Then it happens.

In a new ensemble of comfortable lacy undergarments, Roha is uploaded to AK’s series of monster girls. The video is of AK’s usual length and quality (the highest available on Neovision Blue in 200x), but there are erratic cuts and splices, and the showcase is unusually modest. Her face is blurred - and it’s even more useless than usual, considering he’d shown the channel her photo in the news - but Kir also seems to be putting effort into blocking Roha from the camera. There is no post-coital prodding and posing. - which is even more useless than usual, considering he’d shown the channel her photo in the news - but Kir also seems to be putting effort into blocking Roha from the camera. There is no post-coital prodding and posing.

Instead, there is a cut from the two in bed that seems a bit too early, and then it’s Kir sitting alone before the camera looking slightly baffled at himself. The whole ordeal is, quite literally, anticlimactic.

Roha’s performance is graded a B. I mean, she’s willing to do whatever I say, as long as she can keep awake… Nothing amazing, considering the setup time. With Life Fountains, I guess it’s all about the chase and not the prize at the end.

He rests his chin on his palm with a frown.

I got the feeling I was her first time. And you know what I say, better a girl with some experience. Still, a two hundred year old virgin. Imagine that.

This sets him back on his old rails for a moment.

She’s sweet, don’t get me wrong, but I should have done a little more research. Maybe I should have chased down that nympho that’s been all over the papers in the South. Experience - you can never underestimate a lady’s experience...

He speaks of the legendary socialite known as Nereid, an old fixture in the C-South social scene who had recently begun making appearances again after a decade-long holiday to parts unknown.

Known for her outgoing and charming yet shrewd nature, she is something of an anomaly among the city Life Fountains to this day. In a brief interview, one audacious reporter dares bring up Kir’s interest in her. Although petite in frame, she appears larger-than-life when swathed in her favored knife-pleated evening dresses, waist-length tendrils of hair undulating with the energy of her aura. From a distance, she looks like a frilled deep-sea creature gliding across the dance floor. She smiles toothily at the reporter, tresses flaring.

A chase, you say? Mr Kir, I just dare you to try.

He never does.

Nereid has been in and out of the Central party circuit for over a hundred years and is widely believed to be the oldest Life Fountain living in the Central urban regions, an estimated 380 years old. She is also suspected to be one of the wealthiest.

Most pertinent to the saga, she is also a close friend of the Life Fountain Foundation head, Cadmus, and his wife. On the day Kir’s video went live, the Foundation and its colleagues were in a furious search for Roha.

—

‘Augy was a one-and-done kind of guy. He never kept used girls around,’ Lis tells me emphatically. ‘Never.’

Why exactly Augustine Kir allowed Roha to remain after her ‘review’, or why Roha chose to remain, is not something she enjoys putting thought into.

—

Two days after Roha is submitted to the channel, it’s another Tuesday. She has not attended her Foundation classes in two weeks.

Augustine has a satyr woman visit his apartment, a giggly, curly-horned blonde with long limbs covered in a fine wooly down. The weather is getting cold, he says, but this should warm you all right up.

The uploaded video is unremarkable, his usual fare. He gives the woman a positive review and encourages his filming assistant to get a close look at her pubic area. Come on, don’t be shy.

‘Wasn’t me,’ Vira says. ‘Oh, I’m not saying that I never took part in this kind of distasteful shit. It was a job, after all. No, I mean, I wasn’t on the scene for that one. He did call me, at one point. But the flu knocked me out of the game for all of November and half the month after.’

‘He didn’t even tell me he was filming anything that month,’ Lis stews quietly.

‘Augustine was lazy. That’s why he had us around. But he was totally capable of making videos on his own,’ Vira says, shrugging. ‘He still paid me.’

‘He was trying to replace us,’ is Lis’s view of it.

While Lis and Vira commonly helped Augustine sweet-talk his guests into compromising positions, the person behind the camera this time says nothing. A handful of the raw, unpublished video files from Augustine’s session with the satyr have a hazy blue filter. It is all but confirmed that during her stay at Augustine’s apartment post-review, Roha was often set up behind the camera.

Roha is a poor filmmaker. In addition to her self-made blue light filter, she is prone to turning the camera onto the walls, the floor, the legs of the bed - all despite Augustine’s increasingly desperate efforts to keep her engaged. In the video featuring the satyr woman, he rambles at an unusually desperate clip, perhaps hoping to keep his camerawoman’s attention.

In another unpublished video, Augustine introduces a short, round-faced woman whom he claims to be a ‘mole person’. He promises a review but no video exists on the channel, or on the various archival drives. It seems that Roha failed to set up any of the cameras for that particular session.

—

The hell’s wrong with her? Narcolepsy? Or just not enough sleep last night?

Augustine Kir has just finished with his latest feature, a girl with long red hair, golden scales and a broad tail in place of legs. The woman lies on the bed with her arms dangling and staring at the camerawoman while she waits for Kir to dress himself. She needs help to move herself into her wheelchair.

Look out, Augy, she’s gonna drop the camera.

Yeah, she fucks up all the time. Hey! Wake the fuck up.

Come on, don’t talk to her like that. Hold on - girl - haven’t I seen you before?

A breezy laugh. I doubt you two have met.

The woman is Whistle12, who would later go on to become a spokesperson of the All Human organization. At the time, she was engaged in what she describes as ‘novelty sex work’.

