“Sheena,” Kaori said, from across the cavern. “It’s me. Kaori.”

At Kaori’s words, the tension left the blue woman’s eyes. It was like someone had suddenly turned up the lights in the cave.

“Oh,” said Sheena. “It’s you again.” She sat down on the sleeping man’s groin, causing him to grunt in his sleep. Then she crossed her legs and began to pick at her sharp teeth with one scaly finger. “Somehow you always manage to ruin my pleasure.”

One of the men, the one lying nearest Kaori, rolled over and, in his sleep, began rubbing his head against her bare calf. Kaori pushed the man’s face away with her the fleshy sole of one bare foot. “Looks to me like you’ve had your fill of pleasure already.”

“There can never be enough pleasure.”

“Return that boy to me. In sound state of mind please.”

Sheena looked at Jiro lying on the floor. With his shirt torn and mud all up his back, he was sure he made a sorry sight. “Why?” The woman named Sheena asked. “What is he?”

“He’s my boss.”

“Oh.” Sheena looked at him again. So this, thought Jiro, is what it feels like to be fish food.

“Those others …” Kaori nodded toward the for bodies lying in the puddle of seawater. “They’re not dead, are they?”

“Of course not. I just put them to sleep. With a little prick of my tongue.”

“I’ve told you before, you can’t just kidnapping any human you like and drink their blood.”

“I wasn’t drinking their blood, silly human. I was drinking … other things. Nutritious things.” Sheena’s mouth widened, revealing a long row of white triangular teeth. A low rattling sound came from her throat, and caused the two heads of her tongue to vibrate. Could she possibly be laughing? Jiro wondered. Suddenly, he felt very tired.

Kaori cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t be drinking other things either.”

“They didn’t seem to mind.” Sheena looked down at the man she was sitting on. She lifted her arm high and brought it down on his chest at great speed, leaving a red welt on his chest. The man moaned and muttered something in his sleep. His mouth widened into a stupid smile. “See,” she said. “He likes it.”

“Because you stung him! You could stick a bonsai tree up his ass and he would like it!”

A tree up my ass, Jiro thought with a yawn. That did sound kind of nice. He should try that sometime. Was this the effect of Sheena’s sting? He felt both aroused and sleepy at the same time. Curious …

He looked over at Kaori. He had the sudden urge to pounce on her, tear off her yukata, bury his face in her neck, her armpits, her soft, white breasts … To run his tongue down her legs and then kneel over in front of and lick her toes. To do all the things he had only imagined doing. But his body was heavy, unresponsive. He was so sleepy … So, so sleepy …

“At least do it somewhere else,” Kaori was saying. “Why come here, of all the places in Japan?! You know what when strange things start happening to the authorities, things that don’t fit into their understanding of the world. They start panicking! It could ruin the bathhouse, you know that!” Kaori was like a different woman when she wasn’t teasing you, Jiro thought drowsily.

“Oh, so you are still in business.” Sheena looked extremely bored.

“Of course we’re in business. Now give back my boss.”

Sheena looked at Jiro again. “This is Ichizo? Are you sure? I thought it was him for a moment. But then the way he reacted to my commands. He seemed so feeble …”

“That’s because that isn’t Ichizo. It’s Jiro, his grandson.”

“His grandson?”

Sheena rose and padded over to where Jiro lay. Through half closed lids, he saw her lean forward. Her breasts, he saw, were more oblong than round, and covered all over in shimmering blue scales. She suddenly seems very attractive, he thought. And that tongue. Just imagine all the things a tongue like that could do. All the places it could go … But surely this was the effect of the poison. From her mouth, he caught the faint sent of something sweet, something musky and thick.

“I suppose there is a certain kind of … family resemblance,” Sheena finally said.

“Sheena, what are you doing here?”

Sheena stood up and fluttered her tongue. “Always trying to get to the point, aren’t you Kaori. That’s why I can’t love you humans. Always trying to get to the bottom line, the next yen. Move, move, move. Why can’t you just stop and … pleasure yourselves?”

“Life’s a lot harder when you only live for seventy or eighty years.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“That’s because you don’t have any imagination.”

Jiro swallowed. Was it just his own “feeble” imagination, or was this conversation going in the wrong direction? The direction that did not happen to end in “successfully returns home alive?” He needed to get out. Slowly, he forced himself to turn over and get to his knees. He began to crawl slowly toward the pool of seawater. His whole body felt like it had turned to rock. He could hear the two women arguing, but they suddenly sounded distant, as if they were arguing somewhere far away.

He paused, eyelids heavy. There was movement from the direction of the pool. It was Aya. She was sitting up at the edge of the water, her naked legs off to one side. She was looking down, rubbing her eyes. She must have just woken up, thought Jiro, too drowsy to care.

Her eyes opened in slow motion.

Aya blinked. She looked at Jiro, eyes widening slightly in recognition. She looked down at herself. Back at Jiro. Back to herself.

And then she began to scream.