“You’re blushing,” Iris said in a sing-song voice. There was a smirk that oozed superiority and amusement adorning her ruby red lips. “Could it be that you’re thinking about—”
“All right, that’s enough out of you!” Lilian declared, shoving a pizza into her sister’s mouth, and making her gag at the unexpected intrusion.
“So rough,” Iris moaned around the pizza. “I like that.”
While Lilian groaned and tried to hide her face in her hands, Kevin sighed. “Sit down and eat your pizza, Iris.”
“Huhuhu, sure thing, Stud.” Winking at the blond boy, Iris forced him to scoot over in the booth so she could sit down on the end.
“So, you’re really learning how to use guns?” Lindsay asked, restarting their earlier conversation.
“Um, yeah…” Kevin squirmed in his seat just a bit. He didn’t know why, but for some reason, the look that Lindsay was giving him caused something inside of his gut to squirm most unpleasantly. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Lindsay shook her head, the blond bangs of her pixie-cut swaying. “Nothing’s wrong. I guess I’m just now realizing how much you’ve changed. I could never have imagined you learning to shoot guns before.”
“Ah-ha! Ahahahaha!” Kevin rubbed the back of his head with something of a sheepish expression in play. “I-I don’t think I’ve really changed all that much. I mean, it’s not like I’ve stopped being me, you know?”
Lindsay chuckled, seemingly pleased to see he could still blush like that. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Kevin turned to Lilian. “You never told me what you’re learning with Kotohime?”
Lilian looked surprised, though Kevin didn’t know why. Did she really think he wouldn’t have been interested in what she was learning?
“Oh, I’m just learning how to fight more effectively, I guess,” she said. “Most of my fights have been me trying to overwhelm my enemies with specialized attacks, but because I’m only a two-tails, I don’t have that much youki to spare, and using celestial techniques consumes a lot of youki. Kotohime is trying to get me into the habit of using more illusions to fool my opponent’s senses and hit them with a surprise attack. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.”
“That’s just because you lack the mindset to fight properly,” Iris said, which earned her a rather irksome look from Lilian.
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked. Lilian opened her mouth to say something, but her sister beat her to the punch.
“It’s because Lilian doesn’t act like a kitsune.”
“Ugh.” Lilian doubled over as an arrow appeared seemingly out of nowhere and shot her in the back.
“She lacks the ability to properly use deception to fool her opponents.”
“Urk.” Another arrow materialized and pierced Lilian’s spine.
“She also fights at full power right off the bat, which means she’s usually out of youki before her enemy is beaten.”
“Gurk.” One more projectile for good measure. Lilian fell onto the table, groaning as three arrows poked out of her back. Oddly enough, there was no blood, and the arrows didn’t appear to have hurt her.
Like a good boyfriend, Kevin gently pulled out the arrows that had randomly appeared out of nowhere to spear Lilian’s body. Meanwhile, the redhead lay on the table, groaning in discomfort as her fraternal twin blatantly told everyone about her inefficiencies.
“Truth be told, Lily-pad tends to act more like a human with a slightly devious side than a kitsune. I think the only time I’ve ever seen her act with any deception and cunning was back when she used to prank those men that Granny would have her meet at the marriage arrangement meetings.”
“Marriage arrangement meetings?” Christine and Lindsay said simultaneously. They looked at each other before looking back at Lilian. Lindsay continued speaking. “You mean your grandmother tried to arrange a marriage with a bunch of random men for you?”
“Uh-huh.” Lilian nodded, then furrowed her brows, and then tilted her head as if she was confused. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
“Um, I don’t think so.” Lindsay scratched the side of her head, her face scrunching up, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “I can’t remember you ever mentioning it before.”
“Huh, maybe I just told Kevin, then,” Lilian mumbled before shaking her head. “To make a long story short, our matriarch set up marriage meetings in order to marry me off to another kitsune clan, but I didn’t like that idea very much, so I would prank the people she sent to me. That’s actually how we ended up in the United States. I caused so much trouble that the matriarch sent us out of the country.”
“Really? I never knew that.” Lindsay turned to Christine. “Did you know that?”
“Nope,” Christine said, right before she took a chunk out of her pizza.
Throughout the entire conversation, one Eric Corromperre had been getting progressively more annoyed. Why were they talking about this garbage when they could talk about something more interesting? Like the new technique that he had learned?
Standing up and slamming his hands into the table, Eric glared at the lot of them. “If you think crap like that is awesome, just wait until you see my new groping technique. I’m sure it’ll blow your—woah! Ack! Guh!”
With deceptive swiftness, Christine kicked Eric’s legs out from under him, causing the young man to slam face-first into the table, knocking him unconscious. Everyone there was silent as Eric crumpled to the floor in a heap.
“No one cares about your perverted techniques, bastard!” Christine shouted, shaking her fist at the now unconscious pervert.
Alex leaned over and whispered into his brother’s ear. “Damn, she’s scary.”
“For once, you and I are an agreement. That girl is frightening.”
“I heard that!”
“Meep!”
