Chapter Warnings: None.
RIOT CHILD
CHAPTER 04:
"1-3-1-2"
As far as Yusuke could tell, Keiko wasn't the superstitious type.
She didn't shy away from black cats crossing her path, for one thing. She never threw salt over her shoulder, and she opened umbrellas inside with a cackle of rebellion. Keiko never acted scared of the number 4, and she liked to whistle at night. She even greeted hearses with a big thumbs-up, as if daring the universe to strike her down for this act of small revolt. No, Yusuke thought. Keiko wasn't scared of anything, especially the consequences of breaking a superstition.
When a cop walked by, though? All bets were off.
Yusuke wasn't sure when he noticed it for the first time, but once he noticed, he couldn't un-notice the way Keiko acted when a police officer approached. First she would hunch, huddling down in her omnipresent medical mask, and then she would avert her eyes like the cop could turn her to stone if they made eye-contact. Weirdest of all, as soon as the cop got within earshot, she started muttering. It was always the same thing, too—a series of syllables Yusuke didn't understand, and ones he suspected might not be Japanese at all.
"Wan-tu-ri-wan-tu," she would mutter at the back of every passing police officer. "Wan-tu-ri-wan-tu, wan-tu-ri-wan-tu, wan-tu-ri-wan-tu!"
Wan-tu-ri-wan-tu. Yusuke had no freakin' clue what these nonsense syllables meant, but if Keiko kept saying them, they must be important.
Or at least that's what he thought until they started learning English in the third grade.
They started with the basics—specifically with the English alphabet and numerals under 10, plus low-level vocabulary and greetings. Keiko had zero trouble whatsoever keeping up with it, parroting back the words with an accent that sounded perfect even to Yusuke's untrained ears. Meanwhile, Yusuke and the rest of the class struggled to learn the unfamiliar language—but when they got to the numbers portion of the lesson, something about it seemed… odd. Like some of it was familiar, though Yusuke hadn't a clue quite why.
Not that he had to wonder for long. He figured it out on their way home from school that very day.
The situation wasn't anything out of the ordinary. They were walking beside each other down the sidewalk through their neighborhood when Keiko stopped dead upon the sidewalk, glaring ahead of them through the lenses of her enormous glasses. The cop standing at the corner of the block (the subject of Keiko's ire, of course) didn't pay them any mind as he waited for the crosswalk light to change, striding across the street in shiny shoes that clacked with every step he took across the pavement.
Eyes like a fly's behind her glasses, Keiko glared at him and muttered, "Wan-tu-ri-wan-tu, wan-tu-ri-wan-tu, wan-tu-ri-wan-tu!"
Wan-tu-ri-wan-tu…
Wait.
One-three-one-two?
1-3-1-2!?
"1-3-1-2," Yusuke repeated—and then he jumped forward and socked her on the arm, delighted to have figured it out at last. "You've been saying numbers! In English!"
"Uh," said Keiko, darting out of reach (by her customary distance of two meters, of course). "No I haven't."
"I'm not stupid," Yusuke snapped. "Why do you say them, Keiko? Huh?"
"Uh. Numerology?"
"What's that?"
"Number magic," she mumbled into her mask. "It, uh. It keeps us safe from police." Her head rose, eyes flashing behind her glasses. "Yeah. That's right. 1-3-1-2 keeps us safe from police."
"Oh," said Yusuke. "Cool."
Keiko didn't have a reason to lie to him. Keiko always meant what she said. Keiko was the only person who didn't sugarcoat the truth, so he took her at her word—and the next time he saw a cop on the street, he did what he thought would make Keiko proud.
He ran up to the police officer, screamed "WA-N-TU-RI-WA-N-TU!" at the top of his lungs, and kicked the officer right in the shin. And when he finished fleeing for his life and ran home to tell Keiko about it, all she did was give him a crisp high-five and say he did the right thing.
As far as Yusuke could tell, Keiko wasn't the superstitious type… but then again, maybe she was, after all.
The grand irony here is that I am the exact opposite of a superstitious type, but she'll embrace his misconception and start pretending to believe in superstitions to throw off the scent of her past-life-knowledge. Hijinks, no doubt, will soon ensue.
Quick note: It was mentioned super briefly in a previous chapter, but NQK wears thick glasses in this timeline. They aren't prescription. The reason for her glasses is because there's been talk of COVID being transmissible through the membranes in the eyes. Since wearing goggles would be weird, she opted for glasses, instead, to shield her eyes from pathogens.
Plus, I think the image of her entire face being covered in a combination of thick glasses and a mask to be super funny. No one knows what she looks like, and she'll use this to her advantage, no doubt about it.
I did some organizing and now have a better game-plan for upcoming chapters. Am trying to mimic the timeline of LC and not leap ahead to the Dark Tournament or something. On that note, the next chapter will detail the way Kuwabara and 2020!NQK meet in this version of events.
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