Isekai by Moonlight

[robkelk]

This sidestory has been described by one of the prereaders as an Author Tract. It is not intended to be unbiased.

This sidestory deals with human sexuality in many forms, some of which might be objectionable to certain readers. Reader discretion is advised.

By necessity, this sidestory deals with more mature subject matter than the rest of Isekai by Moonlight. This sidestory discusses matters that, depending on where you live, might be illegal to teach in local schools. The concepts in the sidestory might be presented in a way that does not conform to your family's standards or your community's standards. Thus, the majority of the story is protected in a spoiler block so that you must specifically act in order to read it.

If you do not want to read such material, or if you are not allowed to read such material by your local laws, then do not reveal the spoiler text.

If you ignore these warnings and read the story anyway, do not blame the author – who has given you repeated warnings – if you do not like what you read.

Oh, and one assumption about the protagonist is disproven by this sidestory.

---

"How did I end up needing to give the enhanced version of The Talk to my fiancée, our best friend, her fiancé, our best friend's adopted sister, and the one person who all five of us love like a sister?" I asked myself.

From the doorway to her apartment, my fiancée replied, "You're just lucky, I guess."

Isekai by Moonlight

Chapter S Sidestory: The Talk

By revealing this spoiler text, you accept that you might object to what is said here and you acknowledge my freedom of expression to be allowed to say it.

I stood up and walked over to her. "Thanks for letting me use your place for this, Makoto. Are you ready for the next couple of hours?"

"I think so. Depending on how much detail you're planning on going into about our sex life."

I slipped an arm around her waist. "I don't plan on discussing techniques or acts. I'll probably touch on intentions, though."

"Oh, that's okay, then," she said as she put both of her arms around me.

Finishing the hug, I added, "What the two of us do together stays between us, my dearest. Ryou doesn't need to know what turns you on, and Ami, Minako, and Bunny-chan don't need to know what turns me on."

"Oh. I already told Ami some of what we do, and she's told me about some of the things that she and Ryou like doing."

"Ah." I thought for a brief moment. "If it's just Ami, then I don't have a problem with it, as long as you aren't implying that she can do 'this and that' with me."

"As if I would! Rob, you know that I don't want to share you with anyone, not even Ami, and I'm not interested in Ryou that way."

"Sometimes I think you're the only woman who isn't," I replied with a smile. "But, yeah, the four of us are closer than family, and we have been ever since Petz gave us that two-year vacation on Midchilda. You've never mentioned learning anything about sex from Ami, though."

"I prefer to show instead of telling," she said with a grin.

"I think we'd prefer to be told today," Minako said from outside the apartment.

We quickly broke our hug and got out of the way of the others. "Sorry!"

Everybody walked in, and we made ourselves comfortable in Makoto and Minako's living area. I put up a forcefield along the walls and windows to keep prying eyes and ears out, then began with the standard joke: "I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here today."

"No," Bunny-chan replied, "it's pretty obvious you're going to tell us about all the stuff my parents would prefer I don't know about until I'm married. By then, it'll be too late."

"I'm not going to tell you everything about adult relationships, no. If you want the purely biological information, talk with Saeko-mama. I want to talk about the social aspects, and clear up a few things that 1990s psychology are still getting wrong."

"I'd appreciate it if you would, Rob," Ami said. "You have a full generation of knowledge that we don't."

I nodded. "But only at a general level. Don't expect me to know all of the details." Then I motioned toward the holographic projector that I'd brought over. "Hayate-chan has volunteered to spend time with us today. Thank you, Hayate-chan."

"I'm happy to help my friends, Rob." She called up a display of a blank sheet of paper.

"Thank you. For the longest time, most people have thought that human sexuality was a two-state thing: either somebody was heterosexual or homosexual." Two points appeared on the sheet of paper, labelled accordingly. "But sociologists have known for decades that this isn't true. There's a lot more to sexual preferences than just het or gay." A two-axis chart joined the two points, with the axes labelled "orientation" and "frequency". Then a string of points appeared between the two points that were already there.

"I wasn't expecting that," Minako said.

"I know. There are a lot of people who would prefer to think that only heterosexuality exists, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Sometimes it's because they haven't seen any of that evidence. Minako, Usagi-san, were either of you even aware of the existence of same-sex couples before you met Michiru-san and Haruka-san?"

