What can I say about this chapter? There are finally some explanations about Harry's state, people asking to be eaten (not kidding, want am I even writing...) and finally, a really big spoiler. For pretty much everyone as the chapter 142 hasn't been translated yet. Yes, I'm that evil.
And, now, to answer the anons:
Pyrokitty: Harry will find out for the books at the end of the prelude. It's near though.
iie: Harry's an idiot and it won't change until he realizes that he's in no other world. But don't worry, once the true story begins, he will get back to his clever and badass self.
Reirei: It's a miracle but I updated.
And that's it, I hope that you'll enjoy this chapter.
"For the last fucking time, I don't know you! I've never heard of you before you called so leave me alone!"
Harry hung up the phone and thrummed his fingers on the greasy glass of the telephone booth, his green eyes darkening in worry as he remembered the previous call. Hermione hadn't answered his call but a total stranger did. The man had seemed aggravated, saying that he had had enough of Japanese calling him at the middle of the night when he had to sleep because he was a working man, you know? He had to wake up early and go to his work so could he please stop the fuck with the impromptu calls?
The wizard leaned his head against the glass, his eyes watching without really seeing the crowd outside of the telephone booth. He took a deep breath and let out a shaky sigh.
"Merlin, Potter," Harry weakly whispered. "In what kind of shit did you fall..."
The wizard faintly laughed and closed his eyes.
No Japanese Aurors to contact, Hermione's trusty telephone number having been suddenly relocated to an angry muggle, and his stomach was rumbling unhappily because he still hadn't ate something since he woke up in that little coffee house.
He was just so fucked.
Harry took another shuddery sigh and immediately tensed when he felt something tap lightly against the telephone booth glass. He opened his eyes and glared at whoever had disturbed his self-pitying moment but refrained from doing it when he saw a perfect stranger smiling gently at him. The wizard narrowed his eyes and didn't move from his spot inside the telephone booth. He didn't know that man and was pretty sure that the latter had never seen him.
Yet the man, a typical Japanese with dark hair and brown eyes, was smiling at him like he was an old friend.
Harry shuddered under those heartwarming eyes and smile, and felt something akin to a tingle run over his back and move until it concentrated over his shoulder blades. His pupils thinned into two slits and he felt his mouth water when the stranger tapped another time the glass and articulated something.
"You." Harry furrowed his brows and leaned at bit more over the glass to better see those lips move. "Must." The noise outside was so loud that he couldn't hear what the stranger was saying. Yet he could decipher it from his lips. "Be." Harry widened his eyes. Maybe that stranger was an Auror? It was possible, maybe they had been delayed by all those demons roaming their streets.
"Hungry," the stranger said and at the same time broke all of Harry's illusions.
So it wasn't an Auror but a gentle soul who had noticed his hunger.
Harry frowned.
How could have this perfect stranger known that he was hungry when he had been in a telephone booth and his stomach rumbles couldn't have been heard?
The tingle on his shoulder blades increased.
Harry shuddered, his breath coming out in little pants while his pupils widened until they were framed by two thin green circles.
The stranger's brown eyes morphed into black and red, the crowd not noticing it as he had pressed his face against the telephone booth. They were now nose to nose, only separated by a thin glass. Harry couldn't move, his heart was loudly beating in his chest and he could hear his blood rush to his head.
The demon's face morphed into a grimace of despair and his red pupils became mere dots.
"So eat me," the stranger breathed out in a pained and shuddering voice.
The wizard blinked, trying to push aside the panic blooming in his chest and the pain blossoming on his shoulder blades, and nervously licked his lips. As he did so, the green eyed man noticed an unknown flavor in the air and gulped. That smell had increased his hunger by heaps and he quickly began to breathe by his mouth, unwilling to smell it again. Harry shook his head and fixed his gaze on the demon outside, the latter was still grimacing in pain, as if he had been forced to come out to him.
