The rest of the morning after home room and roll-call was taken up by the welcoming and commencement ceremony, followed by lunch.
Shoko and Jiao were the centre of interest for a large number of their fellow students. Several other Yokai metal fans had shyly come forward, led by the girl from their own class, the one with the large round glasses and her brown hair in twin plaits. She’d approached slowly, clutching her school binder with the Yokai Metal stickers on it. Behind her stood a wedge of half dozen other students, some older, each with their own Yokai Metal merchandise, like tribal markers.
“Uh-um, sorry to bother you…”
Shoko beamed a broad smile and springing up form the table they were sitting at, took her by her clenched hands and drew the shy young girl over. Jiao had waved the rest of the small group over as well.
Leading the shy young girl to sit down on the bench between her and Jiao, Shoko grinned like only a kitsune could.
“It’s no bother! You’re very welcome.. um.. I missed your name during roll-call. I was so nervous, I thought I’d forget my own name!”
“I..I.. I’m Haruko, Isobe Haruko… I, I mean, we’re all f..fans.”
Shoko grinned.
“Oh cool! I’m glad you like our music! Ah… sorry we don’t have any pictures.. that’s what stars do isn’t it? Hand out signed photo’s… I suppose we could sign something else if you like. And talk! I want to know everything about you Haruko-chan!”
Haruko blinked several times, taken aback.
“Ah… I think I’m supposed to say that… which I do!”
Shoko laughed.
“Sorry, sorry! This is the first time we’ve met fans!”
Haruko blinked again, visibly puzzled.
“But… but… you did interviews, all of you…didn’t you?”
Shoko shrugged.
“Yeah, but they were interviewers, not actually fans! I mean, we had a script with our answers and everything. So that doesn’t count. Ask us anything!”
“Ohhhh… you really mean we can ask anything ?”
Shoko nodded, followed somewhat more cautiously by Jiao.
Haruko opened her mouth, but was pipped to the post by a taller, black-haired girl with cheeky grin.
“Hi, I’m Nomi ! Your drummer, she’s a real Oni?”
Shoko laughed at the small pout from Haruko, but she nodded.
“Yep! Her names Yuko, she’s sister to our bass player Yuri and they’re Jiao’s cousins. You already know Tatsuo our keyboard player is Jiao’s big brother… and he’s their clan leader!”
The girls all went ‘ohhh’ or similar... then Haruko jumped in.
“H.. how did you decide to come out, as yokai…?”
Shoko exchanged a look with Jiao, who shrugged, then silently said over Haruko’s head.
>>Tell her.<<
Shoko nodded.
“It was Paul-sama’s idea, but we didn’t ask him first we… we came across Baby Metal on the internet, and I, no, we all loved their music and wanted to do something like it.. so, we just sang and recorded ourselves with what we had to hand. Once we uploaded it, it went viral… which shocked all of us. Then Paul-sama found it and.. well I don’t think we ever decided to come out, we just did ! I’m not sure it ever occurred to us not to… Paul-sama needed a public face for all Yokai, something people would like, as part of his plan to save the temple and all of us living there..and.. well we just wanted to help you know?!”
Haruko nodded, then looking around, swallowed hard. Reaching up she brushed her plaits aside, and from behind them brown rabbit ears emerged to stand upright and proud. Shoko’s eyes widened, and she breathed out..
“Ohhh.. Usagi-chan!”
Haruko blushed furiously, pulling her ears down and hiding them in her plaits again. Shoko blinked, and then gently reached out, brushed aside Haruko’s hair, and lifted her long silky brown rabbit ears. Shoko shook her head slowly
“Chīsana usagi, don’t hide them, please. They’re beautiful. Be proud of who you are Haruko. We thought we’d be alone, the first yokai at school. But here you are, here you’ve been all along! Pretending to be human and hiding in plain sight.”
Haruko’s blush deepened. Until the black haired girl, Nomi spoke up.
“You mean, here we’ve been, all along!”
Shoko and Jiao looked around them. Nomi was sporting a pair of cat’s ears and tail, several of the other girls were other sorts of yokai. With a grin Nomi half-sung a line from Yokai Metal’s ‘Hey, Hey we’re Monsters’
“Hey hey, we’re Yokai, and we’re coming down your street!”
Haruko and the other girls collapsed laughing, and giggling Shoko started to sing, infectious laughter bubbling up in the cracks of her lyrics. The others happily joined in, laughing as they fluffed lines or improvised ones.
The mood abruptly soured as the bully from before and his circle of sycophantic friends, swaggered up. He stopped, a safe distance away Shoko noticed, and eyes went wide.
“What do you know?! A whole load of freaks and animals!”
Shoko sighed, and glared at him.