"No," Bunny-chan replied.

"I'd heard rumours, both during the Silver Millennium and in this lifetime, but I'd never seen a same-sex couple." Before I could reply, Minako added, "That I knew about."

I nodded. "I was just about to say that. Not everybody makes their sexual orientation public."

"Why not?"

I turned back to Bunny-chan. "Because some of those people who would prefer to think that only heterosexuality exists can get pretty violent when confronted with evidence to the contrary. Nobody likes being proven wrong."

"Oh."

After a moment, I continued. "Back to the chart. You can see that the points now form something like a line. Starting at heterosexual, there's bi-curious," Hayate-chan added labels to the dots as I named them, "bisexual with a preference for heterosexuality, completely bisexual, bisexual with a preference for homosexuality, bi-curious again, and homosexual."

"What do those mean?" Bunny-chan asked.

"Bisexual means the person is sexually interested in both men and women. Bi-curious means the person has some interest in the idea of bisexuality but isn't interested in actually giving it a try."

She thought about that for a moment. "Okay, I think I get it."

"Now I'm going to tell you that this isn't necessarily the truth. Some sociologists even in my time think it is the truth, but others see orientation differently." The discrete points were replaced with a line, leaving the labels in place along the line. "Individuals can fall anywhere along that line, not just at the labelled points."

"Isn't there a break between bi-curious and bisexual, though?" Bunny-chan asked. "Either you've tried it or you haven't."

"It's tricky. If you try bisexuality once, but with somebody who you aren't really compatible with emotionally, and then decide that you aren't going to try again, are you still bi-curious? There are billions of people who you haven't tried it with, after all. And then there are people who wouldn't dream of having sex with somebody of the same sex, except with one particular person who they're interested in but haven't approached for whatever reason. Are they bi-curious or het?"

"But most people are het, as you call it, right?" Minako asked.

I shook my head. "Most people are het but bi-curious. They've just been told to believe that they're het. Or, in some unfortunate cases, brainwashed to believe that they're het. My time calls that brainwashing 'conversion therapy'."

"Therapy? You said it was brainwashing," Bunny-chan said.

"People who would prefer to think that only heterosexuality should exist call it therapy. But it most definitely is brainwashing, using techniques that date back to Pavlov's experiments with dogs and the techniques that turned fully-functioning native children into mentally-fragile teenagers and adults in my home country's residential schools. People who go through those kinds of processes are never truly happy at the end of them."

"I have to ask," Ryou said. "Do they work?"

"That depends on your definition of 'work'. They make people act like they should only be happy with a fraction of the people who could make them truly happy, and all because somebody else decided that they knew better than the brainwashed person what the brainwashed person wanted. Remember what Usagi-san told Prince Diamande about his subjects?"

"That they aren't property."

"Exactly. While it's related to sexual orientation, this is really about control, not love. Nobody should impose their will on somebody else."

Hayate-chan looked straight at me and said, "Rob, your biases are showing. I agree with you, but you're preaching, not teaching."

I quickly thought about what I had been saying. "You're correct, Hayate-chan. Sorry about that. Now, back to orientation. It took me years to figure out my own orientation; I hope I can speed up the process for each of you. Don't answer these questions out loud or send anybody your thoughts, just think about them. First, is there somebody of the opposite sex who you would be willing to share your bed and yourself with?"

Makoto looked at me and smiled. Ryou looked at Ami, and both Ami and Minako looked at Ryou. Usagi had a dreamy look on her face, and I was willing to guess that her fantasy involved a certain cape and tuxedo draped over a chair in either his or her bedroom.

"I suppose that was a silly question," my fiancée said.

I shook my head. "I asked a question that I knew the answer to, before asking questions that I don't know the answer to. Now, why do you feel that way about that person? Don't say anything." I gave them a moment to think about it. "Okay, now you should have an idea of what you're expecting from love. Next question, and don't turn to look at somebody or get some expression on your face if you can help it. Is there somebody of the same sex who you would be willing to share your bed and yourself with?"

