Pairings: MasakixKichijouji
Disclaimer: "The Irregular at Magic High School" is the property of Satou Tsutomu. The fanfic author is not making any money from this story.
Author's Note: Masaki calls Kichijouji "Jouji" in both the anime soundtrack and the original light novel, so I'll have Masaki do the same here.
The spirits and ghosts in this story are all based on actual Japanese ghost stories and urban legends. Some creative license has been taken, though, so that those familiar with the ghost stories won't find this fanfic too predictable. Also, the portrayal of the Ouija board is in the Japanese style; they draw it on a piece of paper and then destroy the paper when they're finished.
Chapter One
Before class started, three girls gathered around another girl's desk, whispering and giggling. The seated girl had her tablet out. Kichijouji glanced over and saw the girl with the tablet using a program to handwrite with a stylus. Only, instead of class notes, she was writing down hiragana, katakana, and a few basic kanji. Giggling erupted.
Kichijouji knew what they were up to as soon as one of the girls standing around ran over to the window and opened it.
As she scampered back, her friends chanted, "Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, if you're here, please move this pen."
Masaki had been busy going over his school notes from yesterday. He only looked up at the mention of Kokkuri. He shot Kichijouji a dismayed glance. Oh, no. What am I supposed to do? The game was banned from being played on the high school grounds and on the grounds of any high school. But there was no real magic in it, no such spirit as Kokkuri, and Masaki hated being asked to use his position on the Disciplinary Committee to spoil people's fun. He didn't want to crack down on every little rule.
Kichijouji understood Masaki's dilemma. He stood and walked over to the girls. "You know you're not supposed to play with a Ouija board at school," he murmured. "I don't believe there's anything to it, of course. But you're putting Masaki in a bad position. If the teacher comes in and finds you all doing this, and Masaki hasn't stopped you, he'll get in trouble, too."
"Ah, fine," the girl who'd opened the window said. Her name was Nanabou Rie. She had straight hair she bleached and dyed red, and she always wore her hair back in a ponytail. Every other week some teacher scolded her for wearing too much eyeliner.
"But we didn't get to ask any questions," one of the other girls standing around protested. She had short, wavy brown hair cut in a chin length bob, and she was shorter than Rie. Her name was Kyugawa Tsumiko.
The girl sitting down closed her tablet with a sigh. "I told you guys not to chant so loud." A blonde half-Japanese girl with an American father and a Japanese mother, Miller Asami was a minor troublemaker with a strong personality. She was the usual ringleader when groups of girls were doing things they weren't supposed to.
The last girl shifted her weight from foot to foot and wrung her hands, looking guilty. She had thick, straight black hair, and was usually quiet in class, never responding to any of the teacher's questions. Her name was Hachiyama Utau.
Kichijouji's lips quirked. "Well, if you want to do it, at least go to the roof and do it during lunchtime. Then you can be alone, and Masaki won't be right there in the room with you." He honestly thought the Ouija board game was silly. Did anyone really think they could summon a spirit that way? But at the same time, he thought it was equally silly to ban it at school. The claim that people would die if the players didn't finish the game "properly"—by saying goodbye to the spirit—was just old folklore from the twentieth century. Kichijouji didn't see why anyone in the 2090's should believe such a thing.
Rie walked over and shut the window again. "Fine."
The girls made it back to their desks just before the teacher showed up.
Masaki shook his head. Can't they wait for summer break to tell themselves spooky stories, just like everyone else?
When they came back from lunch, it was time for history class. Miller sat down and opened her tablet case, folding it back and preparing to take notes. She frowned.
From where he sat, Masaki could see that the screen was black.
Miller pressed the button on the top of her tablet. Nothing happened. She scowled and pressed it again. "Damn it, stupid thing's gone dead. I just charged it this morning." She tossed it in her book bag and lifted the screen of the computer built into her desk, which their teachers preferred them to use, anyway.