"W-why are you telling me that?" Harry asked in a whisper even if a glass separated them and the cacophony outside probably smothered his voice.
The demon's face contracted in pain and his breath briefly fogged the glass.
"Eat me."
Harry widened his eyes when he clearly heard the male's voice in the midst of the outside noise.
"Eat me," the demon said in a seemingly pleading voice. "But stop Calling us... It hurts."
"What are you..." Harry furrowed his brows and asked.
But before he could even finish his sentence, the demon's face contorted into pure pain and the wizard widened his eyes in horror when he saw what had cause the stranger's pain. A purplish red tentacle had pierced the demon right on his chest and his blood was now dripping on all over the telephone booth.
Harry faintly heard screams and screeches, white noise buzzing in his ears while he observed with shocked eyes the tentacle come out of the demon's chest in a slow motion, blood gushing from the hole, and return to a figure standing in front of the telephone booth.
It was a teenager girl, her face smirking with contempt at him before she swiftly turned on her heels and left with the panicked crowd.
Standing in the telephone booth, Harry looked at the deathly injured demon leaning over the door and gulped. He could feel trickle of saliva coming out of his mouth and his stomach was as empty as ever. The smell of blood was hovering around him, pressuring him.
Harry closed his eyes and willed himself to disappear.
He apparated with a loud crackle, his empty stomach turning and leaving him on his knees while he loudly heaved, his fingers digging on the moist ground while he tried to not retch his bile all over the grass. Without success though.
"M-mister? Are you ok?"
A tiny and childish voice faintly echoed around him. Harry groaned weakly and tried to get back on his feet. However, a new fit of heaves racked through his body and he tumbled on his retchings.
"Mister!" This time, the child sounded preoccupied and almost panicked.
Harry coughed and weakly wiped his dirty mouth. He slowly knelt in the midst of his waste and finally glanced around him. He promptly recognized his surroundings, it was the small playground where he had brooded hours ago. Except that it was pretty empty now and that creepers were probably coming out now.
But that didn't explain why there was a little boy looking at him with worrying eyes.
"Yeah," the wizard finally answered, reverting to English without even noticing it. "I'm fine."
The boy furrowed his brows and tilted his head before he scrunched his nose.
"Sorry, me not speak English," the kid said in a broken English and making at the same time Harry smile fondly at him.
"No," the latter whispered while he faintly shook his head and made sure that he was speaking in Japanese, "I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm alright."
The kid frowned, his honest face expressing how he hadn't been fooled by the adult's answer and Harry smiled another time.
The rumbling in his stomach had finally receded and he could finally breathe without feeling saliva pooling in his mouth. His nostrils flared a bit when he smelled a sweet and almost nostalgic smell coming from the little boy.
Harry wiped his mouth and took a deep breath, the clean smell coming from the kid calming his panicked mind and he closed his eyes, remembering faintly his son and wife.
"I'm alright," he repeated with a stronger voice. "I'm alright and everything will be alright."
The kid furrowed his brows and pursed his lips. It was evident that he didn't believe the wizard but he didn't say anything, his dark eyes looking with a eerily intense stare at the latter. The little boy hugged his book closer to his chest and hesitated for a brief moment before he swiftly bowed, his ruffled locks hanging lopsidedly over his forehead, and he left the playground without a word.
But Harry didn't mind it, he was too busy thinking over his next move. He needed to contact his friends and family. He was already planning on hacking a boat so he could go back to Europe (or even China, he wasn't difficult) when something disturbed his plans.
The kid stumbled over a rock and fell on the dusty ground.
Even if Harry had already enough in his plate (with his sudden idiocy, apparating in Japan and whatnot), he didn't have a sole bad bone in him. Therefore, he couldn't ignore the kid who had fell right in front of him.
