Interlude I- Anata’s First Day of School

  “And if you move the three over here, you’ll see it becomes thirty-three. Do you have any questions? Anata, how about you?”

  Anata stared blankly forward, past the blackboard. She hated it here.

  “Anata?” her teacher repeated.

  Her blank stare turned into a glare at the woman up front. Then gave a single, curt shake of her head.

  “Very good!” the teacher said. “Would you like to solve this next problem?”

  Other students snickered at their desks beside her. It didn’t take a genius to know they thought her an idiot because she didn’t speak. In reality, she felt like a genius when compared to these idiots who struggled with the most simple questions.

  She stood, walked to the front of the class, snatched a piece of chalk, and scribbled the correct number on the board.

  “Very good, Anata,” the teacher praised her in a condescendingly nice tone. “But you forgot to show your work.”

  Anata looked at her blankly. What work was there to show? She looked at the arithmetic problem and knew the answer. It was obvious to anyone with more than a rock in their skull.

  “You see, you can count these and carry them over.” The teacher began demonstrating by writing over Anata’s answer.

  Anata rolled her eyes and returned to her seat.

  “What sort of spell do you think she’s using to cheat?” she heard a boy whisper behind her.

  “I bet it’s an enchantment on that tacky crown she’s wearing.”

  “Nah, it’s definitely under the eyepatch.”

  Anata took a deep breath. She just needed to last another couple days and Mae would join her at the schoolhouse. That would make it all better.

  Taroe had forced her to come today but decided Mae needed more time to adjust to her new life in Shinzou. As much as Anata hated being here alone, she had to admit that was probably a good idea. Mae didn’t show it openly, but she’d been crying herself to sleep every night since her mother had been taken.

  When first approached with the idea of going to school, Anata’d been a bit excited, thinking it would be like the magical academy Kizu attended up on the mountain. But it was nothing like that. This was a place full of lummoxes who struggled to think more than one thought in an hour. And there was practically no magic here either. Just numbers and words. She’d be better off just reading books. In fact, some of her supposed ‘peers’ couldn’t even read. A skill that really wasn’t that hard. She’d picked up the Universal Script after only a month or so of studying under Kizu.

  “Don’t forget your homework!” her teacher, a lady named Veronica Reads, called out to everyone when the bell rang, dismissing them all.

  Perhaps it wasn’t their fault. Maybe Veronica Reads was simply an incompetent teacher compared to Anata’s uncle. The woman babied all her students and didn’t trust them to figure stuff out on their own.

  “Why are you so pale and thin?” the girl next to Anata asked her.

  Anata flicked her eyes over to the girl and examined her in a glance. Pigtails, slightly upturned nose, slight frown. Earlier in their class this girl had struggled to answer an arithmetic problem. Anata recalled from roll call that her name was Mimi.

  “Don’t bother trying,” a boy said. “She’s too dumb. Can’t even answer a math question without cheating.”

  Anata considered removing the boy’s soul from his body and sending him into an astral projection. She raised a hand to do just that, but stopped herself before she actually cast the spell.

  “Speak less,” Anata said. The first words she’d spoken all day. She directed the words at the boy and girl, hoping in vain they might secretly be monsters that could be commanded by her glamour.

  Of course, she couldn’t be lucky enough to share her class with monsters. Instead she was stuck with these idiots.

  The boy sneered at her. “What’d you just say to me?”

  “That wasn’t even a full sentence,” the girl said. “You didn’t include a subject.”

  Anata sighed. The subject was implied. Other people spoke too much. They filled the world with noise instead of listening. Her words literally carried power. But so did normal words. She’d seen how Kizu spoke to people. Back when they’d met the witch coven in the Hon Basin he’d used words to gather information and save Hon. That was so cool. The way he’d manipulated the witches.

  “What are you smiling about?” the boy asked, his brow knitting together. “Dumbass.”

  He stepped forward and waved a little fist at her, threateningly. Anata almost laughed at how stupid he looked. Not even of a height with her.

  Then someone slammed into the boy, knocking him over and tumbling over a desk.

  Anata cocked her head, curious as the newcomer pummeled the angry boy.

  “You! Don’t! Hit! Girls!”

  “Reads! Miss Reads!” Mimi started wailing. “Rui attacked Dean! Miss Reads!”

  The school teacher rushed back into the classroom and cast a spell, a gust of wind formed between the two boys and pushed both apart.

  “Rui!” Miss Reads said. “Again?”

  Before the attacker had a chance to speak, Dean started whining, tears down his cheeks. He was babbling about being attacked and how Rui should be expelled. Anata watched it all play out. This was by far the most entertaining thing that had happened all day. She wanted to understand exactly what had triggered Rui to attack the boy. Was he just really angry all the time and liked hitting people? He’d been yelling about girls while he beat up Dean. Was this to impress girls?

  “Rui!” Miss Reads said again.

