In Which Common Sense is (not) Regained
Well.
Second day in a row in which I'm wrong about what's going to happen. Being Genre Savvy is only effective, it seems, if one knows what setting they're in.
Kuroha wasn't in school. Her empty seat was a jarring note, a pretty big sign right in my face of just how much I'd been off the mark.
My mood turned sullen for the rest of the day, even with the fact that I was remarkably comfortable throughout the entire day even in my winter uniform. The out-of-season uniform had gotten me more than a few stares, but I didn't care about that.
At the end of the day, the teacher called out Murakami, asking him to deliver some school documents to Kuroha that she had been missing some info on the records that the school had to keep track of. The proximity of her written home location to the observatory was pretty close enough to be a fairly short walk for Murakami, so he was being the one saddled with all the work.
"Heeey Mura~" I sidled up to him. "How is my fine fellow member of the Astrology club today?"
He returns a flat look at me. "Astronomy, not astrology. One is studying planets and stars, the other is hocus-pocus. And you've never been a member of the Astronomy club, I asked and you shot it down."
"No, I was the unofficial mascot all this time. And now, I guess we should both go to the observatory, eh?" I elbow his ribs.
He packs his bags, sighing. "Fine. But why are you so eager to come along? Did you fall for Kuroha?"
He freezes as I grab him by the shoulders and look him straight into the eyes. "Murakami. Repeat after me. NTR is a trash fetish. Kinkshaming is perfectly acceptable if targeted at NTR."
Murakami, clearly shaken up, nods slowly. "O-kay?" Satisfied, I let go of him and grab my own bag as we go.
-x-x-x-
"Aren't you bringing your bike?" Murakami asks. Leaving it behind must seem like a strange choice with how fast it can go, but it would just be dead weight.
I shake my head. "You don't have a bike, so my only options would be to just lug it around or to have you ride in the back somehow, and I don't want that many BL flags to rise in a 24 hour period. I've already walked out of a closet yesterday night."
We both made our way to the given location, Murakami simply following instructions and me going to check the place out. Kuroha hadn't exactly convinced me that she was some sort of cover-up genius with how the whole thing at school was dealt with, so some clues should still be there.
The walk up the hill must have been tiring, with how Murakami was sweating and slightly panting as we trekked upward. I was whistling a tune, comfortable as could be in my longsleeve jacket and thick pants that made it so that instead of experiencing the humid Japanese summer, I was experiencing the joys of a perfectly cool room. The dirty glares mixed with confused looks Mura sent me were glorious.
"So, you talked about your friend, Void." Mura says after some time passes. "I've only really met him once, when he came to school because of your suspension. You said yesterday that he was a magician as well. What did you mean?"
Huh. So he did remember that. Wait, he has perfect memory, of course he would remember. Fucking lucky bastard.
Hmm...what to say? Ah.
"He's an asshole." I state bluntly. "If the world were to have the sun rise in the west, the sky be black, and the moon to fart diamonds, he'd still be an asshole. He'd also probably be the asshole responsible for all that happening. With the reasoning, 'fuck it, I could.'"
"Um," Murakami looks off-put at my sudden declaration. "What can he do, then?"
"Check the box next to 'Anything' and you've got a decent start." I reply. His perplexed face brings back memories. I'm pretty sure that was close to what I looked like the first time Void realized his powers.
Any further questioning from Mura is cut short as the rumbling of vehicles announces the presence of what looks like three military convoys. I quickly grab Mura and have both of us face the side over the cliff's edge, turning our backs to the military vehicles. As they get out of view, I see the panic on Murakami's face, slowly spreading through his frame as he hurriedly walks to the location that Kuroha wrote as her home address.
"Damnit!" His fist hits hard wood as he punches the wooden railing of the open-air viewing area. Kuroha's address had lead us to this place, and it was certainly uninhabited, like Void had said.
"So, what now, Murakami?" I asked, arms crossed. "This isn't her home, obviously. D'ya think she's got a hideout nearby, or was this a complete red herring?"
"No…" Mura mumbles. "No. She escaped from a facility due to luck, so those people that looked like they had military cars, they're probably part of the organization after her. I don't know if she got caught yet, but we can only hope." The tension in his shoulder slowly bleeds out, as he straightens out and starts thinking more clearly.
