The Taxi That Changes Fate - 2
It was a rule with a different flavor from the Stalker's.
Not the frantic push-and-pull of a chase, but something closer to a time attack — a rule that whispered: don't stay put for long. Keep moving.
"So what's my fare?"
(Lewd acts. To be precise, the fare decreases when you satisfy my lust through a lewd act.)
"What about dirty talk? Sexual harassment?"
(Included. However, words that come out of my mouth do not count.)
"And the next gas?"
(An aphrodisiac. The same one released before. If you inhale it only once, the rules purge it — quantity is irrelevant; the effect is identical.)
The taxi began to roll forward, slow and steady, and with it the meter started its climb — in increments of a hundred, unhurried, like any ordinary cab.
(First, those big breasts and those hips. I would like to get my hands on those two.)
I could feel those yellow-green eyes raking over my body. Her face gave nothing away, but her huge cock rose stiff and eager, as if anticipating what came next — and unlike that blank expression, her green eyes burned with naked longing as they licked over my chest and waist, again and again.
"Nnh… before the fare gets charged — if a passenger pays the driver of her own accord, is that valid at any time? Or only right before you charge me?"
The meter, ticking up notch by notch, had already passed 1,000. It looked like an ordinary meter, but unlike a normal cab that grants you a grace period at the start, this one climbing from the very first second was more than enough to set my nerves on edge.
(If you were a male customer, or a woman who didn't interest me, I would accept payment only right before charging the fare, but…)
Those yearning eyes bored into my clothed chest. I could feel the silent pressure of them — hurry up and get rid of that cumbersome thing.
(You, however, I cannot resist. I'll allow it at all times.)
Knock, knock.
"I've got these right here. So how do I pay with them?"
With those words, I rapped my knuckles against the partition — the one dividing front seat from back. There wasn't a hole in it anywhere; it was a solid wall, sealed from end to end. Not even a hole for paying the fare.
(Say you'll let me knead your breasts, and I will show you. Nothing in this world is free.)
"…Fine. Show me."
A flicker of distaste ran through me, but I agreed — because knowing how the fare was collected in advance was the only way to prepare for it. If figuring out the principle that drove this place cost no more than a single grope of my chest, that was a bargain.
(This place is my domain. I can move it as I please.)
"What's that supposed to—"
The moment the words left my mouth, the taxi shifted — just a hair. The back seat wobbled and heaved like something alive, and I, who had definitely been sitting in the right rear seat, was suddenly sitting on the left.
(Do you understand now?)
Did my seat move…? Or did the driver?
To my right — whether it was still the back seat or had become the driver's seat, I could no longer tell — sat the taxi driver, and the partition had rearranged itself to wall her off from me.
Squish, squish.
"…!"
The driver's hand passed straight through the partition as if it were water, meeting no resistance at all. I'd agreed to let her touch my breasts — but I hadn't expected her to actually do it, just like that.
"Wait, my shirt's riding up—"
(I ac-ci-den-tal-ly touched your breasts, and your shirt rode up with them.)
The hand kneading my breast, the T-shirt climbing along with it — I felt both and protested, and was promptly ignored. Irritation flared hot in my chest, but…
I'll let it slide. Once. For her face.
The expressionless, green-haired beauty — not a stitch on her, groping my bare chest right before my eyes and clearly, genuinely enjoying it — had something about her that cooled that irritation. So, left with no choice: just once. I let it go, just this once.
(Haaah… I have my own, but these are truly top-shelf breasts. Made for touching. Soft, plush, springy — I'd wager they're perfect for sucking, too.)
It wasn't ordinary kneading. One deep squeeze, then a light pinch along the side, then a slow scoop from underneath as if to weigh them — hands that examined every last detail with a craftsman's care, like a merchant appraising a product labeled my breasts.
"That's enough for now, isn't it…?"
(What a shame about the bra. Truly a shame. Next time, I will have to feel them without one.)
The fare stopped climbing. The cab was still moving, but the meter hung at around 6,000 — and though the hand never once stopped working my chest, the stalled meter soon began to rise again.
Squish, squish.
"Nnh… let go. The meter's climbing again."
(My threshold has simply risen. Take off the bra, and it might drop again. How about it?)
"And your threshold will rise again after that, won't it?"
(I don't expect it to rise for quite a long while, though?)
"Enough. Let go. Now."
(I am quite satisfied with things as they are — the meter's rise has slowed by half. Why not simply keep letting me grope your breasts?)
"Let go. Focus on your driving."
(Tch.)
It felt less like sticky, drooling fondling and more like a cold, dispassionate appraisal — but in time I came to understand that this appraising touch was the taxi driver's way of caressing. Enjoying a breast through that evaluating grip was this one's favorite way to touch.
So she's… a pervert too, just like all the rest.
On the surface, a cool, expressionless beauty with green hair — but when I told her to take her hands off my chest and watched how reluctantly, how painfully, she peeled them away, the truth was plain. At her root, the taxi driver was a slave to her own cock's commands, same as every other one of them.
Hint.
Raise your value.
Raise my value?
The meter was closing in on 10,000 now, and the earlier episode drifted back to me.
The first time she touched me, the meter went down.
The very first moment her hands found my breasts, the fare had dipped — then begun its slow climb anew.
Let's build a hypothesis.
At the start — before touching me — she'd been a tangle of anticipation and lust. What if touching my breasts had fulfilled that anticipation? And what if that was why the meter had plunged so sharply at first?
