Hello, friends. It's officially October, which means it's time for one of my annual drabble collections!

As usual, I'll be doing a prompt-a-day challenge in October 2020. 30 days, 30 prompts, one drabble a day about the life of Not-Quite-Keiko (because I've gotta accomplish something during quarantine, right?). The list of prompts is available on Tumblr pinned under the username "luckystarchild".

Unlike past collections (Written in Ink and Penned in Memory), this collection is set POST-REVEAL OF NQK'S SECRET,since that's where we are in the current LC timeline. These prompts will all focus on the revelation of her secret: how she feels, how her friends feel, the ways her past life and present life differ, etc.

As such, there may be spoilers for Lucky Child up to chapter 114 or so. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I have NOT planned any of the drabbles ahead of time, but I think centering them on a specific point in LC's timeline (specifically post-secret-reveal) will help unify them and give the drabble collection a cohesive feeling.

Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow, when I publish the next installment of Scribbled in Secret.

Scribbled in Secret

Day 01:

"Technical Terms"

A luxuriously lazy yawn preceded Yusuke's proclamation of, "I guess, in the end, I honestly just can't believe you kept that secret of yours for so damn long."

I shot him a Look and hefted my backpack a little higher on my shoulders. Overhead a few gulls wheeled, their cries and the salty smell of the port alike growing fainter with every step we took toward the train station a few blocks over. The deep bellow of a ship foghorn drowned out the sound of our footsteps for a moment as Morrie's boat—my ride both to and from the Dark Tournament—cut a path toward elsewhere across the glistening ocean water. Yusuke and I walked at the front out our troop. Kurama trailed just behind us, Botan and Atsuko chatting on his heels. Hiei had vanished the second we docked, leaping into the air and out of sight in a flash of inky black. A few dozen feet back lingered Shizuru and Kuwabara, the pair keeping quiet even as they kept their distance.

That distance, however, did not seem quite far enough… because a pair of eyes were burning holes on the back of my neck.

I wasn't sure to whom the eyes belonged. Wasn't sure I wanted to know, honestly. I'd been feeling peoples' stares like ice on the skin ever since my secret dropped the night before we left Hanging Neck Island. Could be paranoia talking, but then again, maybe not. There was no way to tell for sure if the stares were the imagined invention of a paranoid mind or simply, legitimately perceived. Instead I just focused on Yusuke, concentrating on his smarmy grin instead of the glare piercing my nape.

"You're shocked I kept my secret for so long?" I repeated, eyes trained carefully on the road ahead. "Why do you say that?"

"You're a shitty liar," he replied at once. "It's kind of a miracle you didn't blab, right?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." I did my best to look mysterious. "Maybe I was a secret agent in my past life."

Yusuke scoffed. "Yeah, right." But then he saw the look on my face, and doubt skulked over his in a creeping wave. Each syllable more suspicious than the last, he asked, "Wait… really?"

"Fuck no. Have you met me?" I laughed; so did Yusuke. "Someone would point a gun at my face or whatever and I'd probably cry."

"Yeah, you would!" said Yusuke, still laughing. "You'd suck at interrogating people and stuff. Sneaking around and using fancy gadgets, too… Well, maybe the gadgets part would be fine. But not the sneaking." He counted every failed task on his fingertips. "You'd be bad at sneaking, at lying, at interrogating… all that spy stuff."

"I believe the technical term is subterfuge," I said, thrusting my nose into the air.

Again Yusuke scoffed. "I believe the technical term is being a fuckin' liar."

"Hey!" I said, offended—and then, way back at the back of our cavalcade, Kuwabara coughed a cough that sounded suspiciously like a wry, mocking laugh.

The sound felt like sharp nails dragging down my scalp—like a dry cuticle scraping over chalk, porous and rough and horrible. I ignored it, though. It took every scrap of my willpower not to turn around and look, but challenging Kuwabara—already so angry, already so sore and upset—would only make matters worse. Instead I kept my face perfectly smooth, expression unflinching, marching ever forward under the blue of the midday sky and beneath the circling wings of the gulls slicing the sea-salted air. And I think I did a good job of playing nonchalant, because Yusuke didn't seem to notice my discomfort at all.

My lips twitched as Yusuke kept speaking, rattling on about how lame it would be to go back to school the following morning.

He was right. I was bad at lying—but bad at subterfuge, my ass.

Day 1 is done! See you tomorrow for Day 2, "Elementary," and thanks so much for reading.