  “He was going to hit the new girl,” Rui finally said. “You don’t hit girls.” He pronounced the statement like a fact. Anata tilted her head and examined the boy more closely. He was scuffed up, and not only from wrestling a moment earlier. He half-healed scrapes dotted his face and his hair was a chaotic bird’s nest. Unlike all the other students, his clothes were wrinkled and even torn at the knees. He was also missing more than one tooth, but Anata had noted earlier that so too did many of her other classmates. She wondered where the teeth had all gone. It was a weird trend.

  “Is this true?” Instead of asking the boys, Miss Reads turned to Mimi, likely thinking her an unbiased spectator. It did erk Anata a bit that the teacher didn’t ask her, the one apparently threatened by Dean, but she let it slide and watched her classmate stumble over her tongue to respond.

  “No….” Mimi squirmed under her teacher’s scrutiny. “Well, I mean, kind of. She said something really mean to us. All Dean did was shake his hand at her. It wasn’t a hit. Rui’s the one that hit someone! Punish him!”

  Miss Reads opened her mouth, clearly to admonish Rui, but she was cut off.

  “He insulted me then moved in for an attack.”

  Anata didn’t know why she spoke. The words just came out. It was far more than she liked to say and a bit of a stretch. Had Dean moved to attack her? She decided that she didn’t care. She liked seeing Dean’s eyes widen in outrage at the accusation.

  Miss Reads froze, then looked around, as if trying to find the speaker before her eyes fell on Anata.

  “You felt threatened by him?” she asked.

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  Anata nodded.

  Just like that, her ire shifted from Rui over to Dean. She began berating him for not welcoming new students and sentenced him to an after school detention. As she lectured him, Rui managed to slip out the door but not before catching Anata’s eye and giving her a thumbs-up.

  She decided at that moment that she liked Rui. He didn’t seem particularly smart, but he was at least clever enough to evade attention and escape when given a chance. And he’d hit the boy who’d been bothering her. She liked that.

  Instead of heading back to Taroe’s house like she’d been instructed to do after class, Anata decided to follow the boy. Despite him trying to be sneaky, she tailed him with ease as he snuck down into an alleyway.

  As she rounded the corner, she nearly barreled straight into him. Rui stood there, grinning.

  “You followed me! I knew it!”

  He sounded excited rather than offended like Anata first assumed he might be. She slowly nodded.

  “Awesome! I didn’t even realize until last block! You’re so quiet and sneaky! You want to see my hideout?”

  Another tentative nod.

  “You have to promise not to tell anyone.” Rui paused, then his grin grew even broader. “Actually, that doesn’t matter because you don’t speak much anyway! But yeah, I don’t want Dean or the others learning about it. Make sure you don’t get followed.”

  And all of the sudden, Anata found herself being dragged off to a secret hideout. Rui held her hand and gabbed ceaselessly as he led her through the streets to an old decrypt building.

  She recognized it vaguely from her astral wanderings growing up. As long as she could remember though it had always been empty and abandoned. Definitely not somewhere they were supposed to go.

  That didn’t stop Rui though. He lifted up a loose board and squeezed in. It took him a bit of squirming before he slipped inside. Anata followed after him, her thin frame giving her easier access.

  It was dark inside, but that wasn’t an issue for Anata. Her scarlet eye was hidden behind her eyepatch, but the accessory had been enchanted to be see-through from her side. She blinked twice and her Blood Lord inherited eye dilated her vision, allowing her a complete image of the building’s interior, albeit in slight shades of scarlet.

  It took her breath away. The roof above the was domed and the walls lined with different constellations, a few of which Anata recognized from her astronomy lessons from Kizu. But the most attention grabbing object lay in the center of the room. A massive telescope, so big she could crawl inside its lens, gathered dust in the abandoned building. She walked up to it and pressed an eye up to it. It showed only a closeup of the wooden ceiling above them. After a few seconds of investigation, she noted that the domed ceiling could be moved to the side with a system of gears. She spotted an old crank not far away, but it had decayed, the handle lying in rusted pieces on the floor.

  “Pretty neat, right?” Rui grinned. “I found this spot last year. If you think this is cool, wait until you see the basement! That’s where all my treasure is.”

  Treasure? That finally tore Anata’s attention away from the massive telescope.

  Rui was already on his way over to the side of the building. He hopped down in a hole in the floorboards and disappeared from sight.

  Rather than leaping in blindly after him, Anata took a more cautious approach, inspecting the hole. She saw only darkness and heard nothing from Rui.

  She wished she had Mort here to go scout the hole for her, but the monkey was sleeping back at Taroe’s house and watching over the Kitsune.

  “You coming?” Rui’s voice called out from below. Despite being out of sight, he sounded barely a few paces away at most.

  Anata sat on the lip of the hole, her feet dangled down, engulfed in the darkness. She brought one foot back up and inspected it. It looked completely normal. She wiggled her toes inside her shoes. It felt completely normal.

  Then something wrapped around the ankle of the foot still dangling. She yelped as it tugged her down. Her heart went to her throat as she fell.

  And then she hit a mossy ground with a soft oof. Rui beamed down at her. She swiped an arm at him and smacked a leg. Then she slowly sat up and looked around.

  It wasn’t actually moss she’d landed on, but tiny mushrooms. They spread all across the ground as far as she could see. She pulled a few from her hair and tossed them at a retreating Rui.