“You back for more? I’m not going to do it with you, you know. Or do you want one of your boy friends to do you instead, and this is your way of getting them worked up?”
The shocked silence told Shoko that she’d said that out loud.
For a moment no-one moved, then with an inarticulate bellow the bully lowered his head and charged at Shoko.
Shoko sprang up onto the table, out of his way, as to her he lumbered forwards slowly… Shoko suddenly realised that Haruko was frozen, and would be in his path. For split second Shoko wasn’t quite sure what to do. She could snatch Haruko out of the way, but if she did that the boy would crash head first into the wood and concrete table and bench set. Also, the way Haruko was sitting, with her legs tucked under the wooden slats, if she moved her without warning Haruko would get bruises and possibly scrapes all up the back of her calves.
Jiao started to move, glacially slow to Shoko, but obviously intending to intercept the boy. Shoko in that instant decided she would take care of the problem, she’d been the one that provoked him, it was her responsibility.
To everyone else Shoko seemed to blur, she was moving so fast. One moment she was standing on top of the table, the next she was standing where the young bully had been, and he was sailing through the air to land in the nearby flowerbed sputtering and covered in dirt, but otherwise unharmed.
Shoko stood with her hands on her hips.
“Ok, for the last time. No means no! I’m not playing with you any more. You don’t like yourself and you keep taking that out on everyone else. Go away and leave us alone before I have to hurt you.”
The boy stood up, visibly on the verge of tears.
“I.. I’m going to tell my dad! You animals will be thrown out of school!”
Nomi shouted...
“Don’t you dare think your dad’s important enough he’ll get you out of trouble this time Tomiso! I’m telling Ms Mitashi, what you said and did! You are so going to be in for it you.. you horrible racist bigot! You attacked us! We all saw and heard you!”
Tomiso started to storm over, still ready to fight, only to stop dead as Jiao quietly remarked.
“Shoko… I think you should call your mother.”
Everyone froze, as they all remembered exactly who Shoko’s mother was... and more importantly, what she was. The boy Tomiso swallowed, suddenly paler than an uncooked bao bun.
“Y.. you wouldn’t?”
Shoko grinned evilly, and started to reach into her skirt pocket, as if going for a cell phone. Tomiso quivered, and then breaking down, he ran… his friends broke as well, taking off after him. Once they were out of sight, Shoko sat back down laughing shakily, she looked at the shocked faces of their little group, and with a grin, borrowed a line from their song ‘We are Yokai’, improvising upon it a bit.
"We are your worst nightmares! We are the monsters in the dark! We are the evil demons your grandmother warned you about! Hi-iii! … and if you think we’re scary, wait until you meet our mothers!”
The tension broke and everyone laughed until they were wiping tears away and leaning against each others shoulders.
It was sometime later, near the end of lunch recess as they were walking back to class, that Shoko recalled she’d left her bento box on the table. Telling Jiao to go ahead, since she could run faster than her, she sped off to fetch it. Heedless of the chaos she caused in her wake, she zipped around the other students in the corridors, as they seemed to be standing still to her.
She stopped at the table, but there was no sign of her bento box… until she heard crying. Running over to where it was coming from she found Tomiso behind some bushed, her bento box at their feet, they raised one foot up, intending to smash the delicate carved and lacquered box, with it’s cherry blossom inlay.
Shoko darted forwards, snatching up the box just as Tomiso brought their foot down. Missing the box, their foot planted hard in the small of Shoko’s back, causing her to yip in pain!
Shoko slowly stood up, growling, her appearance slipping into her fox form. Tomiso looked at her wide eyed… then burst into howling tears as they just folded down to their knees.
Shoko blinked, and then sighed, reverting back to human.
“Here, here, it’s alright..”
“Please don’t eat me miss fox!”
Shoko sighed… Tomiso was really pitiful actually. Their aura was just a mess, like someone had spilled all the paints, and then swirled them together carelessly.
“Yuck, no… not when you’re all blubberly with snot!”
Tomiso cried even harder, and Shoko sighed, beginning to feel guilty that she’d made them feel this way, even if they did deserve. She had a very clear and sudden mental image of Paul’s disapproving face. And with that Shoko decided that she would just fix this problem… somehow.
Without any clear idea of what she was doing, she pulled the larger boy to her, resting their head on her shoulder as she stroked their hair. At first Tomiso stiffened, but as she quietly sang her favorite lullaby, one that Inari had taught her long ago, soon after she’d arrived at the temple, they relaxed.
After a bit, Tomiso quietened down, and with a final sniff asked.
“Wh.. what are you doing?”
Shoko shrugged.
“You were upset, so I was making you feel less awful since I was the one that upset you.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Bu. But I was mean to you, I hurt you!”
Again she shrugged, and as Tomiso struggled to sit up straight she let go with a final pat to their shoulder.
