When Jiro woke, he was no longer in the cave, but lying face up, gazing at the open evening sky. He could hear the sounds of seagulls and ocean waves. Something was pressing down on him. Something heavy. He tried to move his arms. Nope. His legs. Nope. His neck? Just barely. He looked around. It looked like he was back at the beach, near the volleyball net.

Pat, pat, pat. Somewhere out of Jiro’s sight, someone (or something) was patting down on his stomach and legs. He felt a weight added to his stomach. Pat, pat, pat. Jiro craned his neck to try and see. Only then did he realize: he was buried, up to his neck, in sand!

“Um … hello?” he croaked, throat dry from the sleep and summer heat.

A head appeared in the sky, sliding into view.

“Oh, look who finally woke up,” said the head. “I got so bored of waiting, that I started building a sand castle on your crotch. It even has ramparts. And a long, thick minaret in the center. Rising up like a rod.”

“Hi Kaori,” Jiro said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Kaori leaned forward until her face almost touched his. “Hi Jiro,” she said throatily. Then with a pwwf, she blew some grains of sand away from Jiro’s ears.

Jiro turned away. “Uh, so are you going to let me out now that I’m awake?”

“No.” He could feel her hot breath on his cheek.

“When will you let me out?”

“Eventually.”

“What do you mean eve—oof!”

Kaori plopped down onto Jiro’s stomach. “Well there goes my minaret,” she said, looking down at him. “You’re not sneezing. Hmm. I guess being suggestive isn’t enough. The touch needs to be physical.”

She pivoted on Jiro’s crotch and swung her legs over they sat near Jiro’s head. He could see the smooth white skin of her calves extending from the hem of her yukata. A black yukata, decorated with a red flower print pattern. Her feet were so close Jiro’s face that he could see the individual grains of sand up between her toes.

“Do you like it?” Kaori murmured. “Looking at my legs? Do you like it when I sit on you Sheena style?” Her eyes were crinkled again. Clearly, she was teasing him. Trying to get a reaction.

Jiro remembered the ordeal back in the cave. He shuddered at the thought of what Sheena, the woman with the long tongue, had almost done to him. At the time, he had wanted it so badly. Wanted Kaori so badly … He blushed.

“I’m not sure that I like Sheena style.” He looked around, trying not to look at Kaori’s bare legs. Under Kaori’s weight, he could feel little Jiro reacting. “I’m not sure if I even know what kind of being Sheena is … Or want to know … And where are the others?”

Kaori flicked her toe, sending a few grains of wet sand onto Jiro’s face. “Sheena went ahead to the bathhouse, carrying the others.”

“You’re letting that into the bathhouse?”

“That is one of our most loyal customers.”

“Oh …” Jiro said. He was beginning to see what Kaori had meant when she had said that the guests were not exactly human. He could think of two dozen things about Sheena that were not exactly human. Not least of all her personality.

“What about the others?” Jiro asked.

“When they wake up, Yui or one of the staff will give them the usual explanation. That they almost drowned in the water and were pulled out by some passerby. Their memories won’t be clear. It’s part of Sheena’s poison. Each will think they had some … dream.”

“Dream?”

“Oh you know …” Kaori twirled a strand of her wavy brown hair with a finger.

“The kind of dream where your most embarrassing, most desperate, most true desires become a reality. And I wonder …” She ran her foot by Jiro’s head, almost touching his ear, drawing a trail in the sand. “What kind of dream did you see … hmm, Jiro? What is your most desperate, most embarrassing desire?”

Jiro cleared his throat. Yes, she was very clearly trying to get a reaction.

“So it happens often, huh?” he said, trying to change the subject. “Sheena’s um … kidnappings.”

“Often enough.”

So Sheena had put Aya back to sleep again. Jiro winced at the awkward memory of Aya and her panicked flailing on the floor of the cavern. How she had fallen backward with her thighs splayed out, open to his view. If she ever saw him again, she would probably spike a volleyball right between his legs. And with a serve like hers, she could probably do it hard enough to incapacitate little Jiro for life …

“Sheena is something called a kaiju, if that’s what you were wondering.” Kaori crossed and re-crossed her legs, revealing a flash of her white thighs. Jiro tried not to think about what lay beyond. He knew what kind of underwear Kaori liked: the kind that left little to the imagination.

“Kaiju … kaiju … Kind of like Godzilla?” Stay calm, little Jiro, he thought. Stay calm.

“Sort of. Except with breasts.” Kaori cupped her breasts through the fabric of her yukata, pressing them up. Then she let them fall and rolled her eyes. “And way more attitude.”

Jiro was having trouble focusing. Maybe this was from disbelief. After all, he had never seen a monster girl, a kaiju, before. But it was also probably because of Kaori’s actions, her words. And because he could feel her ass pressing into his groin. All that separated them was a thin layer of sand. If he didn’t calm himself soon, she really would be sitting on his minaret. Kaori shifted slightly. Jiro restrained a moan.