Lust isn't a single emotion. There's the anticipation before you find something; the feverish excitement after finding it, in the moment before you get to enjoy it; the satisfaction that blooms when the object of your desire turns out to possess exactly the charms you craved. A hunger woven from many mingled feelings. That was lust.
"Lewd acts. To be precise — the fare decreases when you satisfy my lust through a lewd act."
I turned the taxi driver's earlier words over in my mind. Lewd acts and lewd words: when her lust was satisfied by them, the fare went down. It sounded as though the weight lay on the act itself — easy to misread — but the heart of that statement was satisfying the taxi driver's lust. Whatever act I performed, whatever method I used, what mattered was satisfying her lust. The dirty words and dirty deeds were never the point.
And "raise my value"…
The higher a person's value — their status, their looks, and so on — the greater the satisfaction to be wrung from them. So if I periodically showed the taxi driver something she found attractive, driving my worth up and up, wouldn't the same act then amount to paying a far larger fare?
There's plenty of time to prove the hypothesis.
The meter currently read 20,000. The alley must have held things back at first — the moment the taxi found its speed, the fare began climbing steeply. But more than three minutes still remained.
(First, I will have to remove those jeans and that bra — they are in the way of touching you lower down.)
(Personally, I think the T-shirt can stay. It can be pushed up whenever I please. The same goes for the panties.)
(Wearing them turns me on more than taking them off would.)
Perhaps sensing I'd sunk into thought, the driver began reciting her lusts aloud — as if to say: these are the things I crave, so before I collect the fare, fill it yourself with them.
"You lower the fare when you feel lust and that lust gets satisfied. That's right, isn't it?"
At some point the taxi had quietly restored itself to its original layout. I knocked on the partition to the front seat and asked what I needed to know. If she answered honestly, that honesty would be my answer; if she went silent or talked in circles, that too would tell me something.
(That is correct, customer.)
Dragged aboard by what amounted to fraud, made to trade my body as the price of the ride. It left a bad taste in my mouth — but I'd made my peace with it. From the moment you tangled with an anomaly, this was simply how it had to be.
"Then this fare—"
(Will you be undressing yourself? I would like that as well.)
"I won't just pay. I'll give it to you exactly the way you want it."
(Pardon?)
If I was selling, I had to sell at the highest price I could fetch. I'd owned a cock once, so unlike an ordinary woman I could empathize — at least in part — and guess what she wanted most.
"The current rule is: survive the clock, and either manufacture or uncover a reason to get out of this cab that you'll find acceptable. Right?"
(Correct.)
"And you built that rule yourself, carefully — the one you judged easiest to catch women with, packed full of the play you wanted, the kind you'd find most interesting. Am I right?"
(Also correct.)
"So the first time, I'll play the victim for you."
(How bewildering.)
This was the answer I'd arrived at. A woman who panics, then strips down to pay the fare in advance. A woman who refuses the strange payment and gets hit with gas and fare collection — both at once. She must have been through those scenarios countless times.
But a woman who worked all of this out on her own — and then offered to stage the very scenario her captor wanted most?
There wouldn't have been a single one. I'd stake my life on it.
A taxi you're kidnapped into — or one you hail and board. Gas seeping from the sealed chamber of its back seat. Would any human being breathe it in willingly? Let alone while shouldering status abnormalities stacking layer upon layer? Ordinary thinking could never get there. Without a status window and Hints like mine, no one would ever reach that conclusion. The stupid would be too stupid to choose this path, and the clever would simply choose another.
(So… what you mean to say… is that you will arrange everything for my sake?)
"No."
But it couldn't be pure kindness, either. An anomaly is a trial. Would a monster of trials ever take a liking to a human who coddled it, who bent the game to spare it? Not in the slightest. It would rage instead — say you were mocking it, looking down on it.
"You set the satisfaction of your own lust as the condition."
"So the higher my value climbs, the more I have to offer — the more excited you get. Isn't that so?"
"That's why I'm telling you what I'm thinking. To show you exactly how capable I am."
"Well? My idea? I'm right, aren't I?"
I laid my cards face-up on the table. I am this clever. I am armed with these weapons. What I'd learned from her own words, through the weapon called Hint — I would hand it all over. So raise my value.
(Ha… this… this is arousing in its own way.)
(Are you proposing to face me head-on? By way of the rules?)
"How would I ever go head-to-head with you?"
(Pardon?)
"Fighting you fair and square inside rules you've honed to a razor's edge? That would just be stupid."
(Then what is it you want?)
"So I'll take my payment for the foolishness: you, and this taxi."
(?)
"If you lose, I'll be having you, too."
The taxi driver's eyes flew wide with genuine shock, and — as if she'd forgotten her role as driver altogether — she stared at me instead of the road ahead.
Pfft.
The expressionless mask cracked. Not with scorn. Out of pure, unguarded delight — the laugh of someone who had never once dreamed she'd live to see this. She laughed, happy and brief, and then her face slid back into its blank calm as she spoke to me.
(A first. This is a first for me. Truly.)
(In all my years working for the Company, I have never once been short of money.)
(And with that money I bought all manner of things, so I never lacked for anything else, either.)
(And yet here, now, something is lacking.)
As if to prove her own words, her cock sprang up rigid, and a gaze came pouring over me — one that promised she would have me, whatever it took.
It might be overkill… but it worked, didn't it?
I'd raised my value. For now, that was enough.
Hey, Hint window. This is how it's done, right?
And that driver over there — all riled up, cock standing at full mast — this is how you handle her, right?