Chapter 1: Girls' Night Out
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Visiting a fortune teller had been Botan's bright idea, and the only reason Keiko went along with it was because Botan had a very persuasive kitty-face.
Not that Keiko was so weak-willed as to fall for Botan's kitty face every time the reaper whipped it out, of course. No, Keiko could resist it just fine—but Keiko had already resisted Botan's idea of putting unicorn horns into the reception center pieces, and she'd also struck down Botan's desire to make Keiko wear a pair of bright pink sneakers to the wedding itself, not to mention the sparkly butterfly clips Botan wanted Keiko to wear on her veil. Botan had a design aesthetic as bright and cheery as her hair, one that didn't quite mesh with Keiko's more refined, subtle tastes. Especially not when Keiko's wedding was on the line.
And that's how Keiko found herself standing in front of a nondescript apartment complex, a grinning Botan at her side, one week to the day before her wedding to Yusuke. After denying Botan input on so many factors concerning her impending nuptials, Keiko figured she ought to throw her friend this last, small bone in compensation.
Botan certainly looked happy enough to be having a girls' night out. She rocked back and forth on her heels, humming absently as she checked the address on the paper clutched in her hand. Her blue hair shone like cotton candy under the light of the streetlamp overhead, color dappled by the shadows of the moths wheeling around the glowing globe.
"Well, we're in the right spot!" Botan said as she folded the paper up and shoved it in her pocket. "Just have to find the right apartment."
Keiko's brow lifted. "She works out of her apartment?"
"Most fortune tellers do in this country, I'm told."
"I wouldn't know." Keiko shrugged. "I've never been to one."
"Really?" Botan's eyes widened. "I thought fortune tellers were common here."
Botan often displayed an odd lack of knowledge (and an accompanying enthusiastic wonder) about Human World, but about this particular subject, Botan wasn't wrong. Fortune tellers were indeed popular in Japan. Several had call-in TV shows on local channels, and there was even a famous one on cable. "The Fountain of Aura" or something like that. Keiko had clicked past it a dozen or more times when she had trouble sleeping, and she passed fortune tellers' shops and pop-up stands on the street quite often. Young women often flocked to them for advice about their boyfriends, but Keiko had never felt the need to join in—not even when Yusuke had stayed away in Demon World for so long, out of touch and distant. Even then, she'd believed that he'd return, and thus she'd had no need for fortune tellers—but Botan's expectant eyes gave Keiko pause.
"My friends have been to them," she admitted. "They've invited me before, but I never…"
Botan's confusion abated. "Until Yusuke's ordeal, telling fortunes probably sounded farfetched to you, didn't it?"
"Right." Keiko nodded. "And then I was living with the supernatural up close and personal." A smile bowed her lips. "Why pay money for it when I have you, Botan?"
"I should think not!" The reaper giggled. "You know something? I've never visited a fortune teller, either. But I've always wanted to see one. I spent time moonlighting as a fortune teller back in the day, just after Yusuke's resurrection." She put a hand to her cheek and sighed. "Oh, nostalgia. I looked great in that cape."
"I'll bet you did," Keiko said (and privately she hoped that the night's festivities wouldn't inspire Botan to wear said cape to the wedding).
The apartment complex was typical of Mushiyori City. Several stories tall, the doors to the apartments lay along open-air walkways that could be reached by one of the many staircases zigzagging up the building's unadorned face. Botan led the way up the nearest, guiding Keiko to the second floor and down to the end of the walkway, near the corner of the building. They stopped before unit 277, where Botan rang the bell with a press of one excited finger.
Immediately a voice from within called, "Enter!"
And thus, they did, though Keiko at once wished Botan hadn't opened the door at all. A veritable wall of perfumed air poured out of the apartment, wafting across their faces with a reek of unnamable incense that made Keiko's eyes water. They watered so much she could only barely make out the apartment beyond, with its floor covered in mounds of overlapping rugs (Tripping hazard! Keiko thought), the draperies covering the walls with cloth and beads, and the beaded curtain blocking the way into what was most likely the kitchen. Light came from a dozen or so flickering lamps scattered across various mismatched end tables, giving the room a somewhat spooky vibe… but the effect was ruined for Keiko. She was too concerned about the oil lamps sitting too near the very flammable mounds of carpet to absorb the room's careful affectation.
Botan, however, seemed quite impressed, judging by the awed look on her face. She practically skipped inside (Tripping hazard! Keiko thought again as she picked her way over the carpets) before settling into a seiza kneel in front of the low table in the center of the room. Keiko sat beside her as the apartment door drifted shut at their backs, studying the woman kneeling across from them with barely disguised skepticism.
