Kevin winced. “That’s kinda harsh.”
Christine’s uncaring shrug said more about her state of mind than words ever could. “Life’s harsh, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I guess.” Kevin didn’t argue. After all the crap he’d been through, he agreed. “So where’s your mother? Does she live with you?”
“My mother’s dead.”
Kevin closed his eyes as guilt slammed into him like a hailstorm of gunfire. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. She died soon after giving birth to me, so it’s not like I ever knew her. I grew up in an orphanage. Occasionally, a family would adopt me, but they would always give me back because I couldn’t control my powers. It wasn’t until I met my benefactor that I left the orphanage for good.”
“Who’s your benefactor?”
“Just some guy. He’s a yōkai, or at least I think he is. I’ve never met him in person before. He always contacts me through intermediaries to give me a monthly stipend.”
Listening to Christine made Kevin realize just how lucky he was. Yes, his mom was never at home, and yes, she certainly wouldn’t be winning any “Mother of the Year” awards, but at least he had a mom. He might not know his dad—and he honestly didn’t want to know—but he knew his mom, and he knew that she loved him.
Lilian and Christine had lived much harder lives than him. One had her own family trying to force her into a mating arrangement for some political crap, and the other didn’t even have a family to rely on. Compared to what these two had gone through, his own problems seemed insignificant.
“You’re a really amazing person.” Kevin smiled at the gothic-clad female. “Really, I haven’t met many people who are as strong-willed and determined as you.”
Christine’s face turned into a raging storm normally only seen in the frozen tundra. “Wh-wh-wh-what the hell are you saying?! IDIOT!”
“GOOOF!”
“Jerk! Imbecile! Jackass! You don’t just—you can’t just say things like that to a girl, you moron!”
“Guh,” Kevin lay on the ground in the fetal position, arms curled around his stomach where Christine had punched him. As the yuki-onna continued to rant, he groaned. “What did I do to deserve that?”
Christine didn’t answer him. She just continued yelling.
***
Track practice ended, though Kevin hadn’t been allowed to run for the last third of it. Coach Deretaine had insisted he rest, not wanting him to exacerbate his facial injury any further. Christine had left before then, huffing and stomping away like an angry rhinoceros.
Kevin would have wondered why, but he honestly didn’t care anymore. Trying to understand women was a pain. Trying to understand Christine was like trying to learn the meaning of life by playing eroge. He’d likely corrode his brain just making an attempt.
“I’m telling you, the new series that just came out is fucking awesome. It’s the only show in the world about trains that I can actually get on board with.”
“That’s just because it’s a complete T and A anime. I know what anime you’re talking about, and the only thing you’d find exciting about it are the massive boobs every chick in that series is sporting.”
“So? You say that like boobs are a bad thing. Have you no pride as a man?”
“I have plenty of pride as a man,” Kevin snapped as they walked into the school proper. “I just prefer anime with good stories as opposed to ‘Massive Plot.’”
“Whatever,” Eric grumbled. “You just don’t know a good show when you see it.”
“It’s not like Kevin needs to watch shows like that anyway,” Alex said.
“Yeah. If he wants ‘Massive Plot,’ then he’s got both Lilian and that Kotohime chick to look at.”
“Not to mention Christine. I think she’s got the hots for him, too, though her breasts are pretty tiny.”
Somewhere within the school campus, a certain yuki-onna sneezed. She then began raging uncontrollably as the powerful urge to freeze someone’s dick off consumed her.
“Do you guys have to bring my love life into this?”
“Yes.”
“Definitely.”
“Indubitably.”
“… Love…”
“W-whatever,” Kevin huffed. “And why bother mentioning Christine anyway? She doesn’t like me. I mean, have you seen how angry she gets whenever I open my mouth? It’s like she’s hardwired toward violent responses to everything I say.”
Kevin’s four friends stared at him.
“Kevin.” Eric placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”
“A big idiot,” Alex agreed.
“A massive idiot.”
“…. Stupid…”
A large vein pulsed on Kevin’s forehead. “Oh yeah? And why is that?”
“No reason. You just are.”
The pulsing vein gained company in the form of Kevin’s twitching right eye.
They continued strolling to the makeshift locker room in the main office building. Kevin didn’t know how Coach Deretaine managed to convince the principal to let them use the main office building as a locker room. Perhaps Eric had a hand in convincing his father to let them change there, he theorized to himself.
While they were walking, a teacher walked up to them.
“Ah, Mr. Swift. I was hoping to see you,” Professor Nabui’s accent was thicker than usual that day. Kevin had a hard time understanding him.
“Um, did you need me for something?” Kevin asked.
“Indeed. I wished to discuss your last test score. If you could come with me?”
Kevin was confused. Couldn’t his teacher just speak with him here? He didn’t protest, however, since this was a teacher, and Professor Nabui had always been unusual.
Really, what could go wrong?
***
Lilian was worried.
After parting ways with Lindsay, she’d gone searching for Kevin, first heading to the track field and then to the gym. After remembering that the gym—and subsequently the school locker rooms—were closed until further notice, she’d traveled to the main office building.
