Over the next few hours Akito introduced me to some of the oddest things I'd ever seen at the time, such as electricity. The other guy had left while he was explaining things and we were dressing me as a guy, and the two of us were in the house together, which made it much easier for him to show me how things worked on his world. It took him almost a half hour to get me to believe that there wasn't any magic involved in the refrigerator and the television, even though I could see quite clearly that there was no magic going on at the time.
I didn't get my staff back until he took me into the room where the television was located. He called it the living room. The staff was lying on the floor right in front of the television. The light in the stone was very, very faint as it lay there, which worried me. I knew that the light in the stone had something to do with my own power, so seeing it so weak when I felt fine felt like it should be a problem. To my great relief, when I picked the staff up, the light brightened back to its normal glow.
Akito didn't look very happy about giving my staff back. He had warned me several times that I wasn't allowed to use any magic while I was staying on his world. He seemed to be sure that I was going to do something that would get him in trouble with the women he made those promises to. I had promised him I wouldn't do anything if I could help it, but he still didn't seem convinced.
We sat in the so-called living room for a while, as he explained some other things about his world. I was going to be pretending to be a friend of his, so I had to be fairly familiar with the things that everyone on his world considered normal. By the time he was done explaining cars, horseless carriages that spewed out nasty smelling smoke, and airplanes, giant metal birds that were made by his people to let them fly, I was about ready to try staying in his room the whole time instead of trying to understand the world he lived in.
At one point I realized that I had to relieve myself, and that I had no idea where I should do it. I asked Akito, and he led me to a room, inside the building, where there was a funny looking white chair shaped thing with water in it. He directed me to go in that and then press down the lever on the back of the chair. I was confused, but I did so. I came out of the room wondering how they could afford to waste so much perfectly good water, but I didn't mention it to him and instead continued the conversation.
"Now that I think of it," he said at one point during the conversation. "What do you want to be called while you're here? Katherine probably isn't the best choice, since it would sound odd."
"How did you know my name?" I asked him. I hadn't told him it, since he hadn't asked. And, even if he had asked, I would have told him to call me Nonay, not Katherine.
"That man used it more than once after you two stopped that mob from attacking me," he replied. I had forgotten about that.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Well, don't call me that. I hate that name. Call me Nonay instead."
"Still doesn't sound right for me to introduce you to everyone else," he said. "Don't you have something I could call you that sounds a little more normal?"
"Like Akito?" I asked him. "That doesn't sound very normal to me."
"My name is rather common where I come from," he said defensively. "The people around here don't think my name is weird because they know I'm not from here. You, on the other hand, both look and sound American, so you need to have an American name in order to fit in."
"Well I have no idea what you think are normal names," I said. "Why don't you just come up with something, and I'll go along with it?"
"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "How about Nick? Is that okay with you?"
"Sure," I said.
"Okay then," he said. "Well, besides that I think you're just going to have to get used to things as they come up. You can sleep in my room, though I'm not giving you my bed. You'll be mostly on your own during the days, because I can't keep skipping classes as long as you're here."
I was about to make a comment about how I was going to be very bored until he could get me back to my world, when the outside door in the living room opened. The door opening was accompanied by a loud, "I'm home!" Shortly after that, a boy who looked more like a ball of strawberry blonde hair, clothing, and energy than a human being hurtled through the open door, somehow managed to close it behind him even though he wasn't still long enough, and attached himself to Akito, who was sitting on the long, stuffed chair that he called a sofa.
"Akito!" the boy, who looked a little more like a person now that he had stopped moving, which he had done as soon as he was more or less sitting in Akito's lap, said. "I thought you were out looking for Kyou again! Why are you home so soon? You didn't give up, did you?"
Now that the boy was still, I could see that he was just around my age, maybe a year or so younger. He looked like he would be at least a few inches taller than me when standing, though I couldn't gauge it perfectly while he was sitting. He was significantly less feminine looking than Akito was, though he still looked less masculine than most of the guys I'd seen before.