Kichijouji glanced at Miller. You probably spent all of lunch playing with your handmade Ouija board and draining your battery. He wasn't about to say that, though. Still, he frowned. And your battery must be going bad. The average tablet battery, even on the generic brands that were a few years old, now lasted twelve hours minimum. Kichijouji mentally struggled to himself and reflected with some sadness that he missed the days when he and his friends would innocently tell ghost stories and halfway believe them. No summer day at the beach was complete without a sleepover that night filled with horror stories. But after the Sado Island invasion, Kichijouji hadn't wanted to hear any more ghost stories. His parents were dead for real, and he'd seen real horror. The fictional kind wasn't fun any longer.
Masaki was uneasy for a much more immediate reason. Swearing wasn't allowed on school grounds, either. As long as she doesn't keep cussing out her tablet, it'll be fine, he told himself. Miller had only come to their school at the beginning of this year. She was unfortunately as intelligent as she was wild, and being in class with her frayed Masaki's nerves.
Halfway through their history lesson, on the 2011 Fukushima Power Plant Disaster, a musical blipping noise interrupted the teacher's lecture on primitive nuclear power.
Miller turned bright red for once. She grabbed her tablet out of her book bag. "I was trying to turn it on, Gochizo-sensei. It wasn't working. I swear. I just meant to take notes on it."
Their teacher frowned, but he didn't rebuke her.
Miller hastily opened her composition program and rapidly typed out notes on the touchpad keys.
Kichijouji glanced Miller's way and frowned again. What? Did you get water on it or something? Mild water infiltration was the only thing he could think of that could cause the tablet's odd behavior. If it wasn't too much water, the damage wouldn't be permanent, and the device would resume working properly once the water had dried. Maybe she spilled water or juice during lunch.
Five minutes later, Miller let out a flustered growl and tapped on her screen. The drawing program had come up again, and a traditional red gate cartoon, like those at the Shinto shrines, took up the entire screen. She swiped the program off her screen and resumed typing notes. This time, their teacher pretended not to notice her behavior.
However, when Miller cried out, the teacher paused with a twitch of his left eyebrow. Miller desperately fought with a sudden onslaught of pop-ups.
Masaki stared. Each of the little windows seemed to contain Miller's own handwriting. Each pop-up had a different message in it. He caught: Hi; Hello; Hey, listen; Good afternoon; Excuse me; and finally, Wow.
"Stop it!" Miller yelled at her tablet.
For a split second, the screen turned solid red. Then it returned to her composition program, with all of her notes intact. She breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back in her seat. "Sorry, sensei. I don't know what's wrong with this thing. It's like I spilled juice on it or something."
Masaki saw it first. He pointed. "Miller-san . . ."
Without Miller touching the virtual keyboard, words appeared at the bottom of her document in a constant stream, forcing the tablet to automatically scroll down. The same word, over and over: Kokkuri-san.
The font suddenly grew larger and larger, until the name took up the whole screen.
Miller screeched and jerked backwards, toppling over her chair and crashing to the floor. Her hand accidentally knocked her tablet off her desk. It fell to the floor beside her, one corner first, and slammed face down.
Everyone heard the sickeningly crisp crack.
Ashen, Miller turned over her tablet. The glass pane of the screen was split diagonally across, and the device was dark.
Kichijouji watched the entire escapade unfold, shocked into stillness. A virus? Or a trojan? He felt his brow furrow. Did you go to one of those séance websites or do a chat with an online medium? Those websites are notorious for viruses. He really wanted to ask, but he wasn't about to do that in front of the class. He didn't know Miller personally, and he might get in trouble for speaking out of turn. Still, he held out his hand. "If you want, I'll work on your tablet for you. Depending on what did or didn't get damaged, it can be saved. You'll just have to deal with the cracked screen."
Miller actually sniffled. She righted her chair and herself and handed the tablet to Kichijouji. "Thank you, Kichijouji-san."
"Yes, that's very nice of you, Kichijouji-san," Gochizo said.
Miller was uncharacteristically silent for the rest of the school day. After school, she waited for Kichijouji and Masaki to emerge from the classroom. Masaki was the last to leave because of a Disciplinary Committee meeting.
