Chapter 3: In a Real Pickle

After an awkward dinner spent listlessly picking at the food on his plate (something which, like many other things Ataru did, his mother took as something of a personal affront), Ataru excused himself and went upstairs to get ready for bed. He briefly considered trying to fly some more before he went to sleep, but after a couple rather pathetic hops decided to give up for the night. Whenever his parents got on his case like that the funk usually lasted the rest of the day.

And so, weirdly early for him, Ataru changed into his pajamas and slipped under the covers, drifting off into a fitful sleep, his mind still abuzz with processing the events of the day.


When he woke up, there were a few glorious seconds where Ataru assumed that all that stuff about Lum roping him into a Setsubun fight and the resulting transformation had all been some weird dream. And now, he thought in a happy, sleepy fog, time to return to the loving embrace of my dear Ryuunosuke…

Hugging the air next to him, Ataru gave a couple of bleary blinks before touching his forehead, feeling the hard, bony protrusions and groaning.

"Aw, hell."

That's right, it was falling into place as he woke himself up. The horns. The weird changes he noticed throughout the day. The reveal that he was not only going to turn into an Oni like Lum, but a female Oni… like, well, Lum. With another groan, Ataru forcefully threw himself forward onto his bed in frustration. However, this led to him discovering the first surprise of the day.

"Owwwwww…" he said, pushing himself up and poking gingerly at his chest. He winced as he discovered that the whole area was sore for some reason. With some trepidation, he lifted up his shirt to see what had happened in his sleep, only to find… nothing at all out of the ordinary. Maybe. It was hard to tell from this angle. Curiosity getting the better of him, he poked again, only to be met with renewed pain.

"Ow, damn it!" Ataru said, dropping the hem of his shirt. He gave a quick glance towards Lum, and was relieved to find her still asleep despite his shouting. "You know, the last time my chest hurt like this, it at least had the decency to have boobs on it I could grab!" he grumbled. Getting out of bed, he stomped off towards the bathroom to get a look in the mirror.


Mr. Moroboshi checked the clock as he sipped his coffee at the table. "Alright, dear. I'm going to go shave and get ready for work before Ataru gets up."

"Mm, good idea." his wife replied, eyes still full of sleep as she poured a cup for herself. She sat down next to him, letting her husband take some of her weight as she leaned into his side.

Mr. Moroboshi enjoyed mornings. Even before the Oni invasion, he had been a morning person. He liked the relative quiet before the city as a whole got going. He liked the weak, watered-down beams of sunlight streaming in through the windows. And as sappy as this may have sounded, he liked that it was, after so many years, the time of day he could spend together with his wife, without any interruptions. Mornings, despite everything else that had happened in his life, remained largely unchanged from before his son had gotten engaged to that alien girl, and his family became the most infamous one in the world.

"Would have been nice to get some fortune along with that fame…" he mumbled.

"Hm? Did you say something, dear?"

"No, no." he said, placing a hand on his wife's shoulder to make sure she didn't fall over as he got up. "It was nothing."

Mrs. Moroboshi yawned. "Alright."

Mr. Moroboshi made his way upstairs and opened the bathroom door, to find his son with his shirt up, poking at his nipples.

The two made eye contact, and Ataru slowly lowered his shirt. The mortified staring contest continued for thirty agonizing seconds before Ataru, suddenly unable to look anywhere in the vicinity of his father's eyes, stiffly walked out of the bathroom.

Mr. Moroboshi watched his son go without saying anything, a twitch of his eyelid the only thing betraying that he had even registered what had happened. With a world weary sigh, he entered the bathroom himself and closed the door behind him.


As the luckless boy walked to school, his wife, flying next to him, surreptitiously inspected the locks of hair that were spilling over the headband he was using to hide his horns. It was faint, difficult to see unless the light hit it just right, but…

Lum smiled. If you were looking for it, the barest hint of an opalescent sheen was starting to become visible. God, Ataru's hair was going to be so pretty!

"Darling, don't you want to fly with me?" she asked, maneuvering herself in front of him. "We'd be able to get to school much more quickly that way."

Ataru merely looked away and continued walking with his particular bow-legged, ambling gait that he used whenever he wasn't in any particular hurry to get somewhere. This was a technique he employed often, because as far as he was concerned he had more than enough of his fill of Lum at school and home, he didn't need to talk to her in the interim as well. Today, however, Lum had apparently decided she wasn't having it.

"Darling, pay attention to me!" she said, grabbing his cheeks to force him to look at her. "I asked you a question!"

Ataru could see the sparks flying off of Lum, feel the electricity coursing through his body, but as a pleasant surprise there wasn't any pain. Still, he batted Lum's hands away out of principle. "What's your problem! Leave me alone, will you? I can't- I shouldn't go around flying everywhere! Mom wants me to keep this a secret, remember?"

