The light hurt his eyes.

Sadly he couldn’t get much darkness in his room, the blinds were torn off and light came from everywhere. He might as well not have any blinds to be honest. He looked up to see Oku in the other bed.

That fox.

She’d taken his roommate’s bed whenever he was gone. Which was just about all the time.

Once he’d gotten to the floor, he looked inside the birdcage.

Nothing had changed.

The dove hadn’t even touched the string sitting on the floor. Not for weeks. And now, it was February. Break had gone by in a flash, as had January and now even winter’s harsh cold was subsiding.

He decided not to wake Oku, as her desired psychology class wasn’t going on today. Once dressed, he quietly shut the door and took the elevator to the ground floor, where Mark was awaiting him. He should really have gotten an apartment by now. Mark greeted him and they were on their way.

Classes flew by as per usual, and they were off to the library.

No regular library of course. This was Jeremiah’s domain. A true bookworm.

For a while now, the worm had helped them find new ways to bring back their bird friend, to no avail. It was as if they were destined to fail from the start. But still, Jeremiah brought more and more information to their desks. Surprisingly Mark was working just as hard as he was. It made him glad to have someone that cared as much as he did.

“Lawrence can you pass that Maskenomicon, I think there was some sort of ritual in there.”

“Here”.

He passed one of the many cracked books. They were so old that he thought his mere touch would turn them to dust. Jeremiah was always there to reassure them they would be safe however.

“I couldn’t find anything in Maskology or Maskogen either… Most of these books are simply about preservation and care of masks, should we change tactics?”

“Moving to the rituals section could help… there’s always the possibility it is in the Necronomicon as well.”

“We’ll be checking everywhere. Until we find something, any solution.”

“Of course.”

“...Never change….”

She disappeared into sunlight.

“No!!”

Oku shot up like a rubber band. It was another nightmare. She’d never been able to get over that. She never would be able to. Lawrence and Mark were busting their asses to find a solution… and she couldn’t even enter the damn library. Yeah, so what if she couldn’t read, and so what if she scorched some of the books. It wasn’t her fault dammit. She wanted… to help. To do something. It was her fault anyways, she’d been the one to fall into the bear’s curse.

She climbed down to the ground and looked in the birdcage. Absolutely no change. Oku took some pellets out of a jar and placed them carefully at the bottom of the cage, causing the dove to swoop down and take a few in it’s mouth. She smiled. It was her. Oku’s only hope was that she was still there, somewhere.

While she couldn’t help them look for ways to bring her back, Oku could however protect Mark and Lawrence with everything she had. Even if that was all she could do… it was something. Lawrence had helped considerably less Youkai since the incident, and they were surprisingly understanding. The community around here was nicer than she’d thought. Gossip had spread quickly about what had happened with their ragtag group after all.

Oku left the sanctity of Lawrence’s room and went out to the lounge area, where she pressed the down elevator button. Sitting in one of the seats was a human girl. She had short black hair and very dark brown eyes. Oku wouldn’t have really taken notice if she wasn’t squinting in her direction so much. Could she see her or something? No no, that was impossible. Finding Mark as another person who could see them was strange enough, there was no way another could. Oku just stood there awkwardly and waited for the elevator to come up as she was stared at. Finally, the girl shrugged and got up, walking down the hallway. Once she came to Lawrence’s door of all places she knocked. Oku, interested in why some girl would knock on her door, followed as her elevator escaped.

She sighed.

“Hey what the hell are you doing?”

The girl turned around slowly, paling, but simply looked around.

“H-hello?”

Again she shrugged, and looked back at the door.

“Looks like he isn’t here again…”

With that she walked back down the hallway and entered the lounge while waiting for an elevator. She even had a nametag on, so Oku went in for a quick look.

“Inari Itsuki… Is she from the east?”

