16. I’m a therianthrope, an F-class monster, but I get mistaken for a cat

Years ago, I used to compete in martial arts tournaments. I never won anything—though I might’ve, but that’s also a story for another day. Even under an environment as rigid as a modern-day, official match, every now and then, I’d snap a bone or two.

Naively, I thought this would be enough to withstand street fights. I might as well have tried to cross the English channel after swimming in a kiddie pool. With time, I ended up getting used to it, but I also had to accept that both… styles… let’s call it that… fundamentally clashed with each other.

This fiasco could be something like that. I was stuck as a turtle now, so I’d just have to learn how to block.

And get pulverized into bone meal every time I did because I did not have their abilities.

Yeah.

Fun.

Aoko ended up placing second. I ended up last, to no one’s surprise. We had to teleport back using our shells, but Surin was nice enough to open a portal in my stead. What a kind lady.

When it came to Aoko, I wasn’t even being facetious, though. Though she felt evidently happy about her result, she didn’t bring this up, instead asking, “Can you walk?” as we returned to post #1408 in the arena.

I nodded. I meant to say ‘pretty cool Aoko, congrats on your result, that’s very nice and you should be proud’, but if I spoke, I’d throw up. It didn’t help that I looked unwell enough for people around to stop and stare. It’d be fine. Connie would heal everything. It was his fault I’d gotten into this mess in the first place anyway. He could’ve just said I was a dark fairy… or not, because they probably would’ve used magic… on second thought, maybe turtle had been the least bad option after all.

Post #1408 was buried in shiitake. I supposed that meant that Hisui had gotten a good result, too. She was the only one there. “Hiii! Kawakami, Ishi… Seishin!” Aoko raised a hand as a greeting, but Hisui seemed to take it as a high-five for some reason. “How did you do?”

“Um… we did fine.” Aoko glanced at me. “We scored somewhere in the middle. Right?”

She was averaging our scores…

I nodded.

“Me too,” Hisui said. “Out of sixteen, I got ninth.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear…”

“Nope. It’s great. It means that there’s room to grow. It’d be boring if I was the first one so quickly.”

That made me smile. Classic Hisui.

“That’s true,” Aoko replied, “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Um, Sakura, I’m a little bit hurt. Where are Connie or Isami so they can help me?”

Classic Aoko. She wasn’t hurt. Maybe she thought that asking for help in my stead would make me snap at her again. I would’ve told her ‘thank you for worrying, but I can look for help on my own’, except now my ribs were killing me on top of my stupid broken hand. They weren’t fractured, or else I wouldn’t be able to walk, but tanking a knee strike from a self-proclaimed muay thai champion had taken its toll. To put it lightly. Every breath felt like inhaling fire.

“They were here like two minutes ago,” Hisui informed. She’d styled her hair into a braid, decorated with flowers. It wouldn’t surprise me if magic had been involved. She kept unsubtly twirling it between her fingers so we’d notice the ‘do. “Connie said that he wanted to talk to Yukimura in private. Ah, and we’ll go on our first quest right now, so they’ll pick up the papers at the front desk on their way back here.”

“Right now?”

“Yup.”

“But what if someone’s hurt?”

“Hmm… you can tell Connie once he’s back. Or Yukimura, since he’s a healer.”

“He’s an awful healer,” Aoko said. She looked more panicked about the lack of healing than I was. Granted, I should probably be more worried or proactive or… something… but that would involve having to interact with strangers again.

At this rate, though, I’d pass out. Bad. I’d always had the endurance of a napkin—at least compared to others. Aoko kept glancing at me, then at Hisui. “Ishida, are you…?”

I nodded.

Hisui was staring at me now while I yearned to lie on the pile of shiitake and embrace the darkness. “Yeah, you look pale. Since we’re basically the same height, you can lean on me if you want.”

No we weren’t. (Yes we were.) I shook my head.

Aoko let out an, “...ehh…” as Hisui approached me anyway. I stepped back, bumping against someone. Said someone was not amused. Oh, right, there were a lot of people… everywhere… oh, God, I was going to pass out. Hundreds of voices were melting into each other. Lights and people began to fuse.

Hisui froze a moment before she reached out for me, wide-eyed. One Hisui, two Hisui. Red Hisui, Blue Hisui.

“Saku—bweh!”

Not only did she push Aoko to the side, but she also shoved the hood of my cape on top of my head and… hugged…? What…? Oh, no, I was hallucinating. Everything looked dark and smelled flowery and felt… soft…

:—<> —:

As soon as I opened my eyes, I got slapped.

…ah.

I’d read this scene before.

Dozens of times, actually.

Some guy would fall and smash his face into a very particular area of a woman’s body, then get hit as though it was his fault that gravity existed.

I was living it now.

Or not.

I seemed to be lying on something.

Not someone.

“...what are you doing?”

That was Yukimura’s voice.

The hand that’d just slapped me stayed on my face—on top of my eyes.“Checking temperature,” replied Hisui. She probably just meant to cover them, but had characteristically lacking spatial awareness.

I lay on a bed.

It felt like one, at least.

I felt her weight next to me. She was probably sitting at the edge of the (probably) bed, close enough for me to…

F-flowers…

“Right. It’s nice that you’d care about your teammates and stuff, but I’m the one supposed to be taking care of him, especially because… you know.”

“Yeah…” Hisui trailed off. “Two out of the four of us getting the worst scores in history might sound bad and all, but—”

“Nope,” Yukimura said. “Not hearing that again. We all suck. It is what it is. Well, except for Aoko. I heard that the team she’s helping wants to steal her.”