"There's got to be something near here that'll give us a clue as to where Kuroha is. She escaped by chance, and she'd been in that facility for her entire life; I think it's safe to say that she doesn't have outside contacts or much help."
Ahh, there's the smart Mura that thinks things through. He's sharp, and his memory is definitely a powerful weapon. But his analysis is one of the things that really makes him shine. "Lead the way then, brave Club Leader."
-x-x-x-
A short ways away from the wooden observatory, we stumbled upon a fence with warning signs telling people to keep out. Mura and I shared a look, and we both started to climb up the fence, scaling the obstruction easily and landing on the other side with a light thud. Both of us knew what could happen if we were caught here, but that didn't matter at this point.
"A deserted village...right, there was something like this here." Mura mumbled.
"Mind filling me in?" I asked. The area was certainly ruined. Cars that looked like they were being swallowed up by nature, crumbling houses, and ramshackle remains of what could have been a nice little village brought to mind some unpleasant thoughts, especially considering we were looking for a "witch" who had escaped from some sort of shady facility through luck.
"The place was supposed to have sunk into a dam, but the plans for the dam were halted midway, and the place was just left like this." Mura explained as we continued to go through the place, looking for any signs of human life.
It didn't take long for us to hear the humming. The childish lyrics… made me wonder just how old Kuroha was. It was obvious enough it was Kuroha, judging by-
"Neko-san appears gallantly, everyone's favorite~"
Yeah.
"Um, Kuroha?" Mura calls out.
The black-haired girl goes stock still, and slowly turns to face the two of us, face crimson red. "...What?"
"You seem to be in surprisingly good spirits with your humming…" Mura points out, the tension leaving his shoulders. Straight man status, level up!
"What do you want! Why did you come here?!" Kuroha shouts, off-put by our sudden appearance. I'd be embarrassed if anybody else heard me humming in the shower as well, don't worry Kuroha, it's natural. Doesn't mean that I'm not going to remember every bit of that song you sung for future reference.
Mura searches through his bag and pulls out the papers the homeroom teacher had given him. "These are documents for school. You need to fill them in and hand them in by tomorrow."
Kuroha turns away from him, her back to Mura. "Didn't I already tell you? That I'm not going to school tomorrow."
"Huh," I muse aloud, "Woulda thought a girl like you would want nothing more than an ordinary life. Why'd you throw that all away, then?"
Her face turns into a frown, sadness and defeat settling into her frame. "Because I know I can't. Why do you get involved with me, anyway? Just leave me alone. It's troublesome."
"Kuroha, why did you help me when I was going to die from the mudslide?" Murakami speaks up. Death by mudslide? It's official, fuck nature and anything that could possibly be a god of bad luck.
"When you know that someone is about to die, and that you may be able to help them, are you just going to do nothing?" The witch responds.
"Void would, nine times out of ten." I grumble, then shut up once more, to let them have their own tense atmosphere.
"I'm the same." Murakami declares. "I can't just leave someone alone who will be killed if she's found. Let me help you. You can't continue like this, without knowing math or even kanji after being locked up in that research lab for 10 years."
"I-it's not like that kind of stuff even matters!" Kuroha replies, flustered at Mura's blunt tearing down of her skills. "Doing times tables and stuff wouldn't even help with daily life!"
"Please don't talk about that sort of stuff like it's Calculus or Trigonometry…" Mura sighs.
"You guys, things should work out decently if you resolve this insane sexual tension between the two of you." I say flippantly. The two blush a nice shade of red, which brings a smile to my face.
The moment of happiness is shattered by a girl's scream ringing out through the air, causing all of us to jerk in surprise and turn to where the scream originated from.
"The shrine?" I wondered. I step forwards to the shrine, confused. "What's going on her-"
A cloud of dust plumes upward as the ground at my feet explodes and creates a hole that could have been me if I had stepped any further. Mura and I both freeze, looking at Kuroha in shock.
"Go home." The cold tone of Kuroha's match her almost lifeless eyes. Murakami wavers, shaken. That made sense. He was normal.
Me? I made a mad dash to the shrine, sprinting with all my might and disappearing faster than Kuroha must have expected, judging by the sound of an explosion right on my heels.
Gathering my strength, I leaped. There was no other word for it. My feet flew through the air, jumping the entire length of the distance and onto the roof of the house, landing without even a light clack. Anti-grav shoes, check. Still proving their worth.