Lum's face became stormy for a second before she took a deep breath and calmed down. "You're right. But…" she leaned in close to him, giving him a conspiratorial grin. "Do you really think this is going to stay a secret forever? Wouldn't it be easier to just embrace it?"

Ataru's lip wavered for a second, before he meekly mumbled something about "not wanting to give his mom more of a reason to be upset". Lum snorted.

"Honestly, darling," she sighed. "Your mother barely even seems to like you! Did you know that the album full of your baby pictures is labelled-"

"'Regrets', yeah." he said. "Listen, I just-" Ataru glanced over his shoulder, as if worried his mother had followed them out of the house. "I just don't want her to think I like all this, okay?"

"Like all what~?" Lum asked sweetly.

Ataru pursed his lips as a blush began to rise in his cheeks. "You know, how I'm turning into a… an Oni." he said. "Not that it doesn't have its perks, but I can't have everyone thinking I'm some sort of freak! I'm an Earth man, damn it!" He thumped his chest, which both didn't make the hollow thud he was expecting and caused him to double over in pain. "Owwwww…"

"Darling? Are you alright?"

"I-I'm fine." Ataru said. "Just hit myself harder than I thought. Don't know my own strength." He waved Lum off as he continued trying to hide just how much doing that had hurt. "Go on, fly to school since you're so keen on it. I ain't stopping you."

Lum sighed, fishing something out of her school bag. "Here. Take this."

Ataru only barely caught the box covered in a tiger-print cloth tied in a knot. "A bento?" he asked, perplexed. "Lum, my mom already made me one."

"Yes, and I bet you you'll barely be able to eat it," she admonished. When Ataru continued looking at her in confusion, she sighed again. "Darling," she said patiently. "You hardly had anything for dinner or breakfast. Apart from being starving, you also have Oni tastebuds now."

"Oni… tastebuds?" Ataru asked, grabbing the end of his tongue and trying to pull it into a place he could focus on.

Lum made a face of minor disgust, but persevered. "Exactly. You can still force yourself to eat it if you need to, but most Earth food is probably far too bland for you to actually enjoy. So I made you this, the way I like it." Giving a couple of sidelong glances, she leaned into Ataru's ear and whispered as though she was revealing government secrets. "Plus, there's a shaker of Oniboshi firesalt in there." She gave him a wink as he stared at her, mouth slightly agape.

"For the one your mother made," she clarified. "...Darling, are you alright?"

"Fine!" Ataru said, quickly wiping the corner of his eye. "I'm fine, I-" He sniffed. "...Thanks, Lum. This is really…" Ataru blinked, realizing something. "...When did you land on the ground?"

"I didn't."

Ataru looked at the ground, which was now several feet beneath him, and jumped. Or, he would have if he'd had a solid surface to push his legs against. "W-when did I get up here?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Lum. "Probably when your wife's lovingly-prepared lunch made you feel all warm and fuzzy. Now come on, let's get to school!"

"B-but-" Ataru protested. "I-I can't, everyone will…"

Lum held a finger to his lips to shush him as she extended her other hand. "Come on, grab hold." she said. "Everyone will think I just carried you there."

Ataru regarded her hand like one would a half-submerged log on the Nile. "I… I guess…" he said as he reluctantly grabbed her hand. "But this is the only time I'm doing this, okay? It's just… hard to stop flying once I start."

"Of course, darling." Lum said. "Now let's hurry, we wasted a lot of time."

Before Ataru could say anything, he felt himself being yanked away from the road as Lum took them on a far more direct route to Tomobiki high.


At school, Ataru was finding it difficult to concentrate. And not just because it was English class. The growling in his stomach was leading to fuzziness in his head, and even ignoring all that, his chest was still incredibly sore. He wasn't normally a man who was hyper-conscious about his health, but all the stress surrounding his current situation was causing him to freak out.

My chest shouldn't feel like this, he thought as Onsen Mark droned on, reading English passages aloud. This has to be some kind of Oni heart thing. My body's not made for it. A lit match of a thought hit the powder keg of stress that was his mind as beads of cold sweat started breaking out on his forehead. Oh, god. I don't know if Onis have hearts. I'm going to die. I have to- wait. As Ataru gripped the sides of his desk in panic, another, equally troubling thought occurred to him. Maybe Onis have more than one heart. They were aliens, anything was possible. My chest can't fit more than one heart in it! Everything's all jammed together already! Oh my god I'm growing a second heart and all this pain is everything else being crowded out and-

"MOROBOSHI!"

Onsen Mark had slammed his hand on Ataru's desk, his eyebrows furrowed in a deep V of anger and his sideburns practically bristling. As Ataru's unknown quantity of hearts raced wildly, his teacher glared at him.