The adult promptly walked towards the fallen kid and swiftly knelt, his waiter pants getting dirty with the dust and dirt, before he glanced with worried eyes at the boy. The latter was curled on the ground, his forehead leaning over his forearms while he gnawed on his lips. His face was scrunched over in pain and he was breathing in deep breaths, something that Harry was pretty familiar as he had done the same when he was a child and had been beaten by Dudley.
The kid was hurt but didn't want anyone else to know it.
Harry frowned and bit pensively his lips. Asking the boy if he needed help would only hurt his feelings. That much he knew. But he still wanted to help him.
"Are you able to stand up?" he asked after a little while during which the boy stayed still.
The latter slowly lifted his head and raised his eyes until they fell on Harry's face. The adult was expressing genuine worry for the boy and the younger male let out a shaky sigh before he weakly nodded and began to move. He swiftly stood up, his right arm dusting his clothes while the left one continued hugging his book against his chest.
Harry sighed in relief and smiled wearily at the kid, discreetly checking if the boy had an injury. And, just as his eyes were passing over the kid's knees and reaching his stomach covered by a slightly filthy shirt, the wizard felt his heart stop.
Mostly because he had finally seen the title of the child's book.
The adult nervously moistened his lips and coughed, he felt as if his throat was constricted by something and he could hear his heartbeat echoing in his head.
"Thank you mister," the boy said in a meek voice.
Harry didn't hear him and blinked, his eyes taken by the book.
"That book," he whispered just as the boy was readying himself to leave the playground for sure.
"Yes?" the kid had been taken aback by his question and he stopped walking, turning his head to look with wide eyes at the adult.
"That book," Harry repeated with a stronger voice as his face paled. "Can I see it?"
The boy furrowed his brows and took a small step back.
Harry opened his mouth but quickly shut it. He could see why he had scared the kid and didn't have anything to say to appease him. So he just stayed quiet and waited for the boy to decide if he was going to show him his book or just run away.
Frankly speaking, Harry would have run.
But the boy just knitted his brows and, munching over his lips, reluctantly gave him his book.
"Thank you," the wizard told him in a breathless voice.
Harry didn't hear the boy's answer, his eyes taken by the title and he began to turn the pages, sometimes stopping to read some lines and promptly going back of turning the pages.
Everything, from every little word, was an accurate depiction of his first year at Hogwarts. Everything.
The tingling feeling over his shoulder blades came back and the dryness in his mouth increased until Harry felt as if he was dying. He closed the book and glanced at the author's name, furrowing his brows when he saw the unfamiliar name.
"Where did you buy it?" he asked when the sudden thought that it could be one of his biographies came to his mind.
The kid was surely from a wizard family. Harry knew that his name was famous even in Asia. That boy was his ticked to go back home.
"At the XXX library," the kid answered with a puzzled look. "In the foreigners section..."
Great, Harry nodded to himself with a decided expression and, after biding the kid a goodbye, he left the playground with a small hop in his steps. He had finally a lead to go home! Finally!
The wizard traveled until he found the said library and quickly lost all of his spirit when he found out that the shop was closed for the night. However, it only meant that he had to wait for the morning to finally see if there was a wizard at the counter to help him.
"Great," Harry muttered to himself as he looked around him to find if there was a place where he could crash for the night.
It was a busy road with a lot of closed for the night shops and cafés still open for whoever wanted to drink and eat something. But no hotel at the sight. The wizard sighed and he tried to muffle his stomach's rumbles as the latter was still going strong. Of course, he could always find a hotel room and get back to the XXX library tomorrow morning. In fact, it would be the logical thing to do. However, Harry didn't want to move from his spot. Or rather, he felt as if he couldn't.
His empty stomach had finally got the better of him and his shivering legs didn't want to move. The wizard briefly tried to apparate away, maybe to the strange cafe where he had woken up that morning.
But it was all for nought as Harry couldn't even concentrate a sliver of his magic.
He slowly fell on the ground, in front of all the bystanders and some of them stopped to look at him with face filled with pity. Harry couldn't find in him the will to get up and leave, to stop being their object of pity.
