Chapter 2:

Chapter Two: English, Break, and Mr. Santa Claus

Ao


 Kenji and I get along fine. There was, however, one issue between us. If I practice the recorder at home, Kenji puts on his headphones and turns on his music or a video game, so I usually practice when he’s not home. Kenji’s in his school’s film club, so he tends to come home later. Hana, on the other hand, is more tolerant of my subpar recorder playing. She even helped me so my playing was passible. Although, Kenji still didn’t want to hear it. Uncle said if I were better at music, I could practice at the park. He evidently played a few instruments when he was in school, and practiced them at the park a few times. Most people ignored him, but he did get a few glances every now and then.

Both Kenji and Hana had friends come over to do homework and play video games. Since Kenji and I shared a room, I got to know his friends, Makoto Torishima and Tadaka Matsumoto, pretty well. They let me join their video game tournaments. Of course, Hana and her friends (Reina Moriwaki, Naoko Obata, and Fumiko Tamura) also joined in the tournaments at times.

Kenji’s class is studying a language called English. I never heard of it, but apparently it’s spoken in many countries.

“Do dragons and yōkai have their own language?” Kenji asked. “Or do you just speak Japanese?”

“Neither,” I said.

“What do you mean by ‘neither?’”

“There isn’t a yōkai language or a dragon language, but I speak more than just Japanese. Some yōkai, like your mother, probably only speak Japanese, but since dragons are important to many cultures, my family and I speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Malay, Tibetan,—”

“So you basically speak every East Asian language, but you never heard of English?”

“Well, it’s not spoken in East Asia, I guess. Besides, I don’t know every East Asian language. I don’t speak Indonesian or Tagalog. At least not very well. My grandpa, on the other hand—”

“English is one of the four official languages of Singapore.”

“Oh.” That’s how I decided to study this strange new language. It was easy to balance out with my regular homework, considering the only subjects I really struggled with were music and PE…and sometimes science.

I injured myself in PE class. One of my classmates bumped into me causing me to fall and scrape my leg. Fortunately, dragons heal relatively quickly, and even in my human form, I have that ability (not that any of my classmates or teachers know I’m a dragon, anyway). The PE teacher, Ms. Yabuki, asked my classmate, Junichi Takimoto, to take me to the nurse’s office. (Because I didn’t know where the nurse’s office was yet.)

After we left the gym, Takimoto-san said, “You’re not very athletic, are you? I’m glad you weren’t here for Sport’s Day.”

“Sports Day?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“Seriously? You don’t know what Sports Day is? Are you a foreigner?”

“Well, um, I guess you could call me that.”

“Huh. You speak Japanese really well. I never would’ve guessed you were a foreigner.” Fortunately, Junichi didn’t ask were I was from, but he did explain to me what Sports Day was. It sounded like Hell! A whole day of PE, in which you compete with other classes. Not only that, but parents and family members are allowed to come participate! Yikes. The very idea sent shivers down my spine.

“That sounds terrifying,” I observed.

Junichi laughed. “Actually, most of us think it’s fun, but I can see why you would be scared.”

“Please tell me there isn’t a whole day of music class, too.” We had reached the nurse’s office by then, and I had sat on one of the beds. The nurse, however, was not currently in her office.

“No,” Junichi said. “Well, kinda. Would you like me to wait with you until Ms. Nishi arrives?”

“Sure,” I said.

Junichi and I talked for a few more minutes. The moment the nurse arrived, I wished I hadn’t asked Junichi to stay. Even before she walked in the door, I noticed. The school nurse, Ms. Nishi wasn’t human; she smelled like a yōkai. If there wasn’t a human in the room, I could’ve asked her what she was. Was she a shape-shifter like a fox, tanuki, river otter, or mujina? Was she a yōkai that naturally looked human like an ameonna or rokurokubi? Was she taking the human pill like me? I waited. It didn’t take long for Junichi to explain the situation and head back to class, but my heart was pounding so fast. The moment Junichi left, I let it out, “What are you?”

“I’m the school nurse. What do you mean ‘what am I?’”

