Arisu approached the gates of the school, looking around nervously. She had never been to a school; she had some memories of Mama Seika’s time in one, but those were brief flashes, nothing concrete. Just enough to feed her the knowledge needed to live in this world, but not enough to navigate it with confidence.

  She was supposed to check a bulletin in the main hallway to know where to go, so that was where she went. The first trouble came when she entered through the door. She saw the other girls changing out of their street shoes and storing them in the lockers lining the entrance hall. She frantically looked around to see if she could spot her locker somehow.

  No luck. They’re all marked with numbers.

  She looked around some more until she was noticed by another girl who kept an eye on the entrance hall from the door, holding a clipboard. She stepped closer to the frantically looking Arisu and cleared her throat.

  “Are you a transfer student?”

  Arisu wheeled around and nodded enthusiastically. “I am, yes! Can you help me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Arisu!” she declared and nodded clipboard-girl’s way.

  “I… mean your family name,” the girl with the clipboard said, raising a brow and Arisu felt her face heating up.

  “Ah… ah! Mama Miori said it’s her name, so… it’s Takeuchi. Arisu Takeuchi.”

  Again, the girl’s brow was raised ever higher, and Arisu got the strange feeling that she made some kind of mistake right now.

  “Right…” the girl with the clipboard said, running her hand over her forehead to get some black hair out of the way by brushing it behind her ear, then her eyes darted over the list.

  “There you are. Student number 1204. Your locker is in the third row from the left. Your parents brought your indoor shoes the other day already, so you only need to put them on and you’re good. You’re in class 3-2, third floor.”

  Arisu nodded and gave the girl with the clipboard a little bow.

  “Thank you! I’ll be on my way!”

  Arisu hurried over to her shoe locker, taking care to take her shoes off before the step separating the outside from the inside, then she opened the compartment. Just like the girl earlier said, her indoor shoes were inside, and she eagerly put them on before she hurried up the stairs – until another girl with an armband chastised her for running in the hallway.

  ***

  “Rise! Bow! Sit down!”

  The class representative gave the typical instructions as the teacher entered the room. Arisu stood by the door, slightly nervous as she let her eyes wander. The first thing that she noticed was that the class looked a little smaller than it should be. Around ten desks were unused.

  “Right, class. First order of business: we have a transfer student who will be joining us from today on forward. Takeuchi, go ahead and introduce yourself!”

  Arisu quickly stepped in front of the blackboard and wrote her name. She felt the eyes of the class on her back as she did so, but there was a strange feeling mixed inside that she couldn’t identify. As she turned around, she saw all the expectant students looking at her.

  “Hello, I’m Arisu! Nice to meet you all!” she announced, and immediately she was at a loss what she should say next. Did she have hobbies? Not yet, unless watching Mama Seika’s anime collection counted. It couldn’t hurt to mention, either way.

  “Uhm… I’m into anime and old movies and, uhm…” she saw some eye rolls at the mention of anime, and yet others didn’t appear to listen to her but stared at her eyepatch

  I’m supposed to say it’s a birth defect, but that sounds lame…

  “Oh, this?” Arisu challenged the class with a laugh, hovering her right hand over her eyepatch. She narrowed her visible eye and showed the other students a wide grin before she spoke again.

  “This is a seal to conceal my true, awesome power!”

  There was silence. Some of the students averted their eyes now, some others put a hand on their foreheads and closed their eyes.

  Eh? Why? That was such a cool way to say it, though!

  Only one person kept looking at her directly, with squinted eyes that were so large and dark that it almost looked like they were black pearls. Her hair was the same color and fell over her shoulders like a waterfall. More than that, Arisu sensed something odd about her. She felt malice, though, it wasn’t exactly the same kind of presence she felt from various people on the way to school who were visitors to her world.

  Her teacher cleared his throat.

  “Very… interesting introduction. Go and sit next to Okumo by the window, Takeuchi.”

  “Ah… yes!” Arisu confirmed and obediently moved to the back of the class, sitting down next to this so-called ‘Okumo’. She sat down and turned to her new seat neighbor, giving her a little wave and a smile, but the girl simply stared at her from the corner of her eye without saying a word.

