My Femboy System-Chapter 145: Old Pops

Japeth’s smile wasn’t cruel, nor smug, nor even sarcastic. It was soft, almost tender, the sort of expression one might expect from a weary farmer greeting his son after a long day in the fields, or a proud grandfather catching a glimpse of the family resemblance.

It sat ill upon his face, like a saint’s mask strapped over the snout of a jackal, but the expression was unmistakably genuine. He looked at me not as a rival, not as prey, not even as a mistake he meant to rectify—he looked at me as though I belonged to him. As though I were his.

And that, dear saints above, was intolerable.

"My boy," Japeth said warmly, spreading his arms in welcome, the haze curling around his shoulders like obedient serpents. "Come here, give your old Pops a hug."

Pops.

If you had handed me a dictionary of insults, slurs, and blasphemies written in seven different languages, I could not have found a word more offensive than that. My blood boiled so fast I thought I might actually ignite on the spot, and before I even knew what I was doing, I was already storming forward, pen clenched so tightly in my fist that the nib threatened to snap.

My free hand shot out, seizing him by the collar of his immaculate cloak, and I yanked him down until our noses nearly touched.

"You don’t get to call yourself that," I hissed, my voice strangled with fury. "You don’t get to smile at me like some doting old bastard who tucks me into bed at night. You don’t get to pretend we’ve shared firesides and lullabies. You don’t get to—" My throat tightened. My voice cracked, raw and ugly. "You don’t get to act like you were ever anything to me! What did you do to my parents?! What did you do to me? To my past? Just who the fuck are you?!"

My questions came in a torrent, spat like arrows from a bowstring stretched too far. Each word tasted like acid, like blood, like desperation disguised as rage.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to tear his head from his shoulders and mount it on a pike outside of Graywatch, and I wanted to fall to my knees and beg him to tell me who the hell I was supposed to be.

Japeth didn’t flinch. His cloak collar bunched beneath my fist, the fabric strained, but he didn’t react. He didn’t shove me back, didn’t strike me, didn’t even glare.

He only tilted his head, watching me with the calm, patient exasperation of a man waiting for a child to finish his tantrum. And then, as though my rage were no more than an insect buzzing in his ear, he sighed and shook his head.

"I thought we already talked about this," he said, his voice maddeningly gentle. Then, as though struck by a passing realization, he tapped his chin with his finger. "Oh, right. You don’t remember."

The words landed like a slap. My grip faltered, not because I wanted to release him, but because my hand went numb.

Don’t remember.

The phrase curdled in my skull, oozing rot into every corner of my thoughts. What was that supposed to mean?

Confusion replaced rage for a heartbeat, but only a heartbeat. My knuckles whitened, and I slammed him harder against himself, teeth bared like a feral dog.

"Don’t play games with me," I snapped. "What did you take from me damn it?"

Japeth’s hand rose—not to strike, not to defend, but to rest upon my shoulder with an intimacy that made my skin crawl. His palm was warm, steady, absurdly paternal, and the gentleness of the gesture made me want to scream.

"Calm yourself," he murmured. "All in due time. The past will make sense when you’re ready for it."

I very nearly bit his hand.

Behind us came a sharp, derisive snort, followed by the rich rasp of flame catching. I turned just enough to glimpse Dagon slumped on his throne, one meaty hand casually raising a thick cigar to his mouth.

Smoke blossomed as he drew in a lungful, though I never once saw him strike a flint or summon a flame. The cigar had simply... lit. The smoke curled into grotesque shapes, half-formed faces with sneering mouths, before dispersing into the haze.

Wonderful. The two men most responsible for dragging me into this nightmarish carnival of blood and melodrama were sharing the same stage, and I, in my infinite wisdom, had somehow been cast as the leading actor. It was enough to make me wish for an early death, if only to spare me the indignity of their company.

I released Japeth’s collar at last, shoving him back, though my hands still trembled from the sheer pressure of holding him so close. My lungs heaved, my heart thrashed, and my mind clawed itself raw with too many questions all at once.

I needed answers.

Rage could wait. Hatred could simmer on the stove a little longer. Right now, I needed to scrape some fragment of truth from this smug bastard’s tongue.