He was just so tired. And the tingling in his shoulder blades had increased into a dull pain that distracted him from finally using his magic.
And, just as he was about to fall unconscious on the ground, Harry felt something poke his head.
He slightly grunted but didn't move. Couldn't move.
"Heeeey," a female voice muttered above him. "You alive?"
Harry fainted.
When he woke up, Harry was surprised to find out that he wasn't in a street or being eaten by somebody. (Yes, that part had really traumatized him)
Instead, he was laying on a dusty couch and he could faintly heard a clock ticking somewhere in the room. The wizard slowly sat on the couch, his eyes looking everywhere for his glasses and he let out a small relieved sigh when he found them on the little table in front of the couch. Once he had his glasses on his nose, Harry glanced around him and blinked in surprise. He wasn't in a hospital nor in that little café, but in a dusty room full of books. They were everywhere, on the shelves, on the floor and he even saw one laying open on the door handle. That sight comforted him, it reminded him of Hermione.
"Ah, you're awake!"
A small voice shook him from his memories and Harry tensed when he noticed that there had been someone else in the room that he hadn't seen before. It was a teenager girl with ruffled brown hair and wide eyes shining with curiosity. She was nursing a cup full of dark coffee and, just as Harry looked at her, she drank a little sip of it while dangling her legs from her spot on the kitchen counter.
"W-wh..." Harry spluttered as he tried to understand how he had ended with a teen during his unconsciousness.
"Who? What? Why? When? Where?" the girl tilted her head with a wide grin and she took another sip of her coffee. "I could say the same thing but I'll let you be the first to ask them!"
Harry clenched his fingers on his trousers and took a deep breath. The girl was throwing him out of the loop, he couldn't let her do it.
"Why did you take me here?" Harry asked her after considering what kind of question would be better with the teenager.
"Good question but you could have done better," the girl nodded with a small huff. "First," she raised a finger and grinned at him, "I took you here because you were causing quite a ruckus in the street. And second," another finger up. "Let's get over with the trivia! Who are you?"
"Harry Potter," the wizard reluctantly answered her.
The girl pursed her lips and suddenly smacked them as if she had had an idea.
"Like the Potter book?" she asked him.
Harry perked up and widened his eyes.
"Yes," he almost quivered with excitation on the couch. "You read it?"
"Who didn't?" the girl retorted with a small shrug. "It was distracting enough, a magical world hidden from our eyes, where creatures from all kind of legends coexisted with wizards... But the protagonist's innocence won't last long though, not with the foreshadowing. He did kill a man when he was eleven."
Harry felt all of his hopes crumble down as he slowly realized that the book was mere fiction for the girl.
"So it isn't real?" he muttered to himself. "It isn't a biography?"
"Oh?" the girl cooed as she cocked her head in a bird like action. "Could you perhaps be the Harry Potter from the book? Was the stick in your pocket your wand?"
"Was?" Harry stressed over that simple word and bolted from the couch to shook the girl by her shoulders. "What did you do with it?!"
"Don't worry," the girl told him with a smile. "It's right here." She patted the kitchen counter with her right hand and Harry sighed in relief when he saw his wand.
He quickly took it in his hand and flexed his wrist, red sparks coming from the tip of his wand.
"I see," the girl whispered with an amazed voice. "You're really him! Would that mean that you got out of the book?"
Harry furrowed his brows and actually considered that option.
The Skrewts had never been a regularized species and no one knew what kind of power they really had. So it could be that he had indeed crossed universes. Even if it all felt really wrong with him and that he just wanted to go back to his home, drink a Butterbeer with his wife and then go to sleep.
However, no matter how much he wished for it to happen, Harry was still stuck in a dusty apartment with a total stranger with no means to get back home. But that didn't mean that Harry was going to let it affect him and wear him down.
First, he needed to understand that new world. And then he would look for a way to go back to his.
"Yes," he answered with a decided tone.