Since I already had brainprints of Ryou, Ami, and Makoto, I had a pretty good idea of what they were thinking... and the expressions on their faces confirmed it. Makoto and Ryou looked like they thought the question was a waste of time because obviously there wasn't anybody like that, while Ami was actually giving the idea some thought. Minako also looked like she thought the question was a waste of time. Bunny-chan, though... well, I guess that a characterization point from Sailor Moon Crystal applied to our Usagi-san, too, because she had a dreamy look on her face again. I wondered who her dream girl was.

"And now you know where along this line your boundaries are," I said, gesturing to the display. "Now, I've already mentioned that there are some people out there who think that heterosexuality is the only normal orientation. There are others who say that bisexuality isn't an orientation and anybody who says they're bi isn't willing to make a commitment to one extreme or the other. Those people are wrong, even if they happen to be political or religious leaders. Or your friends. I have no business telling you to be het or bi or gay. Neither do our parents, even if Saeko-mama is a doctor. Neither do our teachers, or our friends. We should like each other for who we are, not for what we are."

Bunny-chan nodded in agreement. "That makes a lot of sense. It's my body; why should I let somebody else tell me who I can share it with?"

"Your body, your rules, your choices," I agreed. "Although I hope you'll wait a few years until your body has finished developing." I waited for another moment. "Now, about the second axis on the chart. This one is a bit easier to understand, in that it goes from 'never' to 'always'."

Hayate-chan added labels to the extremes of the frequency axis: Asexual and Hypersexual. "We'll start at the 'always' end. This end is sometimes called 'nymphomania' or 'satyriasis', depending on whether it's a female or a male who exhibits a desire for hypersexuality. By my time, the gender-specific terms had pretty much fallen out of use, at least clinically. Some people call it an addiction to sex, while others call it a compulsive behaviour, and still others call it an exaggerated sex drive. A few think that there's a hormonal imbalance behind hypersexuality. In a few cases, people simply don't know how to relate to other people without bringing sex into the relationship. What little clinical research that exists, even in my time, is inconclusive as to why hypersexuality exists. For our purposes, it's enough to say that it does exist."

"So there are people who walk around always ready to have sex?" Minako asked.

"Not always," Ami replied before I could. "There are physiological issues with being constantly aroused."

"Not the least of which are the biological issues of interrupting the oxygenated blood flow to the penis or clitoris," I pointed out. "Mizuno-sensei can tell you more about that if you're really interested, which I for one am not. Hypersexuality has a social aspect that is separate from the purely biological aspect: somebody who is hypersexual is often but not always obvious."

"Like most boys," Bunny-chan said.

"No, not like most boys. While it's true that most of our male classmates are very interested in sex, that doesn't make them hypersexual. It makes them out of synchronization with most of our female classmates." The graph minimized, to be replaced by a new graph where the axes were labelled "Age" and "Frequency". Hayate-chan drew two curves on the chart, one labelled "Average Male" and the other labelled "Average Female".

"Those two lines don't match up," Bunny-chan said.

"You're right. Typically but not always, males our age are far more interested in having sex than females our age are, and males a bit older than your parents are less interested in having sex than females the same age are. The two curves sync up once people are past their child-raising years, when companionship is more important to most people than sex is. There are exceptions to this general guideline, of course."

"Like Rei's grandfather," my fiancée said.

"Yes, he never did lose interest in sex when he got older, did he? I wouldn't be surprised if he happened to be hypersexual. You'll notice that he can still lead a normal life; not everything he does is about sex. Hayate-chan, would you switch back to the previous chart, please?"

"Before you do that," Makoto said, "there's a question I have that relates to your sex drive, Rob."

"I think you know from experience what my sex drive is like, my dearest."

"Oh, I do," she said with a smile. "You've told us that your mental age and your physical age aren't the same, although you've never told us what your mental age is. What should I be expecting when you get older?"

I sighed. "I suppose I should have expected that question some time today. Mentally, I'm in my late 30s, older than Kenji-san but not by much. Physically, I'm your age, and being in junior high is emphasizing my habits from the first time that I was a teenager."

"And here I was worried that you were the same age as Hino-kannushi. When you said 'males a bit older than your parents', you meant yourself, didn't you?"

"Actually, I meant males closer to Principal Takeuchi's age. But to answer your question, I'm physically young again and I have what I consider to be a proper sex drive for a teenage male, so you should expect the same thing that every other woman expects when she grows older with her spouse. Now, Hayate-chan, if you'd be kind enough...?"