  The only surface not covered in mushrooms looked to be Rui’s little hideout area. A sheet had been pinned over it, creating a lean-to tent. Another blanket was laid out inside and Anata spotted a few books and papers with drawings scribbled on them plastered on the wall.

  “Come look,” Rui beckoned, bringing out a small wooden crate. He thrust it forward. “See! Treasure.”

  Anata glanced at it. Inside were half a dozen shiny stones and an old bronze key. She reached in to pick up the key but Rui pulled it back suddenly.

  “Don’t touch! I’m just showing you it.”

  Anata rolled her eyes. It didn’t look like anything particularly valuable. She’d seen inside one of Emperor Sasaki’s vaults. But she wondered what the key went to. Her eyes wandered from the little hideout.

  She sensed something nearby. She looked over her shoulder. This area wasn’t so much a basement as it was a crawlspace. They just happened to be in the biggest area.

  Squinting, she thought she saw something move slightly in the shadows. On a whim, she relaxed herself. She dropped the mental barrier that Kumiho had taught her to create. Without it, monsters would be innately drawn to her presence. But she could still use her glamour to command them, so she didn’t think it was too dangerous.

  Then the object she stared at stirred more notably. It crawled toward them.

  “What are you looking at?” Rui leaned in. “Spot treasure?”

  The creature broke through the dirt, throwing them both backward.

  Rui screamed and Anata raised her hands to shield her eyes from the dirt. When the dust cleared, a monster crouched in front of her. It had a pale bald scalp and large white eyes that took up half its face. Slits instead of ears and a nose. And a massive mouth that hung open, two rows of jagged, broken teeth.

  “I-I’ll protect you!” Rui scrambled to his feet and raised his fists. “Run, Anata. G-get help! You can tell them about my hideout. I give you permission now!”

  “Masssster?” the creature’s head fell to the side in confusion. Its voice was a raspy wheeze.

  “Me?” Rui asked, fists lowering slightly. “Wait, no, you’re trying to trick me into lowering my guard!” And he raised his fists again, though his body shook.

  “What are you?” Anata asked.

  “Ahhh. Sssissster,” it said. “Not Massster.”

  If it thought she was its sister, then only one person came to mind who might be its master. Father.

  “Otochi made you?”

  “What?” Rui asked. “Who?”

  “Yesss. I am Gomi. Your brother.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I failed so I slept. You woke me.”

  “Anata,” Rui said slowly. “Do you…know this thing?”

  “No.”

  “Our firssst meeting,” Gomi concurred.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Hmmmm.” Gomi considered the question. “Not like me…but other brothersss and sssissstersss. Rare.” His face fell and his shoulders slumped. “I don’t tassste them in the air.”

  “How do you know about my hideout?” Rui demanded. Despite his steady tone as he spoke to the creature, his shaking body betrayed his fear.

  “I ssslept.” Gomi pointed a crooked pale finger at the corner of the crawlspace.

  Not turning his back on Gomi, Rui started edging his way over in that direction. When he reached the edge, he glanced down at the new hole and gave a shout of surprise.

  “It goes deep! What…what’s down here?”

  “Sssleeping place,” Gomi said. “For the dead.”

  Anata cocked her head, thinking. She’d read about catacombs in books. Labyrinths filled with undead, waiting to rise and fight for evil necromancers like Necro.

  “The dead?” Instead of being deterred by that prospect, Rui sounded excited. “Then are you some sort of undead creature? Or a keeper of the graves?”

  Gomi’s fingers jittered on the ground, as if he was playing a piano buried in the dirt. “Father’sss child. I missss him. I wait.”

  “Your father sounds like a weirdo.”

  Anata tensed, believing Gomi would attack as his body started shaking. Then a chortling gasping noise came from his throat. It was…laughter? It took Gomi a bit of time to recover.

  “What do you think, Anata?” Rui asked. “What do we do next?”

  Anata blinked. It still surprised her when people acknowledged and questioned her. She considered for a few seconds.

  “Gomi, stay down here.”

  “Sssissster wantsss me to sssleep?”

  “Yes.” That sounded like a good idea. If he could go back to sleep, Anata could think about her half-brother more before coming back.

  Gomi began skittering across the ground. Rui backed away as Anata’s half-brother dipped back into his hole.

  “Goodbye, little sssissster. Wake me when you’re ready.”

  “Goodbye,” Anata said. Despite her soft tone, the word still reverberated from her lips. “Stay safe, brother.”

  And then Gomi disappeared into the darkness.

  A moment of silence.

  “That was so cool! It’s like you unlocked a secret feature of my hideout! This is awesome! He said you have more monster brothers and sisters? We need to find more secret spots! You have the coolest family! I bet they’ll lead us to treasure too!”

  Anata’s eyes widened as she remembered something. Back when Kizu first discovered Owl’s Respite, he’d found a map rolled up in the captain’s cabin. And not just any map. A treasure map. She grinned. Rui and Mae were both going to lose it when they saw what she had planned.

  Fifteen Blood Curse Academia chapters (7 weeks) ahead of Royal Road on Patreon!