Author's Note: Thought or Emphasis; Flashback or English; Thought or Emphasis in Flashback

I don't own K-ON!. If I did, I'd at least answer the question of just what the heck the band members' parents do for a living. No, even better, I'd let people SEE them! That would blow minds!... Well, unless you looked in the manga to see Yui's mom and dad.

Yeah, that's right, THEY EXIST.

Feel free to be astonished, then read and review.

K-ON!: Howl!

Part III: The Morning After

Mio woke up a bit out of sorts that morning... or rather, that afternoon, according to the clock above the living room television. That hardly ever hap-

Wait... living room? This wasn't even her house...

And what was this weight on her lap?

The bassist looked down to find her bandmate's face as the source. The brunette looked quite serene in her sleep, and the sight made the ravenette hesitate to wake her. Two things forced her to act, however: one was the lack of feeling in her legs, while the other... was the red stain around Ritsu's mouth.

After a couple of nudges to her shoulder and calls of her name, Ritsu managed to rise from her comfortable pillow. Her mouth tasted funny, though, and thanks to the wake-up call, she failed to recall a thing from the past few seconds, let alone last night. "Wha...?"

"Good. You're awake." Mio's gray gaze sharpened. "You have some serious explaining to do about last night."

Ritsu only halfway regarded the voice. "Last night? What are you—wait. Wasn't I in my room? How did I..." She suddenly had a bad feeling, but denied the worst-case scenario. Still, she had to know what happened, so she stood and looked around.

The first thing she noticed was that the lamp was smashed to bits, the stand it once occupied not much better. Mom's gonna be mad about that. I think that got broken the last time I...

Upon that realization, she continued her search. Nothing else seemed to hint anything though, until she saw the kitchen that, without doors, blended into the room. There were grooves, grouped into fives, etched into the refrigerator door.

That clinched it. Only one thing could make those marks. It happened again. Yet, something was missing... someone?

Her eyes picked up something unnerving. Walking to a corner of the room, she discovered small stains of dried blood; each was not even the size of her thumb, but there were just enough to make her face grow pale. She had a strong suspicion that those stains had to do with the weird taste that did not go away.

She tentatively felt around her back teeth, pulling out her final hint, a chunk of blood-red meat. Her hand began to quake as she dropped the former meal. "Wha... what did I...?"

Just before she began to break her brain for any other clues, she heard something.

"Ritsu?"

"Mio..." Turning back around, her sleep-and-fear-addled mind finally connected the voice to the face. "MIO!" The brunette yanked her interrogator off the floor before crushing her into a hug. "YOU'RE ALIVE!" She backed up, hands still on the other girl's shoulders, and frantically looked her over. "You're not bleeding, or missing anything-"

"Ritsu."

"And you're not bitten, or at least you don't look like it. I mean, I've seen movies, but I don't really know what could happen if you-"

"Ritsu."

"Wait!" The paranoid released the survivor before revealing her theory. "You could be an illusion or something! Like... uh, the last image of the person that died, and you're haunting my house for my horrible sin! Mio... be honest with me." She talked slowly, but fearfully, "...are you... are you a... g-g-ghost!?"

"CALM DOWN!" A fist smashed her back down to Earth. "...stupid Ritsu." With a few deep breaths, the brunette did indeed calm down, allowing Mio to repeat her question. "Do you remember last night?"

"No, but I know what happened." Ritsu's head hung low, loose hair veiling her face. Before her friend could wonder about her mood, the Tainaka girl straightened up with a toothy grin. "Guess the secret's out, huh?"

The playful girl's hand scratched the back of her head with the gesture. Others might have compared the sun of happiness to Yui's and her blinding rays, but it was clear to Mio the falsehood of Ritsu's smile.

Thus, she was unaffected. "I'd say it is, seeing how I saw you turn into it. But what... h-how..." She filtered her stammer to one question. She already had a good guess, but she somehow needed to hear the answer from the one affected.

"What are you, exactly?"

"Well..." Ritsu dropped the act. "I'm a wolf-girl. Werewolf." She spoke the last word in English, remembering an old American flick. "But you could probably figure that out, right?" Mio nodded, her suspicion confirmed, so the shape-shifter answered the next logical question. "It started last month. Mom, Dad, and Satoshi saw me the first time I changed. Remember when I had to leave you and the girls early for feeling really sick?"

"Yeah. Your mother said you caught a bad stomach flu and said it was best to stay away for a few days." The ravenette's eyes widened. "So you were..."

"Yep. They were all full-moon days, like yesterday. And after the pain gets really bad, I don't remember what happens to me, but Dad said every time it was over, I acted like a dog, so I'm thinking 'wolf-girl' fits."

"That sounds about right. You were barking and sniffing everywhere, you tore apart the meat from the freezer once you got it in your sights," Mio looked down and slightly grimaced at the blood on the floor, "and you..." she pushed down her blush with a forced ahem!, "...licked me a few times."

"Um..." Ritsu felt her own face heat up. "Dad said I did that a lot too."

"Well, at least you're a nice monster, as strange as that sounds." The next question: "But how?"

