Walking through the narrow streets to the school, I noticed the looks. People didn't even try to hide them. Some gasped, others whispered, and a few outright stared at the scar. I ignored them. It only took me twenty minutes of weaving through alleys to arrive at the school gates.
The building was modern, bland, and utterly unremarkable. Exactly what I needed.
I found the teachers' office easily enough and knocked.
The door opened to reveal a woman in her late twenties with black hair, sharp eyes, and the kind of smile that made men stupid. White shirt, black jacket, red skirt. She glanced at me, blinked once, and then closed the door in my face.
"...Alright," I muttered.
From behind the door, her voice carried loud and clear: "HAS ANYONE PISSED OFF A GUY WITH WHITE HAIR, BLUE EYES, AND A HUGE SCAR ON HIS FACE?!"
The office exploded into murmurs.
I waited five minutes before the door opened again. Same woman. Same sharp smile.
"Sorry about that. You must be Adachi-san. I'm Suzuki Yua, your homeroom teacher." She bowed slightly.
I bowed back, polite enough. "Please take care of me, sensei. You can also call me Shiro."
Her lips curved into a grin. "Charming. You should smile more often. In fact, call me Yua when we're alone." She winked.
"You know I'm sixteen." I tilted my head.
"I like them younger," she teased, walking past me with the confidence of someone who'd already won the argument.
Shaking my head, I followed.
The first day blurred by. Introductions, stares, whispers. Nothing I hadn't expected. Most of the class looked at me like I was a wolf dressed in a school uniform. They weren't wrong.
But the strangest part wasn't the students. It was Yua.
She had the energy of a storm bottled into a human body-wild, erratic, and always two seconds away from saying something inappropriate. Where I maintained a deadpan expression, she radiated fiery energy. Where I was silent, she filled the air with noise.
The real shock came the next morning.
I opened my apartment door in running clothes, only to see my neighbor step out at the same time. Same black hair, same sharp grin. Yua-sensei.
She froze. "Shiro!? You're my new neighbor?!"
"Morning, sensei," I said flatly. "What are you doing up so early?"
"I could ask you the same," she shot back, slinging a sports bag over her shoulder.
"Going for a run."
"Same. Want to join me? Or are you scared of being outrun by your teacher?"
I sighed. "I'm more scared you'll try to flirt mid-sprint and get hit by a car."
She grinned. "Worth it."
And just like that, I found myself running through Kyoto streets at dawn, side by side with a woman who seemed determined to break every rule of professionalism.
Half an hour later, we were jogging back past a stray dog. Yua's eyes lit up like fireworks.
"Oh my god, look how fluffy he is!" She squealed, crouching down.
The dog growled, teeth bared.
"Yeah, that's rabies waiting to happen," I said.
"Nonsense, he's adorable." She inched closer.
The dog lunged. She yelped, stumbling back, and I laughed.
"You looked like you were about to kidnap him," I teased.
"I wanted to!" she snapped, brushing dirt off her knees. "He was cute!"
"He smelled like garbage and ticks. That's your definition of cute?"
"You men wouldn't know real cuteness if it bit you in the ass!" she shouted, standing on her toes to glare at me.
I chuckled, walking ahead. "Well, he almost did."
"Ugh, shut up."
By the time we reached the school, she was still sulking.
And then it happened.
As I walked down the hallway, half-listening to Yua's complaints about the misunderstood stray dog, my vision turned white. Not the gentle fade of tired eyes, but a sharp, searing flash like lightning behind my skull.
I blinked-and the school was gone.
The fluorescent lights, the chatter, and the tiled floors-all vanished. I was back in that room. The one with Stacy.
Her hand was still pressed to my head, her skin clammy, her breath uneven. She looked pale, almost sick, as though digging through my memories had drained her dry.
I frowned, reaching to steady her, when movement flickered at the edge of my vision.
Dizzy. Standing behind her. A dagger in his grip, poised to slit her throat.
Everything snapped into focus. My muscles tensed, my pulse steady, calm. I'd been here before. A hundred times before.
And without hesitation, I moved.
"No!"
Yo Author here
Know that you know the past, and yes, he/she isn't right in the head. That is why the 5 years of torture didn't really do anything to him/her.
Ooh, some of you thought I am going to kill Stacy. That ain't happening. The only way she is going to die is of old age, most likely.