She’d passed Christine on the way. The girl looked angry, but that was nothing new. They spent a few moments arguing before they both stalked away in a huff.
She eventually reached the office, a square building that sat next to the library. Lined with windows and painted in the school colors, Lilian could easily see inside.
She was about to walk in when someone walked out first and, upon seeing her, brightened like a million watt bulb.
A very perverted million watt bulb.
“My Tit Maiden!” Eric ran toward her, drool leaking from his mouth and blood from his nose. His hands were outstretched and his eyes were locked on her chest.
Lilian swiftly clotheslined him the moment he was within reach. She was not in the mood right now.
“Do you guys know where Kevin is?” she asked, staring at Alex. The young man gulped. He didn’t know why, but that stare really scared the crap out of him.
“Kevin? He’s, um, he’s, oh, blast it! Why can’t I remember?!”
Fear will do that to a man.
“… Japanese…”
“Oh, right!” Andrew snapped his fingers. “Professor Nabui said he wanted to speak with him, so they went off to his classroom, I think.”
Lilian’s stared hardened. “You think?”
“I’m sure that’s where they are. I mean, where else would a teacher take a student that he wants to speak with?”
“I see. Thanks.”
Lilian left soon after. Eric was still choking on the ground, his hands clasped around his throat. She didn’t wait for him to recover, which also meant she missed the waterworks his personal storm cloud made when it returned with a vengeance.
On a side note, Alex and Andrew were not pleased when their clothes got sopping wet.
Lilian didn’t bother knocking on Professor Nabui’s door, instead going straight for the ha
ndle. It was locked. A sense of apprehension washed over her. After glaring at the handle for several seconds, Lilian looked around to confirm she was alone before releasing her “foxy parts” and channeling youki through her body and into her arms.
The door dented, bent, and then yielded to her fist, before flying off its hinges and crashing to the ground. Lilian retracted her tails and ears, transforming back into a fully human form, and walked inside.
Kevin wasn’t there.
Neither was Professor Nabui, for that matter.
The room was empty.
Lilian walked further into the room. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Everything was exactly as she had last seen it.
As she continued searching, something on the professor’s desk grabbed her attention. Lilian crept over and saw a single sheet of paper lying on top, a small paperweight pinning it to the surface. She grabbed the paper and held it up to her face. It read:
Dear Ms. Pnév̱ma. By now you have no doubt realized that your mate, Kevin Swift, has been kidnapped. If you want him back unharmed, all you have to do is hand yourself over. I shall be waiting at the All 4 Anime store on 19th Avenue and Dunlap Road. I suggest you come alone, otherwise, I cannot guarantee Kevin’s safety.
Lilian stared at the sheet of paper in her hands, uncomprehending. She could barely concentrate on the words written therein, and only one phrase within the entire letter penetrated the stormy haze brewing within her mind.
“Kevin Swift has been kidnapped.”
“Has been kidnapped…”
“Has been…”
“Has… has… has…”
Lilian frowned. That wasn’t right.
“Been kidnapped…”
“Kidnapped… kidnapped… kidnapped…”
That was better.
Her body began to shake.
Her lips trembled before they peeled back into a feral snarl.
The sound of paper crinkling was surprisingly loud as Lilian clenched her hands into fists. Her control over her transformation slipped, ears quickly sprouting crimson fur, elongating, and moving closer to the crown of her head. Her tails sprouted from between a flap in her shorts, writhing in a rictus of furious activity. While her face remained mostly unchanged, six whiskers did appear around her nose.
Lilian didn’t even bother to consider how the professor knew she was a kitsune, nor did she think about the ramifications that came with someone knowing about her origins. All her thoughts were focused on the building mass of rage coiling around the center of her stomach.
Someone had kidnapped her mate. Some pretentious little fool had taken her mate! They had stolen him from her! And now she was going to find them and Kick! Their! Ass!
Shōnen style!
“Now isn’t the time for that, idiot!” Lilian’s enraged voice filled the empty room.
… Sorry, my bad.
Chapter 11
Not Human
“I’m telling you! I saw Lilian with animal ears and two tails! And she destroyed Professor Nabui’s door with a single punch!”
“I’m sure you’re just imagining things.”
“But I’m not!”
Christine sighed in exasperation. After stomping out on Kevin (something she was starting to regret), she’d found herself wandering the school campus. She hadn’t felt like going home. After a brief run-in with Lilian, she’d gone to the main office building to see if she could find Kevin and apologize―w-well, maybe not apologize apologize, but, well, make up somehow.
Then she’d run into Lindsay. The girl had been freaking out. Apparently, someone had decided to reveal their yōkai form in public.
Really, Lilian, you just had to transform in broad daylight where everyone could see you? You couldn’t, I don’t know, wait until you got home to do that?
Gotta give the girl credit. She’s got balls. Nyahaha!
Quiet you!
There was a reason that yōkai didn’t reveal themselves to humans anymore, beyond the sheer stupidity of doing so in this day and age. While the many yōkai races were in a state of cold war with each other, they had established a common set of rules, which all yōkai were required to adhere to. The first and most important of these laws was to never reveal your identity as a yōkai to humans.