Yukimura being a useless loser neither surprised nor disappointed me. So, the two of us had not only gotten the worst scores out of our species for this round, but also history? That was so impressively bad that it was kind of funny, but I couldn’t smile or else I might’ve disturbed the peace.

The bone-drilling pain was gone. Connie must’ve healed me after I passed out or something. Where were we? Our room? Where was Aoko, exactly?

Slowly, Hisui’s hand left my eyes. We exchanged gazes for a second or so, then she slapped me again. I recoiled, but I supposed that it didn’t matter if she knew I was awake anymore. Within that split-second, I’d been able to confirm that, no, we weren’t back at the inn.

“If, uh… Sakura, if some other team asks to take Aoko in, I think we should encourage her.”

Hisui’s hand jerked on my face. “But…”

“I mean, let’s be real. She’s just going to do all the work if she stays with us. At least she’d get to do something fun that way, not… recon quests.”

“Recon quests can be fun.”

“They can, just not here.” Yukimura sighed. “You’ll see.”

They were silent for some time.

“Yukimura… I know that I’m supposed to do the rounds right now, but uhh…”

“No need to make excuses,” he replied. “I’ll do that for you. I want to see the landscape anyway, but you’ll owe me a favor.”

“That’s fine.”

Footsteps, close, then farther away. Clothes rustling.

Hisui removed the fleshy blindfold again. We stared at each other. I was paralyzed; I’d be hiding otherwise.

“Oh, no,” she mumbled.

So then I used the hood of the cape to cover my face.

“Ishi… uh… Sei… um. Oh, dear.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I just didn’t.

“Do you have your phone with you?”

I shook my head. I’d left it in the drawer at the inn.

“A mirror?”

“No?” Why would I have that?

Wait.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, the thing is… maybe it’s nothing that bad, but it is weird, because turtles don’t have that?”

“...that?”

“Slitted pupils.”

I waited for a punchline that never came.

Hisui asked, “Why did that happen?”

FUCK IF I KNEW? “I don’t, um. Maybe you’re wrong?”

“Maybe. I don’t think so, but I can check again. Show me your face.”

“No,” I said.

“Then how am I supposed to see them? Show. Me. Your. Eyes!”

She was trying to force the hood up my face while I was trying to force it down.

“Seishin!”

“Stop! Stop. Stop calling me that. Get away from me.”

Thankfully, she did. I even felt her weight leave the bed. My heart was racing, and not for the reasons I wished.

I remembered the pamphlet mentioning that some people could get traits from their species, but… fuck me… seriously…

Hisui was now thrashing the place. I sat up, wincing when an invisible knife lodged itself into my ribs again. Without thinking, I reached out to paw at my side. Since I did this with my right hand and it didn’t feel endless agony, it was safe to say that somebody had healed me while I was out. Just in case, I stretched my fingers. They still hurt a bit. So healing magic had its limitations…

“This’ll do.” Hisui approached me, holding something like a crystal. “What do you think?”

We seemed to be in a tent of sorts. Beside a desk with a map lay a heap of other crystals. The thing I lay on looked like a bed, but it was a mattress floating on nothing. Before I got nauseous again, I decided to just go with it and take the makeshift mirror.

Here went nothing.

A cursory glance revealed that, yes, my eyes were not only notably lighter in color, but also slitted like a cat’s now.

I sighed.

Hisui stood beside me, tilting her body, hands behind her back. “I expected more, hmm… panic? How are you always so calm about everything?”

I shrugged. One of my few talents was passively accepting misfortune.

“Oh, I get it. You’re right. Maybe it doesn’t really matter that much. After all, the pamphlets did say that some people might get traits from their species. But turtles don’t have slitted pupils, so maybe you’re a dragon?”

I nodded. So we were doing that thing where she went on a monologue while hallucinating responses from me.

“The thing is, I saw when the uh… the change happened earlier.” That explained her freezing. “I don’t know why, but I felt like we had to hide it.” That explained the hug…? “But you’re right, as usual. If I get something I like that, I hope it’s something cute. What about flower-shaped pupils?”

That sounded so stupid. She was so stupid. Fuck, I liked her so much…

“I knew you’d agree! I’ll ask Connie if he can help me get them later. Oh, that reminds me. We should tell him about this once he comes back.”

I shook my head frantically.

“Wait, why not?”

I didn’t know. Connie was the only other… being… that knew what I actually was, so why didn’t I want to tell him? Wouldn’t he know what to do?

One of my favorite movies involved someone slowly transforming into a fly. The one that got me into weird body horror films was the one where people turned into mushroom monsters. Stupid as it was, my mind was… soaring, for lack of a better term. “Because…” but there was no good answer to that.

It took the sound of clothes rustling for me to leave a world where I turned into a homicidal furry that snacked on Igasu. As the intruder walked through the curtain meant to be a door, I lay down, but Yukimura said, “Don’t bother. I heard all of it. You guys are stupid.”

Neither Hisui nor I replied.

“Sakura, you could’ve at least tried not to make it obvious that Mr. Snake Eyes woke up and you wanted to talk to him. Come on. I just stood outside while you morons revealed everything. And by that I mean you, because that weird fuck barely talks.”

Yukimura was the last person that should use ‘weird fuck’ as a derogatory term, but I digressed.

Upon sitting back up, with my newly-acquired monster eyes, I glanced at him, then winced as the light from outside filtered into the tent.

Bright…