第一章
⁓❣⁓
モンスターとの生活
"Well... I guess we have to talk about this, don't we?" Kuroo and Kenma sat across the table from a startled pair of redheaded siblings, Hinata and Natsu, who looked about ready to make a run for it. The atmosphere in the kitchen was tense and the four individuals studied each other warily (though Kenma was playing a game on his phone, so he wasn't really an active member of the gathering).
Hinata was the first one to speak, voice wavering and eyes uncertain. "So... you're... not human?"
Kuroo snickered while Kenma clicked his tongue in annoyance, not bothering to look up from his phone screen while Kuroo answered. "Of course I'm not!" He paused, lips pursed in confusion as his eyes flicked between Hinata and Natsu. "But wait... something still doesn't make sense to me. If you read the flyer, you would know that already." The tengu raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "You did say you read the flyer, right?"
"Um, y-yes." Hinata shifted in his chair, gulping down a nervous breath, feeling like his chest was about to open up and spit his heart out onto the table. "But, you see... I think the flyer I saw was different than the original..." It didn't say you were a bunch of yokai! he panicked internally, silently cursing the mischievous god that had played this dastardly prank on him. What was this odd twist of fate?!
"Oho?" The dark-haired boy hummed, giving a sheepish half-shrug. "That's odd. I swear we printed the copies of the original." He turned his gaze to his roommate accusatorily. "Kenma, you were in charge of that. Did you mess up the flyers?" He crossed his arms with a morose shake of the head. "It wouldn't surprise me. You have the attention span of a— OW!" He yelped, resting a hand on the back of his head, which Kenma had slapped with an annoyed growl. "You didn't have to hit me!"
"You're an idiot," Kenma muttered concisely, tapping away on his phone with the expression of a sulking cat. "Besides, I gave the duty over to Kageyama because I had to go to the game store..."
"Ah!" Kuroo slammed his palms against the table with an exasperated (and exaggerated) shout. "How could you let that idiot take care of it?! That moody bastard probably shoved the flyers at them and told them to make it however they wanted!" He groaned, resting his forehead against the table with a defeated sigh. "Geez, Kenma, you're so unreliable..."
"Um... Excuse me?" Natsu piped up for the first time in the conversation, raising a hand timidly as if she were in school. "Sorry to interrupt your... whatever, but I'm confused." She pointed at Kuroo hesitantly. "You're a tengu, and your flyer said that your other two roommates are yokai as well." She crossed her arms with a slight frown. "What I don't understand is... yokai aren't real?"
"Eh?" Kuroo blinked at her confusedly. "Aren't you two yokai as well?" He scratched at his left eyebrow, muttering to himself distractedly. "At least, you must be..."
"No!" Natsu stood from her chair with an aghast expression. "We're humans, right, nii-chan?" She turned to Hinata for backup and he jumped as if he'd been dunked in cold water, sucking in an unsteady breath. He wasn't sure it was the best idea to tell a bunch of yokai that they were humans. After all, the stories he'd read about yokai had been way scary... What if they decided to eat them, or worse?!
"Impossible!" Kuroo said dismissively, mercifully saving Hinata from having to respond. "You two can't be human. Humans can't see us, let alone find this place." He rested his chin in his hand and glanced over at them with a relaxed smile. "Because this is a yokai sanctuary, after all. The supernatural barrier is built to keep humans out." He snorted out a laugh. "You had me going there for a second!"
"Y-y-yo-yokai s-sa-san-sanctuary?" Hinata stammered, brain short-circuiting as he absorbed the words. "B-bu-b-b-b-but..." This was way too much to process in such a short amount of time. His whole world was crumbling right in front of him. Tengu, yokai, sanctuary... This was way too crazy! Was he dreaming? Would he wake up in a second and be back in his bed at home just like he had the previous morning?
"Did someone say... humans?"
"EEK!" All four at the table whipped around at the voice and the two human siblings immediately stiffened as they witnessed the dark, intense aura exuding from the hallway directly behind them. It was like tangible shadows, and the two red eyes that peered at them from the depths nearly caused Hinata to faint from fear. Is this the third roommate?! Please don't be the third roommate...