The girl briefly squealed and she jumped from the counter to prance around the wizard, eyeing him analytically.
"I see, I see!" she repeated with enthusiasm. "How old are you? Did you kill Voldemort? Did you die?"
"Twenty-eight, yes, no."
The girl's dark eyes twinkled in happiness and she acquiesced before she suddenly calmed down.
"You need to tell me everything," she told him with a serious voice. "But first, we need to do something with your abilities."
"Abilities?" Harry raised a perplexed eyebrow and waited for the girl to explain herself.
"The Call," the latter shrugged as she went back to the counter to take her cup. "You're calling for help like a madman. It's one of the reasons that made me took you, you know? You were Calling every ghoul in the ward."
Calling every ghoul? Harry furrowed his brows even more and suddenly remembered how the two demons had talked about him during his brief madness. And how that doctor hadn't stopped interrogating him about ghouls.
"Ghouls," he said to make a point. "They aren't harmless and noisy creatures here, right?"
"They are like that in the book?" the girl seemed interested and weirdly amused by that fact but she quickly began to smile once more. "They are like humans here. Except that they eat humans."
"Do they have black eyes with red pupils?"
The girl's smile widened.
"Yes," she approved. "They have kakugans (that's the name of their eyes, by the way) and kagunes. The last ones are their weapons. Their form varies from ghoul to ghoul."
"Can those kagune look like black wings?" Harry inquired as he remembered the white haired demon.
"So you met someone with a ukaku," the girl commented. "That's the name of the kakugans that are on the shoulders. They are other names too, koukaku for under the shoulder blade, rinkaku for the middle of the back and the bikaku for the end of it. They have all their weaknesses and strong points though."
"You seem to know a lot about ghouls," the wizard pointed with a small frown.
"I've read a good book about it. And I'm good at observing people," the girl rebuffed with a shrug. "What about you? How did a wizard end up like a ghoul?"
"A magical creature sent me here and I've been sick," Harry simply answered. "What about that 'call'? How do I stop doing it?"
"By eating," the girl grinned at him and put down her cup on the counter before she sauntered to the fridge. "This should be enough."
Harry suddenly remembered the horrible time with the chocolate snack as well as how the teenager back in the café had told him to eat him. Or how everyone, or rather every ghoul, he had met since had asked him to eat them.
"I can't eat humans," he told to the girl even if it was impossible that she stored human meat in her fridge. She was human after all.
"You can't? Or you don't want to?" she asked him with her two eyebrows raised in a mock pity.
"Not that," Harry retorted. "Even if it won't sit well with me, I would eat it if it was the only thing I could eat. I need to live if I want to get back home."
And it was true. Harry was ready to do anything to get back to his world. Anything.
"Could you perhaps be a kakuja?" the girl tilted her head and her smile widened even more. "You do smell like one."
"Kakuja?" Harry was getting tired of all those new words. But he felt as if he had already heard those words before.
"A cannibalistic ghoul," the girl's smile was now a toothy grin. "Like me."
Harry felt a shiver run on his back and he quickly pointed his wand to the girl's chest, his heart beating madly as he considered all of the possible ways to escape from the dusty apartment. He immediately began to concentrate so he could apparate away.
"Don't worry," the girl told him without ever stopping to smile. "I won't eat you. Not when you have such an interesting story that I still have to hear!"
That didn't relax Harry at all.
"I'll teach everything that you need to know and even more," she added with a calm voice even if her eyes shone with dark excitement. "How to fight the Doves, how to lure out ghouls and all the good spots in Tokyo. What do you think about it?"
Harry's wand didn't move from the girl's chest and the wizard didn't even dare to blink. He had seen how fast those demons, no they were ghouls, moved.
"I'd need a place to sleep and something to eat regularly," he finally breathed without moving. "And I need to know something."
"My house is your house," the girl opened her arms to engulf the dingy and dusty room with the tiny kitchen. "What do you want to know?"