TheRealSkolliecreators' thoughts
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Chapter 18: First Real Fight
"No, you don't!?" I yanked Stacy in with my right hand and hauled her against my chest. With my left I snapped an ice shield into existence between Dizzy's dagger and Stacy's throat. I didn't have an opportunity to shape it clean-more slush than plate-so the blade punched through the ice and straight into my palm.
"Ugh." The pain lit every nerve like a fireworks factory going up; my left arm was howling with that ten-times curse-tax interest. I'd taken hits from Stacy for three years, though. Pain wasn't a stop sign anymore; it was a suggestion I ignored. I hopped off the bed with Stacy slung tight and put distance between us and the dog with the suddenly unfriendly eyes.
"What terrible timing." Dizzy's voice came out flat and irritated. "I wanted to do it in your dreams, but you just had to wake up. Tsk." She let the blood-wet dagger clatter onto the bedsheets and palmed two more-one reverse grip, one forward-like she was deciding which cutlery to use for dessert. She saw me glance at the discarded blade and smiled too sweetly. "Wondering why I dropped it? You'll find out later. Hehe."
"Can't wait." I fed mana to Super Regen. My flesh knitted together, and the nerve-screams faded to a barbed hum. I glanced down-my right hand had Stacy by the collar like she was a stray kitten I'd rescued from a well-and gave her a small shake. "Hey. Up."
"Don't take your eyes off your enemy," Dizzy sang, already moving. She dashed in, blades fanning for my ribs and throat.
I grew a greatsword in my left hand-ice shivered into length and weight with a sharp, clean ring-and caught both daggers on the flat. Sparks of frost hissed. "Dizzy," I said, meeting her eyes over the locked steel, "did you really think I'd be that easy? Furthermore, who trained you? You're crossing your lines like you're slicing cake."
Her answer was a hiss. I tilted my head to clear the stabbing line and kicked. My heel sank into her stomach like booting a sack of rice. Dizzy launched backward, taking the bed with her, then the wall, then most of my patience, and hit the far side of the room with a dent that was going to make the mansion's auto-repair spell work overtime.
I shifted my grip on Stacy, slung her over my shoulder fireman-style-so dignified-and faced the crater. Dizzy peeled herself out of the wall with a rattle of plaster and stubbornness. "How are you so strong?" she wheezed. "I knew you were a demon-fox, but you're still level two."
"Is there something special about being a demon-fox?" I asked, deadpan.
She laughed like I'd told the world's funniest joke with a knife in it. "Didn't you know? Your kind is rare and dangerous. Why do you think it's rare to see any others? The Federation gave a continent-wide order to exterminate you. Anyone who brings back a corpse gets a massive reward. It's open season."
Something low and ugly rolled under my tongue. It wasn't fear. It wasn't grief. It was the kind of anger that makes your hands go steady and your thoughts get clearer. Maybe it was the blood in me-primordial, old as everything. Perhaps it was the result of three years spent building something that felt like a life, only to suddenly hear that strangers wanted my species as a trophy. I leaned down close to Stacy's ear. "Sorry about this," I whispered, not sure whether I meant the wall, the mess, or the things I was about to do.
I let Stacy down gently to the floor and moved.
Dizzy saw a blur. She got her blades up-credit for that-and still went skidding in a skid of splinters. This time she didn't stop at the wall; she went through it, screaming metal and stone, and vanished into bright late-afternoon air.
I stepped to the hole. Outside, the sun slanted gold across the courtyard, throwing long shadows off the training posts. Beyond the outer lawn, the Dead Forest crouched and breathed: a black treeline like a jawline of teeth. Dizzy was a broken figure fifty meters out, sprawled in a churned scar across the lawn, fighting her body to stand.
Behind me, the door banged open. "Kitsune!" Rebecca held a chain-axe in one hand, while Lily stood beside her with a rapier at her side. They took everything in-the crushed bed, the hole, Stacy on the floor, me-and then their eyes hit mine. Rebecca flinched just a fraction. Good instincts. The idea of running away from me must have occurred to her, and then she sensibly left.
"Take care of Stacy," I said. "She used her memory skill." I didn't explain. I didn't have time. I dropped out through the hole.
Gravel crunched under my sneakers; the air outside was bright and cold with the first bite of evening. I walked toward Dizzy at a conversational pace, letting my shadow stretch long. She finally scraped herself upright, blades raised again, arms shaking like bowstrings pulled past their limits.
"Are you really Federation?" I called, pleasant as a clerk. "You're so weak. Level two did this. Has your battle power declined so much we wouldn't even need half our Black Ops to mulch you?"