“Yes, I know… but I also know that you were hurting too and that’s why you were being horrid to those you thought you could and get away with it. The other girls told me that everyone knows you’re a bully.”
Tomiso nodded in misery.
“I.. I know I’m a horrid person...I just.. I just can’t seem to stop myself. I… how I feel gets all twisted up and..”
“Sheesh… I’ll tell you a secret. Kitsune can see that sort of thing. I could see you were all mixed up inside. But I could see you were all pretty colours too, just, all muddled together.”
“What’s that even mean ?!” Tomiso whispered so forcefully it was almost a shout.
Shoko considered telling them outright, then decided that Jiao was probably right about humans needing to find out for themselves. She met Tomiso’s eyes, saw the anguish in them, and sighed, deciding to split the difference between the two choices before her.
“I can’t tell you exactly, because I don’t know really. But you need to talk to Kiko, she can help you. I’ll ask her if she’ll see you, but I think she will.”
Tomiso blinked, surprise writ large on their face.
“Why would you even help me? I was horrid to you!”
“You’re hurt, inside in your soul, should I blame the fox for biting me as I free it’s paw from the hunters snare? No, of course not. So I don’t blame you either…. At least that’s what Mother Inari tells me when I’m mean to her! Then I usually say sorry..”
Tomiso bit their lip, then softly murmured.
“I… I’m sorry..”
Shoko could tell they meant it, and sighed.
“It’s ok… Paul-sama says that we should always try to make friends, especially of our enemies because they need it the most. That almost all conflict comes from fear of the unknown. You didn’t know what to make of us, you…. you have things you need to work out about yourself and you’re afraid of what those answers are. Kiko can help you, almost certainly, and I’ll try to help too. But you were afraid, so you hit out at everyone.”
Tomiso sniffed, wiping their nose on a sleeve. Without saying anything Shoko passed Tomiso her handkerchief.
“Look, if you like I’ll walk you to the school nurse, we’ll say you fell down, that ok?”
“Thank you… I don’t deserve this. You being kind to me I mean.”
Shoko made a small humpf sound, and shook her head.
“Paul-sama says everyone deserves kindness, and he should know. He tamed Aimi-chan without even knowing what he was doing, just by being nice to her.”
“Who’s Aimi-chan?”
“Oh she was a Yūrei-onryō, until he bound her and made her nice..nicer anyway. You’d know her as Hanako-san, but we don’t call her that now because it’s rude and she’s a friend.”
Tomiso’s eyes went wide at the mention of Aimi’s old and cruel nick name.
“He.. he.. bound her?! How?”
Shoko giggled as they walked slowly.
“Oh… Paul-sama was just being Paul-sama. She floated out of the mirror being all ghastly and terrifying, and he just wasn’t scared, at all! Which confused her no end, and then he offered her an ice-pop and before anyone knew, she was being friendly, had told him her real name and he’d invited her to the festival and offered to cook her a cheeseburger, which is her favorite food!”
“That’s all?!”
Shoko nodded.
“Yup… all you gotta do is be utterly unafraid and treat them just like any other person.”
“Oh…. Yeah I can see how that’d be hard to do for most people. But he’s Inari’s Herald.”
Shoko shook her head.
“Oh no… this was even before he’d met Inari, so he wasn’t then. He was just.. him. I don’t know why he’s like that. I mean, I do… but I don’t understand it. I did ask him, and he said…”
Shoko coughed, and lowered her voice to do a credible impression of Paul’s light tenor.
“Imagine the absolute worst thing that could happen to you. Imagine being in as much pain as you can possibly think of, and then make it a thousand times worse. Now imagine that pain and horror staying with you every day, day after day.. . until you can no longer feel anything. Now… imagine that little by little, you get used to it, until one day you wake up and you just feel..numb. Then imagine you get better.. you start to feel again. But, you’re never quite whole, because it hasn’t actually gone away, you just don’t feel it any more., but it’s carved out a hollow in your soul where fear used to be. That’s why. I’ve already gone through hell.”
Shoko coughed and grinned at Tomiso who was staring at her, mouth hanging open.
“See, doesn’t make any sense does it? How can you get better and yet still be in pain?”
Tomiso shook their head.
“No.. I get it. I just hope you never do. I don’t suppose I could meet Paul-dono?”
Shoko nodded.
“Sure, why not! You can come to the temple if you like. I’ll tell the oni guards you’re ok and can come in.”
Softly Tomiso sighed.
“Thank you Shoko. I really am sorry I called you horrible names. You’re ok.”
Shoko shrugged.
“That’s ok, I thought you were a butt-head, but you’re ok really.”
Tomiso pulled a face.
“Yeah… thanks...Um I have a question though. Do you really not wear pantsu all the time?”