His hair, as I had noticed when he entered, was strawberry blonde. It wasn't quite as long as Akito's was, and instead fell down to about his shoulder blades and was held back in a tail that was starting to come loose. His clothing was similar to Akito's. He looked very happy where he was, though Akito looked about ready to run away.
"Hello Kyle-kun," Akito said, sounding a little less than pleased. His voice was strained, and I saw the first signs on panic on his face. "I don't suppose you could get off of me, could you?"
"Awww," the boy said, but he got up. It was then that he finally noticed me. He stared at me for a few moments, then smiled and stuck his hand out in greeting. "Hi, my name's Kyle! What's yours?"
"This is Nick," Akito replied, just before I could accidentally introduce myself as Nonay. "He's a friend of mine from school."
"Really?" Kyle asked. He looked at me for a few more moments, which worried me because I thought he might have noticed that I wasn't male. "You look around my age. Does that mean you started college even earlier than Akito did?"
I had no idea what to say in response to that. I didn't know what he was talking about. I couldn't mention the schooling I was going through, since I guessed that they had a radically different system of teaching on Akito's world, and Akito hadn't mentioned anything about school. Luckily, Akito came up with something to tell him, so I didn't have to try and explain my way out of it.
"Not quite," he said. "He's home schooled and is planning on coming to the university soon. We met while he was touring the campus a few weeks ago."
"Oh," Kyle said. "You're not replacing Kyou with him, are you?"
"No, I am not!" Akito exclaimed. "Why do you always ask that every time I spend time with someone other than you, Matt, and your fathers? Just because I'm talking to someone else does not mean I've given up on finding Kyou!"
Kyle winced, but then went right back to the way he'd been acting. He looked slightly disappointed, but it didn't last long. He sat down on the sofa next to Akito and stared at me. The intensity of his gaze made me feel more than a little uncomfortable, because I was afraid that if he kept looking at me he might notice that I wasn't like everyone else on his world.
"So what are you guys doing anyway?" he asked brightly. "Can I help?"
Akito thought for a moment, before he seemed to get idea and said, "We're just discussing dimensional theory. You're welcome to join in if you want." He looked slightly pleased with himself.
"Okay!" Kyle said, not moving from where he was seated, and Akito's smile fell off his face.
"I thought you hated dimensional theory!" he protested. "You always said it was boring when Kyou started talking about it!"
"That was when Kyou talked about it," Kyle replied. "You make it interesting!"
That was when I actually realized something that should have been obvious to me from the moment Akito told me that there were no women on his world. I'd heard of men back home who slept with other men, because there were no women available or just because they wanted to, though I'd never seen any and had a hard time believing that they actually existed. I should have realized right away that that was what the men of Akito's world must be like. But, because it was such an unnatural idea to me, I must have unconsciously prevented myself from coming to that conclusion until then.
It was when I saw Kyle acting very much like a girl with a crush that I realized it. The way he was acting toward Akito was just like the way Aimee, one of Jer's "little sisters" who wasn't actually related to him by blood, acted whenever Jer was nearby. The only one he looked at was Akito, though it wasn't that noticeable with only three of us in the room. Everything Akito did was perfect, even if those things weren't what he normally liked. And Akito didn't seem to notice at all.
I suspected Akito had been trying to get rid of Kyle. Unfortunately, it hadn't worked, and Kyle was now expecting us to talk about this dimensional theory that Akito had mentioned. I wasn't even sure if I knew what the words meant, let alone whether I would be able to have a conversation with Akito, who seemed to know the subject quite well, about it. I started looking for somewhere to escape to, my hand clenching around the staff nervously.
"Well, I was just telling Nick about some of the things I've found out after doing some of my own research," Akito said, and I calmed down a little. He sounded like he was about to start talking a lot, so I wasn't going to have to show any knowledge of the subject.
"Now the first thing you have to remember is that these ideas are pure speculation on the part of the researchers," he said. "Kyou and I are the only two people to ever get to a different dimension, and I'm the only one to return so far. Since I'm bound by an oath not to tell anyone about where I've been, the men who did this research have no proof of what they suspect.