I tapped the roof lightly with my foot, wary that it was going to give out on me any moment. I looked back to where Kuroha and Mura were, and sighed as I saw their reactions. Right.
Mura was understandably confused and pretty much out of his depth. I'd been his friend for a while, 2 months, yet he'd only found out the truth about Void yesterday and I hadn't explained all of the oddities that being with Void basically guaranteed. The things I had just done were clearly beyond the norm, with my insane speed and jump from the uniform's boosts clear evidence that what he knew -everything about "normal" people- was shattered.
Kuroha, though, was more odd. Just from seeing my jump and dash, even though it had been beyond human standards, she was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Was I really that scary? Did I remind her of something else? Well, no way of telling. I stepped forward, tensing up to hop off the roof-
And promptly crash through the rotted wood and into the shrine. "Owwww…" I whine. "That fucking stings. Hope I didn't get any splinters or something." I stood up and brushed myself off, not a mark on my uniform. The wood was also blunted and shredded around me, more than a few pieces of long wood almost having impaled me but instead just bouncing off my clothes.
A loud shriek pierced my ears once more, the sound seeming more mechanical now that I was closer to it. Covering my ears in irritation, I looked around and saw in the room across from me what looked like a full-sized gothic doll. Except, this doll didn't have the visible joints, any line marks, or overdone makeup, just the eerie stillness.
"Get away from me, you creep!" A girl's voice called out, originating from the same mechanical kind of sound as the scream.
Looking more closely, the doll-like girl was actually a girl. Just paralyzed, apparently, given how she could move her hand to type on that keyboard type of machinery.
"Uhhh…" I blankly responded. "Sorry for dropping in?" Damn that pun. Damn it to hell. "Were you the one screaming?"
"Yes! Kuroha, save me!" She continues to "shout".
Kuroha and Murakami come barreling in, panting and searching through the house in a panic, before their eyes finally fall on me. "Step away from Kana." Kuroha demands.
I shrug with complete nonchalance as I step backwards. "Thought the screaming was a poor tortured soul you had hidden in the basement. Glad to know that's not the case." One Gerbils was enough. His diet was hella hard to deal with. Carrying that much meat down to the basement was always a chore.
Kicking a few stray pieces of wood aside, I start looking around. "Do you guys have tea? I'm pretty thirsty. Don't worry about the mess, I'll take care of it."
"Please leave." Kuroha repeats firmly. The strength of her voice hadn't wavered, but it had gained a more wary tone to it.
"Nah, this place seems comfy." I reply. "Better some wood and nature than a stark square cube, eh?" Wait a minute...if they're really this badly off, they probably wouldn't have any good tea...shit. I've been spoiled. Why the fuck don't I carry tea in my bag of holding? Note to self, keep good tea in bag for the future.
Mura walks forward and looks Kuroha in the eyes. "Please, Kuroha." Her gaze doesn't soften, but she nods, and turns to go into the kitchen.
Sitting down on the floor, Mura hesitantly joins me. "Well Murakami, how do you feel now? Better, now that we've found your potentially long-lost childhood friend again?"
"I...don't know." Mura responds. Figures. He's pretty much in shock. Can't blame him.
"What's wrong with you both?" Ah, the doll speaks. "You, the one wearing a winter uniform in summer comfortably, you fell from the roof into the house, and you don't even have a scratch on you! And you, the wimpy noodle tagalong! Why are you even here, you creepy stalker!"
"Kana!" Kuroha admonishes from the doorway. She walks in, tea in hand for both of us. "We don't have much, but this is tea we have." The tea is passed to our hands directly, making the slight shaking of Kuroha's hands all the more noticeable.
I take a small sip, and immediately begin to retch. Wildgrass tea. Wildgrass tea. Dear God, what did I do to deserve this? I knew they would have limited options and the tea would probably suck, but this? No. No. Carefully waiting for a moment when Kuroha was busy looking over Kana and Murakami was trying unsuccessfully to swallow the tea himself, I use my enhanced speed to throw the contents of the tea cup out through the window behind me, before returning to my original pose, calm.
"So, who are you?" Kana asks bluntly. "Neko says you have some ridiculous strength and speed for a human, but males aren't witches. Are you from the facility, or something else?"
"First off, my enhanced...well, almost everything, that's not me. That's my clothes." I say. "As for who I am, I can definitely confirm that I am something else. That is, a normal human."