“Whatever. I don’t really care about being subtle when I fight.” Continuing along with the previous vein before they’d been interrupted by Eric, Lilian started speaking again. “I’d much rather use super awesome moves that are cool and flashy. They’re so much more fun than simple illusions and misdirection. If anything, I’d want to pull out a technique similar to what Monkey D. Luffy uses.” Her eyes widened. “And maybe I can! I can use the extension and reinforcement techniques to make my tails super long and hard. Then I can smack people with them. I’ve done it to Iris enough times.”
“Oi!” Iris twitched at Lilian mentioning all the times she’d been tail-whipped.
“I can call it something like Gomu-Gomu no Tail Extension.”
“Actually, I don’t think you can,” Kevin said. “Copyright issues, you understand.”
And just like that, Lilian deflated like a balloon. “Way to take the wind out of my sails, Beloved.”
Kevin placed a hand on her thigh and rubbed it underneath the table. “Sorry, but I don’t want you getting in trouble for stealing someone else’s technique.”
“It wouldn’t be stealing,” Lilian mumbled. “I’d just say I was inspired by Eiichiro Oda’s writing.”
“Would you even be able to use a technique like that?” Kevin inquired curiously. “I mean, you’ve mentioned before that enhancement is one of the most youki-intensive techniques. That’s why you can only reinforce yourself for short bursts instead of sustaining it over a long period of time.”
It was something that he’d first learned from Lilian back when his biggest issue was her desire to walk around the apartment naked. The enhancement technique was the act of strengthening the body by shoving youki into one or more parts of the body. It was a very inefficient method. The technique generally cost more youki than it was worth, and by the time most kitsune had enough youki to use it properly, they had already learned more efficient means of fighting.
Extension was an easier form of enhancement compared to enhancing the body, since their tails were where all of a kitsune’s power came from, but it still cost a lot of youki depending on how far the kitsune
in question wished to extend their tails and how durable they wanted their tails to be.
“Ugh.” Lilian grimaced as she realized that her mate was correct. She crossed her arms and pouted at him. “You’re crushing all my dreams today.”
“I’m sorry, Lilian. It was never my intention to crush your dreams like this,” Kevin said earnestly, his eyes glimmering like the light of an unknown star. “Is there any way I can make it up to you?”
“Well…” Lilian thought about it for around a second. “A hug would be nice.”
“I can do that… Lilian.”
“Kevin.”
“Lilian!”
“Kevin!”
Everyone stared at the two as they began hugging. Their faces were blank except for the twitching in their eyes.
“I feel like Kevin’s doing this just to taunt me,” Alex muttered, glaring at Kevin like he wanted the boy to catch fire.
“I know how you feel.” Andrew was also glaring. “And it’s working.”
Lindsay sighed at her two friends before turning a slightly teasing gaze on the girl who normally tormented her. “Aren’t you going to join them?”
“Shut up,” Iris mumbled, staring bitterly at the couple engrossed in their hug. Why was she imagining the two surrounded by a beach filled with crashing waves and a sunset?
While everyone else stared at the human/kitsune couple in consternation, Christine slammed her face down on the table.
Because when a facepalm didn’t cut it, a faceplant got the job done.
***
Christine returned to her empty apartment just as the sun was setting. She was tired, but it was a good kind of tired, the kind that came from spending time with people she cared about.
She locked the front door, slipped out of her shoes, and wandered into her one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. There were no real decorations in her apartment. Christine had never been one for decor—and it wasn't like she ever had anyone over. Outside of a couch, a television with a stand, and a table, her living room/kitchen contained nothing. No posters, no paintings, nothing.
Ignoring the utter lack of anything resembling life in her apartment, Christine wandered into her bedroom, walked over to her king-sized bed complete with canopy—the only part of her house that was decorated—and flopped face down on the bed. It wasn't long until she once more revisited the day so long ago that had changed her life forever, the day that she met the boy who would become the most important existence in her life.
Consequently, it happened to be the same boy who had rejected her.
Life sucked sometimes.
***
The weather that day was freezing. I had expected it. The small village that I lived in was always cold, though I had been hoping it would be a bit warmer because the sun was almost always out now. It was also summer, but I guess it was too much to expect that summer meant warm in Alaska.
I sat by the window, watching the snow fall outside, ignoring the other kids as they played together. I remember trying to play with them once, but none of them wanted to play with me because I was weird, because I had strange powers that they didn’t. They were scared of me, so when they weren’t making fun of me, they did their best to ignore me.
Most of the children were orphans like I was. The place where I lived was a combination of a daycare center and an orphanage. Children who didn’t have parents lived there, while children who did came there during the day so their parents could work. Our village was tiny. I guess they couldn’t afford to separate the daycare from the orphanage.
That day someone I had never seen before entered the daycare. It was a young woman with shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a large overcoat, thick brown gloves, and sturdy boots. Holding her hand was a little boy around my age. His hair was blond and messy, and several bangs hid his blue eyes. He looked around the room, his large, thick jacket creating squeaking sounds as he moved.
His eyes locked with mine. He tilted his head as I looked away. A few seconds later, I looked back when I heard who I guessed was his mom speak.