She switched the display back, and the chart now showed a large band labelled "Socially Acceptable" between Asexual and Hypersexual. "Most people learn how to have a socially acceptable interest in sex, leaving most of their time available for earning a living and pursuing a hobby or two. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, and I don't want you to say anything right now, I assume that everybody in this room has a socially acceptable interest in sex. However, there's also a lower-than-usual interest in sex, and in some cases a person simply doesn't have much if any interest at all in the sex act. That's asexuality."

"I thought asexuality was an orientation of its own," Ami said.

"No, it isn't. It's possible to be heterosexual and asexual, or homosexual and asexual, or bisexual and asexual. One says who you're interested in having sex with, while the other says how often you're interested in having sex. I won't name names, and the person has graduated from Kuritsu Juban Chuugakkou anyway, but I'm aware of one person who told me he had no interest in having sex but was jealous of me because Makoto is in love with me."

"Somebody else thought of me that way?" she asked. "And you didn't tell me?"

"It wasn't my secret to tell. And I told him that if he wanted you to know, he'd have to tell you."

"Nobody ever did."

"There you go. He was interested in you, but he wasn't sexually interested in you or anybody else. That's the classic definition of asexuality."

"But not the modern one?" Minako asked.

"The 2020s definition allows for having some interest in sex, just not much interest."

"Going back to those two curves," Bunny-chan said, "and what you said when you told us how old your mind is, what happens with homosexual lovers? Assuming they can even become spouses."

"Same-sex marriage will be legalized in the Netherlands in 2001, in Belgium and parts of Canada in 2003, and in the rest of Canada and in Spain in 2005, so, yes, it's possible for homosexual lovers to become spouses. And even in places where same-sex marriage isn't legal in 2022, such as Japan, same-sex couples still exist. They just aren't married. As for what happens, well, their sex drives over time tend to remain in as much synchronization as they were when their relationships started. Not always – there are always exceptions to the rule – but often enough that I'd call it a pretty safe bet."

"Where does rape fit into the frequency axis?" Ami asked.

"It doesn't." I said flatly. "Rape is about objectifying people, not about love. Hayate-chan, let me know if I start preaching again." She turned off the display. "I don't know the psychological terms, but I'm pretty sure that the reasons for performing sex acts fall into four broad groups that in the real world blur into each other. Either you want your partner to be happy, which I call 'making love', or you want your partner to feel sexual pleasure, which I call 'having sex', or you primarily want to feel sexual pleasure yourself, which I call 'screwing', or you only want to use the other person, who in these cases can no longer be called a partner, for your own sexual urges. Since most people don't want to be used as if they're living sex toys, that last one sometimes involves rape."

"Rob, you're starting to preach again."

"Sorry. There's also the matter of consent. If the other person doesn't want to take part in sex, you're definitely raping that person."

"You keep saying 'the other person'," Ryou said. "Not 'the other people'."

"So I do, and that's a sign of my own sexual preferences. I'm not interested in having multiple sexual partners." A bit of a dodge in that I was counting on everybody to assume that meant 'more than one' instead of the 'more than two' that I actually meant, but I had to hedge my comment until I was certain that I felt no sexual desire for Ami. "Some people are, though, and the technical term for that is polyamory. If more than two people marry each other, that's called polygamy."

"How would the physical act work if there's three people making love or having sex with each other?"

Before I could point out to Minako that this wasn't that sort of talk, Hayate-chan said, "If anybody's interested, I have memories from my donor personality about polyamory."

"Thank you, Hayate-chan. I have no experience with polyamory. Everyone, please save questions about particular physical acts until after this talk. I'll just point out that there are some people who believe that somebody has to be polyamorous, if not actually have group sex, in order to be considered bisexual. The fact that there are people who are both bisexual and asexual shows that this belief is incorrect."

I waited for a moment.

"So, is everybody okay with what I've said so far?"

"I think so," Bunny-chan said.

"There's one thing that I'm wondering about," my fiancée said. "Is a guy who wears girls' clothes bi-curious?"

"What, just because he wears girls' clothes? There's no way to tell. Wearing clothing that was originally designed for a gender other than your own is transvestism, not homosexuality."

"What's the difference?" Makoto asked.

