Author's disclaimer:
Code Lyoko, its locations, including Kadic Junior High and the factory, and its characters, including Jeremy, Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, Aelita and XANA, are the property of Antefilms Ltd.
Chapter Two: Discovery
Yumi stood before his door, undecided. Instinct told her to flee. Reason told her to face what was coming, to face him, to face them. She knew that whatever the outcome, she must not kill him. Even if he tried to trap her, she must not kill him, although she did not know if she could stop herself from killing him if he did. Unless he trapped her, there was always time for flight afterward. It would take quite some time for anyone to believe the monster stories of an eleven-year-old, even if the eleven-year-old in question was Jeremy.
She continued to stand in the corridor, her knuckles two centimetres away from the door, still not knowing whether to walk away and prepare to flee forever or to knock, enter and face the boy inside, or more likely to face them both, the boy in the room and the girl in the computer. Despite the quiet inside the room, she heard him, she smelled him, and she heard the soft humming of the computer, humanly inaudible at that distance, through that door. She was probably there too, although if she was, and they were not talking to each other, then there was definitely something up.
"No," she thought. "I can't flee. I can't disappear. There'll be a search, an investigation. Who knows what they'll find out? My mother? Lyoko? No, I can't risk that. Not yet, anyway. Jeremy's reasonable, maybe he won't tell anyone.
"Besides," she thought with a hope she did not feel, "who knows? Maybe it's about something else entirely…"
She knocked.
"Come in!" said Jeremy.
Yumi opened the door, entered the room and, after a moment's hesitation, closed the door behind her. Jeremy was standing beside his bed, while Aelita looked at her from the computer screen. Aelita's face was expressionless. Jeremy's was not. He looked unsettled, uncertain, and yet somehow determined.
"Have a seat," said Jeremy, offering her his chair.
It occurred to her that he had been sitting on the bed and not in his chair. Could the chair conceal a trap? "No, thank you," she replied, "I'll stand."
"Very well, then," replied Jeremy. "Yumi, I have a very strange question to ask you, although I don't know how strange it is to you."
Jeremy paused. Yumi's expression was one of curiosity and ignorance, but she knew that the question she had been dreading was coming. It was not about something else entirely.
"Yumi, we've known each other for months now, and we've come to trust each other, at least I've come to trust you. You were the first to know when I met Aelita and the first to go to Lyoko to defend her. You advised me that we could trust Ulrich and Odd with the secret of Lyoko and with Aelita's defence.
"But I've noticed something disturbing during the transfers. I thought it was a glitch in the system at first, but it's not specific to any hardware or software and it doesn't happen with Ulrich or Odd. It happens with you, always with you, and only with you.
"Yumi, I'm sorry if this sounds bizarre or insulting, but I have to ask you this…"
Yumi braced herself while appearing to remain calm. "Ask me what, Jeremy?"
"Yumi… are you human?"
Silence for a moment, as Yumi realized that no tricks, no lies, no angry, blustering questions, no denials could save her. The only way out lay through the truth.
Yumi sighed heavily, bowed her head, and replied, "No, I'm not."
Jeremy sat on his bed, closed his eyes, and bowed his head such that his forehead rested in his hands and his elbows rested on his legs just above his knees. "I didn't think so," he muttered.
"So, what are you?" asked Aelita. There was no horror or hostility in her question; to Aelita, the idea of Yumi not being human seemed no less natural than the idea of rain falling. It was just another thing about the real world that she did not know or understand, and so she asked.
"A kitsune. A fox spirit."
"Oh," Aelita replied, with an expression that sounded a bit nervous to Yumi.
"Yes, a kitsune," said Jeremy, still seated, but risen from his earlier crouch. "A supernatural creature known for its cunning and deceit. Just about everything points to them being tricksters that cannot be trusted or believed."
"Jeremy…"
"I'm sorry, Yumi," Jeremy said as he stood up, "but I can't trust you anymore." He turned away from her, and then continued, "I can't trust you with Aelita anymore."
Yumi looked at the back of Jeremy's head, and then bowed her head. Her elation at knowing that Jeremy was not going to tell the authorities about her, much less try to trap her, was far overshadowed by the pain of losing Jeremy's friendship, and the anger that the same old prejudices were making a mess of her life yet again.
"Jeremy," she asked in a cracked voice of pain and sorrow, "when have I ever deceived you? When have I lied to you? When have I ever been anything to you but a friend?"
"I don't know," said Jeremy, icily, "when have you?"
"That's not fair and you know it!" replied Yumi bitterly.
"Jeremy," asked Aelita, "How do kitsune trick people?"
"Well, apart from changing their shape," Jeremy replied, turning to look at Yumi again, "they can cloud people's judgement, make things appear real that aren't, and generally bend people's minds to believe what they want them to believe."
"The old legends again," Yumi thought. "And yet there is some truth in them. We can read thoughts to an extent, but it takes decades of rigorous practice, and even then we sometimes get it wrong."
"Would their tricks work on programs?" asked Aelita.
"Huh?"
"The mind-bending and the illusions, Jeremy; can they affect computers?"
"I… I don't think so… they shouldn't… why?"
"Because I don't have any records of Yumi ever telling me anything false."
"Uh…"
"The only data we have that indicates she might deceive us are the articles you gathered on the Internet and, far from being conclusive about the habits of kitsune," Aelita paused, then continued, "they weren't even sure that they exist.
"Yumi, I can't speak for Jeremy," Aelita continued, "but I still have faith in you."
"Thank you, Aelita." Yumi said.
Silence. Jeremy looked at the floor. After a while, he raised his head, looked at Yumi, and said, "Well, if Aelita still trusts you after all this, I guess I do too."
"No, you don't." said Yumi, a bit sadly. "Not really. That will only come back with time."
"Yeah," replied Jeremy, "I guess so. Anyway, Ulrich and Odd don't need to know about this."
"No, they don't. Not yet, anyway."
"So I'll… I'll see you later, then."
"Yeah, O.K., Jeremy. See you later."
"'Bye, Yumi."
"'Bye, Aelita."
After Yumi closed Jeremy's door behind her, she sighed. Not only was Jeremy not going to trap or expose her, they were still friends. She knew that he would second-guess and double-check everything she did for the next week or two, and that he was probably looking through the data log of their conversation right now to check that what was recorded was what he remembered. But she knew he would come to trust her again. Everything had gone so well that she was even a little disappointed that every word she said was true and every gesture and expression she made from her confession onward was genuine and heartfelt.
If it had been a trick, she thought with amusement, it would have been such a great trick…
