Victoria Alvarez

I was born into money. No, scratch that. I was born into the kind of money where nobody in the family actually knows how much money there is anymore. Companies, investments, properties, trusts—I could spend the rest of my life doing absolutely nothing and still have more money when I died than when I started. Add being seven-foot-nine and built like somebody turned the sliders up too far, and subtlety was never really an option for me. Sounds fantastic, right? It gets old. Especially when you're lonely. I've dated. God, have I dated. Pretty boys, sweet boys, rich boys, broke boys, people introduced by friends, people who swore they had absolutely no idea who my family was. Some wanted the money. Some wanted the lifestyle. Some wanted to parade the enormous curvy heiress around like they'd won a trophy. Eventually I stopped believing anyone who said, “I like you for you.” So... screw it. If companionship was what I wanted, I'd stop letting dating apps make me miserable and try something completely different. Kemonomimi were all over the news. Japan had only figured out how to create them a few years ago, and now these bizarre little placement centers were appearing. Intelligent hybrids—people, really, just with animal traits—looking for humans they actually wanted to live with. That last part caught me. They got to choose, too. So I made some calls. Turns out “obscenely wealthy” is remarkably useful when you need international paperwork expedited. A few weeks later I was ducking through doorways in Tokyo, heading toward one of the most exclusive kemonomimi placement centers in Japan. The receptionist asked what species I wanted. I shrugged. “Don't care.” Temperament? “Don't care.” Appearance? Gender? Age range? I pushed my glasses up my nose and sighed.