She leaned against the wall with her hands clasped behind her back. "Thanks for volunteering to work on my tablet, Kichijouji-san. If you want you can come over to my house. My mom will make us rice balls. She makes them for all my friends and my study group."
Kichijouji glanced at his watch. He had an hour and half before going to work. He paid his own tuition, room, and board through the job Ichijou Gouki had secured for him at the Kanazawa Magic Research Institute. "Sure. I've got just enough time if you don't live too far away." He gave her a smile. "And rice balls would be nice." Since he lived in Third High's dorm, he had to eat cafeteria food three times a day. The cooks were decent, but the food could get repetitive. Kichijouji welcomed even the smallest changes, and he especially enjoyed eating supper at Masaki's house.
Miller looked to Masaki. "You're invited, too, Ichijou-san."
Masaki smiled. "Thanks. Sure." He couldn't be impolite, and the possibility of her tablet being broken had shaken Miller out of her usual obnoxious attitude. Plus Kichijouji was going.
Miller smiled at them both. "I live fifteen minutes away. It's really close. I walk to school every day."
Together they walked to Miller's house, which was a typical middle-class home. Her mother, who looked very Japanese and nothing like Miller, greeted them kindly and asked them what kind of rice balls they liked.
Miller brought them to the room set aside as the family's study, and not long after they settled around the kotatsu table together, Mrs. Miller brought in snacks and cans of green tea. "Study well," she said cheerfully, and left them to it.
"Let's see." Kichijouji pulled out Miller's tablet and retrieved a small toolkit from his school bag. He always had the kit on him since he always had his laptop, and it contained a miniature screw driver, a small magnifying glass, screen cleaner, and a cloth wipe. He undid the screws holding Miller's tablet together and popped the back off. He used the magnifying glass to study the processor and mother board. "There's no scorching, and nothing looks fried or broken." He popped out the tiny battery. "Let's completely stop the current for at least two minutes." He ate a rice ball while they waited, then popped the battery back in and reattached the back. "Have you ever visited one of those séance websites?"
"Yeah," Miller admitted, eating a rice ball with cucumber in the center. "I totally have. I think they're cool. I know what you're going to say, but I installed special anti-malware programs. They should've worked."
Masaki ate a rice ball with a little dried squid in it. "People come up with new ways to infect devices all the time."
"Yeah, I know." Miller bowed her head. "But it's so boring around here, and everyone is so serious. I mean, Kokkuri-san." She snorted. "He's not real. I just wanted to see what he would say."
"Or rather what your friends might say while holding the stylus?" Kichijouji asked. He picked up a second rice ball, this one with a piece of plum in it. "Fair enough. But it seems more like a game for a summer night after ghost stories, not the middle of May and at school—and with the sun shining." He hit the power button and hoped the tablet would boot up.
The screen blinked on, and Kichijouji was asked if he wanted to start the system in repair mode. He tapped the "yes" box and waited.
Miller shook her head. "My mom says you don't have to play Kokkuri-san during the summer or at Halloween. She's where I got the idea from. After we moved back here, she started telling me all kinds of stories about what she and her friends used to do. They played Kokkuri-san. There wasn't a ban on playing it at school then. Why should there be now? They played it, and nothing bad happened to them. It's just a kid's game, like you said."
She looked exasperated. "When I told my mom I was going to get the girls at school to play it with me, she tried to convince me Kokkuri-san really does know the answers to everything, and he predicted she would meet my dad and move away." Miller shook her head. "She's always doing stuff like that."
Kichijouji considered the claim. "Some people just need more belief in the supernatural than others. I don't believe in any supernatural powers—ghosts, gods, or youki. But other people couldn't handle life without their religion or whatever deities they believe in." He took a drink of his tea and then fell silent as he went through all the options on the safe mode screen, making sure nothing was severely amiss.
"Kyugawa-san didn't come back to class after lunch," Masaki said. "Is that because something upset her?"
Miller frowned. "She's a big baby. It was just a joke, and she took it all seriously. She went to the nurse and said she was sick and had to go home."