The woman was unmistakably the fortune teller. She'd done her best to dress the part. Long black hair spilled from beneath the wine-colored wrap tied atop her hair; she wore at least six shawls, layers obscuring the dimensions of her figure like a caterpillar hidden inside an eclectically bohemian cocoon. She sat with her back hunched, head hanging low on the end of her long neck. Tassels dripped from the edges of her shawl. The beads clinked together as she swirled her hands around the enormous crystal ball sitting on a bronze stand in the table's center. She wore a ring on each and every finger, and they caught the light of the oil lamps in a conflagration of rainbow refraction. The crystal ball caught the light, too, making it dance across Keiko's face in tiny pips of reflected light. The fortune teller regarded Keiko and Botan over the crystal through eyes rimmed in so much eyeliner, she quite resembled a tanuki in desperate need of a good night's rest.
In short, she was the single most stereotypical-looking fortune teller Keiko had ever seen, appearance carefully cultivated to resemble an unfortunate caricature of an eastern-European mystic. Not the best choice for branding, Keiko reflected to herself. She would be better off styled as a Japanese shaman, given they lived in Japan and whatnot.
The fortune teller, whose face was neither old nor young thanks to its abundance of overdrawn eyeliner, regarded them solemnly for a time. Then her hands settled flat atop the table, rings clicking together musically.
"Welcome." She spoke in a thin, reedy voice—the exact kind of cliché voice you think of when you picture how a fortune teller might speak, which of course made Keiko think that she was faking it. "Whose fortune am I to divine on this fine night?"
(Shouldn't she know that already?)
"My friend Keiko's, here, of course!" said Botan, who apparently was a lot less skeptical of potential bamboozlement than Keiko. "Please read her fortune!"
Self-conscious, Keiko folded her hands neatly atop the table. From within her eyeliner the woman sized Keiko up, eyes raking up and down her face like claws. Absently Keiko noticed that the fortune teller wore acrylic nails, cut long and painted deep purple. Really, she could've been 60 or 26, with nails like that. It was hard to tell, though the hunched back made Keiko suspect the former.
"You are to be married soon, yes?" the fortune teller rasped.
Botan gasped. "How did you know that?"
The fortune teller's mouth curled in satisfaction. Keiko was less impressed, however, and she moved her hand—the one with the sparkly engagement ring upon it—out of sight below the table.
"Yes." The fortune teller lifted her hands, waving them around the crystal ball again. "You are to be married within this cycle of the moon, the universe sings to me."
OK. That specificity was a little more impressive. Keiko leaned forward in spite of herself, a frown tugging at her mouth as the fortune teller's eyes fluttered shut.
"The universe tells me many things." Her voice came out in a whisper, still reedy, now hushed. "But to know more…"
Botan leaned forward, entranced.
The fortune teller's eyes snapped open; she pointed over Botan's shoulder toward a plaque hanging on the back of the apartment's front door.
She said, more brightly than before: "Please consult my pay scale and select your desired service package."
It took every ounce of her composure to keep from laughing. Keiko opted instead for rolling her eyes as Botan happily consulted the service menu and paid for a standard crystal ball reading (instead of the deluxe package; Keiko wouldn't let her pay for the deluxe package). The money disappeared into the folds of the fortune teller's shawl and out of sight as soon as Botan handed it over. Hands reemerged from the cloak to once more swirl around the crystal ball, rings upon them catching the light in another storm of fractured illumination.
"Now…" She gazed steadily into the ball, eyes distant, mouth barely moving as she spoke. "Your groom-to-be has known you for many years. Your bond is strong, having stood the test of time and hurdles immeasurable."
Botan gasped again. This time, Keiko felt tempted to join in. That bit of divination had been much more convincing than the last, though Keiko of course still chalked it up to a parlor trick. She had to wonder how this was done, though…
"However…" The fortune teller leaned toward them, eyes narrowing until they all but vanished in pits of eyeliner. "His youthful spirit causes you worry. You wonder about the future, and if he will be there for all of it." Her eyes flickered to Keiko's face, motion given away by the merest sparkle in her socket's black depths. "You wonder if he will wander with the wind to places you cannot follow."
Botan didn't gasp that time. She just reached for Keiko's hand beneath the table and squeezed it. And Keiko… she just swallowed, fingers cold and clammy within Botan's steadying grasp.
Demon World.
That was the first thing she thought of upon hearing the fortune teller speak. Keiko would never be able to follow Yusuke to Demon World. Is that what the fortune teller meant? Had she really managed to discern that truth? But how could she…?