"Pay attention!" he said, before pointing a stubby digit at Ataru's headband. "And just what is the meaning of this?"

"It's a headband." Ataru answered. And then, anticipating the next words out of his teacher's mouth, he said, "It's not against school rules to wear one. I checked with mister Hanawa." It was a lie, but Ataru was willing to bet that Onsen Mark didn't actually know the school dress code offhand.

Sure enough, the short man merely narrowed his eyes and grumbled. "Hanawa, that spineless nerd. He's too soft on you kids!" Tapping Ataru's textbook, he said, "At least open your book, Moroboshi." before moving on to the next desk and continuing his monologue.

Ataru obliged, propping up the hardcover in front of him and deciding it was time to take advantage of his extra lunch. Maybe getting some food in him would help quell the… everything that was stressing him out right now. At the very least, it'd take care of the "hungry" part. Groping around his bag blindly, his fingers found a knot of cloth, which he excitedly pulled out to find a box covered in… gingham. His mom's, then.

Shrugging, he opened it up and shoveled some rice into his mouth, noting as he chewed that once again his mother's ordinarily excellent cooking was now about as appetizing as a bowl full of unflavored gelatin. Wrinkling his nose as he forced himself to swallow, Ataru debated attempting to fish out Lum's bento to grab the firesalt when… it caught his eye. Half-buried under the rice it sat, pink and wrinkled and gloriously, wonderfully tempting.

It was a single umeboshi, and right now it was the most appetizing thing he'd seen in the past 24 hours.

Without a further thought he popped the pickled plum into his waiting maw, his taste buds primed and salivating as the explosion of sour, salty goodness danced on his tongue. Ataru had no idea why this of all things was something he was apparently craving, but he wasn't going to argue when he could feel a warm, fuzzy feeling spreading out from his stomach and up through his body, lodging itself in his head. Not the unpleasant fuzziness of a brain beset by hunger pangs, but the comfortable fuzziness of a hand-knit gray matter sweater, with a bowl full of soup by the fireplace, to boot. Onsen Mark's lecture became harder to follow and Ataru slumped in his seat, a wide beatific smile spreading across his face as he found it harder and harder to keep his eyes focused.

And to Ataru's mind, it sure was getting warm in this stuffy old classroom…


"And so, ensuring that the wires are plugged in correctly…"

As an English teacher, Onsen Mark had a considerable amount of freedom in what he presented to the class to read (in today's case, it was the English section of the instructions for a set of speakers.) He was also used to a considerable amount of sound coming from his students as upwards of two dozen teenagers mumbled in an unfamiliar language. This was Good. This was Expected.

This was Education.

As the chalk in his fingers squeaked on the blackboard, he could hear a chorus of pencils scratch out their refrain on paper. It all wove together in a beautiful melody, an orchestra of learning with himself as the conductor, his baton doubling as his instrument.

Read.

Mumble.

(squeak)

(scratch)

Read.

Mumble.

(squeak)

(scratch)

("hic!")

Rea-

Wait.

Something wasn't right here.

Onsen Mark paused, stick of chalk hovering over the board, waiting, waiting for another sour note in his scholastic symphony. After enough time spent in silence he felt the weight of his students' stares, and decided that it was safe to continue with his lesson. At which point a second hiccup sent his hand careening across the blackboard, the tortured shriek of chalk on slate causing more than one student to cover their ears.

"Mister Moroboshi," he said, vein on his forehead beginning to throb. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Hey!" came the voice of his least favorite student, his voice slurring to the point where it was only just on this side of legible. "Wha' makesh you think ish me? (hic!)"

"Because it's always you, Morob-OH MY GOD!"

Onsen Mark wasn't sure what he had been expecting to see when he turned around, but it certainly wasn't Ataru Moroboshi with his gakuran top on the floor, every eye on the class on him as he proceeded to wriggle out of his shirt.

"WHAT are you DOING?" Onsen Mark demanded.

"I'm tryin' t' cool down!" Ataru answered, fixing his eyes onto his teacher after a considerable amount of time and effort. "Ish so hot in here."

Briefly, Onsen Mark considered raising the point that in the winter months the school was kept at the delightful temperature of 58 degrees fahrenheit, but there were in fact more important matters to deal with at the moment. Namely, the clearly drunken boy stripping in his classroom.

"Someone find wherever he hid the liquor he snuck in!" Onsen Mark barked while quickly making his way towards Ataru's desk. "You've gotten away with a lot, Moroboshi, but drunkenness at school? I would love to see you wriggle your way out of that."

"Drunk?" Ataru asked, his affronted tone only slightly ruined by a persistent giggle that he couldn't seem to drop. "Hahaha… Whaddaya mean, drunk? I ain't- (hic!) drunk!"

