Drade exited Datai’s office. He thought for a moment, wondering why he had such an aversive response to the idea of visiting someone who meant a lot to him. He didn’t get time to think, though, as he saw something more pressing.

Onei was sitting on the other wall of the hallway, tears lightly falling down her cheeks. “O-oh, you’re already out.” She stood up quickly but didn’t bother to wipe away the tears.

“Are you ok?” was all Drade knew to say.

“Of course I am,” she said, almost obliviously.

“I doubt it, you’re crying.”

“I-is that so?” She still didn’t try to hide it.

Drade looked at her discerningly. “That’s strange. Most people tend to cover their tears when they cry.”

“I did, earlier.” She quickly changed the subject, “You tend to talk like you aren’t apart of ‘people’ or ‘humans’, are you really so different from us?”

“I’m pretty much human. I just don’t think like one, to a certain degree.”

“Oh.”

“But all of that is unimportant. Why are you crying?”

“...” Onei looked at Drade with a doubtlessly annoyed expression.

Drade raised his eyes to the top-left of their vision, thinking. After properly organizing his guesses, he easily singled one out. “It’s because of what I said, isn’t it?”

“...” she averted her eyes.

“Sorry, I tend to push people I don’t know away; for various practical reasons.”

She looked back at him. “Various practical reasons?”

“How someone reacts to being told off says a lot about their character.”

“So...you were...testing me?”

“I guess, among other things. Everything I said still stands, but I don’t have any hard feelings towards you or anything. I wouldn’t be so harsh to you with the little genuine understanding I have of your situation.”

“If you didn’t talk so calmly and detached I might have felt worse about what you said, but somehow...your inhuman manner of speech has left me without a salty taste in my mouth. Haha.” Her chuckle seemed forced and genuine at the same time.

“Good to see I’m good for one social scenario. Either way, are you sure you’re fine? I can’t leave someone feeling like shit because of what I said.”

“Uhh...” Onei wiped the tears from her face while thinking -mostly because they impeded her vision- then chucked again. “How about you praise me.”

“Ahh, taking the ‘a right and a wrong make an even’ approach. Naive.” Drade laughed at his own callback joke mockingly, then continued to give ‘praise’ as best he could. “Well, on the bright side, you stabbed Faio because of naivety, not despite full comprehension.”

“That’s not praise.”

“It isn’t?!”

“No, that’s ‘on the bright side,’ not a compliment.”

“That explains nothing, but I’ll just take your emotionally charged word for it. Umm...praise...I guess you aren’t as insane as I thought you were?”

Onei facepalmed.

“What?” Drade asked, annoyed and oblivious.

She chuckled. “We can work on it later. Where are we going next?”

Drade wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong but didn’t press the issue. “Well, I’m going home. I don’t know where you’re going, obviously.”

“Ok, lead the way.” Onei gave Drade a mischievous smile.

Drade still wasn’t sure why she insisted on following him, but going home with him was not a line to be crossed for no good reason. Sort of...it wouldn’t be the first time he had a girl live at his house for practical reasons -probably closer to the seventh. “Why must you follow me home?”

“Because I don’t have one.”

“Then sleep here.”

“But that’s awkward!” Onei pouted charismatically.

“Why?”

“Because at the end of each day, they forget who I am and interrogate me! Plus, I was once stabbed to death here, and that was mildly unpleasant.”

“How is that just unpleasant?” After saying the sentence, Drade paused as his eyes drifted to the top-left of his vision again.

“I’ve died a lot of times.”

“Oh, I guess that means I was being really stupid when I said it was dangerous around me.”

“You were.” She chuckled again.

“Then I apologize for my moronity, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t feel bad about yourself. Most people take a few hours for the fact I’m cursed settle in. You just took it like a champ.”

“I don’t feel bad about myself over being stupid once or twice. How fragile do you think my ego is?”

“About as fragile as a vault, I would guess.” She admitted.

“Well, at least I know I don’t look like a wimp.”

“Oh? So you’d feel vulnerable if I thought you were a wimp?”

“No, it’s just annoying when others see you differently than how you see yourself, you know?”

“I never thought too much about it.” Onei narrowed her eyebrows in introspection.

“But really, is going to my house necessary?”

“No, I just feel like you’ll just disappear the moment I look away.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“Uhh, something about the phrasing of that sentence makes me feel bad for you, like a stray dog.”

“Really? I’ve been going through hell for the past four years, and you’re the equivalent of sunlight. I’m just unsure if I’m going through a new layer of hell or if I’m in Midgard.”

“Oh, deep,” Drade deadpanned. “Well, I’m not going to put you in a cave after you’ve lived in one for so long so I...guess you can come along...but my mom’s word is law. Got it?”

Onei tilted her head. “I’m surprised you have one?”

“Because you think I’m not human?”

“No, I just figured you’d have some sort of tragic backstory where she died.”

Drade shrugged, talking from his personal experience. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s a bargain bin filled with those, and you’re just another in the pile.”

Onei gave him a strange smile. “Should I feel insulted by that?”

“Nothing bad with being normal.”

“Being cheap and being normal are two different things.”

“They are?”

“Of course they are. I’m about as normal as...a tree...?”

Drade digressed, “Just for clarification, you’re following me to my house?”

She shot him a thumbs up.

“Ok. Let’s get going then.”

The quickest path to Drade’s house was through the park, so that’s where they went. Onei’s conversation attempts were short-lived and met with deadpan annoyance until they were almost out of the park.

“I’m hungry. Do you have any food at your house?” she asked, putting a hand on her stomach.