"What’s your aim?" I asked, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "What are you really doing here? You didn’t build this circus just to torment me. Even you can’t be that obsessive."

Japeth’s lips curled into that maddening, infuriating smile again. "Clever boy," he said softly, as though the compliment were a caress. "Go on, then. Tell me. What do you think I want?"

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. My mind churned through recent horrors like a millstone grinding bones. The man in white—the feather left behind. His words, echoing still, naming Japeth his enemy.

And then it clicked.

"You want him dead," I said quietly. My voice steadied as the words took shape. "The Man in White."

Japeth’s laughter rolled through the chamber like thunder in a hollow church. He threw back his head and laughed, a rich, bellowing sound that rattled my bones and made the very haze tremble in its wake.

The warmth of it was worse than cruelty—it was joy, genuine and unfeigned, and I despised it more than hatred.

"Of course!" he cried. "Of course I want him dead! The feathered parasite, the painted liar, the—oh, Cecil, my boy, you are a clever one. That’s exactly what I want!"

My throat burned. I forced the next word past the lump there. "Why?"

Japeth’s laughter died. He looked at me, smile still lingering but quieter now, softer, sadder. He shook his head once, slow and deliberate.

"You’ll find out soon enough."

It was the single most infuriating sentence in the history of language. I felt my temper ignite all over again, hotter this time.

"No," I snapped. "Not soon enough. Now. I’ve had enough riddles, enough smoke and mirrors, enough cryptic little pats on the head. You’ll tell me why, or—"

"Or what?" Japeth interrupted, tilting his head. His voice was still calm, still maddeningly gentle, but there was steel underneath now, a razor-edge glint that reminded me how very quickly he could end me if he chose. "You’ll stab me? You’ll scream? You’ll demand truth like a child demanding sweets? No, boy. I’ll tell you what I told you already: all in due time."

My teeth ached from clenching. My throat ached from swallowing back the scream I wanted to unleash. Every fiber of me wanted to tear him apart, to pry open his ribs and drag the answers from his lungs, but I knew—I knew—it wouldn’t work.

Japeth lifted his hand in a casual wave, dismissing me as though I were no more than an overeager page. "Besides, you have bigger things to worry about. The first match begins soon. You’d do well to save your strength."

The casual dismissal nearly broke me. Rage clawed at my chest, desperation gnawed at my ribs, and the only thing keeping me from hurling myself at him again was the faint, broken whisper of Lysaria at my feet, echoing in my memory like a prayer. Give them a performance.

And so I stood there, trembling, pen tight in my hand, staring at the man who called himself Pops and the brute who smoked without fire, and I laughed.

I laughed because it was that or scream, and if I screamed, I feared I would never stop.

It took me a while before I steadied my heart, forcing air into my lungs the way a drowning man might force water out. I straightened, narrowed my eyes at Japeth, and managed—against all odds—to sound marginally sane.

"Okay. Fine. You want the Man in White dead. You’ve got secrets. You’ve got your smoke tricks and your cryptic little bedtime stories. But that still doesn’t explain why you dragged me into this circus. Why me?"

Japeth didn’t hesitate. "I told you already. What father wouldn’t want to see his son’s progress?"

My lungs seized and my vision briefly went white at the edges. He said it so casually, so naturally, as though the entire universe had unanimously agreed on this adoption while forgetting to send me the paperwork.

"I have high hopes for you, Cecil," he continued, stepping past my fury as though it were no more dangerous than a child’s tantrum. "I always did. I raised you and Vincent because I believed you were the outliers of this world. The cracks in the foundation. The inevitable mistakes in the god’s arithmetic. Everyone else is born into chains, their lives scrawled like numbers across ledgers that stretch into infinity. They’re predictable. Boring. Dust meant to return to dust. But not you. Not Vincent. You were different. You are different."

My jaw clenched. "Raised me? You didn’t raise me. You slithered into my life like a ghost and left ash in your wake. If you’d raised me, I would’ve remembered. And yet, conveniently, I don’t."