The fortune teller continued to study her face—but then her lips curled again. Her hunched back straightened, face pulling away from the depths of her crystal ball.
"Fear not," she said, wagging one ringed finger at Keiko gently. "His love for you is true and certain. If he wanders, it is only so he can find his way back to you once more."
For a moment, Keiko just sat there.
But then… the lump in her throat eased.
The fortune teller grinned. Her teeth where white and straight, gleaming as brightly as her rings as she stood and shuffled to the back of the room. A tall piece of furniture stood along the room's back wall, draped in a black sheet edged in silver moons. She swiped this tapestry off the object to reveal, of all things, and omikuji cabinet. It was large and made of oiled wood, covered in dozens of tiny drawers with small brass knobs, just like the one at the shrine Keiko visited with her parents every New Year's Day. It was a Japanese fortune-telling object, nothing like the Western accoutrements the fortune teller had shown them thus far, and for a moment, Keiko could only stare at it in confused silence.
The fortune teller waved a hand. "Come," she said, gesturing at the cabinet. "A blessing for you."
Botan piped in, "But that's part of the deluxe package, and we only paid for—"
The fortune teller shook her head, beads on her headscarf rattling. "Call it a gift," she said, and she gestured once again. "Come. I insist." Her eyes turned the color of flint. "But you must choose it yourself."
Keiko rose. She picked her way across the swamp of overlapping rugs and to the omikuji cabinet. Her fingertips ghosted over the many tiny doors on its face before they settled on one near the center. It opened with the softest of creaks, revealing a tiny scroll tied shut with a bit of string. She picked it up and slid off the knot, unfurling the scroll with a swipe of thumb.
"It's a blessing of trust," she said once she read the characters written on the sheet of paper.
The fortune teller nodded, shutting the door Keiko had opened on the omikuji with the flat of her palm.
"Trust him," she said, meeting Keiko's eyes with her own—ones Keiko now saw were dark brown, nearly black, and just as intense as the reek of incense inside the apartment. "Trust in his love for you. Trust in the bond you share. Trust him as you always have, and you will not be steered wrong."
Her words were spoken with conviction, with a certainty that made Keiko wonder—if only for a moment—if the fortune teller really was tapped into some universal font of truth to which most mortals were not privy. But she didn't ask about this (some things are not knowable) and instead bowed.
"Thank you," Keiko said.
"You're welcome." She waved them toward the door. "I hope to see you again. And many blessings on your wedding." The fortune teller's lips curled, grin warm and kind. "May it run smoothly, and may no unwanted guests darken the light of your door."
It was an obvious dismissal, one Keiko didn't mind obeying (even if she wondered if this session had been rather short, given what Botan paid for it). They left into the quiet, damp night and walked down the stairs to the street below, scent of incense clinging to Keiko's clothes but fading quickly in the fresh, clean air. Botan didn't speak, allowing Keiko time with her thoughts as the pair travelled down the street, toward a fork in the road that would take them to Yusuke's ramen stand. Keiko was going to walk home with him once he got off work. She was not certain, if he asked, whether or not she'd tell him what she'd been told by the fortune teller.
"That was nice of her, to give you a blessing like she did," Botan said eventually. "We didn't even pay for the deluxe package!"
Keiko didn't say anything for a moment. Soon, though, she tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, eyes trained on the concrete under their passing feet.
"You know, Botan." Keiko smiled at the pavement just a little. "I was skeptical when you first said you wanted to bring me here. But even if she was just pretending, it was nice. Comforting, really. I can see why people love coming to see—Botan?"
Mid-speech, Botan had grabbed Keiko by the arm.
It wasn't terribly unusual for Botan to randomly touch her friends. She was a hugger, prone to outburst of unforeseen affection, but the vice grip she had on Keiko's forearm was not affectionate. It was forceful, rather, bruising and desperate—another quality that didn't describe Botan whatsoever. Keiko fell quiet in an instant and allowed Botan to yank her off of the sidewalk and into the shadows of a restaurant's doorway, where Botan hid them both behind a large sandwich board proclaiming that happy hour would start at midnight.
Almost immediately, two huge men walked past their hiding spot. Keiko didn't get the best look at them, but despite the sandwich board taking up a large chunk of her view, she still got a sense for the sheer size of them. They were big enough to see over the signage even though she and Botan had crouched down quite low, and the hems of their long (but not long enough) coats slapped noisily against the back of their knees with every step. It was a warm spring night, and definitely not the kind of night requiring a trench coat, but Keiko was too busy concentrating on holding her breath to pay that special attention. And along with her breath, she was focused on the implications of Botan's actions, not to mention the look of ashen panic on the otherwise bubbly reaper's face—a look Keiko recognized at once.