‘I knew what I was getting into with him,’ she says to me in our interview. ‘We all knew his deal - thought we did, anyway. It’s Roha that I wasn’t prepared for. It wasn’t a huge surprise that someone was there to film, I just thought it would be one of those floozies that worked for the channel.’

The video ends once Whistle has left the apartment, so the following events are taken from her testimony.

When Whistle was outside, she dropped her purse and it took a long while to recollect all of her belongings. Perhaps, she says, Augustine thought she was long gone. Perhaps he thought he was safe.

Kir began shouting from deep inside the apartment; possibly the bedroom. Spitting and cursing, he was accusing Roha of doing something, you did it again! Dumb bitch, can’t you do anything right? Do you never learn?

Whistle did not hear Roha respond, but the noise moved into the living room. There was the sound of impact, something being thrown and cracking. Kir then begins shrieking even louder - are you even listening? You never listen!

Kir’s words dissolve into a roar. There is another impact and Whistle hears a squeak that could only have been from Roha, then the whump of a body against the living room table. Table and chairs clattering. Almost immediately afterward, Kir lets out a cry of pain or confusion, and begins stumbling around, footsteps erratic. Then he also seems to crash-land into some furniture.

Horrified, Whistle bangs on the door with her cell phone in one hand, dialing the police.

There is silence from inside the apartment. Whistle tells the police her location, that it sounds like there was a fight, and somebody got hurt.

As the dispatcher tells Whistle that someone is en route to meet her, the door opens. Both Kir and Roha loom over her in the doorway.

‘Strangest thing I’d ever seen,’ she confides. ‘But then, I didn’t know anything about Life Fountains, at the time.’

Their clothes are rumpled from whatever had occurred, but neither of them is injured. Roha, her hair wild and dress wrinkled, is otherwise perfectly composed. There is not a single mark on her, she is even smiling. Augustine Kir is in similar disarray, and also unhurt - though he is not smiling. Inexplicably, he appears to be ripping small blue, sticky lumps from his face.

Behind them, a table is upturned and a glass-front cabinet by the door has been smashed through.

Before Whistle can even begin to form questions, Kir tells her to mind her own business, and slams the door shut.

The police supposedly checked in that afternoon. Just a lovers’ quarrel, say the reports. Nobody got hurt. Ms Kir, as the officer’s notes call her, has not a scratch on her pretty skin. They found no reason to suspect any foul play.

‘Of course not,’ Whistle scoffs.

—

Later that same day, Augustine makes a lengthy, ellipsis-laden text post announcing an indefinite hiatus.

Let nobody say that I never tried. To those ladies’ rights trolls who are always telling me to settle down… I finally gave a girl a chance, a real full chance, but obviously she doesn’t see the need to give me one….

Wholeheartedly ignoring the fact that he forced his supposed sweetheart film him having sex with other women, he mourns her apathy, her lack of consideration for his needs.

And now the cops got involved. They saw nothing was wrong but this has NEVER happened before… I need a break. Gonna be staying with the fam for a bit bc I can’t make her leave. And I wouldn’t want to throw her onto the streets…. She’s not THAT bad.

He doesn’t mention her by name, but it seems to be more of a habit by now than a true consideration. Many of his followers seem to immediately know who he is talking about.

She’s not a bitch. At least I know what to do with a bitch. But she’s like… a rock. She just won’t talk to me. Don’t girls want communication? She just wants to sleep and eat all day. Is that all I am to her?

Responses from the viewers are unexpectedly lighthearted. Many die-hards had abandoned the channel in the lead-up and disappointment of Roha’s review. But this meant that many of the remaining viewers were of milder temperament.

rest up AK! still love the channel

A few of the comments carry slight barbs.

like u said warming up a girl two centuries old. gonna take time

Others are less subtle, almost parental in tone.

So you’re finally joining the real world. Took long enough. That’s women for you. They’re all like that. You wanna live with them? it’s all about compromise…

Kir signs off and the channel enters it’s hiatus - which lasts just short of three days.

Nobody can know exactly what happened during Kir’s brief disappearance. With so much of his surrounding life documented on film, this gap - while small in the grand scheme of things - is a source of intrigue to investigators. His sisters, Petra and Calya, corroborated that he did join the family for dinner and stayed one night. The cousin Emile, who was by then living with the family in their Central manor, hinted on a video log of his own that Augustine had gotten into an argument with his parents, but denies it when confronted later on.

The Kir parents, Nia and Andon, have never offer any clarification. To the outside world, it looks as if they never interacted with their son at all.

Augustine naturally makes no explanation himself. Considering his tendency to record any minutiae that crossed his mind, it could simply have been the case that nothing out of the ordinary occurred in the Kir household, and he simply needed a few days to think over his relationship. Whatever his motivation was, without bothering to remove his old post (shameless to the end, none can recall him deleting a video or post of his own accord) he announces his glorious return that same week. He makes clear that he has been reading the comments, which seems to flatter his loyal viewers, as the response is almost universally positive.

You guys are right, Augustine says. Who am I to say how a goddess should or shouldn’t be? I forgot why I cared about these girls in the first place. No bitching, no pushy fakes - I was the one being a little bitch!

He promises plenty of ‘sexy stuff’ in the new year. He issues something resembling an apology to Roha as well, though it is unlikely she ever read it.

The real world is just real shitty. All that shit just makes you tired. It makes sense now. Living so long through so much shit - girl, you’re right to want to sleep right through it.