“I have a lot work to do today, so I need you to be a good boy and stay here. No running off on your own today, got it?”
“Kay!”
The mother just sighed and stood up. She ruffled the boy’s hair, which he didn’t seem to like, and then walked outside into the freezing cold weather.
The matron and caretaker smiled down at the boy. “Why don’t you go and make some friends with the other kids here?” she suggested.
The boy looked at her before grinning widely. “Kay!”
I stopped paying attention after that. That boy would probably get together with the other boys and do whatever it was boys did, like play Cops and Robbers or something. I just hoped they didn’t decide to “play” with me. The last time they did that, they pulled my hair and it had really hurt.
To my surprise, the boy did not play with the other boys. While I looked out the window, watching the snow fall and wishing I was somewhere warmer, someone tapped on my shoulder. Was it the boys coming to make fun of me? No, if it was, they would have started off by yanking on my hair.
That meant it was probably the girls. They were more vicious than the boys. Girls would pretend to be my friend, and then they would do something awful like shove glue up my nose or tear off my clothes and throw me outside. I feared them more than I feared anyone else.
I whirled around, my heart hammering in my chest.
“Please don’t hurt—” I started to say, only to stop when I saw who was standing in front of me.
It was the boy. He wore the same big grin that I saw him wearing when he first entered. I was taken aback. This was the first time anyone had grinned at me so cheerfully.
“Hi!” The boy greeted with a happiness that made me shy away.
“W-what do you want?” I tried not to stutter, but I was frightened of this boy. I was scared of everyone, but this boy, for some reason, was particularly unnerving. I didn’t know why, but his smile made something weird flutter in my chest. I think I felt this way because of what would happen once he learned about me.
I was always being made fun of. Everyone, all the time, they constantly made fun of me. This boy was new, so he didn’t know about my powers, but once he learned about them, he would make fun of me just like everyone else. That was how it had always been. That thought made my chest ache and my desire to hide almost overpowering.
“Do you want to play with me?” he asked.
I was so shocked by the question that I lost my balance and fell to the floor. I yelped as I crashed into the ground. My butt really hurt. As I rubbed my sore bottom, a hand suddenly entered my field of vision.
“Are you all right?” the boy asked.
“I’m fine—eek!” My words were cut off by a shriek as the boy grabbed my hands and pulled me up. Then he began dusting me off, though I swatted his hands away, feeling my face grow colder than it already was. “W-what are you doing?”
The boy looked at me with this strange expression, like I had just asked him a really stupid question. “Uh, because you fell? I wanted to make sure your clothes didn’t get dirty and stuff.”
“W-well don’t do that!” I told him. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Why was it beating so fast? “P-please go away. I don’t want to play with anybody.”
“Eh? Why not?”
“B-because everyone I try to play with just makes fun of me. You’re going to be the same as everyone else. I know it.”
“Why would anyone make fun of you? That sounds mean.”
“Yeah? Well, people are mean.”
“I’m not mean.”
Christine frowned at the boy, who had yet to leave. “Why do you even want to play with me anyway?”
“Hmm… I don’t know,” the boy admitted before grinning. “But I’ve decided that I want to play with you, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Then the boy grabbed my hand and started dragging me over to the toy
box.
“What—hey! You can’t just drag me like this! Let go!”
“Hahaha! Come on! Let’s play something fun!”
“I don’t wanna play something fun! I want you to let go!”
“Oh, by the way, my name is Kevin. What’s yours?”
The boy turned around, walking backwards while still pulling me along. He stared at me with his big blue eyes, and my cheeks became really cold. It felt like they were being hit by shards of ice. I didn’t like this feeling, but at the same time, I didn’t think it was an unpleasant feeling. It was strange. I didn’t understand. My heart was beating really fast, too.
“Uh… it’s Christine,” I muttered. I wanted to hide in my coat. “Christine Fraust.”
“Nice to meet you, Christy! Now, let’s have some fun!”
The rest of the day, Kevin and I played games, and Kevin even stuck up for me when several other kids tried to tell him that he shouldn’t play with me.
He only stayed there for one day. Apparently, his mom had come because she was some kind of writer or something. Even though I only saw him that one day, I would always remember my first friend, the boy with blond hair, blue eyes, and a big grin.
From that first meeting, my heart had been stolen.
***
Yuki-onna, otherwise known as snow maidens, are a type of yōkai often found in the most inhospitable regions of the world, places where sleet and snow are a constant, and where more humans die from hypothermia than anywhere else. They love the cold, and why shouldn’t they? Their very powers are derived from the ice and snow that they so covet.
Christine hated the cold. Despite having the blood of a yuki-onna, she despised the cold more than anything. Perhaps it was the nekomata in her. Cat yōkai loved warm weather and possessed powers over fire, or so she’d been told. She’d never met another nekomata before, and she couldn’t control fire, so it wasn’t like she could confirm or deny what Orin had taught her.
Either way, it didn’t change the fact that she hated the cold, despite wielding the power to control ice. It made her different than other yuki-onna.
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