"My dearest, I'm going to use you as an example. That t-shirt and cargo pants outfit that you're wearing looks really good on you, but that doesn't change the fact that it was originally men's clothing. You're wearing clothes that until recently were normally worn by guys. Does that make you bisexual?"

"Of course not! I just like the way this outfit feels on me."

I nodded. "It's comfortable, and it looks good on you. That's all that transvestism is – wearing clothes that are comfortable and look good on the person who's wearing them. It doesn't have anything to do with your sexual orientation."

"Rob," Ryou asked, "does everybody in the 2020s think the same way that you do about all of this?"

I shook my head. "No. Old thought patterns are hard to break even in the face of new evidence. Some people would rather keep thinking the old ways, even when changing their thought patterns would make them happier. And, as I mentioned earlier, nobody likes to be proven wrong."

I waited for another moment in case there were any more questions.

"Now that I've said so much about sexual orientation and frequency of sexual desires, and implied that those charts were a way to sort out everybody's sexuality, it's time to talk about people for whom that isn't true."

"Wait, is there a third sex out there somewhere?" Bunny-chan asked.

"Some Native Americans think so," I replied in all seriousness. "But I'm not Native American so I'm not qualified to discuss the 'two-spirit' concept. From a Western viewpoint, biologically there's just males and females, but psychologically, there are more than just men and women. Nowadays, the term is 'transsexuality'. In the 2020s, the term is 'transgender' to compare with the term 'cisgender'."

"You mean like Transformers?" Minako asked with a smile.

"In that there's more to transgender people than meets the eye, yes," I replied, again in all seriousness. "Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own body?"

Bunny-chan nodded. "Ever since I started puberty, I've been clumsy sometimes."

"Now, imagine feeling like that all the time because you think you were born into the wrong body. Some biological males think that they should have been born girls, some biological females think that they should have been born boys, some people were misidentified as either male or female at birth because their primary sexual characteristics were unusual, which is called 'intersex', and some people think that they aren't human at all. Statistically, it's likely that somebody somewhere in Tokyo would have been more comfortable being born the same species as Ail and An than they are having been born human."

All Bunny-chan said was, "Wow."

Ami frowned in annoyance. "Rob, I have to admit that, other than the intersex cases that I've read about in medical textbooks, I'm having trouble grasping that idea."

"You aren't the only one, Ami. I've never been able to grasp it emotionally, although I understand it intellectually. Just because I'm cisgender and comfortable in the body that I was born in – and, yes, this rejuvenated body counts as the body I was born in – doesn't mean that everybody else is equally comfortable in their bodies."

"Before Rob starts preaching again," Hayate-chan commented, "I'll mention that there's some so-called 'conversion therapy' for transgender people in the 2010s, too."

"It exists for the same reasons that the other sort exists, and that's all we need to say about that," I agreed. "Oh, and before anybody asks, transsexuality is not the same as transvestism. There is some correlation, but one doesn't require the other."

"That makes sense," Makoto said. "I like being a woman, and I like these clothes, even if my fiancée says they're masculine. But I've never really thought of myself as feminine, even though I'm definitely female."

"So what do transgender people do about their bodies in the 2020s?" asked Minako.

I sighed. "A lot of them suffer. Some of them undergo some very expensive hormonal treatments and cosmetic surgery to change their bodies to look like what they know their bodies should have been all along, and from every account I've heard, they're happier for it. However, the state of the art in 2022 was not sufficiently advanced to completely flip the biological gender of a body; these people often end up unable to procreate."

"But they can still adopt, right?"

I nodded at Bunny-chan's question. "They can, unless they live somewhere that thinks being transgender automatically makes somebody unfit to be a parent. Which of course is false; there are plenty of cisgender people who are unfit to be parents but nobody stops them from having children. It's the person who is a good or bad parent, not the body." I waited for a moment, felt a bit of surprise that Hayate-chan didn't say I was preaching again, then continued, "I'm not going to say anything more about transgender people, because I don't know anybody who's ever told me that they aren't cisgender. I simply don't know enough to go into any more detail."

We all sat in silence for a moment.

"I think I've run out of things to talk about," I admitted.

"Thanks, Rob," Ryou said. "I now know a lot more than I ever wanted to know about some things I'd never thought existed."