"Family curse."

"WAH!" The raven-haired houseguest leaped from the foreign voice. Once her heart started again, she turned to find a boy three years her junior. While his hair was slightly darker, his eyes matched the color of his older sister's. He stood casually in jeans and a shirt that said DEATH BERRY. (While Ritsu was a Naruto fan, the boy preferred a TV show known as Bleach; shockingly, no war yet broke out over which was superior.) "Oh, it's just you, Satoshi."

"Mornin', sis." He spoke to both girls, as Mio was at their home so much, she was practically family. "Sorry I wasn't here, but I forgot the first night was yesterday." Stupid video game. "Once I figured it out, it was too late, and Daigo's mom wouldn't let me come back."

"It's too late to say sorry now!" His sister whacked him in the back of the head. She ignored his small "ow!" of pain. "I could've KILLED MIO!"

His response was quite calm despite that possibility. "It's not my fault you didn't remember, though. You're the one with the curse."

The boy was right, of course, but Ritsu wasn't going to admit it. Just as the older Tainaka was about to strike again, Mio interrupted. "What 'family curse'?"

"I heard the story from Grandpa."

"And I heard it from Satoshi." His sister explained her part, but noted the oddity: "You know, I still don't get why I never heard the story from Grandpa."

"I dunno. Maybe he was scared you'd eat him or something." He walked to the refrigerator, ignoring the damage, and pulled out the milk. Getting a cup for himself, since no one answered when he asked, "You guys want any?", he gulped down half and began the tale.

"It started with Grandpa's grandma Satomi. She lived in a village at the bottom of a mountain, with a forest between them." Satoshi took a sip from the cup. "Our family used to be carpenters or something back then... eh, not important." He shook his head clear and went on. "Anyway, her home village was attacked every few days by this gang with swords. What they liked, they took, and what they didn't like, they cut to shreds—anything, and anyone. They did this for about three years, and everyone who stood up to the gang died.

"But one day, a couple from the gang cut up and beat up Satomi's husband when he wouldn't give up enough stuff from his family's old store. They didn't outright kill him, but they hurt him so bad, he fell into a deep sleep and never woke up. Everyone thought he was going to die soon. Satomi swore she'd get revenge for him and everybody else in the village, so she asked them to fight with her. Problem was, no one else wanted to cross the gang again.

"She went mad from the grief, ran into the forest and cried out for anyone to help, even the kami.

"And then something answered: a single wolf. It didn't like the gang either, 'cause they were spoiling its home in the mountains where they lived with their stolen stuff, and it didn't like them taking tributes like the kami without protecting the people too. The wolf promised to help her out, but for a big price. Satomi didn't care, she just wanted to beat the gang, so she took the deal. The wolf told her to go back home, so she did.

"The gang came for their usual tribute at sundown the next day, but the only one in front of them was Satomi. They laughed at a single woman saying she'd kill them all... but then the full moon came out, and she transformed into a horrifying wolf-woman!" A spark seemed to move into his eyes as he approached the climax.

"She started ripping them all apart, blood and guts flying everywhere, dripping off her claws and..." He pulled himself out of storyteller mode when he saw Mio starting to quake. "Heh heh, sorry."

The ravenette's hands went to her ears, blotting out the words that made the monster, so unlike her docile descendant, rampage before her mind's eye. "I can't hear it, I can't hear it..."

Ritsu applied the usual remedy when she did not want to wait for Mio to get out of the nearest corner. She grabbed her shoulders and looked her dead into her closed-eyed face. "Mio!" Shaking her a bit, she tried to force her to "snap out of it!"

"...wha?" She slowly returned to the real world. "...O-oh! I'm okay. P-please continue."

"Geez, how'd you even stay sane last night?" Ritsu only half-joked, concern slipping into her words.

Mio only saw it as another of Ritsu's jibes about her aversion to gore, however, and tersely called out to the drummer's brother. "Can we just move on?"

"Sure. We're almost at the end anyway." He wiped off his milk mustache.

"So Satomi slaughtered the whole gang and howled at the moon to celebrate... but then she turned on the villagers, who left their houses to see the mess. The wolf that took over her body didn't let go, and it fed off of her anger at them for not helping her. But just before she was going to sink her fangs into her new prey...

"Her husband appeared. He woke up that night and pulled himself out of bed to find her, calling her name again and again. Hearing and seeing him calmed Satomi down, and once he figured out she was the wolf-woman, they left the village and never returned. The rest is family history."

Satomi finished his cup of milk.

Mio started to take it in. "That's quite a story-"

"And it's not over." Ritsu jumped in. "Remember the 'price' as part of the deal? As you can figure, it never let go-"

"-and she kept changing!"

"Yep... until she had a child, according to Grandpa. Even then, it never let go of the Tainaka bloodline." Satoshi added more. "And that's still not the weirdest part. From what we figure, it's a pretty picky spirit."

"I get that. You've already said it only comes out under the full-"

"It likes girls." The Tainaka siblings spoke in unison, before noting the weirdness of that moment.

"...Eh?"