She couldn’t smell the difference between me and a human. Either that or she’s playing dumb. If it’s the former, that eliminates quite a selection of options. There are thousands (possibly millions) of types of yōkai, but most of them can easily distinguish the smell of human from the smell of yōkai.

I looked around. “I’m a dragon,” I explained. “I’ve lived most of my life in the spirit realm, and I’ve noticed that you smell like a yōkai. I can’t, however, figure out what kind of yōkai you are.”

“I see,” Ms. Nishi said. She took off her hat and undid her hair-bun to reveal a second mouth on the back of her head. “Please don’t tell anyone that I’m a futakuchi-onna.”

“Not even my host family, who knows I’m a dragon?”

“Not even them.” She paused for a second. “I’ve never been to the spirit realm. What’s it like?”

I told her about the spirit realm, and she in turn told me about the human realm. I wondered why Ms. Nishi never went to the spirit realm. I also wondered why she didn’t want my host family to know she was a yōkai. I understood why she didn’t want the students and school faculty to know. I mean, most of them didn’t know I was a dragon. After we had been talking for a while, Ms. Nishi said, “I’d better send you back to class, or your teacher might start wondering way I kept you for so long.” (She had already examined and treated my leg scrape.)

“Just one more thing,” I said. “How did you become a futakuchi-onna?”

“It’s a long, sad, and tragic tale,” she said. That didn’t answer my question. There were three ways to become a futakuchi-onna, and they could all be described as “sad and tragic.”

PE was almost over when I was dismissed from the nurse’s office, so I went straight to my classroom. We had math after PE.

It was just Aunt and I when I got home from school. Hana went to Reina’s house to bake a cake with her friends. Kenji probably had film club stuff going on, and Uncle was at work. He works in the accounting department of a IT company.

“Do you have any yōkai friends?” I asked. “I mean, here in the human realm.”

“Yeah,” Aunt said. “Are you lonely? I can introduce you, if you wish.”

“No. It’s not that. I was just wondering if you knew anyone who doesn’t go into the spirit realm.”

“What brought this on? If you want to stay in the human realm forever, I’m not going to stop you.”

“It’s not that.” I hadn’t really thought about how long I would stay in the human realm. I just got here!

“Kenji and Hana are human. Despite having a yōkai parent. They are both human, not hanyō.”

She thought I was asking about that? “I know. Why is it that they were both born human, though?”

“I do not know.” The conversation ended there. There was nothing more to say. I didn’t tell Aunt about Ms. Nishi, as I promised I won’t. I was mostly done with my homework when Kenji came home. Hana came home the latest that day, but she was home in time for dinner.

The next day, I was assigned cleaning duty after school with a girl named Saki Takeuchi and a boy named Takeru Ishihara. It was just me and Saki, though. Takeru ditched. Which didn’t surprise me. I had been at the school long enough to knew Takeru was a troublemaker. Saki and I managed to clean the classroom without him, though. In class (and even while cleaning), Saki would occasionally look at me a blush. I’m not sure what that was about.

I quickly fell into a routine. Although, there were a few times I pretended to be sick just to avoid PE class. However, it didn’t take long for the teacher to call me out on it.

My one and only friend, Junichi, invited me to visit his apartment a few times. We watched TV, read manga, and played video games.

Late December brought much excitement to everyone at Hinotori Elementary. Winter break was coming up, and so was a holiday I never heard of called Christmas. A few of my classmates were excited to get gifts from an individual named Mr. Santa Claus, but I also had many classmates that seemed certain that Mr. Santa Claus didn’t exist. I decided to ask my host family about him. He and his reindeer seemed almost like yōkai, but I hadn’t seen them in the spirit realm. Maybe they were like Ms. Nishi; yōkai that have never been to the spirit realm. I decided I was going to catch sight of this Mr. Santa Claus and his reindeer, and if he truly delivered presents to every child in the world, all I had to do was wait.

Other than not finding the mysterious gift giver, winter break was fun. My host family and I visited a shrine for New Year’s. The shrine’s komainu gave me a funny look as we entered, but no one else seemed to notice. As we were leaving, one of the komainu asked me why I wasn’t at my own god’s shrine. Of course, he noticed what I really was! I explained that I hadn’t been assigned a god, a shrine, or a river. At least not yet.