"Happy to help you there, ol' buddy," I replied with a grin.

Most of the others stood up to leave. I noticed who didn't. «Makoto and Minako,» I sent to just the two of them, «would you mind giving the two of us a few minutes alone? I think she wants to ask me something that she doesn't want anybody else to hear.»

My fiancée and her roommate stood up. "I'm going to go shopping for dinner ingredients. Is there anything in particular you want? And don't say inarizushi."

"I'll let you surprise me, my dearest, as long as you're going to eat whatever you serve me."

"I'm in the mood for omurice," Minako suggested.

"Sure, why not?" And, with my sort-of agreement for the menu, they headed off to the store, followed by Hayate-chan heading for my apartment.

Then I got up, closed the door, and returned to the front room. "Is there something else you wanted to ask me, Usagi-san?"

"Maybe. Can I just talk for a few minutes?"

"Sure. Until somebody opens that door, I'll just listen unless you ask me something."

"Thanks. You said that it's my body, my rules, and my choices. And I already know that I want to wait until after I graduate before I share myself with Mamo-chan that way. But now that you've explained that there's more than just heterosexuality and homosexuality, I don't know what my choices are any more. I love Mamoru. I know you don't like him and he doesn't like you, but I'm not you. Chibiusa is proof that Mamo-chan and I are going to get married. Eventually. But... I love you, but not the same way that I love Mamo-chan. You're more a brother that doesn't annoy me, the way Shingo does. That is still love, right?"

I nodded, realizing that she was talking around what was really on her mind. "It's familial love, and I'm happy to hear you say that you love me that way. I love you as if you were my sister, too, the same way that I love Princess Lady."

"Thank you, Robu-san. That means a lot to me. But... I think there's somebody else who I love the same way that I love Mamo-chan. And if I do, then I'm bisexual. That doesn't make you love me any less, does it?"

"Not at all. I love you for who you are, not what you are."

"Thank you." After a moment, she continued, "I'm pretty sure now that I love her that way. But I'm worried. She's so pure; maybe she isn't allowed to love me back. Maybe she's only heterosexual or only bi-curious and can't love me back. Maybe she's asexual. And maybe... maybe she doesn't love me that way."

I let her sit in silence. I had told her that, right now, I would only answer her questions.

"Robu-san, what should I do?"

And that was a question. "You said that she's so pure, so it's pretty obvious to me who you're talking about. I doubt Rei-san will hate you if you tell her that you love her that way. She might be a little confused that she's receiving a love confession from another girl, but she attends an all-girls school so she must have at least heard of that kind of thing happening. Right now, you're like so many other girls at school, worrying about how the person you love feels about you. Go and talk with her. Put a note in her shoebox at home asking her to meet you behind the shrine building, if you want to go all-out with the cliché. But you'll never know how she feels unless you tell her how you feel first."

She sat there for a moment. "I suppose you're right. I mean, that cliché is a cliché because it works, right?" I nodded. "I'll do that later. Not now. I want to be sure that I love her that way before I make the offer. But I'm pretty sure that I do. Oh, but what do I tell Mamo-chan?"

I smiled. "You can worry about that after you talk with Rei-san. If she tells you 'no' and never mentions it again, would you really want Chiba-san to know about it?"

"Well, he should know that I'm bi. Shouldn't he?"

"Maybe in a while, once he's a bit more mature. And I feel weird saying that about somebody his age."

She giggled. "Yeah, you're not unbiased there. I'll ask Ami-chan for advice on that. Thanks again, Robu-san."

And she let herself out.

"Any time, Bunny-chan," I said to the still-open door.

---

Original text and original characters are copyright © 2022-2023 by Rob Kelk. "Rob Donaldson" and any representations thereof are copyright by and trademarks of Rob Kelk.

Sailor Moon and the characters thereof are copyright © 1991-1997 by Naoko Takeuchi, TOEI Animation, Kodansha, Bandai, and their licencees, and are used as allowed under section 29.21 (1) of the Copyright Act of Canada, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS and the characters thereof are copyright © 2006-2007 by Masaki Tsuzuki, Seven Arcs, and their licencees, and are used as allowed under section 29.21 (1) of the Copyright Act of Canada, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42.

My thanks to my prereaders, Brent Laabs, Robert M. Schroeck, and Heather K.