Keiko might be as psychic as a sushi roll, but she wasn't stupid.
As soon as the sound of the men's' heavy footfalls faded into the distance, Keiko whispered, "Demons?"
Botan nodded sharply as sweat beaded on her upper lip. She passed her fingers through her bangs, matting them to her forehead like ribbons of blue vein against translucent flesh.
"Yes," Botan said, eyes cutting this way and that. "They have horns."
Not that that was out of the ordinary. Demons had been living in Human World more and more regularly after the barrier between worlds came down. Yusuke was always helping demons new to Human World out by putting them up at Genkai's temple, and by helping them find places to live in the city; the thought of demons didn't curdle Keiko's milk, so to speak, as it had when she first learned of their existence. She'd met many of Yusuke's demonic friends, and she considered many of them friends enough to invite to her wedding. That's why they were hosting the wedding at Genkai's temple, after all. Keiko wanted their supernatural friends to attend the party in comfort. But no matter how accustomed to demons Keiko had grown over the years, the look on Botan's face told her that the two men in trench coats weren't par for the course.
"These aren't the run-of-the-mill Demon World immigrants we're used to, are they?" she muttered to Botan.
"No. They aren't." Botan audibly swallowed. "They're murderous." Swallowed again. "Weak… but still."
Slowly, Botan and Keiko slid from the shadows and back onto the sidewalk. The two men, tall with broad shoulders that strained their beige coats, walked at a steady and quick clip away from them. At the end of the street loomed the fortune teller's apartment complex, silhouetting their wide forms with its pale white heft. Keiko watched with her heart in her mouth, the acrid scent of adrenaline in her nostrils, as they continued toward it with determination dogged—and then her heart nearly leapt from between her teeth as they came to a stop in front of the very same apartment complex that Botan and Keiko had just left.
"No." The word slipped from her mouth in disbelief. "No. They can't—"
"They couldn't be—" Botan agreed.
But they could, and they would, because after a moment's pause, the two men (the murderous demons, Keiko reminded herself) began to climb the apartment's stairs to the second floor. She hoped they'd keep going after they reached the second floor, but they didn't. They began to walk down the open-air second story landing, passing apartment door after apartment door moment by agonizing moment.
"Surely they're not here for her," Botan said; it was obvious about whom she was speaking. "Surely they'll keep on walking, won't they?"
But they did not keep on walking.
A moment later they stopped, one beside the other, in front of apartment 277.
A moment after that, Botan summoned her oar.
Keiko hunted around on the ground until she found a brick beneath the sandwich board—one most likely used to prop open doors.
"Ready?" Botan said, clutching her oar in both determined hands.
Keiko hefted her brick high. "Let's go."
They exchanged no more words than that. They knew what they had to do. They broke out running down the street, and they ran faster when they saw the two demons open the door to the fortune teller's apartment and disappear inside. Part of Keiko wanted to double back and go find Yusuke, to let him take care of this instead of her, because Keiko knew full well how dangerous this was, facing down demons with no one but Botan beside her… but she had learned a thing or two from Yusuke over the years. The first thing was that if they just leave the fortune teller to her fate, there was no telling what might happen.
And the second thing?
She had learned from Yusuke how to be a person of action, and not to let the baddies run loose on her turf.
Botan mounted her oar and sailed skyward as Keiko hit the apartment's stairs and bolted up them. Panting, but not winded, she met Botan outside the fortune teller's door and signaled for Botan to hang back just a moment longer. Keiko stilled her breathing and leaned her ear against the door, hoping to hear something—anything—that might give her an advantage when they inevitably burst inside.
What she heard was this: "S-stay back! I mean it!" A thump, and then another. "I will hit you with this crowbar, I swear to fucking Christ, do not make me hit you with this crowbar!"
(The voice that screeched those words, thin and high and feminine, didn't sound anything like the fortune teller's; Keiko noted this in an absent-minded way, because there were much bigger things to worry about just then.)
And then another voice, masculine and very deep, replied. "Now, now," he said, sounding about as comforting as rocks in a pillowcase. "No need to be scared. We're to take you in alive."
"Yeah, that's right," said a second deep voice. "We just need your eyes; that's all!"
A crash followed this statement within an instant, one accompanied by a high-pitched shriek of rage. A low growl filtered through the doorway under Keiko's cheek, purring against her skin like angry bees.