“And … there are more of these things? These kaiju?”

“Oh yea. They come in all types.” Kaori wriggled her butt again. “Usually some similarity to animals. Fish, birds, snakes, lizards. Even cows. All types, really. And all of them like to take baths … Or did, before things fell apart …” She sighed. “Well, if business picks up, you’ll be seeing many more of them.”

That’s a lot to take in,” Jiro said, who was trying to take slow, deep breaths. He folded his chin and watched warily as a crab crawled over his chest. He was taking this information about the kaiju surprisingly well, he thought, considering a fish woman had tried to knock him out and suck his ramen noodle dry.

“It’s strange … I’ve never seen any kaiju before in my life.”

Kaori wiggled her toes in greeting as the crab crawled past. “You need the right kind of blood to see them. Bloodlines. Priests, monks, shrine maidens. In your case, it comes from Ichizo, your grandfather. But your ability was latent. You also needed a little help …”

“A little help …” Jiro looked at Kaori. “The tea … You told me that was just ordinary tea. With no stimulant but caffeine.”

“Well it was tea. And what was inside was not exactly a stimulant ... More like a depressant. One that lowers your inhibitions. Helps you see the things you don’t want to see.”

Inhibitions. Jiro thought about how, for the longest time, Sheena had looked human to him. Even with the effect of such a depressant, it had been hard to see her for what she was. “So I drank this tea … and now I can see monsters.”

“Not just monsters or kaiju. Also ghosts, spirits, yokai, ghouls …”

“Great,” Jiro said. “Just wonderful.” Suddenly he felt angry. Here again, someone had decided his life for him. First it was Gramps, running off and leaving him in charge. Now Kaori, slipping some weird herb into his drink. Had he asked to see monsters? Had he asked to be in charge? No. And yet here he was, step after step, forced down a path not of his choosing.

“Get off me,” he said. “Get your conniving ass off me. You’re just like the rest of them. I didn’t ask to drink that tea.”

“Jiro, I—”

“Stop it. I said get off.”

Kaori slid off Jiro’s chest and pushed some sand off with a foot. He broke free and, not bothering to shake the sand off, walked to the water’s edge. He sat staring out at the darkening sea. What was he doing here? The same old thing was happening again. Complications had followed him, across the sea, all the way here to Japan.

After a time, Kaori walked up behind him and sat down by his side.

“Jiro …” she said softly. “It wears off you know. The tea. You don’t have to drink more if you don’t want to.”

Jiro was silent. Thinking.

“How did you know …” he said, his voice quivering slightly. “Where to find me? About the cave.”

Kaori didn’t reply. She sat, looking out at the darkening horizon.

“You knew, didn’t you? That Sheena, or whatever her name is, was coming? And where she would bring her victims.”

“I didn’t make you go down to the beach Jiro.”

“But … But when you noticed I was gone …” He trailed off. He did not know who he could trust anymore. There was nobody in the world he could trust.

When Kaori spoke, her voice was almost a whisper. “Would you have believed me? If I said drinking tea made you see monsters and spirits?”

“I …”

“What would you have done in my place?”

Jiro open his mouth and closed it again.

“It was the only way. To let you see and then let you decide. Because you do have a choice.”

Jiro poked a finger into the sand. “Do I? Do I really have a choice?”

Kaori drew her legs to save them from an incoming wave. The yukata rode up past her knees, giving Jiro another glimpse of her thighs. He looked away. He was not in the mood for Kaori’s teasing.

“Sure, Jiro. You could leave tomorrow. And nobody would come after you … Yui and I and the others might even manage on our own. Maybe Ichizo was wrong to put you in charge … Maybe you’re not the grandson he thought you were.”

For a time, both of them were silent. There was no sound but that of the waves, and the occasional cry of a seagull.

Jiro laid back and looked up at the sky. It was growing dark. He wasn’t angry anymore. Just tired. And a little of something else, a feeling he couldn’t quite put a name to. “All my life, I’ve been running away,” he said to no one in particular. “Running from the problems that people put me into. Do this. Say that. Sign here. Answer that.”

Kaori laid down and turned to face him. He could see her looking at him in the corner of his eye. “And you ran away,” she murmured, “all the way here to Japan.”

“Yea …” He thought about the bathhouse. All of its problems. Money problems. Termites, rotten wood, broken fences, holes in the flooring … Monsters that snuck into your bed and tried to suck away your bodily fluids while you slept. Could he fix all that? It seemed terrifying, overwhelming. He wanted to run away.

“I always know how to handle the little things,” he said softly. “But the big things … the big things I never know how to handle. And in the end, isn’t the big things that matter?”

He could feel Kaori next to him. She wriggled over until her waist almost touched his. He could feel the distance between them, like an electric charge. Her breath was hot on the back of his neck. He caught a faint smell of sweat, lavender, and also something musky.

Then, without warning, Kaori wrapped her arms around Jiro, thrust a bare, white leg between his thighs, and pulled, hiking her naked thigh up into his crotch.