"Oh, K-Kageyama..." Kuroo chuckled nervously. Hinata got the sense that even his fellow yokai were nervous around this newcomer—which only made him want to crawl under the table and get into the fetal position all the more hard to resist. "It was just a false alarm... No need to get worked up."
"Are you sure, because..." There was a faint breeze and suddenly Hinata felt a sinister presence behind him. Wahh... His body stiffened and he felt himself trembling, too afraid to turn around. Oh no oh no I'm gonna die oh no. The voice from before was right behind him when it spoke again, setting him more on edge. "...this one smells off."
"Don't pay any attention to him!" Kuroo quickly urged Hinata with a perturbed expression. "Kageyama, he's our new roommate, so don't scare him away! He's definitely not a human. He would have the aura of one. And besides, how would they have gotten in here if they weren't yokai?" He seemed to be trying oddly hard to convince the newcomer—Kageyama, Hinata gathered—that they weren't humans... Why was that? It was making him nervous.
He was too afraid to speak up let alone turn around and he could tell that Natsu was, too.
"I hope you're right." There was a cool breath against Hinata's neck and he stiffened, feeling a chill travel down his spine. Scary scary scary... "Because if you two are human, I'll have to kill you."
"This is bad, this is very bad..." Hinata clutched his head between his hands, biting his lip with a hopeless expression. "How can I get myself out of this one?" The question fell on empty air as he was currently locked away in the room of his new apartment, struggling to find a way to get himself back to safety. He'd sent Natsu home as soon as the table gathering had ended, though she'd been reluctant to leave him there.
Whatever he did, though, Hinata knew he had to act normal... Or, rather, like a yokai. Because if you two are human, I'll have to kill you. Kageyama had said it himself, and ever since that pleasant conversation, Hinata had been stuck in an endless loop of thoughts that were getting him nowhere. How was a measly human like him supposed to escape a building full of yokai? It seemed impossible to accomplish...
At least Natsu was safe: That was one less thing to worry about. He'd made her promise to stay away from his apartment until further notice, so she was safely tucked away at home and would hopefully not have to deal with this whole yokai situation anymore. But that left Hinata with absolutely no one to help him come up with an escape plan, which wasn't good at all.
"I just need to figure out how to get out of the lease..." he muttered to himself, deep in thought as he paced the carpeted floor of his room. "I already signed it the first day, and if I asked outright, it would seem too suspicious..." He let out a defeated groan and collapsed on his back amidst the many pillows piled up on his freshly-made bed. "This is useless! My brain isn't built for this kind of thing!"
"Hinata!" The redhead nearly jumped out of his skin when Kuroo pushed his door open and poked his black, spiky-haired head through. "It's time for dinner."
"O-oh, is that so?" Hinata cleared his throat with an uneasy laugh. "I'll... be there in a second."
The taller boy ducked back out of the room with a noncommittal shrug, as if saying 'whatever you say', and closed the door behind him. As soon as Hinata was sure he was gone, he collapsed backward again with a grimace. This sucks. I have the worst luck in the world! He let out an irritated growl and kicked his legs against the mattress angrily. Seriously, yokai are real and now I'm being held captive by them? Is this some kind of joke?!
No... Hinata took a deep, steadying breath and pushed himself into a sitting position. I need to keep my cool. Think of this as an RPG quest or a puzzle game... I just have to think of all the possible solutions. He nodded to himself. Yeah, that's it! And besides, it's not such a bad place to live, if you ignore the whole 'yokai' part. I'll stay here and get familiar with the place: that way it will be easier to escape when the time comes.
"Hehe..." The boy sprung to his feet on the bed with a satisfied grin. "I'm a genius!" He punched the air a few times with an excited hum, feeling much calmer now that he'd come up with a plan. "Let's do this!"
Hinata was obviously skeptical of a dinner served by yokai, but to his great surprise and relief, it was normal food (for the most part—Kuroo used an ungodly amount of hot sauce). The redhead sat at the table throughout the meal, staying quiet and doing his best to discreetly observe his companions and the apartment itself to pick out weaknesses and possible escape routes.
Kageyama—the scary third roommate—was noticeably absent from the table, but Hinata was a bit relieved. That guy terrified him, especially after what he'd said before. Not to mention the fact that Hinata had no idea what he looked like. If he was a yokai, he could have the appearance of an 8-foot oni for all he knew.