  Arisu’s smile slowly disappeared from her face, and she simply looked ahead to follow class; of course, they only had homeroom for now, so there wasn’t much to learn.

  From time to time, she glanced to the side, and every time she found the girl next to her staring at her with an unreadable expression. Arisu felt a bead of sweat building on her forehead which persisted until the bell signaled the end of homeroom, marking the start of a five-minute break.

  Arisu propped herself up on her seat and put on a self-confident grin. If what she knew from anime was true, all the girls would now flock to her seat and ask her questions! Everybody wanted to know the exchange student, after all!

  With that thought in mind, she simply sat and waited. And waited.

  Not a single soul approached her.

  She looked around a little confused and only saw four girls flocking to Okumo’s desk.

  “Hey, Okumo, do you want to go shopping this weekend? I hear they have new items at…”

  “Okumo, did you hear about Tanaka’s boyfriend? Apparently, someone saw him at…”

  The flock of girls continued to swarm her desk neighbor, and Arisu’s enthusiasm deflated entirely. She rested her cheek against her hand, elbow on the desk while she stared ahead and let time pass.

  It was there again, that strange feeling. She looked back at the black-haired girl, but all she saw was another human like any other. She furrowed her brow in confusion. It wasn’t like she had a lot of time to really explore her sixth sense regarding otherworldly visitors, but she could tell that it wasn’t working correctly, for whatever reason.

  “So, what’s really going on with the eyepatch?” she heard someone ask and propped herself up again, looking to whoever posed the question. She froze as she realized that it was Okumo herself.

  “Bumped your head into something, maybe?” Okumo asked and some giggles erupted around her. The girls surrounding the black-eyed girl appeared like courtiers, obediently mocking the target of their queen’s ire. Arisu furrowed her brow and turned her head away, trying to hide her expression.

  “I was born with one eye, that’s all. I was just making a joke,” she quickly explained.

  “Oh, is that so? Did you hear, girls? We have a… ‘special’ girl in our class, now.”

  More giggles. Arisu’s hand shook and she gritted her teeth in response. She immediately got out of her chair and faced Okumo, who looked at her with her cold, dark eyes.

  “Seriously, what’s your problem?!” she shouted, which made their surroundings grow quiet all of a sudden. Okumo got out of her chair and faced Arisu, narrowing her eyes as she sized her up.

  “Raising your voice at me? Bad mistake.”

  ***

  Arisu was aware of the existence of extreme bullying, but in the past weeks it was just something she saw in her mama’s anime. Over the course of the next periods, Okumo and her followers did everything in their power to make her first day at school the worst. She got water dumped on her from someone’s bottle, Okumo ‘accidentally’ bumped Arisu’s books and pencil case off her desk, and when she returned from a bathroom break, she found her belongings scattered all over the floor and partially hidden in the classroom. The other girls simply stared at her and tried to hide their giggling, barely.

  They wanted her to cry, she realized, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. These petty little acts of cruelty paled in the face of the love she was given by her mamas, and all she had to do was to hold out. In a few months she would graduate and enter high school anyway, and with some luck, she wouldn’t be in the same class as Okumo anymore.

  At least that’s how she thought things would go…

  Mana sighed as she walked out of her class after the bell rang for lunch break. Once again, she dodged her classmates trying to pet her ears or tail and hurried through the corridor, way up to the rooftop. The door was closed, of course, but that didn’t stop her. With a quick check over her shoulder, she made sure that no one could see her, then she opened a portal straight through the door, stepping into her little oasis of peace and quiet.

  She could see the surrounding city from here. She stepped up to the chain link fence and stretched, letting the wind blow through her long hair and closing her eyes, reminiscing a little.

  She saw Arisu today, on the way to school. She felt a little guilty for avoiding her, but part of her was still utterly ashamed of how she gave in and resumed her intimate relationship with Marisa, even though it completely violated the security protocols of the containment facility.