"You-how dare you mock the Federation!" someone screamed behind me.
I turned. It was one of the kitchen staff-one of the night-shift chefs I'd seen laughing at stew-charging with a longsword from the crowd that had gathered. Behind him, faces. So many faces. Some pale, some worried, some too focused. The intense focus displayed by some individuals suggests that they have previously engaged in violence and enjoyed it.
I smiled. "One guy? That's sweet."
He screamed wordlessly and chopped. I brought the ice blade down in a simple vertical. The adamantine edge I'd molded through practice and temper didn't so much clash as dismiss his steel. My sword bit through his guard and then his skull, and gravity took our argument from there. I let the blade go, and he crumpled with it-folded like a wicked idea.
"Really?" I looked at the crowd. "First swing and he's gone? Has the Federation always been this squishy?"
That did it. Twenty broke from the edges at once, peeling off aprons and dropping tools, producing real weapons from places servants shouldn't have them. Twenty of the less than one hundred and fifty staff members were involved. Ten percent rats in our grain.
"Cute," I said, and reached into the pocket between moments.
Dimensional Storage unlatched. Fabric whispered and caught, and in one smooth breath I was in my fighting clothes: black hoodie, dark red tee, jeans, sneakers, scarf up, and my twin chakrams settling against my hips with a familiar, hungry weight. Adamite fibers kissed my skin like a promise. I curled my hands and felt the lightning itch under the left forearm, the fire purr under the right, and the ice sit in my chest like a cold star.
"Let's dance."
I stepped forward, and the first two came in tandem-butchers' rhythm, the kind you learn cutting meat. I gave them the respect of a clean response: pivot inside, left hand rising, and the chakram flicked in a flat arc that hummed through the air and took the first man across the throat. I was already ducking under the second's blade, my knee driving into his thigh; his leg folded, and I clipped him across the temple with the pommel. He went down boneless.
Six more rushed. Good. I needed something to do with my hands before I started thinking about extinction events.
"Federation special today," I called, because if I didn't talk I might start screaming, and I didn't want to do that in front of Rebecca and Lily. "Two for one in humiliation."
The courtyard roared and narrowed. I felt the world in the soles of my feet-the give of grass, the crunch of gravel, and the clean hard confidence of stone. A spear thrust for my ribs; I trapped the shaft under my forearm, let the point glance past, stepped on the spear foot, and shoved. The wielder stumbled into his friend, and I kicked both of them into a tangle of limbs. The left chakram whirled out-thunk, thunk-and returned to my palm with a wet breath.
Someone screamed behind me. The sound snapped and cut short. I didn't look; I didn't need to. Rebecca's chain sang. Lily's rapier made bright, neat music. We were a choir.
Dizzy staggered back into my view, spitting blood and sliding into the gaps, while my movement felt like rain finding a crack. "You can't-" she started, and I cut the conversation short by planting my foot in her chest and borrowing her body as a stepping stone to go up and over a sword swipe that would have taken my legs. I landed behind two men, took them by the shoulders, and clapped their skulls together. The sound was ugly. I didn't apologize.
"Are we sure the Federation pays you?" I panted, grinning, letting the humor sit on top of the iron under it. "Because I would ask for a refund."
An ax whistled at my spine. I let lightning out, just a breath. Agony bit into my left arm like a thousand frying needles-hello, ten-times curse-but speed flooded the world. The ax looked reluctant to arrive. I slid aside, caught the haft, and twisted. The wielder stumbled into me, and the heel of my hand broke his nose through his mask with a red pop. He screamed into my palm. I did him the favor of making it brief.
"Eyes up, fox!" someone shouted-a house guard, loyal, shocked, trying to help. He took a knife for his trouble. I identified the thrower by her low, balanced, and precise movements, and then I flicked my right wrist. The chakram left me like a thought and came back like an answer, and she folded her hands at her throat as if in prayer.
In the corner of my vision, the dagger Dizzy had left on my bed-now far behind us, through the hole in the wall-crumbled to powder. A faint scent carried on the breeze; not iron, not oil-bitter, metallic-sweet, wrong. A beacon. The hair on my tail bristled.
So that's what she meant: not poison, a call. "Later," she'd said.
"Rebecca!" I shouted, without turning. "We've got a marker out; expect company."
"Noted!" She barked back, and the metal ball at the end of her chain smashed a spy into the ground, breaking the courtyard stones. "Stacy's awake and swearing!"