If she was she didn’t look much like it, besides the black hair of course. She was pretty though. Timid too…

“When I get my hands on him…”

Or maybe not timid. Scared of ghosts? Oku kept thinking until Inari had gotten up and left the floor, only then realizing that she’d missed two elevators in a row. Not that she really wanted to go down with the girl that could almost see her of course…

Instead of trying again for a third time Oku went back to Lawrence's room and sat down in the chair next to his computer. She wondered why some girl would come to his room in the middle of the day, especially while he was out at the library. He’d always be there until five, so how long had she been coming?

She pondered this until Lawrence returned with Mark in tow and told him what had happened. Not surprisingly he had no idea who the girl was either. Useless as usual.

They’d had another day of failures. No rituals, no spells, it seemed as if nothing could bring her back. Of course, they’d keep trying no matter how desolate their research became.

They would never give up.

Not on her.

Mark said goodbye to his friends, and ventured back down the elevator to the ground floor. The place he lived wasn’t that far, so he usually came here whenever him and Lawrence went to the Youkai library. He needed exercise anyways.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

On his way back he noticed a girl kicking up soggy leaves. She had short black hair and extremely dark brown eyes. She seemed sad, but it wasn’t really Mark’s place to say.

Of course he would never have pointed her out had she not fallen into the street a second later.

Mark sprinted towards her ready to throw her out of the way of an oncoming car before he realized there were no cars coming at all. Instead, the girl looked up to see a less than pleasant man sprinting towards her.

Great.

She got up and tried to run off, but her knee was scuffed pretty bad.

“H-hey… you ok?”

He had no claim to being able to talk to anyone easily.

Instead, she looked just as uncomfortable.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

Of course, as she said that she practically fell over. Not ok after all.

Being Mark, he had no idea what to do, so he did the next best thing to something smart.

Phone a friend.

“Hey uhhhh…. Lawrence some girl hurt herself down here.”

“What? Why didn’t you call an ambulance?!”

“I don’t think it’s bad enough to warrant an ambulance…”

“God- fine just bring her up here and I’ll try and get her patched up.”

After hearing their conversation the girl seemed to perk up a little and willingly took his arm back towards Lawrence’s complex.

Back up the elevator and back into Lawrence’s room for the third time today… But strangely enough at first sight Oku seemed to spew dissatisfaction in their direction.

“Shit that’s pretty bad… Ok- Mark could you go get some wet paper towels and soap for me? All these pebbles and dirt need to be dealt with before a bandage.”

Right, he didn’t want the girl to know about Oku, she’d just think they were insane after all.

It had taken her getting injured unintentionally, but Inari had finally made it in! Of course, there was no real reason she had to come here but… with her dreams telling her to for so long, she had to try. Maybe this could explain some of the weird things she’d begun to see lately.

Once the tall guy returned, Lawrence looked her in the eyes. It was hard not to blush. Not even because of the fact that he was… kind of attractive. But after all her research on him she was finally able to find the guy that she’d dreamed about so much. Her grandfather had always told her to find the source of these dreams, but she’d never taken him seriously. She’d let the tree dream go by, the library dream as well, so finally finding the source of one was almost refreshing.

Not knowing why she kept seeing his room was kind of stupid though. Just to look in and see a strange looking girl across from him and yet another girl standing next to him was… weird…

She’d been thinking so much that the pain was unnoticeable, and soon Lawrence was tying up the bandage.

She was so out of it by that time that when Lawrence’s back was turned to her she blurted out something she’d been wondering.

“Where’s the girl in the mask? And the girl that cosplays as a wolf?”

At this Lawrence froze. Next he looked to Mark, who nodded in affirmation.

“There are no girls here, what do you mean?”

“I saw them, you idiots can’t hide two girls forever.”

“Trust me, I’d love to have girls here bu-”

“Cut the shit Lawrence, she obviously knows somehow.”

Inari whipped her head around to suddenly see a girl sitting in the chair to her right. She was neither of the girls… was she? With a tail and ears… she could be the wolf girl.

“Are you-”

“I am Oku, yes. But you can’t seem to see me unless I’m in human form…”

“What?”

“Oku did you really have to show her…”

“She knows about Hato. I had to.”

At that name Lawrence perked up, and looked Inari in the eyes, causing her to back away slightly.