  She was also considering the possibility that she could simply avoid the future in which her and Marisa had one final clash by never allowing Arisu to get close to her. If they never made eye contact inside the facility, as Arisu described last year, then that would mean none of the events that led to last year’s events would happen. But what would that mean?

  Arisu wouldn’t ever have her first kiss with past Mana. Mana possibly wouldn’t get involved with Miss Hitoishi, but there was more than that.

  Mana’s thoughts went back to one of her earliest visits to the Infinite Library. A young, inexperienced witch, pinned to the ground as her clone sat on top of her and was about to choke her to death. She shuddered and quickly discarded the thought.

  Mana sighed and grabbed her triangular headphones for her cat ears; she would spend this lunch break simply drowning out her troubled thoughts with music and lazily eating her bento, she decided.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Though before she could put the headphones on, her sensitive cat ears picked up shouts and laughter from the roof of the other building.

  As Mana turned around, she was utterly flabbergasted. There was Arisu, but she looked way more timid than the one she knew. She was dragged onto the roof by her hair, pulled along by another middle school student, a girl with long black hair and even darker eyes.

  “Let go of me! What did I even do to you?!”

  “You’re trying to act tough when you should know your place,” the taller girl responded and kept holding Arisu’s hair.

  It wasn’t like her to struggle like that, Mana knew. Arisu was very strong; strong enough that she could dent a steel helmet with a punch from her bare fists. Was she simply playing weak because she didn’t want to hurt people with her immense strength? Was her strength maybe tied to transforming, and she couldn’t risk revealing that secret? Or did she not awaken to her power yet in the first place?

  Mana yanked herself out of her thoughts. She grabbed the chain link fence and gritted her teeth as she watched the scene unfold.

  Arisu shouted something at the other girl, who raised a brow and looked from one of her accomplices to the other, then all three of them laughed.

  Arisu was grabbed from either side and the tall girl stepped closer, reaching for the unusual girl’s eyepatch. Arisu shook her head, and Mana could see her pleading.

  Damn it all, just when I thought I could avoid her…!

  ***

  “Now let’s see what kind of deformed mess you have under that eyepatch, cripple girl!” Okumo spoke and let out a laugh. The moment lunch break started, her and her cronies had surrounded Arisu and dragged her towards the rooftop. It took Arisu an inhuman amount of restraint not to try and punch her assailants, recalling Mama Miori’s words.

  ‘Listen, Arisu. You’re different from others, and probably way stronger than them. Whatever happens, whether someone insults you or grabs you, don’t give in to anger and hurt someone, alright?’

  She wanted to follow her mama’s instructions, but the situation she found herself in didn’t leave her optimistic that she could keep her promise.

  “I told you; it’s a birth defect! I just made a joke about it, why won’t you believe me?”

  “Oh, I believe you. I just want to show you your place, so you won’t do anything rash like raising your voice at me anymore,” Okumo spoke, stepping closer. Her long nails trailed over Arisu’s cheek, scratching it slightly, and she panicked.

  Sorry, mama.

  She strained for real against her captors. If what she heard about her possible powers was true, she would be able to shake the girls holding her off without issue and throw a quick punch at Okumo to convince her to leave her alone.

  Arisu’s muscles strained, and…

  “Gh… keep still, you stupid bitch!” one of her captors shouted at her.

  Arisu was straining against the two girls holding her arms and made them put some effort into it, but she didn’t overwhelm them.

  Why?! Shouldn’t I be super strong?

  “My, you have spirit. But that won’t last for long,” Okumo spoke with some boredom in her voice. Her nails went under the edges of Arisu’s eyepatch and began lifting it off her face.

  She was panicking now, she realized, and she pleaded.

  “Please…! Please don’t lift it off! I made a promise!”

  “Shut up and…”

  “Stop that! Right now!” a shout came from the direction of the rooftop door. She trio surrounding Arisu turned around and froze, with Okumo letting out a ‘tsk’ sound. Arisu used the opportunity to yank her arms free from the girls’ grip and looked towards the door, seeing a girl with blue hair, cat ears and a cat tail, and simply going with the fact that there was currently only one human with these traits in all of Japan, Arisu immediately concluded that this must have been Mana.