Onsen Mark shouldered his way past Ataru, shoving him to the side as he made his way to his desk. "Mendou, please keep him under control." he asked as he glanced to where he had pushed Ataru.

"Wh- but sir!" the rich boy protested, stiffening like a board the second Ataru's exceedingly relaxed body made contact with him. "Wh-what do you want me to do?"

"Restrain him!" answered the teacher, busy tossing random items from Ataru's desk over his shoulder.

"B-b-but-" Mendou stammered.

"Come onnnnn, Shuutarou~! Like this!" Ataru interrupted with a big grin on his flushed face, grabbing hold of Mendou's wrists and clapping them to his chest. "Honk~!"

As an involuntary shiver went up Mendou's spine and Ataru broke down into peals of delighted, drunken laughter, Lum got up from her desk and hefted Ataru into the air by the armpits. "I-I'll take darling to the nurse's office!" she said.

"Good idea," Onsen Mark grunted, having at this point moved on to dumping the contents of Ataru's bag out on the floor. "Once I find his hidden booze I'll bring the principal there."

"R-right…" Lum said as the class continued to stare at the display in front of them. "Come along, darling."

"Wheeeeee~!" cried Ataru as he was carried half-floating through the air and into the hall.


Rounding a corner, Lum slowed down once she was out of sight of the classroom and sighed. "Well, darling," she said to the giggling, gently revolving figure above her. "It looks like your secret's going to be out after all."

"Hm?" Ataru asked, doing his best to look at her as his rotation led to his head facing the ceiling. "What'cha mean?"

"Well," she said, raising her hand to be in a position to count off her points as she went. "One: Onsen Mark is looking for liquor that he isn't going to find, but he will find your partly-eaten bento, and two: you're hovering several feet off the ground and randomly arcing electricity into the air."

"...Huh," Ataru said, finally seeming to notice that his feet weren't on the ground. "Sho I am." Giving a dreamy sigh, he floated lazily over to Lum and buried his face in her iridescent mane, having evidently reached the "snuggly drunk" stage of his intoxication.

"Your hair smells so nice, Lum."

Shocked, a blush rose in her cheeks as she absentmindedly grabbed a shimmering lock. "Wh-what? You think so?"

Her husband nodded, which accounting for the current location of his face meant that the back of Lum's neck bristled and scratched as her own hair was rubbed against it.

"Mm-hm," he said, before his whole body relaxed, slowly going from laying horizontal on a bed of nothing to allowing himself to be draped over Lum's back. He gave a yawn as Lum felt him turn his head to the side to make himself more comfortable. "It's real pretty, too."

A number of thoughts fought for their turn to make their way past Lum's lips, including thanking Ataru for the rare compliments, asking if he was feeling alright, and playfully telling him that his own hair was well on its way to matching hers. What managed to come out was; "Ataru, I…-"

Before she could say anything else, however, she was interrupted by the sound of an indignant raspberry coming from just behind her ear.

"Wh- darling, that's gross!" she yelled.

Another raspberry. Followed by Ataru saying; "It's a gross name."

Lum froze, her still-charging electric shock (which, she chided herself, was just her working on instinct at this point. Ataru wouldn't even feel it) evaporating in her hand. I can't believe this is happening, she thought. That umeboshi might have been a blessing in disguise.

Out loud, she asked; "What do you mean, darling?"

"I don't like it," Ataru said, allowing gravity to pull him a couple inches further down, squishing the cheek that was pressed into the back of Lum's neck up towards his eye. "I don't think I ever liked it. It's just a dumb, stupid name." He gave a deep, wistful sigh, the effect of which was only slightly ruined by the hiccup in the middle.

"Is there something you'd like me to call you instead?"

For a second Lum only got silence in response. And not the silence of Ataru continuing his gentle breathing, but the silence of that breathing pausing, being replaced by a soft gasp.

"...Darling?" Lum ventured after a while.

"I…" Ataru responded. "No one's ever asked me that before. I, uh..." Lum could feel heat on the back of her neck, undoubtedly from an incandescent blush, and her husband's next words were barely more than a whisper. "I'd really like to be called Kokomi."

Despite the tenderness of the moment, Lum couldn't help but give a small snort of laughter. "Really?" she asked. "I thought it'd be something more common, darling."

A third raspberry, though this one was longer and more playful. "Shut up! It's cute."

Lum chuckled, and said in a gentle voice, "Yes, Kokomi. It is."

"Mmmmmm…" came a happy, breathy sound from Lum's spouse, halfway to a sigh. And, as she listened to the sounds of deep breathing from behind her begin to slow down into a deep, sedate rhythm, she smiled and stood up.

"Come on Kokomi, darling," she said quietly, so as not to wake the figure who had fallen asleep on her back. "Let's get you somewhere more comfortable."