"One popular theory about the other dimensions is that each one is different, even if we could never find the difference between some of them in our lifetimes. The key to this theory is that there is one for each different choice made by a person in his lifetime. In one universe you might decide to go to Harvard for college and get in. In another one you might try and fail, and go to MIT instead. It's things like that that make the difference between those universes, and because there are infinite things that could be decided differently, there would have to be an infinite number of these dimensions.
"The biggest thing about this theory that makes it easy to disprove is that there would be more or less the same people in each dimension. There would be a different copy of each person for each dimension. I think I've seen enough different dimensions to say that this theory is wrong. In the whole time I've been searching for Kyou I haven't seen any copies of people I know here. I've seen a few who reminded me of people I know, but they have never been that similar.
"The other popular theory is that there are an infinite number of dimensions, with infinite variety. There doesn't have to be any theme to the dimensions. They're just there. There aren't very many details to this theory, because the whole idea is that it is a very unorganized universe.
"I happen to agree with this one so far. Out of the dimensions I've been to, the only common factor is that humans are prominent, powerful inhabitants of the world. I haven't seen every world, and there are only certain ones that I can get to from here. I think it might be that the more radically different worlds are harder to get to from here than the ones that are similar to this world.
Akito kept talking about similar things to that for a few hours. Kyle hung on his every word the whole time, and I would have been surprised if he would have noticed someone being killed right next to him if it had happened. I probably could have taken off my shirt, undone the bandages binding my breasts, and danced around right in front of him, and he wouldn't have noticed except to ask me to get out of the way. I didn't test it though, and instead I listened to what Akito was saying as well. It was interesting, though I was still very glad that he wasn't asking me to talk.
Finally, he stopped talking. Kyle looked disappointed, but he turned to me. It was apparently my turn to talk, even though I had no idea what I was going to say without giving away the fact that I wasn't from around there.
I tried to think of something I could tell him about that wasn't horribly off topic, but I was failing miserably. Luckily, just before he started getting impatient, the door opened again. A guy who looked a lot like him, but older and with dark blondish brown hair instead of strawberry blonde, walked through the door.
"I'm home!" he proclaimed. I recognized his voice as the man who had been talking to Akito right after I woke up.
"Hi Matt!" Kyle said, though he didn't move from his spot on the sofa. He waved excitedly, and then started chattering. "Have you met Nick? He's a friend of Akito's, and he was just about to tell us some of the things he studies." Matt looked at me.
"I see you got your staff back," he said. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to make dinner. The dads aren't going to be back until late tonight, so I was asked to cook dinner. And I know it's your turn to help, Kyle."
"Fine," Kyle grumbled. He got off the couch and grudgingly went to help Matt cook dinner, leaving me alone in the room with Akito.
"You do realize that I had no idea what you were talking about, right?" I asked him once the other two were gone from the room. "I didn't have anything to tell Kyle about, unless you wanted me to start talking about magic."
"I knew Matt-san was going to be home soon," he said calmly. "That's why I stopped talking when I did. I could have started on another part of the subject, but then Kyle wouldn't have agreed to help with dinner. He'll have forgotten that you were supposed to tell him about dimensional theory by the time we sit down for dinner."
"And if he doesn't?" I asked him.
"You don't happen to have a kid of magic that relies more on thinking and doesn't get to the real magic until much later, do you?" he asked me. "I thought you might, like a few of the other worlds I've been to, when I saw that guy sitting on the floor meditating."
"Yeah," I said.
"Could you talk about that without bringing up actual magic?" he asked. "Make it sound more like a religious or purely spiritual thing?"
"Considering that I learned it from a bunch of monks, yeah," I said.
"Well then, you can tell them that that's some religion somewhere and explain how it works," he said. "I doubt Kyle will be all that interested in it, and I know Matt doesn't care about religion in any form. You almost certainly won't have to talk long."
We sat in silence in the living room for a few minutes before hearing a loud argument from the room where Matt and Kyle were supposed to be making dinner. I couldn't quite understand their words, but it was very obvious that Kyle wanted to do something, and Matt was refusing. Finally, it died down, and a very smug looking Kyle returned to the living room.