  “As if one freak wasn’t enough, now we have to deal with kitty-senpai, as well…”

  “Real mature,” Mana commented and narrowed her eyes before she continued. “I’ve seen everything. Unless you want to deal with a teacher, I suggest you leave her alone and go have lunch.”

  Another ‘tch’ came out of Okumo’s mouth and she walked towards Mana, hitting her with her shoulder as she walked past. Her two accomplices were a little more timid and walked past Mana with lowered heads.

  “Seriously, you two? Why are you following a girl like that around? I know you both from last year, you weren’t like this back then!” Mana chastised them as they walked past, but she didn’t get an answer as they hurried through the door. The blue-haired girl with cat ears looked rather befuddled as she watched the rooftop door swing close and shook her head before she hurried to Arisu’s side.

  “Are you alright, Arisu?” she asked, and Arisu blinked. She knew that this was Mana, due to the description given by her mamas, but she didn’t expect to be recognized by her. Still, Arisu grabbed her sleeve and held on to it, with tears gathering in her eyes.

  Now that she was alone with a girl she knew she could trust, the strong fa?ade faded and she sniffled quietly. Mana panicked as she saw her tears and looked around frantically.

  “Ah? Ah! It’s alright, Arisu. It’s alright, I’m here.”

  “It’s my first day here and I already hate it! It’s unfair! Why is she targeting me? What did I do to her?! They even emptied my bento and soaked my books!”

  Arisu clung to Mana’s uniform and let it all out, while the blue-haired girl ran her fingers through her hair to comfort her.

  “Feeling better, yet?” Mana asked Arisu while the two sat next to each other on the roof of the other building. Mana immediately demonstrated that she had special powers just like Arisu’s mamas, opening a portal through which she hopped over to the rooftop. According to her, that was how she got over to help out in the first place. Arisu had Mana’s bento on her lap and reluctantly ate from it, while Mana made do with a sandwich from the school bakery.

  Arisu took big bites and nodded, still sniffling sometimes, but nonetheless, she looked towards Mana with gratitude.

  “Seriously, what’s wrong with them? And who was that girl? I thought I knew everyone in the classes below mine from last year, but I’ve never seen her before…”

  Arisu wiped her nose with a handkerchief and dabbed at her wet eye with her sleeve before she spoke again, gathering her thoughts.

  “You think she was a transfer student, too?”

  “Well, obviously. I think she would have stood out in her class with those eyes in particular. And even more if she had that attitude a year ago already. But for everyone to just flock to her and help her bully others? That doesn’t make sense, those girls used to be very friendly…”

  Arisu dwelled on it a little longer, thinking about the strange presence she felt but couldn’t exactly grasp. Now that she paid attention, there was a strange presence behind Mana, too, but she chalked that up to her having otherworldly powers and magic books besides. Still, it looked like the shade of a human woman, hugging the girl from behind, and all she could feel from it was love. It was oddly beautiful.

  Arisu shook her head, forcing her thoughts back into the here and now to add her thoughts to Mana’s ruminations. “Well, uh… I think she might not be from here, if that makes sense?”

  Mana looked at her for a few long moments before she took another bite from her sandwich.

  “You mean you can tell she’s not from here?”

  “No, that’s just the thing! She feels weird, but also not completely out of place, if that makes sense? Also, hey! How do you know about my ability?!”

  Arisu pierced Mana with her eyes, who quickly looked to the side and cleared her throat. Her cat ears twitched a little.

  “I… it’s complicated. I’ll tell you some time, but the gist is: I know about your abilities. From a very reliable source.”

  Arisu furrowed her brow even deeper. This didn’t make sense to her; she never talked to anyone about her ability to see the origin of otherworldly visitors, not even her mamas. Not yet, at least. But before Arisu could even prod Mana further to elaborate…

  “Hey. How about I take you to a nice place after school? I don’t want your memory of your first day be entirely about being bullied by Okumo.”

