New Hair is Death!
Shinka Nibutani walked the halls of her school with a bright smile. On the first day of her second year, she'd been worried her new look wouldn't have the effect she was hoping for. However, after a few days went by without a single incident, she allowed herself a sigh of relief several years in the making. Her change in appearance had gifted her with one final chance to reinvent herself. During her first year, she'd encountered more close calls than she felt comfortable admitting. Some of these could be written off as simple mistakes. A quick slip of the tongue was nothing to be too concerned about, nor was an accidental, exaggerated gesture. To the average person, that would never be enough to raise suspicion.
The bigger mistakes, on the other hand, those were the ones she had to really worry about. Given the right conditions, she could usually keep what remained of her 'adolescent delusions' in check. Unfortunately, there remained one small, unbelievably annoying little factor that never ceased to throw her off, and it was that very annoyance that served as her current objective. If she was finally going to break away from her shameful past, there was one last thing she needed to take care of. A certain twin-tailed nerd was going to hand over the last trace of her past self, whether she wanted to or not. That thought in mind, she rounded a corner at the end of the hall. Sunlight shined in from the windows that lined the wall, warming her skin as she made her way down the hall at a determined pace. At the hall's end, she pulled open the sliding door that led to a very familiar room.
The club room she'd so swiftly joined last year didn't look like it'd changed one bit in the time they'd been on break. Countless boxes were still stacked against most of the back wall, while a large kotatsu took up the majority of the room. The table itself was littered with an assortment of what she assumed was garbage, although she knew a few of her friends would probably disagree. Bags of empty junk food, various manga and books on subjects she wouldn't touch (nowadays) with a ten foot pool, and a few objects even she couldn't identify all made it impossible to see the table's top. the blanket surrounding the kotatsu was an equal sight for sore eyes, looking to be a few weeks overdue for a wash. Not that any of that seemed to bother the black-haired girl sleeping underneath it. Walking casually, she crossed the room and opened the blinds that covered a large window. Sunlight poured into the previously dark room, illuminating the dusty chalk-outline hidden beneath the kotatsu, and causing the sleeping girl to let out a light moan as she rolled to her opposite side. She knew worrying about waking Kumin would only be a waste of brainpower. When it came to the definition of a heavy sleeper, she was certain this particular upperclassmen wore the title above all others. Even then, disturbing Kumin wasn't the reason she'd come here in the first place.
"Huh," she thought aloud, "That's strange, I thought for sure she'd be here."
She was about to start back across the room when, as if on cue, she heard a light snicker sound from somewhere close. A quick glance around the room drew her attention to the single locker sitting along the right-hand wall. A thin grin on her lips, she took a few quick steps to stand in front of the locker. "Oh, no!" she said in a melodramatic tone, "I sure hope that I, the fake Mori Summer, don't find something inside this locker that would cause me harm!" At the end of her sentence, she wrapped one hand tight around the locker's door and swung it open with all her might. "Alright, you little brat! Time to finally—"
Cutting her off was the sight of an empty locker, or rather, one empty of the annoying girl she'd hoped to find inside. Instead, what she found was a small recording device, one permanently set on loop to give off the sound of snickering that instantly raised her blood pressure. Whatever was about to happen next, she already knew things weren't going to play out the way she'd intended.
"Ha!" Came a laugh from somewhere inside the room, causing her to spin around as a high-pitched voice continued to mock her with laughter. "I knew you'd fall for such a deathly cliche' tactic! Yet another example to prove that you're not the real Mori Summer!"
Shinka's eyes flew over every inch of the sun lit room. If Sanae was anywhere close, she'd chosen a perfect hiding spot. "How many times do we have to go over this!?" She screamed at the empty room, feeling increasingly stupid as time went on. "I am Mori Summer, or...I mean, I was! The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can both get on with our lives!"
"Lies!" Sanae replied, her voice somehow closer than it was before. "The real Mori summer would've used her powers to identify the voice manipulation device before breaching its containment field!"
"What are you even talking about!?" Shinka shook her head in frustration, an attempt to physically break away from the stupidity of the situation. "Listen, I'm tired of this! This is the last time I'm asking you! Destroy every copy of my book you have, and delete all the files of it from your computer!"
A long silence followed, one wherein she slowly inched her way into the middle of the room. Inches away from Kumin's sleeping form, she felt a cold chill run down her spine. Before she could shake the feeling of eyes watching her, movement from above forced her head straight towards the ceiling. All she managed to see was a flash of hair falling from the rafters. A second later, her vision was stolen from her, at the same time her shoulders buckled under the addition of a sudden weight.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing!?" Despite her attempts to throw the small girl off her shoulders, all Shinka's thrashing accomplished was making herself feel dizzy. The bags Sanae kept attached to her twin-tails smacked relentlessly against her chest during all of this. "Get off me, you little brat!"