"What was a joke?" Masaki asked. He was reminded of why he didn't like her.
Miller shrugged and looked away. "They were all asking silly questions, like 'Does my boyfriend love me,' and 'Will I get an A on this paper?' I remembered my mom said Kokkuri-san can predict when you're going to die, so I asked it when Kyugawa-chan was going to die. It said tonight." She snorted with laughter.
A chill passed through Kichijouji, and he assumed it was his PTSD from the Sado Island invasion trying to rear its ugly head. Ending up in a war zone and with dead parents had left him with bigger wounds than most of his classmates had. "I don't think I'd ask that even as a joke." He glanced at Miller. "I had to attend a mass funeral for my family and friends after the Sado Island invasion. When the real thing is in your face . . ." He trailed off. Why am I trying to explain this to her? She probably won't understand. He turned back to the tablet and told it to restart in normal mode. "Looks like your tablet might be okay, other than the cracked screen. We'll find out."
Miller looked uncomfortable. "Hey. I didn't mean to be cruel. I just didn't think she would take it seriously."
"Well, you can't control whether Kyugawa-san takes the Ouija board seriously or not, or how seriously she takes it." Kichijouji relaxed as Miller's tablet finished restarting normally. "But you can reassure her tomorrow that you only meant it as a joke, and if she's still upset, you can consider apologizing to her anyway. It won't hurt you any, and it might make her feel better." Kichijouji rattled off the advice without much thought. He was the RA for the third floor at his dorm, and he had been as a first-year and second-year student, too. By this point, he was used to settling arguments, negotiating truces, and handing out advice. He had twenty boys under his care.
"Oh." Miller wrapped a strand of her blonde hair around one finger restlessly. "I guess I could. Yeah. I didn't mean to freak her out." She sighed. "It's just . . . I mean, my dad is like you. He doesn't believe in any of this stuff. He's a scientist, and he's not impressed by folktales."
Kichijouji handed Miller her tablet. "Makes sense. You side more with your dad, right? So you just don't think much about people taking supernatural things seriously. You forgot to factor in that one of your friends would be more like your mom." He checked his watch and stood. "Okay. I should probably head out. I have to work tonight."
Miller stood, surprised. "I'll walk you out. Thanks for coming over. I know we're not friends or anything, so you went out of your way for me just because you're nice."
"You're welcome," Kichijouji said, and they traded bows.
Masaki stood as well. "Thank you for having us. If you like, you can come over to my house sometime." He liked her better again after she took Kichijouji's advice.
"I'll be there, too, to help create the study group," Kichijouji said, worried that Miller might misunderstand the offer. Half the girls at the school had a crush on Masaki, but thanks to the time Miller had spent in the USNA, Kichijouji had never been able to read her well enough to determine if she had a crush on Masaki or not. American girls and Japanese girls underwent very different upbringings.
Miller grinned. "Afraid I'm going to jump your boyfriend?"
"That's not what 'boyfriend' means," Masaki complained as they followed her out. "Just say the word 'friend.' You just said Jouji and I were dating."
Miller snickered. "That wouldn't be so bad, either, but okay."
Kichijouji was too busy sweating to correct their weird miscommunication. He wasn't sure if his confusion about their exchange came from their misunderstanding of each other or was a result of his being unable to fully understand them due to a spike of fear. In truth, Kichijouji was in love with Masaki and would give anything to date him. But no one knew that except Kichijouji himself.
In the end, Kichijouji said nothing, although he wondered if Miller's acceptance of boy love was the result of a shonen ai obsession or the result of the USNA's more relaxed stance toward the LGBTQIA community.
When Kichijouji and Masaki got to class the next day, it was in an uproar. Most of the girls were crying, and the boys either looked ill or uncomfortable. Miller was at the center of the chaos. As usual, Masaki thought sourly.
"I didn't mean it!" Miller yelled above the wailing. "It was just a joke!"
Masaki's gaze fell to Kyugama's desk automatically. It was empty. Not even her bag or her textbooks.