“Alright that’s true. How do you know about Hato uh…”

“Inari.”

“Yeah, how could you possibly know about her?”

“I… dream about her. And you. All of you. Well except the other guy.”

Mark looked a little dejected but Lawrence prodded her on.

“What do you mean? Why do you dream about us? Are you some sort of future seeing person? Can you dream about the past?”

“Jesus give me a second ok? My grandfather is a priest at one of the shrines around Dombay, just a few cities over. He used to dream about these spirits called Youkai… and said that I’d inherited it after I told him what was in my dreams. If I followed the dreams to their source something good was supposed to happen…”

“Really…”

“All I got from it was an infected knee though…”

“Hey I think I did pretty damn good.”

Oku butted back in.

“So what exactly does your dream about us three mean then? Is this in the future?”

“Listen all I know is that I dreamt about you three sitting in here. Nothing more, nothing less. No times, no dates.”

“Nevertheless, that’s not enough. So you’ll have to come back here to tell us about your new dreams... Inari was it?”

“You think I’ll just bow down to you?”

“I’d thought that you’d realize your place a little sooner.”

“Hey could you two knock it off. Oku, Inari came to us to help. There’s no reason to treat her badly. Inari, can you try not to egg her on please…”

“Lawrence both of those comments were basically directed at me you know.”

“Yes because you started it Oku.”

Inari heard a puff and looked back towards Oku to see that she was gone.

“Where the hell did Oku go?”

“So you really can’t see Youkai huh?”

Mark leaned over as he asked her this question, sparing glances in the area that Oku was only a few seconds ago.

“What?”

“It looks like you can only see them in your dreams. That’s so weird.”

“And some guy that runs toward a girl in the street isn’t?”

“Enough of that. Oku stop messing with her too. It looks like you can’t see Youkai, but you can… dream about them? I suppose.”

“Can’t see-”

At that moment she heard another puff and was looking the correct way to see Oku pop out of nowhere, lips curling into a smile.

“Easy way to sneak up on you huh?”

“Wha wha what!?”

“She’s a Youkai that is powerful enough to have a human form, and you cannot see her in her Youkai form.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but only a few people can see Youkai. The fact that you dreamed about them is strange enough as it is.”

She sat in a daze as Oku puffed in and out of her vision, causing her to wonder just how many of these things were around in everyday life. That was when she noticed that one thing actually didn’t change at all. Oku’s shadow. She could at least see that.

“You can’t sneak up on me if I can see your shadow.”

“You what? You can see it?”

“As I thought, she is not totally blind to us. She can even hear us somewhat. To be honest I messed around with her earlier.”

“Why… Well anyways, that means you at least have some spiritual power.”

Him and Mark had been learning a lot about spiritual energy and magic and stuff lately. They weren’t going to find a way to bring Hato back without it after all… Lawrence looked at his clock. It was past ten already, and he had class tomorrow.

“Alright we’d better continue this talk tomorrow.”

“Inari could you meet us at three in the lounge downstairs?”

“Tomorrow? Well yeah but…”

“Perfect! See you tomorrow.”

Mark left like it was nothing, leaving Lawrence, Oku, Inari, and a dove in a cage.

“He wasn’t even thinking…”

“That does tend to be a downside to him at times.”

“Will you be ok getting back to your.. Apartment?”

“I’ll be fine. It doesn’t really hurt anymore.”

“I rubbed some pretty good shit on there so you should be healed up in no time.”

In fact it barely hurt at all. Inari got up, gave one more look in Oku’s direction, and said goodbye. Once she was down to the ground floor again she realized that she’d gotten roped in with a bunch of weirdos…

“Wait what did I just agree to!?”

However, without a second thought, she decided that would be something to find out tomorrow, since she’d meet them here around three. Her grandfather’s words echoed in her head.

“Just once find the meaning behind your dreams… Then a new world will be opened…”

The old man was normally full of shit, but today he seemed to be correct. Youkai and spirit power… What the hell was she getting thrown into?

She sighed and walked into the dark.