"Ha! Beg for mercy all you want!" Sanae bellowed in a confident tone, "It'll do you no deathly good in the end, my super secret stealth attack has a one-hundred percent death rate!"
"You sound like such a nerd!" While struggling against the girl on top of her, Shinka could feel herself slowly losing her balance on the floor she couldn't see. "And that's a horrible name for an attack! It's way too long!"
"You're just jealous you're losing! Now, admit your defeat! Give in, and head towards the light in front of you!" At the end of Sanae's rant, Shinka finally manged to get a solid grip on the girl's legs. Still, pulling Sanae off of her took far more effort than she'd expected. With a sizable grunt, she lifted the small girl's body, dropping her legs first onto the floor at her feet. Sanae hit the floor with a blank expression on her face, as if her mind required a moment to accept what had just happened.
Breathing in a series of heavy breaths, Shinka waited until the small girl turned in her direction to speak. "Okay, are you about done? Believe it or not, I didn't come here to fight you. I'd planned to ask you sensibly to return my possessions."
"Never," Sanae said, clearly pouting in the face of her apparent defeat, "Only the real Mori Summer can reclaim her testaments."
"God, not this again." Shinka spoke through the hand she was using to rub at her tired eyes, "I am—"
"No, you're not." This time, Sanae's tone actually stopped her mid-sentence. For the first time in a long while, it sounded like the small girl was speaking seriously. Or, as seriously as someone like her could manage. "You're not the real Mori Summer. The real Mori Summer would never give in to the demon's temptation."
Letting out a deep sigh, Shinka bent down to her knees and tried to meet the girl's eyes. "Alright, I'll bite. What are you talking about?"
In a move the took her completely by surprise, Sanae stood up and grabbed hold of several strands of her raven colored hair. "This," Sanae said with a startling amount of disgust, "If a mortal gives in to a demon's temptation, accepting their contract of infinite power, their image is changed to match that of a servant of the underworld. The real Mori Summer would never do that."
It took a short silence for Shinka to understand what the girl was saying. "Oh, I get it," she said with a light chuckle, "This is your weird way of saying you don't like my new hair color."
In quick response to her words, Sanae released her hair and walked across the room. After rummaging under the kotatsu for a moment, she came back with an all too familiar book in her hands. Setting the book on the floor between them, the girl immediately started to flip through its pages. "Here," she said, after a few seconds of searching, "It says right here that a great deal of Mori Summer's power comes from her rich, brown hair. Hair that draws—"
"Hair that draws energy from the Earth itself, energy that's used to draw upon an extra reserve of magical power in times of emergency." As much as she hated remembering it, Shinka had no problem finishing the passage from her book word for word. "Yeah, I nearly forgot about that. So that's why you're so upset." When Sanae's only response was to look at the floor, she took it as a cue to continue. "Listen, I know how closely you follow everything in that book, but that part of my life is over now. All I'm doing is trying to reinvent myself."
"Why?"
The strange question took Shinka off guard. "What...what do you mean, why?"
Sanae still refused to meet her eyes, and lightly traced the edges of her book as she spoke. "Why do you want to reinvent yourself? I think you were cooler before, back when you didn't care what other people thought of you. That was what I really learned from Mori Summer's book, to enjoy being myself, no matter what other people said about me."
For a great while after that, Shinka found herself utterly speechless. "Wow," she finally managed, "I...I don't know what to say. I never knew you felt that strongly about all of this." At the end of her sentence, a bright smile finally brought Sanae's eyes up to meet hers. Another short silence followed, one that Shinka found far more bearable than all the others. "So, what do you say? Can I have my book back now?"
Sunlight illuminated Sanae's smile as she softly wrapped her hands around the book between them. Looking up once more into Shinka's eyes, the small girl stood to her feet and opened her mouth to speak. "Never!"
"What!?" Was all Shinka could get out before the end of Sanae's twin-tails smashed against her forehead, sending her flat onto her back against the hard floor. By the time she'd pulled herself back up, all she saw was the very tip of the girl's hair fluttering out the door. In a mad dash across the room, Shinka could feel her blood pressure rising once more, and made sure to slam the door shut behind her on her way into the hall. "Get back here, you little brat! I swear, once I get my hands on you! I'll get that book from you if it's the last thing I do!"
With that, the fighting of both girls drifted off into a peaceful silence. A silence that Kumin found deeply satisfying as she rolled onto her back underneath the kotatsu, a warm smile on her face as she did so.