"Matt's ordering pizza," he said, sounding very pleased with himself. "He said that Dad told him to cook dinner, so we were supposed to make something ourselves. But, I didn't want to cook, and he really didn't want to either, so we're having pizza. I'm paying, since I was the one who wanted to do it so much."
"Seems like we always have pizza when it's you and either Matt or me cooking," Akito said.
"Well the dads don't give in when I try to get them to get pizza, so I stopped trying a long time ago," Kyle said. "I hate cooking. Now, you were going to start telling us about your take on dimensional theory, weren't you?"
"Actually, we were originally talking about our respective interests," Akito said. "Nick doesn't study dimensional theory."
"What do you study then?" Kyle asked.
"Religion," I said. "Specifically, I've been studying some of the more spiritual religions. I've been focusing a lot on one in particular lately. It doesn't have a name that I know of."
"Oh," Kyle said. "Well, what about it?"
"Well, the focus of the religion is discovering your own inner power through meditation," I continued. "The holy men are called monks, and many of them claim to have discovered some spiritual powers that they can call on. They tend to run orphanages and try to spread their beliefs by teaching the children in exchange for giving them a home and food.
"The children of these orphanages are tested for this spiritual power when they arrive, and if they show signs of having some kind of ability, the monks place them in classes that are meant to help them discover how to use whatever power they supposedly have. The classes consist mostly of meditation and a type of soul searching, and tend to get very boring for the children.
"The meditation starts out as a rather impersonal thing, with a generic focus image provided for a person to try and lose himself in. As the person meditates more, he is encouraged to find he own personal focus image, which will allow him to go into a deeper trance, which is where he is supposed to be able to find the secret of his powers.
"Some of the monks of this religion claim to be able to move things with their minds, or read minds, or even call demons using the spiritual powers they found while meditating. I have never seen them do any of these things myself, nor have I heard from anyone who has seen it himself. I have done some of the meditation myself, and I've never managed to find any kind of powers."
The wonderful thing about what I was saying was that I hadn't told a lie yet. The meditation was an integral part of the religion that the monks were trying to suck me in to. The three abilities I had named were ones that were supposedly possible, but none of the monks at the orphanage could do them. No one I knew had ever been able to do those things either.
"Where in the world are these people?" Kyle asked. He looked interested.
"All over," I said. "They tend to be rather secretive, which is why most people haven't heard of them, but they have places set up all over. I would tell you where the nearest one is, but I promised them I wouldn't."
Kyle prompted me to tell him more, and I continued to talk about meditation and the monks until a knock came at the door. Kyle answered it, handed over some money to the person at the door, and came back carrying two boxes that had a wonderful smell coming from them. I wanted to ask what it was, but I assumed it was the pizza that Akito and Kyle had been talking about earlier, something that sounded like it was a commonplace thing on their world.
It turned out to be a round bread crust covered in some kind of tomato sauce and then cheese and some kind of spicy thin meat that Akito later told me was called pepperoni. It tasted wonderful, though I would have preferred it without the pepperoni. I'd never been a huge fan of spicy foods, not that I got to eat them often. They were scarce in Aligon, which made me happy.
I wasn't pressed upon to talk anymore and instead got to spend most of the rest of the night listening to the others talk. Akito didn't try to pull me into the conversation, and the other two almost forgot I was there once they got talking. I learned more about their world's schooling just by listening to the three of them talk than I possibly could have if Akito had tried to explain it.
I got to meet Kyle and Matt's parents later that evening too. They seemed like nice people, though it was a bit strange to meet the brothers' parents and realize they were both male. Their names were Jeff and Tom, and they welcomed me to their house with open arms.
That night I stayed in Akito's room, sleeping on his floor. He told me to use the same room I had before, which he called a bathroom, if I needed to relieve myself during the night. He also reminded me not to unbind my breasts, since one of the others could possibly come into the room during the night and see me. It annoyed me, but I kept them bound while I slept.