Hello YYH fans! This is my first YYH fic and I'm glad to see the fandom is still thriving for such an old show.
Taking a bit of a risk because Tsubaki isn't supposed to be particularly likeable in the beginning, which is the opposite of what you're supposed to do with OCs right? She's the hero of her story, but she's also going to butt heads with Spirit World and Team Urameshi.
No, stop it. Don't even think about it. He's too old for you.
Tsubaki was grateful, once again, that the three other people in the classroom were only human and couldn't read her thoughts.
In the classroom of an all-girls high school, Tsubaki, her best friend, classmate and her mentor met to discuss their upcoming competition season. Tsubaki had been picked to be the leader of their science competition team because her grade average was 0.01 higher than the girl who really wanted the job. Though Tsubaki hadn't asked for the title (or extra responsibility) she accepted the new role, honored to be picked by both her teacher and her mentor Tamuro-san.
Tamuro-san, her college-aged very off-limits mentor, folded up the sleeves of his black sweater, showing off toned milk-tea arms. Tsubaki had to peer away, scribbling a note of gibberish on her notebook to give her jittery hands an outlet.
This would be the start of many of her fantasies. But in those dreams, Mikata and Esumi, her best friend and classmate, wouldn't be sitting next to her.
They had squared away their questions and suggestions for the upcoming season and Tamuro assigned them the responsibility of finding a new girl to replace the third year girl who had since graduated. A new girl, preferably a first year, would bring them back up to six members in time for their first competition.
"A new girl, we'll find someone," said Tsubaki. She agreed but her to-do list was running out of space in her head. She had an essay to finish, house chores that were piling up, two upcoming exams, in addition to the multiplying duties as team leader…
"Oh, actually I think I might know someone perfect," said Esumi, sitting to Tsubaki's right. "I knew we had to find a replacement, so before the year began I asked around." Her slanted eyes fell on Tsubaki like a watch-light or at least, Tsubaki felt that exposed at the moment. We get it, Esumi, you wanted the job as number one.
"Good job, Esumi-san," said Tamuro and Tsubaki stabbed a pencil hole through her paper.
"You'll do very well as second-in-command," Tsubaki added.
"I'm sure we'll work very well together," Esumi said.
Bitch, thought Esumi. Her bitterness stabbed into Tsubaki's mind like her pencil through her paper.
Mikata just whistled in her head and thankfully Tamuro hadn't noticed any of the toxicity in the room.
Tamuro ruffled his hair in mid thought, in a way Tsubaki found endearing. "And Tsubaki, your presentation was moved forward to this week. I was going to remind you last week, but you said you were done, right?"
More jitters, this time not from her smitten heart.
"Yes, Tamuro-san," Tsubaki said, flipping pages of her notes to seem productive. "I'm nearly finished. I mean it's done, for the most part, just adding the finishing touches."
Haven't started yet, have you? She didn't even have to enter the girls' minds to feel their disbelief in the air. Their suspicion prodded her from both sides.
Damn, Mikata, you're supposed to be on my side.
Tsubaki half expected Tamuro to ask for more details but he nodded. Good, she's ready, he thought.
Her knee hit the table with a nervous twitch. She hated lying, especially to dreamy Tamuro-san. Where she came from, you didn't lie. It was near impossible to lie. Her kind read minds and exchanged thoughts and it was far more efficient than human speech.
Tamuro glanced at the school clock and his watch, a cute habit of his. "Excellent, well on that note, I'm happy to draw this meeting to a close."
Tamuro flipped open his messenger bag, corners of notes stuck out of the bag folds and he shoved his notepad into the bag without even flipping the lid over. He waved goodbye to the girls, wishing good luck to Tsubaki for her presentation before leaving.
Esumi flipped her delicate wrist, also reading the time on her watch. "Good timing. My driver should be here. Yabu-chan, do you mind sending me the presentation by tomorrow morning so I can review it?"
And saturate the paper with so much red pen that if you twisted the paper like a towel you could squeeze out drops of ink? "Of course. I was going to ask if you wouldn't mind."
"You know I love reading your work," said Esumi with a smile that actually twinkled in the light, a smile that could fool anyone.
One thing I'll give you, Esumi, you're a better liar than I'll ever be.
Mikata stacked her books in her special order before setting them into her bag. "You were drooling the entire time Tamuro-san was talking," said Mikata long after Tamuro left and Esumi drove home.
"I only drool when I sleep," said Tsubaki.
Mikata frowned. "Do you have to utter every candid thing that pops into your head?"
"You know I hate lying."
"You told a big, fat one to your mentor," she said.
"It wasn't a lie. My presentation is done. In here," Tsubaki said, tapping her temple.
"I'm more surprised that you didn't try to use it as an opportunity to sneak more alone time with him," said Mikata.
Mikata didn't have to utter it all again, the lecture she had already given her: he's too old for you, it's unprofessional, even if he fancied you, you, the minor, are off-limits. Tsubaki promised up and down that she had no true intentions of trying anything. She only enjoyed his company, his cute mannerisms, his dark bed-head hair, the view of him only in a light t-shirt after he wriggled out of his black sweater when the classroom became too warm.
That aside, he didn't even fancy her. Not like that. As he thought once in the privacy of his own head, 'yeah, she's pretty cute, for a sixteen-year-old girl.' Tsubaki couldn't tell Mikata that Tamuro already fancied a girl at his uni, a short, adorable, curvy strawberry blonde girl, who always wore pencil skirts and shared his love for stringy natto and string theory.
It wasn't fair. Tsubaki's true age was much older than Tamuro. What did strawberry blonde girl have on her besides four human years?
"What are you up to after this?"
"Homework, studying, rendering that perfect presentation from my head to paper, you know. The various mundane tasks of human life."
"You wanna join me for the long train right back to the 'burbs?"
Though she ought to go to the library, Tsubaki gathered her things to leave too. "You know, if we befriend Esumi, she might get her chauffeur to drive us home."
"I'm pretty sure she hates me for associating with you," said Mikata. "I don't know. I can't read her well."
I can.
"She doesn't hate you but she wishes you would back her up more and that you let me do too much of what I want," said Tsubaki. "She can be a sincere person, but at the moment she is bursting with jealousy that she didn't get picked for team leader."
Mikata's thoughts drifted to the new manga books tucked between her textbooks in her bag. She had been reading the supernatural sub category of her favorite romance genre. In her head, she pictured a non-human manga character who posed as a human but had supernatural powers.
Her round spectacles made her eyes look large on her otherwise small face, like a bug. "You know, sometimes I wonder if you have a sixth sense. I'm not sure how you read that in her Cheshire smiles but I trust your judgment for a reason. You have a natural skill for reading people that I wonder if you're really human."
Mikata was a clever companion, but incapable that final leap, surmounting all disbelief. She beat around the truth yet never quite landed on the fact that Tsubaki was not entirely human and someday, she wouldn't be human at all.
Though her kind hated to lie, wasn't technically her whole human persona a lie? No, it wasn't a lie, she told herself. A secret isn't a bold-faced lie.
'I wonder if you're really human.'
Tsubaki followed Mikata out, donning her own beguiling Chesire smile. "You have no idea."
An introductory chapter that I hope gives you an idea of what kind of person/not-human Tsubaki is. She's a wannabe academic, less organized than her friend (and rival), a bit of a hopeless romantic, fancying her older mentor and though she's resigned to the fact that it isn't happening, a girl can dream right? The next chapter we'll see the main YYH boys and the plot will really kick in.