“No, not at all, I don’t eat,” Drade said with no shift of tone.

“What...You don’t have food at your house?!”

Drade rolled his eyes. “No, that was sarcasm.”

“Oh. Maybe next time, you might want to shift your tone a little when you speak sarcastically.”

“I would have, but I felt like it was unnecessary given the ridiculousness of the statement.”

“It’s not ridiculous when you’re speaking. You could claim you’re made of food and -wait no, technically we are- I mean, you could have claimed you were an elf, and I wouldn’t have blinked, assuming you didn’t already call yourself an eldritch entity.”

“Interesting, you’d believe anything I said if I claimed it to be true.”

“Ahh, such trust I place in you!” She raised one hand into the air dramatically and the other on her heart.

Drade raised his eyes to the top left, then pulled something out of his pocket. “Last time we met, you wanted one of these, right?”

Onei looked to Drade to see a small candy cane in his hand, “Do you just...carry those around with you?”

“Yes. It’s a token of goodwill for if I meet any children strong enough to level cities.”

“And...am I being called a child by taking it?”

“It isn’t meant to be taken that way, no.”

“Then don’t mind me.” She snatched it from his hand, unwrapped it, and placed it into her mouth, savoring the minty goodness. Drade seemed to find it put an end to their conversation, so Onei decided to talk about herself a little. “You could say I gained an appreciation for things like food over my time through hell.”

“Well, given the nature of your ‘hell.’ it only figures you would appreciate inconsequential and fleeting feelings such as ones produced by food.”

“Ok then...” Onei flickered her eyes between her left and right as if looking for someone who would admit how terrifyingly insightful the statement was.

“Which makes me wonder if you’ve had sex.”

“Drade, that’s intrusive.”

Drade decided to continue his insights, despite the awkwardness. “I just realized.”

“What?”

“My mom said I should try to get a girlfriend to improve my interpersonal skills yesterday. Now I’m *ahem* ‘bringing a girl home’ and it’s going to be super awkward to explain the whole thing is a coincidence.”

Onei kept flickering her eyes to the right and left, this time in a panicked kind of matter.

Drade relished in the silence for a moment, then saw something mildly entertaining to point out. “Oh, there’s Luuko,” he mumbled, seeing her next to the other Schoolers.

Stumbling out of her thought process, Onei was curious at his mumbling. “Luuko?”

“Oh, she’s a Friend...actually, I guess I should probably tell you about that...”

“About what?”

“Luuko is a polysomnomancer, so she can control people who are asleep. I’m training her, and as an experiment to let me understand how souls work in greater detail, I’m going to have her attempt to bond her soul to my body tomorrow.”

“Ahh, yes, I totally understood everything you just said, I swear.”

“Well, if that wasn’t enough for your siiiimmmpppple mind, then allow me to oversimplify it for you...she’s going to possess me for a day.” Drade let out a tiny sigh.

About five minutes later, they were at the base of Drade’s apartment complex. They began ascending the stairs.

Drade gave Onei a disclaimer before they got close enough to his apartment. “By the way, my sister knows about everything in a twenty-five-foot radius of her. Anything you do is subject to her scrutiny. You know, because she’s an incomprehensible eldritch being yadda-yadda.”

“Oh, that’s incredibly uncomfortable!” She said with sarcastic bluntness.

“At first, yes.”

“Wait, if your sister lives in your home...W-will I go insane if I look at her or-”

“No, you simply won’t notice her presence unless you’re already aware of it, or if she touches you or something. If you do look at her, I hear she looks quite cute. Unlike other people, though, I can see past her veil, so I know what she really looks like. You’d also see her true form under other circumstances, like if you saw her through a camera, somehow.”

“What’s she look like then?”

“Would you care to describe how your brother looks naked?” Drade retorted.

“NevermindIdidn’task.”

They were on the third of five floors when Drade turned to unlock the door. He walked in and held the door open for Onei. “Well, here’s my home.”

She walked in, unimpressed. “This looks about as normal as it gets.”

“What else were you expecting, Onei?” Drade innocuously added her name to the end of the sentence.

“Not sure. Wait, I just remembered! You said your sister was a V-tuber or something. What was that about?”

“It means that she streams herself as she plays games using a virtual avatar that mimicks her emotions.”

“Sure, but how does that even work with an eldritch entity?”

“Well, the Friends and I put in a lot of effort to make a program that could read her body language.”

“Cool, but that’s not my point. Is her avatar an eldritch monster or what?”

“Well, her condition is more of a...handicap. She can’t interact with the normal world without everyone seeing her as a magical monster, cute or not. So, naturally, she would want her avatar to be human. Unlike me, her mind is mostly like that of a human. That’s why she lives on Earth instead of the astral plane.”

“Oh, I think I get it.”

“Anyway, it’s about six, and I don’t think mom is home, so I’m going to make some dinner. Any preferences?”

“Uhh, egg and bacon, if you have that? Otherwise, some sweets.”

“That’s not a dinner, but whatever my ‘guest’ wants.” He peered into a room and whispered. “Hey sis, what do you want for dinner?”

An obviously female voice came from the room, “Whatever Onei wants.”

“Eggs and bacon it is.”

Onei shuttered, looking at the door to the room. “Your sister knows my name?”

Drade tilted his head and spread out his arms, a sign of mischievous intent. “I made sure she did.”

“Conspiracy!”

“Trust me, conspiracy is one thing I’m good at.”

“‘Trust’ and ‘conspiracy’ seem fundamentally opposed.”