Japeth chuckled at that, and the sound was like silk tearing. "Oh, you remember, just not in ways you recognize. Fragments, dreams, shadows... call them what you like. They’re still mine." He pressed a hand against his chest as though pledging fealty to his own heart. "I am your father in every sense that matters. Not by blood, perhaps, but by vision. I forged you as surely as if I’d hammered you from iron."

His eyes glinted with a fire that made me want to spit. "The world is built on the backs of the obedient. They march. They kneel. They rot. But you, Cecil, you bend the world to you. You take the cruel and you remake them. You take the broken and you claim them. You do not bow. You alter. You write. That is why I brought you here. Because I wanted to see whether you would crumble like the rest or rise above the cage."

He spread his arms wide, the haze curling like banners around him. "This tournament is not for the weak. It is not for the dutiful. It is for the aberrations, the cracks in fate’s script. And if you can climb through the blood and the laughter and the ruin, if you can scrawl your name across this ugly stone with enough force, then perhaps, perhaps, you are the one who can tear the Man in White from his pedestal."

For a moment, I almost faltered. Almost. His words hit somewhere deep, somewhere ugly, because I knew, saints damn me, I knew he wasn’t entirely wrong. I had spent my life bending the world with ink and lies and lust. I had made the unthinkable real, carved my will into flesh, and I had enjoyed every bloody step of it.

But then I remembered Elias.

And I remembered Japeth’s smile.

And I remembered how badly I wanted to gut him like a pig and paint the walls with his smug ideology.

"I’ll kill you," I said flatly. My voice didn’t crack. My hand did not shake. My eyes did not leave his. "One way or another, Japeth, I’ll tear that smile off your face and watch you choke on it."

Japeth leaned close then, so close his breath brushed my ear. His words slid into me like a knife through parchment. "Good," he whispered, and the word made my bones lock tight. "I wouldn’t want it any other way."

He patted my shoulder like a proud father congratulating his son on finally learning to tie his shoes, and I nearly vomited. Then he added, as casually as if we were discussing dinner plans, "Matter of fact, if you win the tournament, I’ll let you challenge me. Fair and square."

My heart caught in my throat. It was a cruel trick, that offer. A poisoned promise dressed in velvet, dangled just close enough for me to feel the edge of its lure.

The very thought of it—Japeth, on his knees, his smile shattered, my pen driven into his chest—made my breath stutter. And that was exactly what he wanted. Desperation. Hunger. The gnawing edge of obsession.

Japeth brushed past me then, the haze parting like loyal dogs before his stride. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. His presence lingered like a brand pressed into my skull.

Behind me came a sharp snort and the pungent reek of cigar smoke.

"Bastard," Dagon muttered, puffing smoke like a dragon too lazy to roast its prey. He leaned forward on his throne, his crimson eyes narrowing as he glared at me. "You know, if not for him, I’d bash your brains out against that pillar right now. You should be thanking him, little scribbler."

I ignored him. My gaze dropped instead to Lysaria, broken and trembling, chained and bleeding at the foot of the throne. His eyes were still half-open, still searching for me. I crouched low, close enough for him to hear, and whispered, "I’ll be back."

Then I rose, turning to Dagon with a smirk sharp enough to cut. "And you," I said, voice steady as steel, "I’ll kill you too."

For a moment, silence reigned. Then Dagon burst into laughter so thunderous it rattled the chamber. He laughed until his face turned red, until tears streamed down his brutish cheeks, until his cigar nearly fell from his lips.

"Kill me?" he howled. "You’ll kill me? Oh, fucking shit, you’ve got jokes. You should take them to the stage before I take your skull to the wall." He blew another cloud of smoke directly into my face, the stench of rot and ash coating my lungs.

I didn’t flinch. I did not cough. I only smiled back, lips curved, eyes cold.

And then, mercifully, a tap came on my shoulder. I turned to find another hooded attendant waiting, posture precise, voice calm. "The first match is about to start," he said. "I’ll lead you to the viewing platform."

I nodded once, sharp and final, before turning my back on the whole wretched mess. On Dagon’s laughter, on Japeth’s lingering warmth, on Lysaria’s bloodied chains. I walked out of the haze with my head high, my pen in hand, and my heart clawing itself apart with fury and desperation.

Fine then, let the games begin.