Sometime in the mid-1800s, humanity’s technological capabilities had skyrocketed. While this normally wouldn’t have been a problem, it became a serious issue for one simple reason: the advancement of human weaponry.
Centuries before the invention of the musket, yōkai had been the pinnacle of power on earth, and humans were but their playthings. Only the Miko and Shinto Priestesses, along with a few powerful humans possessing unusual abilities, were capable of combating them. Yet those remarkable humans had eventually died out, having been hunted down to the last bloodline during the Meiji era in Japan.
However, all that had changed within the past century. With the invention of firearms, high-yield explosives, chemical warfare, intelligent missiles and, of course, the nuclear warhead, humanity had risen to power and now stood at the top of the food chain. Meanwhile, yōkai, the very creatures who had once oppressed humans, were forced into hiding.
Christine thought it was the ultimate example of poetic justice.
“I swear, everything I’m telling you is true!”
Christine shook her head to refute Lindsay’s claim. Regardless of her feelings toward Lilian, she couldn’t let a human know what the redhead was; a creature beyond the understanding of humanity.
“Look, Lindsay. I’m sure you think you saw something, but that’s not―”
Christine gasped when Lindsay grabbed her shoulders and slammed her back against a wall. Hard. Her surprise was such that she almost bit her tongue.
“What the hell, Lindsay?!” She glared at the tomboy. “What was―”
“Shh!” Lindsay pressed a finger to Christine’s lips, causing her to blush at the feel of someone else’s skin on her mouth. “Don’t speak so loudly. Lilian just walked by.”
Lindsay removed her finger and peered around the corner to spy on the redhead. After a moment’s hesitation, Christine followed suit, crouching underneath the tomboy and poking her head out from behind the wall. She imagined they made for a comical sight, like something out of a bad spy movie.
They watched as Lilian stormed across a sidewalk with all the grace of an angry bull seeing red.
“She looks angry,” Lindsay murmured worriedly. “I wonder why?”
“No,” Christine shook her head. “She doesn’t look angry. Angry is ‘I can’t find my damn keys’ or ‘where the hell is my lunchbox?’ Lilian… she’s not angry. She pissed.”
Christine’s description was, indeed, far more apt than Lindsay’s. Angry did not do Lilian justice. Her lips were peeled back in a fierce snarl, and her canines looked strangely sharp, far sharper than usual. Further accentuating her boiling rage were her eyes, which glowed like two emerald moons reflected off the surface of a murky green lake. Her hands were clenched into fists. They shook violently, and the knuckles had turned a deathly white. Crimson trails of liquid ran down her hands as sharp nails dug into the flesh of her palms.
Lilian didn’t even seem to notice.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so angry before,” Lindsay whispered. She sounded frightened. Christine couldn’t blame her. An enraged yōkai was not something a human would ever want to see, advanced weaponry or not.
“Neither have I.”
“Where do you think Kevin is? Do you think he’s the reason she’s so angry?”
“Possibly.”
“What do you think we should do? Follow her?”
Christine knew that she should tell Lindsay to forget what she just saw and go about her business. However, her own curiosity overrode her common sense. She, too, wanted to know what had made Lilian so livid.
She nodded.
“Follow her.”
***
When most people thought of Eric Corrompere, th
ey usually thought of a person so lecherous, so perverted, that he couldn’t possibly be human. And for the most part, they would be right. Eric was a pervert. He peeped on women every chance he got, he played eroge imported directly from Japan, and he had an extensive stash of hentai on his hard drive. Yes, few people in the world were more salacious than him.
However, that didn’t mean he was an idiot. When Eric wanted to, he could actually be quite intelligent. After all, it took cunning and skill to secretly install several spy cameras in the girls’ locker room and have no one notice for months―the fact that they were always found eventually and he got the crap beaten out of him by a horde of vicious, angry teenage girls afterward notwithstanding.
… Right.
Regardless, Eric wasn’t the idiot that everyone made him out to be. He had a good head on his shoulders. He was smart, cunning, and more than capable of making intelligent and well thought out decisions.
So, when he saw Lindsay and his Goth Hottie following his Tit Maiden, he did the most logical and well thought out thing he could.
“Hehehe… I wonder where you sexy little creatures of mammarific proportions are heading off to.”
He followed them.
Okay. So maybe Eric Corrompere wasn’t that smart after all.
***
Lilian had a newfound respect for Kevin.
She’d never realized how difficult riding a bike could be. Her first attempt at trying to ride Kevin’s bike ended with her crashing into the school fence. After emitting some surprisingly foul expletives from her pretty mouth, she hopped back on the bike and tried again.
She ended up crashing into a cactus.
It was a very irritated kitsune who arrived at the Swift’s residence. Her clothes were a mess, her hair had twigs in it, her body was covered in scratches, and her mate wasn’t with her. She could deal with the first three issues, but that last one really set her off. No one messed with her mate.
Lilian didn’t bother taking off her sandals when she entered the apartment. She only planned on staying long enough to look up the location of the Just 4 Anime store on Kevin’s laptop. It shamed her to admit it, but she’d been so angry about Kevin’s kidnapping that she hadn’t realized she had no clue where the store was until well after leaving school.
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