"Impossible!" Kana cries out. "That doesn't make any sense at all!"
"Dunno what you wanted to hear, but I'm most certainly a normal guy." I reply. "Sure, I can Jump Good, and Run FAST when I Gotta Go Fast, but other than that, pretty normal."
"What." Mura blanks out. "What."
"Well yeah, I got everything I need to be amazing. All provided by my asshole of a housemate, but still, he does good stuff from time to time." I answer. "It still doesn't make up for how many times he's fucked up the roof, the attic, and the portal to hell that is the basement."
"Wait, wait. Go back." Kana says. "Is your housemate from the facility? How can he do all this?"
I scratch my chin and think. "Well, if we're thinking about the same facility, then he was the IT guy there. He manages to do all this by sheer levels of assholishness that he reaches through endless trolling and simple enjoyment. Of course, he'd tell you something along the lines of his balls being magical or whatnot."
Mura and Kuroha seemed confused by my words, as though I had said something utterly ridiculous. Well, I had, but they were magicians too. Did this really strain their suspension of disbelief so much.
"Then, if he was from the same facility, then you should know at least a few things." Kana firmly responds. "Like what the lowest possible ranking for a witch is, and how the higher ranked ones are codenamed."
Probing questions, eh? Obviously I wouldn't know the answer to them, so might as well guess.
"I don't know what the ranking or code names for you witches are at all. What, do you go from a letter system starting from D all the way to S? And are your codenames all hilariously Japanese?"
Kuroha frowns at my response. "No, the witches who survive are ranked from B to AAA, and the higher ranks all have these foreign code names, like Valkyria."
"Huh. Norse mythos. Seems fitting, yet not." Here's to hoping that this manga wasn't going to try and take the Norse comparisons all the way with some sort of Ragnarok. "Anything else?"
Kuroha looks awkwardly at Kana as she fidgets a bit in place, obviously uncomfortable with the current mood. Mura sputters a bit as he takes another cautious sip of his own tea to be courteous. Hah. Wait, I still have the aftertaste in my mouth. Shit.
Reverting back to age-old procedures, I dug through my bag, and pulled out some of the food Void had set to the side for me if I had really gotten hungry. Opening the container, I took out today's meal. Braised short rib with some spices for taste, mash potatoes, a red wine sauce, and sauteed green beans with a drink of choice.
As soon as I had pulled out the meal, all three of them had drool coming from their mouths as the smell wafted over to them. Mura and Kuroha had adopted similar expressions and began inching closer to my lunch, causing me to slowly back away. "Hey Jin, you're sharing, right?" Mura asked more than a little expectantly.
"Nooo! I want to eat this great-smelling food too!" Kana shouts, stuck to her place on the bed.
Nothing cuts through an awkward air like really good food I guess. "Uh, sure you guys. Just...back off a bit, 'kay?" I held a hand out to try and keep them away.
They both settle down a bit as I take an appreciative bite first for myself, letting the glorious taste soothe my crying taste buds. Yes, life is beautiful again.
Breaking out of the trance with practiced ease, I cut up the meat and divvied up the meal to give the rest of them something to eat. Mura started eating ravenously, as Kuroha took one of the meals and looks at Kana piteously as she hesitates.
"Something the matter?" I ask.
"Kana...well, she can't really eat solids. I ground up the food for her, but this…" Kuroha looks downcast.
Shrugging, I rummaged through my bag, sticking my arm in and searching. Void probably stuck something in here… "Well, those are my books, that's the ice shaving machine, that's my pencilcase, oh that's my long lost Latin book, and…" Reaching in a bit further, my fingers stretch out and grab onto the object, pulling it out firmly and dropping multiple other items to fill in its space in the confines of my bag.
"Ta-da! A portable blending machine!" I dutifully ignore the sticky note put on it in Void's handwriting, hoping that the twitch in my eye wasn't too noticeable.
As Kuroha took the machine from my hands, Mura looked over her shoulder and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "Why does it say 'Margaritas' in English? And what is a Margarita?"
"Nothing. Important." I state with a sweet smile and closed eyes, signaling the death of that particular discussion before it would even begin.