"Alive and eyes intact—but the boss didn't said anything about you needing your damn legs," rumbled one of the deeper voices. "Try that again and I'll—"
Keiko pulled her cheek from the door, backed up, and pointed through the apartment wall to the left and to the right, directly at the places she thought the demons might be standing.
Botan nodded in confirmation.
Keiko readied her brick.
Botan kicked the door down with a hyena scream of feral rage, and Botan and Keiko burst into the room with weapons poised to strike.
As she ran forward (tripping hazard! she reminded herself of the rugs on the floor) Keiko took stock of the room with a hurried sweep of keen and careful eye. The table with the crystal ball had been knocked askew, crystal miraculously in one piece where it had rolled away into a corner. The fortune teller had backed up against the omikuji cabinet with a crowbar in her hand, eyes wide, scarves undulating about her hunched body like the tentacles of a frightened octopus. Her eyes grew wider when they registered Botan and Keiko, and the woman started to shout a warning as the demons turned around—but they moved too slowly, and Botan and Keiko loose twin yells of fury as bashed the men over the heads with their respective weapons. Keiko's fell with a grunt; she darted around him, Botan still wailing on her demon with furious cries and loud smacks of oar on cranium, and Keiko grabbed the fortune teller's hand and yanked.
"Come with me!" she said.
The fortune teller blinked at her a few times. "Wait, you're that girl who—"
Keiko yanked her arm again—harder this time.
"Ack!" said the fortune teller as she stumbled after. "All right, I'm comin', sheesh!"
And they ran, the three of them fleeing into the night to the tune of the fortune teller's jingling beads—but despite the cacophony of the fortune teller's clothes and the blood rushing in her ears, Keiko heard the demons' cries of anger and the footsteps that hounded them down the stairs and into the street, and thus Keiko didn't dare look back. She just ran and ran, hand still clamped around the fortune teller's sweating fingers, running and running like they were being drawn to their destination by a magnet. Just run a little more, a little more, she told herself, and if you can get to him, you'll be safe. She knew the way to his ramen stand like she knew the landscape of her own heart, and soon Keiko, Botan and the fortune teller thundered around one final corner—and there he was.
He had parked his cart up against the back of a laundromat; this alley was his usual Sunday-night hangout, one that smelled as much of ramen as it did of detergent and laundry starch. He didn't even look up as they ran toward him. He just grinned, face misty behind the steam rising from a bowl of noodles, because he could no doubt sense exactly who had entered the alley—but then his face fell. He looked up, teeth bared, as the two demons at Keiko's back skidded around the corner, too.
Seeing Yusuke fight was like poetry. Very violent poetry. He leaped over the counter and blurred out of sight, a wind that smelled like ramen and Yusuke's shampoo streaking past too fast for Keiko's eyes to follow, and then there was a grunt and the sound of a fist on flesh. Keiko spun, putting the fortune teller and Botan behind her as she held out her arms to defend them both, watching with frantic and absent pride as Yusuke downed both men and blurred from sight once more. He reappeared an inch from her face, hands on her shoulders as he pulled her to him in a ramen-scented rush.
"Keiko, are you OK?!" Yusuke said.
"I'm fine." She shoved away, but only so she could look up into his livid face. "Those demons—they weren't after me."
From behind her Botan trilled, "They were trying to kidnap this fortune teller!"
Yusuke's eyes, bright brown and right then full of thunder, flickered over her shoulder; he let her go so she could turn, all eyes on the fortune teller. The aforementioned woman stared at the demons on the ground in slack-jawed amazement—and Keiko noticed that she was actually rather tall. Taller than Yusuke, at least. The hunch in her back had vanished, which was hardly the weirdest thing that happened this evening but OK, whatever; Keiko would follow up about that later. Just then Yusuke strode forward and grabbed the fortune teller by the front of one of her many, many shawls. The fortune teller hardly noticed, though. She only had eyes for the demons on the pavement. Yusuke didn't like that, of course, so he hefted her high enough that she had to rock onto her toes.
"Hey. HEY! Listen to me!" He gave her a little shake, beads and tassels jangling. "What the hell did those demons want with you, huh?"
The fortune teller blinked like an owl waking from a coma, and then she blinked again. All at once her face transformed into a mask of horror. She hiccupped once, then twice, and her lower lip began to tremble.
"I—I have no fucking idea!" she wailed in a high, clear voice, and she burst promptly into tears.
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WELCOME TO MY FANFIC. I can't promise this won't be a clichéd mess; I just wanna have some fun with an OC and use my fav fanfic tropes while doing it. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think. Kisses, byeeeeee (also Keiko being where she was tonight wasn't a coincidence but you'll see how soon, byeeeeee againnnnn~)…