Satoshi explained, "Well, we think it only does its magic in girls born Tainaka. Ritsu's changes never happened to mom, Grandma, or Grandpa's mom, or even our aunts."

"Plus, the last three generations of our little clan have all been born boys." Ritsu continued where he left off. "The only girl born into the name is..."

"...You."

Ritsu nodded at Mio's bug-eyed answer, a mirthless chuckle slipping past her lips.

"Dad always said a Tainaka girl would be special."

Now Mio started to take it in. Last night, she simply went with what her gut told her; she needed to keep Ritsu occupied, and she needed not to run screaming into the night. Now that she was neither blocking her eyes and ears from messy eating, nor tired from a strange night and boring television, she could think about just what her friend really was.

But first, one thing gnawed at her:

"You hid this from me for a whole month? Wait..." she recalled Ritsu's behavior, "You were trying to hide it yesterday too!"

"What'd you expect, Mio? Think about it." She tapped one of her temples for emphasis. "What'd you have done if I told you what happened? Whack me on the head? Told me to stop messing with you? You never would've believed me!"

The ravenette's mouth opened to retort, before she realized, "You're right."

"And last night... if I hurt you, Mio... " Her voice faded to a whisper. Once again, her unbound hair shadowed her face. "I don't know what I'd do."

"Ritsu-"

"I'M BEING SERIOUS HERE!" The drummer shocked the bassist with her volume. "I didn't want to scare you away either. I'm already a monster now, and I think maybe I'll learn to live with that..." she saw her torn clothes, "...eventually. But you afraid of me? Never talking to me again?"

She raised her head, a small flame lit behind her watery orbs. "No way!"

"S-so..." The fire dissipated as the cursed girl took a breath. "Yeah. That's why I couldn't tell you."

The room fell silent for a moment, the afternoon sunlight still not enough to penetrate the fog of uncertainty left by the tale and the truth.

It's over, were the words bearing on Ritsu's mind. Mio did not know it, but her braver counterpart admitted her greatest fear. In their second grade class, Mio became the first child who wasn't pushed away by Ritsu's sometimes unruly nature. Ritsu cherished that early bond to this very day, almost jealously defending it at times; that incident with Nodoka almost put a strain on the friendship.

This was no high-school issue, however. This was a problem lying in wait to reveal itself since Ritsu's very birth, a burden fallen to her shoulders thanks to simple bad luck. Just because of some stupid ancestor making a stupid deal, this stupid curse was going to take her away from the first and best friend she ever had. Mio's silence only confirmed it, so the brunette screwed her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable goodbye...

Then, a voice.

"If you think I'm leaving you now, you're more brick-headed than I thought!"

Amber eyes shot open. Mio?

"We've been friends for too long for me to stop now. Even with something like this." Mio pulled her friend into her embrace, the other's arms still slack. "If I wanted to run, I'd have done it last night. And like you said, you'll learn to live with this thing." Her hug tightened as her conviction affirmed. "We will."

"Aww, Mio..." Ritsu returned the hug in full force, happy tears messily trailing down her face. "You're the best friend EVEEEEEEER!" Laughter and sobs mixed between the drummer and the bassist, their bond of the bandmates strengthened.

The two girls suddenly heard a sniffle, one not coming from them. Ritsu pushed back from Mio to see Satoshi, rubbing his face with his arm; they had forgotten he was there. Now that he was noticed, however, the more mischievous of the duo felt a tease coming on.

"Oh? What's this? Were you crying, dear brother?"

"What? NO!" His bravado was countered by his red eyes; rubbing his eyes again only made it look worse. "It's just, uh... stupid allergies."

"Really? I found Mio's words quite moving." She turned her head to the giggling ravenette. "What do you think, Mio? Were my words moving?"

She held in her laugh and forced a straight face to reply. "Quite so, Ms. Tainaka. A performance worthy of acclaim."

"ALLERGIES!" Satoshi's hope that volume would get the point across fell flat before the older sister's and art critic's laughs. He gave up and walked away, pushing a frustrated growl under his breath. "I'm gonna make breakfast."

"Alright! I'm starving!" Her energy was back. "Omelet rice?"

"I am the best at it." Ritsu had to agree with him; if he and Ui ever worked together, she once mused, they could probably cook the best feast ever made.

"Then feed us!" She shoved her brother's retreating shoulder a bit to get him going. "I'll wash up a little." She addressed this to Mio, who nodded and walked to Ritsu's bedroom for her purse. She would have to explain to her father why she did not come home last night—with more than a few details left out, of course.

Both could hear Satoshi's words from down the hall:

"And put some new clothes on!"

To be continued...

About the story of Satomi Tainaka: I was inspired by a Religion in Japan college course lesson about kami. Rather than simply meaning "gods", the term can refer to just about anything inspiring awe, from deities (like sun goddess Amaterasu), to animals (like dogs—inugami), to natural formations (like waterfalls). Obviously, I picked the "animals" section, and poof, an origin began to form.

Better than the usual werewolf bite, huh? I hope so...

By the way, the name "Satomi" refers to Satomi Satou, the voice actor for everyone's favorite girl, Ritsu Tainaka.