through. The problem wasn't with him, but with the other girls. Could they really all be trusted so completely, especially if he changed as a person as a result of that heightened emotional bond?
"The reason your harem works is because you treat all of us the same. None of us feel left out of the group because you clearly don't have a favorite. Once love goes into the mix, whose to say you won't end up loving one of us more than the others?"
Alex opened his mouth to argue, but Vera continued.
"Don't say you can hide it from us, either. We can tell at a glance if you have any preferences. We're women, after all. It's our superpower, just as men are single-minded creatures who only focus on problems to solve."
"What do you think I should do?"
"That, dear husband, is a problem you should solve on your own," Vera said as she leaned in and kissed Alex on the cheek before cleaning up and leaving the bathroom.
Alex jumped back into the shower to rinse the hair from his body, deep in thought. He didn't think it was as serious as Vera made it out to be. He had felt those emotions for Mesprit, and he wasn't in any hurry to see her again, which made it seem as though those feelings lacked permanence.
The real problem would arise if he eventually developed feelings of his own. He would lose the control he currently had over who he fell in love with, and that would create complications for the girls. There were simply no guarantees once the trigger was pulled and the ball started rolling.
"Am I overthinking this?" Alex muttered as he reached out to Gardevoir through telepathy.
In a flash, Gardevoir teleported into the bathroom as Alex was drying himself off and putting on casual clothes.
"Gardevoir, I have memories of falling in love with Mesprit. Can you isolate them and direct them toward the girls as needed?"
Gardevoir stepped closer, placed her hands on Alex's temples, and began searching through his memories. Once she found the one he had specified, she internalized it and began experimenting with it.
After a moment, she opened her eyes and nodded at Alex.
"Difficult, but possible," she said, then elaborated.
Love exists as a persistent emotional state rather than a single, isolated feeling. It becomes part of a person's identity, so simply seeing the loved individual naturally brings those feelings to the surface. The emotion is further reinforced by that person's actions as perceived by the one in love. Because of this, it cannot be artificially invoked without undermining the connection itself. Forcing it, as Alex plans, would make it feel fake.
What is possible, however, is to condition the person through the emotion. The memory of love can be anchored to specific perceived actions, effectively turning them into triggers. When such a trigger is recognized, the associated memory would surface, signaling that Alex should experience feelings of love at that moment.
The problem lies in identifying and controlling those triggers. The human mind is highly complex, and triggers are rarely clean or deliberate. They can range from something entirely mundane, such as a friendly smile, to something deeply intimate, like a kiss. Determining which actions should activate the memory, and ensuring they do so consistently and appropriately, is exceptionally difficult.
"Do you have any suggestions for how to use it?" Alex asked.
"Sex," she replied.
Sex was undeniably intimate. Unfortunately, Alex tended to treat it more like a drug than an expression of intimacy. If sex were used as a trigger for these memories, he risked developing feelings for the women he had sex with most often.
This presented a problem. Of the girls he had sex with, Nyx was the most avid, engaging almost daily when he was around. The others were satisfied with once a week or even just once a month, depending on their own needs.
Using sex as a trigger would make Alex fall in love with Nyx faster than the others. It was both fair and unfair at the same time.
He explained this to Gardevoir, who suggested limiting it to once a week per girl to reduce blatant favoritism. The drawback, however, was that it would require the girls to be intimate with him at least weekly, even if they weren't in the mood.
"What about once a month?" Alex suggested.
Gardevoir shrugged. After all, this was his own mind he was trying to program.
"I guess I'd better ask the girls' opinions on this rather than deciding on my own."
Alex pushed the problem to the back of his mind and went to meet the girls in the living room. They were eating ice cream while Sable, Lyra, and Mika shared their side of the story.
Once Alex joined them, he recounted his journey through Hisui, especially for Alvera, who listened with stars in her eyes as her father described his adventure.
"So… Alex. No one has… 'put you to sleep' for close to a year now?" Nyx asked with a mischievous grin.
"No, and I'm very pent-up," Alex replied.
"Ewww…" Alvera said. "Don't talk about that with me in the room."
Vera had recently had "the talk" with Alvera, since girls were apparently more aware of such things at a younger age than boys.
"Sorry, sweetie," Nyx said. "I got a bit excited."
"EWWW, NO! STOP!" Alvera shouted dramatically.
The girls all laughed, giving Alex a moment of genuine happiness with his family. It was exactly what he had missed during nearly a year of isolation and reminded him of his desire to reciprocate their love and affection. So, while he had everyone in the same room, he decided to bring up the topic.
"While I was away, Mesprit gave me a method to feel love," he said bluntly.
The room fell silent as each of the girls processed what that meant.
"I thought you already loved all of us, Dad," Alvera said, while the others continued to think it over.
"And I do," Alex replied. "But it's different when it's between unrelated adults. I'm sure you'll understand someday when you meet that special someone."
"I don't get it."
"You will eventually," Alex said.
Alvera shrugged and continued eating her ice cream, glancing around at the others. From her perspective, the atmosphere had suddenly turned strange.
"Can I do it too?" Rhea asked, breaking the silence.
"Gardevoir?" Alex called out.
Gardevoir teleported into the room and, after Alex asked her through telepathy, nodded.
"She says it's possible," Alex said, "but it would feel even more artificial."
"It's worth a try, just to see," Rhea said shyly, an expression she rarely showed.
Alex went on to explain the details of his idea. He proposed using sex as a trigger for the feeling, limited to once per girl per month at most. As he spoke, he made a point of addressing Vera's earlier concerns.
"And Vera, to answer your questions from before, no, this isn't me forcing myself to fall in love with you," Alex said softly. "This is me giving back what all of you have given me. I'm doing this willingly, which may not be romantic in the way you described, but I think it matters more that I'm choosing of my own free will rather than responding to some random trigger."
He looked around the room at each of the women present, remembering everything they had done for him and reaffirming his conviction before speaking. "I'm leaving the decision up to you. Everyone here has a say in who should or shouldn't be included in this little experiment. I consider all of you my girls, so I'll leave this decision in your hands."
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