Kichijouji followed Masaki's line of sight and saw the empty desk. A chill washed through him, settling in his stomach. He threaded his way through the kids surrounding Miller and stopped in front of her. "What happened? What's going on?"
"I didn't do it! I had nothing to do with it! I called her on the phone and told her I was sorry, and she said it was okay, and she was going to bed," Miller blurted out.
"I hate you!" Rie screamed, sobbing into her hands. She was Kyugawa-san's best friend. "It's your fault she did it. If you knew her like I did you would have known she was lying! She wasn't okay!"
Miller turned white. Then her thunderstruck expression changed to agonized rage. "Fuck you guys!" she shouted in English. Then she ran out of the room, crying.
Rie uncovered her face and stared at Kichijouji, pointing at the doorway to the classroom. "She killed Kyugawa-chan! It's her fault Kyugawa-chan's gone!" Then she collapsed to her knees on the floor and cried until she made herself hiccup.
Kichijouji looked after Miller, then back at Rie. "Miller-san clearly didn't literally, physically kill Kyugawa-san." He stopped, Masaki's voice in his head admonishing him. He didn't even have to glance Masaki's way to know he was coming on too logically. "I mean—I'm sorry your friend is dead." He couldn't believe he was saying those words. It seemed unbelievable that Kyugawa was dead when there hadn't been a terrorist attack or an invasion. "But I still don't understand how she died. Can someone explain?" He looked at the other kids around Rie.
The last girl who had been pulled into Miller's decision to play Kokkuri-san spoke quietly, her head bowed. "Kyugawa-chan killed herself with a pair of scissors." Everyone seemed shocked that the ordinarily silent Hachiyama Utau had spoken up. Her thick, black hair was a curtain over her face.
Masaki started forward. The other students parted to let Masaki through. He stared at Utau. "Scissors? How? Why?"
Utau didn't move. She just kept staring at her feet. "She went insane. She said the Kuchisake-onna did it."
Masaki exchanged a glance with Kichijouji. "The Slit-Mouth Woman? But that's just a ghost story out of a slasher movie."
Kichijouji was sloshing around on a sea of illogic at this point. "How could Kyugawa-san lose her mind in just one day? Especially without a sufficiently triggering event? Playing with an Ouija board is not sufficient enough to cause a psychotic break." He paused, remembering that none of the other students had probably done as much psychological research as he had. Then he backed up. "Hachiyama-san, had Kyugawa-san ever said anything suicidal before? Was she depressed?"
Utau trembled. "She said . . . she said over the phone Kuchisake-onna was in the room with her . . ." Then she passed out in a dead faint.
Masaki, startled, reflexively caught her before she fell. "Hachiyama-san is probably just exhausted," he said feebly. He knew this wouldn't do a thing for his reputation as the shining knight of Third High. "Let's take her to the nurse." Not really feeling he had a choice in the matter, he picked Utau-san up in a front carry. He just knew people would be talking for weeks about it.
"Okay." Kichijouji followed Masaki out. Not all the doors in the school were automatic, so he'd need to clear Masaki's way for him. He walked beside Masaki down the hallway. "Kuchisake-onna? Really?" His mind played back footage from the old horror film: a woman wearing a white allergy mask. The woman looked utterly normal until she pulled off the mask, revealing an overly-large mouth full of blades. "I didn't detect any signs that Kyugawa-san was delusional or having hallucinations. Then again, I didn't know her very well, so I suppose she could have been coming down with the slow-onset type of schizophrenia." He sighed, his stomach clenching. "In the end, I know it doesn't make a difference. She was here yesterday, and today she's gone. She was in pain, or she wouldn't have been suicidal. And somehow, no one noticed."
Masaki understood why that depressed Kichijouji so much. "I'm not going to let that happen to you. I'd notice."
Kichijouji glanced at Masaki. "I know. I trust you." He just wished Kyugawa had had a friend as good as Masaki was. "It's still sad she committed suicide." Kichijouji didn't uphold the same stigma about suicide that many others did. He felt genuinely bad for Kyugawa.
Kichijouji opened the three doors in Masaki's way—all of them fire doors. Then he opened the door to the nurse's office.