"Two things," Harry clarified as the tip of his wand lightened threateningly. "First, is it normal for ghouls to have fits of unexplained idiocy?"
"Depends on what you consider idiocy," the girl scrunched her face and scratched her neck. "What happened to you?"
"I went back to the hospital where I knew that some kind of policeman wanted to interrogate me," the wizard reluctantly admitted. "And then I apparated in a backstreet and killed three men before I went into a further state of madness."
"Pardon me if this sound really rude but were you wet?"
Harry blinked in shock and almost lost his hold on his wand.
"What?" he squeaked. Yes, he, Harry Potter, proud Auror of the wizard British Isles, had squeaked like some random squeaky toy.
"I mean," the girl sighed and shrugged. She seemed almost annoyed and bashful to ask him such a thing but still did it. "When you had that fit of madness, after you killed those men (did you even eat them?), were you wet down there? As in was there some self-lubricant falling from your bottom?"
Harry blushed like a schoolgirl who was given her first sex ed. Or like a grown man who had been asked if he had gotten wet after killing three men. So, yes. He blushed until his face (and upper torso) became sherry red.
"Y-yes," he squeaked. Again.
The girl took a deep sigh. It seemed that she was as disturbed as he was. And that was slightly comforting for him because he was pretty much lost right now.
"Then the answer is obvious," she sighed. "You didn't get mad but you went into your first heat. Was there some ghoul when it began?"
"Just one," Harry answered as he remembered the dem-ghoul with the hair pulled back by a headband.
"Was it a male?"
The wizard nodded.
"Well," the girl shrugged as if she didn't care about what happened. "I hope that you're in friendly terms with him because next time that you will go into heat, you'll search for him."
"As in," Harry furrowed his brows and scowled in disgust. "A mate?"
"No," the teenager shook her head and chuckled darkly. "While ghouls do believe in the concept of mates, it doesn't happen like that. He's just something like your temporary proctor."
"Proctor," the man repeated as he branded that word in his mind.
"It's the name for those who protect weak ghouls when they go into heat. They act like mates yet aren't. You should be wary because they can get really bossy and annoying," she told him with another shrug.
"Do you have one?" Harry inquired as he suddenly remembered that the girl was a ghoul as well.
"No," she coldly retorted.
Harry was clever enough to understand that pushing that matter further would only end badly. So he decided to get back to the heat subject because it was weirdly fascinating to think that he, a grown male, could get into one.
"How often does a heat happen? Once a month? Once a year?" he asked before he suddenly thought of something. "And why does men also have them?"
"They happen once every two months and last five days, a week max," the girl immediately answered. "Male's heat are rare but happen. Their pregnancies never end well though."
"Pregnancy?" Harry squeaked. For the third time of the day. He was getting tired of it.
That or he was getting tired of being so shocked and terrified by mere words.
"Why do you think that there are heats?" the teen snorted. "Everything is there to reproduce, you know?"
"Right," Harry weakly muttered as he ran a hand through his hair.
He slowly went to sit in the couch as his knees felt wobbly. Once he was seated, he put his head on his thighs and tightly closed his eyes to calm himself. Harry faintly heard the girl move in the apartment and wasn't surprised that her voice sounded closer when she talked.
"You said that you wanted to ask me two things and that only was one thing..."
"Right," Harry said in a weak voice. He softly coughed, opened his eyes and looked up at the teen. "What's your name? It would only be normal if I knew my new roommate's name."
The girl grinned at him and stretched a hand for a handshake.
"I'm Eto," she said as Harry shook her hand. "But you can call me Takatsuki Sen."
"Well," Harry told her as he warily smiled at her. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sen."
Yes, I know. That was quite the spoiler. But as I said in the beginning of the chapter, I'm evil like that. Also, the real story begins in the next chapter. As in, the Tokyo Ghoul plot starts now.
It's going to be a hell of a ride!