Kuroha begins to blend the food as Kana quietly cries before tasting the food, and cries happily after eating the food. Foodgasms are a literal thing. Godlike cooking is a literal thing. I take a moment to just look back and wonder, how I had gotten here, and how this was almost the norm now. Least I don't pop a boner anymore. Neither does Mura thankfully, or maybe it's just cause I can't tell. Asian dick jokes are eternal, even if I am Asian myself.
After that entire scene, everyone winded down and began to discuss our future plans. Kuroha wouldn't be coming to school in order to stay safe, Kana was stuck here by provision of being paralyzed, and Mura and I would come back here after the school day to bring meals. Mura and I left the two witches to their own peace.
-x-x-x-
Tired and worn out, I trudged back into my home as night settled. I'd had to come home without my bike because the bus was too fucking slow to be able to go to the school and back. At the very least I wasn't dying from the heat and humidity thanks to my clothes. Clothes 1 - Weather 99.
Quietly opening the door, I walked in and saw Void playing on the coffee table, or rather, what used to be the coffee table. The last time I was in the kitchen, the table wasn't exactly capable of playing Starcraft as a holographic device.
"Soc, I need your APM to help me here, I stumbled into the Korean servers." Void says as his hands blur over the coffee table, not even able to spare a moment to glance up at me.
I pause for a moment as I continue to watch Void's Terran forces be bogged down in an endless wave of Zergs without mercy, ripping apart everything he had as he was attacked from at least three different directions at each major conflict point. "Wow man, you really suck. There's a reason this is a PC game, the keyboard lets you jump around and be more effective y'know." I say dryly.
"I haven't found all the keys and shortcuts yet, this is still new to me man." Void replies with panic in his voice, as his Battlecruiser signaled its premature death at the hands of the Zerg.
"Well, you obviously don't have enough hands for this." I state as his hands move even faster, trying to cover the entire span of the coffee table in approximately 0.3 seconds. "Want some more?"
"That is a great idea!" Void says as he snaps his fingers and an extra pair of arms pop out from his back and proceed to try and continue the futile struggle, only to get tangled up with his normal hands and flop around, resulting in him banging on the coffee table and accidentally turning the power off.
"I'll call that a tie." Void says as he retracts the two arms and leans back.
Well. Moment of truth. Time to see if I could convince Void.
"Void, Mura and I found Kuroha and a friend of hers hiding in an abandoned old town. We did manage to convince them that we weren't from the evil organization of evil with tiers of suspicious EVUUUHL, so we've got a decent amount of trust."
Void nods, and beckons for me to continue. I kind of doubted that he was still listening, but no point in giving it a shot.
"So… do you think you could find it in your tiny heart to help out the girls?" Immediately after the words came out of my mouth, I knew I had fucked up.
"Uhh, no." Void replied flatly. "Don't give a fuck. Speaking of handouts, did you leave your bike at school again or did you just leave it? Or...did you drive it off the cliff again?"
My left eye begins to twitch at Void's statement. "For the last fucking time. You were the one who set up a shitty Mario Kart knockoff track without the Lakitu's to fish out the people who go over the side."
"Aw come on man, I forgot! It's not like you remember all the details of all the games you play." Void shrugs. "Besides, you had your uniform on, it's not like you were really hurt. I don't see what the problem was."
"It's a problem when you made the course hazard fucking lava." I ground out from my teeth. "But in any case, that's not the real issue here. If you could make some food for me to lug around, that'd be great. Just think of it as me pulling off bullshit magic tricks to make them confused. Is that better?"
Void gives an unassuming "Meh." That could mean literally anything when it came to him. Was it 'Meh, whatever, you can do it', 'Meh, you should feed Gerbils now', or 'Meh, let's go reenact the craziest scenes of Rick and Morty'?
Before I can question his Meh-language skills, I feel my bag become significantly heavier, despite the weight reduction that was worked into it. I gave a nod to Void, who decided to turn the table into a 2-d projector and let a computer program that gave shrill, 12 year old sounding screams into the mike every few seconds loop as he joined a room for a shooter game.
Making my way up the stairs, not even 30 seconds had passed till Void screamed in outrage. "What the hell is this bullshit!" I looked back and saw a kill cam showing someone spinning in the air before apparently taking Void out from halfway across the map. "So much for feeling like playing a shooter. Ugh."
I know that feeling bro. I know it so well.
Mind at ease, I got into my room, shut the closet while glaring at it, and went to sleep.