But aside from him, Kuroo and Kenma actually... weren't that bad. The two bickered like an old married couple, and they had a few weird tendencies (like Kuroo's constant stretching and Kenma's gaming addiction), but other than that, they were pretty normal.
In fact, if Hinata wasn't so freaked out by the fact that they were yokai, he might've felt bad for judging them just for that fact. He wasn't one to do that as it was pretty rude and his mom had raised him and Natsu to treat everyone equally, but yokai were a completely different story... weren't they?
He couldn't be expected to get along with a bunch of monsters, could he? That was too weird, even for him. But still...
"Kuroo, quit hogging the salt!" Across the table from Hinata, Kenma beat on the dark-haired boy's arm with a scowl, reaching around him with his free hand and trying to bat the salt out of his hand, like a cat pawing at a mouse. Kuroo successfully kept it away from him, laughing like an immature child the whole time. "Haha, your arms are too short, Keneko-chan!"
"I told you not to use that stupid nickname! You wanna die, bird bastard?!"
This is weird... Hinata watched them, and it was just like watching his old classmates during lunch, fighting over the last bit of food in the bento box. They're... not acting like monsters at all. Really, they're pretty normal, aren't they? His lips turned down in a frown. I wanted to get out of this, but it's not as scary as I thought... He let out a huff, taking a spoonful of rice and chewing on it with deliberation. What should I do?
Later that night, Hinata sat at his desk, head in hand and face distorted with a grimace that only came from thinking hard. It was nearing midnight, so he presumed his fellow housemates had gone to bed, but Hinata couldn't coax himself into a state of mind where sleep was possible. He felt wide awake, brain frantically working, searching for a solution to his moral dilemma.
He hadn't been raised to judge a book by its cover, and yeah, sure, yokai were supposed to be fiction and not fact, but did that really change anything? They were still living things with feelings and thoughts and opinions: So what if they came with a little extra on the side? Who was Hinata to judge? He could recall several odd individuals he'd met in person or read about online who could do weird things like pop their bones out of place or contort themselves into weird shapes. Yokai were kind of like that, weren't they?
No matter how hard Hinata tried to convince himself that he should stick to his original plan and get out of his lease—a human really had no business living with yokai—he couldn't seem to agree to it. It would feel wrong, somehow, if he backed out. Unfair. He felt crappy just thinking about doing it. It would be like he wasn't treating them equally, and he couldn't stand that.
Because of his height and small stature, Hinata had constantly seen the unfair side of things throughout his younger years: Picked last for sports teams, used as an elbow brace by taller kids, tripped, shoved in lockers, and countless other things. Luckily, the bullying had eventually stopped as the kids matured and Hinata made his own group of friends and was left alone, but he knew what it was like.
The only issue he really had with the apartment was the fact that yokai inhabited it, and if he left just because of that one insignificant thing, he'd be no better than one of those jerks that used to constantly pick on him. Even if it was a little scary being around a ton of monsters, the ones he'd met so far had been nice and civilized; in all honesty better than some humans he'd met before.
So? a little voice in the back of his head whispered as he sat there frowning. What do you want to do?
"What do I want to do?" Hinata murmured to himself, pushing himself back in his desk chair with his heels. It gave a creak of protest as he spun around in a circle but Hinata ignored it in favor of pondering aloud. "The pros certainly outweigh the cons... Actually, there's really just the one con, isn't there? Cheap rent, a place to sleep, some actual leftover funds at the end of the month..." He paused. "They really are nice... And this place is really close to my campus, too...
"Alright!" Hinata pushed himself back from his desk and gave a determined shout. "It's settled! I'm staying!"
"Shōyō, shut the fuck up," Kenma screeched from across the apartment. "We're trying to sleep here!"
And so began Hinata Shōyō's life with monsters.
A/N: A lot of you guys liked the idea of this so I decided to continue it! I hope you guys enjoyed the first official chapter~ I'm using Japanese for the titles because I'm a weeb 'kay. Anyway, remember to follow and favorite if you enjoy the story and want more, and please feel free to leave comments, corrections, and suggestions down in the review section ^-^
Btw, I know you guys are all probably waiting for Kags to make his full appearance and all I can say is: Be patient my children! The time will come MWAHAHHAHAHHAA ;w;