Shoko sighed.
“What is it with boys and panties? What’s the fascination?”
Tomiso shrugged, then looked at her. Shoko shook her head.
“Yeah, I don’t, because I can’t. My tail gets in the way. No panties, no trousers, no shorts, not even baggy ones. I mean, you’re a boy. You must know what it feels like to get your..ah.. bits, trapped in the elastic, or stuffed down one leg…”
Tomiso nodded, wincing.
“Ok, I get it. I think if I had a tail I wouldn’t either. But… how do you plan on doing PE or sports? You can’t just wear a skirt, you’d risk flashing everyone!”
“What’s wrong with wearing nothing? If everyone can see it, why make a fuss?”
Tomiso went a solid shade of tomato.
“No, no no.. you can’t do that! It’s...well it’s embarrassing!”
Shoko stared at Tomiso for moment, obviously confused.
“But… I’m not?! Embarrassed I mean.”
Tomiso shook his head.
“No, no...I mean it’s embarrassing for everyone else !”
Shoko blinked.
“Wait… you mean you saw my bits, and you were embarrassed?”
Tomiso frantically shushed her, then putting a hand over her mouth dragged her into a corner under the stairs. Puzzled Shoko allowed him to manhandle her. Once they were hiding, Tomiso stuck his head up, looked around then dropped back down into a crouch beside Shoko. Almost hissing he whisper.
“You can’t ever tell anyone that Shoko! I’d get into so much trouble!”
Shoko frowned.
“What, for looking up my skirt and seeing I wasn’t wearing anything under it? But I practically made you do it?!”
“Shhhh!! Not so loud! Someone might hear you!”
Tomiso stuck his head up, looking for anyone listening.
“Hey Tomiso.”
Tomiso glanced back at Shoko, and saw that she’d lifted her skirt at the front, displaying herself in all her bare glory. His eyes went wide as he grabbed at her hem, tugging it down frantically. To his horror the waistband slipped and Shoko’s skirt slid to the floor.
“Hoi, Tomiso, if you want to do it that badly, ask first!”
“No, no I..I “
Tomiso felt his world slipping away from, and the last thing he saw as the blackness closed in around him was Shoko, naked from the waist down, standing over him.
When Tomiso came to, he felt something soft under his head. Struggling to recall what had happened, he opened his eyes, and to his relief, found he was lying in a bed in the school nurses office. Shoko was sitting on a chair next to him.
She looked like she’d been there for some time.
“Sh.. Shoko?”
“Oh, you’re awake finally.”
“What happened?”
“You fainted, collapsed after I… teased you.”
Tomiso blinked.
“That.. that was teasing!?”
“Yeah… it isn’t just calling people names you know.”
Tomiso sighed.
“Ok… I suppose I had that coming to me didn’t I. Just.. don’t do it again, ok? I suppose if I don’t do what you want now, you’ll tell people?”
Shoko shook her head slowly.
“No, I don’t do mean things like that. I won’t tell anyone what you saw if you don’t. But you get it now, right? No more bullying or teasing people.”
Tomiso nodded.
“I get it… you’re right. It’s mean. But you shouldn’t keep doing that! Not everyone would..I mean.. well there are some very bad people out there.”
Shoko nodded.
“Yeah, I know. Private bits are supposed to be private, and some adults like things they’re not supposed to. Both Paul-sama and Inari talked to me about it. But I’m a kitsune. Not some defenseless human child. Not that it matters. I just don’t care one way or the other. I mean, I bath naked with the others at home all the time. We have our own onsen after all.”
Tomiso frowned.
“That’s.. not the same.. I think. I hope. Anyway, what’s the time?”
“Oh, you weren’t out long, just long enough for me to carry you here. The bell for class has only just rang. The nurse said to rest for the first period anyway. I told her you felt dizzy and fell down, she believed me.”
“Oh.. ok.. thank you.”
Shoko nodded, then quietly asked.
“Do you want me to stay? I don’t mind.”
Tomiso shook his head slowly.
“No, it’s ok… I.. I’ve got some thinking to do. I’d rather be alone if you don’t mind.”
Shoko nodded.
“I understand. I go off into the forest to be alone when I need to think. See you after school?”
“Hmm, sure. And thank you, again.”
“It’s alright.” Shoko stood up to leave, then with a serious face, she told Tomiso. “You just be good ok?”
Tomiso nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I’ll try.”
Shoko nodded.
“That’s good enough. Ok, I’d better get moving.”
Tomiso nodded, and as Shoko turned he remarked.
“Oh! Shoko it’s…”
But she was gone, vanished, as she took off at run. Tomiso sighed.
“She’s forgotten it’s PE next lesson, I bet. She’s going to get into SO much trouble...”