Masaki deposited Hachiyama on a bed as the nurse stood and fluttered about the room.
Kichijouji adored the school nurse, mainly because the man was the only clearly gay person Kichijouji had ever met. All the students suspected Tadashi Juro was gay, but no one ever said anything to the man's face. He was being left alone to tend to ill and ailing students, a fact that gave Kichijouji some mild comfort.
"Oh, no." Tadashi hovered by Hachiyama's bedside and put a thermometer strip on her forehead. It beeped after only a second. "No fever. What happened?"
Masaki stood by Kichijouji. "We think it's just sleep loss. Did you hear about Kyugawa-san? Last night . . ."
"I heard," Tadashi said grimly. He pulled a small scanner from the pocket of his white coat and scanned Hachiyama's ID bracelet. He glanced at the information. "So Hachiyama-san is a friend of Kyugawa-san?"
"Yes," Kichijouji said. He well knew that not all gay men were "queens," but some were, and Tadashi was closer to that style. Kichijouji even detected a touch of eyeliner and mascara on the man, although there were no other signs of makeup, especially colored makeup. "Before Hachiyama-san fainted, she said that Kyugawa-san claimed that the ghost Kuchisake-onna was in the room with her. Apparently the two girls were on the phone. Later, Kyugawa-san committed suicide with a pair of scissors."
Tadashi threw one had over his heart. "Gods! That's terrible." He paused and frowned. "I know how logical you are, Kichijouji-san. You're probably thinking Kyugawa-san had a mental disorder, assuming that Hachiyama-san's story is true."
"You're right," Kichijouji said.
Tadashi glanced out the window. "My grandmother is a Shinto priestess. I grew up hearing stories about spirits." His brow furrowed, and he seemed to be staring at the tree just outside. "Not all of those stories are fiction."
Kichijouji just raised an eyebrow.
Masaki said, "That's what Miller-san's mother apparently said, trying to warn her not to play Kokkuri-san carelessly." He still didn't believe either one of those ghost stories were true. But he had the sinking feeling that what he or Kichijouji thought didn't matter.
Tadashi turned to Masaki with a smile and a faint blush. "Adults always try to impart their wisdom."
Kichijouji smiled faintly at Tadashi's blush. He could tell that the nurse had a small crush on Masaki. Tadashi was only twenty-three, so Kichijouji didn't think it was creepy. Masaki was eighteen, after all, and the age gap was only five years. I understand, Tadashi-sensei. Masaki is irresistible.
"The problem is that some adults are idiots, so kids are always trying to figure out what is and isn't wisdom," Tadashi finished wryly.
Kichijouji chuckled.
Tadashi sighed. "Still, in this case . . . Kuchisake-onna is probably not a real spirit. But a real spirit could come in the guise of Kuchisake-onna, knowing that kids are familiar with it."
Masaki was startled. "Another spirit in the guise of Kuchisake-onna? You mean like ancient magic?" Maybe it's terrorists after all.
"Maybe we are dealing with terrorists," Kichijouji said, immediately on the same page with Masaki. "Still, why just one girl? The Kyugawa clan isn't highly ranked."
Tadashi looked down at Hachiyama as she stirred. "I would guess a personal vendetta against the family and a magician-for-hire." He held up a hand to hush the boys. "Hello, Hachiyama-san. Would you like some water?"
Kichijouji withdrew so Tadashi could tend to his patient. When Masaki joined him, they headed back into the hallway. "We can't deny that we have a dead girl on our hands. Suicide is always a possibility, but we should check into the situation. If an ancient magic user is behind this . . ." He let his sentence trail off, knowing Masaki would understand his meaning.
Masaki nodded. "Then they could be hiding and waiting for their next opportunity to strike. Ancient magicians are known for their feuds. This situation could be far from over."
"Which may mean more dead students if we don't stop them right away," Kichijouji said. He clenched his fists. "Not at our school."
"Hell, no," Masaki agreed.
A/N: To the readers of "Just a Kiss," I haven't abandoned the story. I'm just busy.