  “And where would we go?” Arisu asked, handing back the bento box after she finished her meal. Mana grinned and pulled out her phone.

  “Somewhere special. I’m letting your mom know that you’ll be late, so no worries on that front!”

  “…you have my mom’s number?”

  “Hm? Yeah. She’s my editor. I write for her,” Mana answered nonchalantly and Arisu’s eye widened in amazement.

  “You’re an author?!”

  “Shh, not so loud.”

  ***

  Seika stretched and let out a little yawn after finishing her meal; today she had some cup ramen for a quick break as she had a look over Hifumi’s latest manuscript. Volume 2 of ‘I Became the Demon Queen’s Pet’ was on her screen in all its smutty glory, detailing acts of debauchery that turned Seika off from even asking Hifumi if they were still based on her own sex life.

  At least by now she had developed a suitably thick skin when it came to reading these manuscripts at work, now that the company officially had an R-18 imprint. Still, they made her quietly yearn for the end of the workday so she could go home and embrace her wives – or roommates, as they were officially called on her rental agreement.

  She received a text from one of her authors, known by her author handle ‘Kaizoku Witch’, or, as Seika knew her: Mana.

  ‘Mana: I’ll take Arisu somewhere after school, so she might come home late.’

  Seika raised her brow and started typing her answer.

  ‘Seika: Got it. Are you two getting along?’

  ‘Mana: We are.’

  That was all Seika got on that matter, tilting her head. She had a feeling that there was more to this, but she didn’t want to pry further if Mana didn’t directly mention anything. She herself still remembered from her own childhood how fourteen-year-old girls, or those in that age range, liked their privacy.

  ‘Seika: Show her a nice time, Mana. I’ll put her in your care.’

  ‘Mana: It’s not like we’re dating!’

  ‘Seika: I didn’t say anything about dating.’

  Mana didn’t respond after that. Seika assumed that she landed a critical hit with her teasing and continued her work with a wide grin.

  They did look very close back then. Maybe something will come of it.

  September 2025?

  “Yeah! Yeah, punch him! Use your rocket fists!” Arisu shouted excitedly, while Mana stood next to her. The cat-eared witch just grinned and kept watching as Arisu jumped up and down, throwing air punches while cheering on the giant robot which was assembled from various smaller animal-shaped robots in the distance, which fought what looked like a mechanical T-Rex. The creature swiped at the robot with its tail and sent the robot flying, flattening a few houses on the way, and Arisu let out a shocked gasp.

  “No! No, get up! You can do it, Beast King Zero!” Arisu shouted at the robot, which struggled to get up.

  Mana immediately took Arisu to this strange world after school; thankfully, Mana’s intervention during lunch dissuaded Okumo from further pursuing Arisu with her harassment, but she still gave her some strange, venomous side glances, like she was planning something, but Arisu didn’t care. Right now, she was fully immersed in this parallel world’s fights of giant robots and spandex-wearing heroes.

  “Get up! Come on! You’re a hero of justice; you can do it!” Arisu shouted, and as if it could hear her, the eyes on the robot’s lion-like face lit up. Boosters on its back and limbs activated and rocket-propelled it back into a standing position, while throwing a right hook at the mechanical dinosaur’s head at the same time. The loud clang of tons of metal hitting innumerable tons of other metal rang across the city, and the T-Rex’s head yanked to the side. It stumbled and had to hop once before it regained its balance, only to be hit by the aforementioned rocket fist. The T-Rex roared and crashed into another row of houses, before Beast King Zero grabbed its beam saber and activated it, ramming it in the downed robot’s power supply. One roar later the glow behind the giant lizard’s eyes died and it stopped moving. Shortly after, a bright light engulfed the robot that fought to defend justice, and it vanished out of sight.

  Arisu cheered and clapped for the spectacle, though she could faintly hear Mana behind her, whispering “How do they manage to rebuild this city every time?”

  She turned around, facing Mana again and gave her a wide smile.

  “Thank you for this! Where are we going next?”

  Mana raised a brow, rubbing the back of her neck.

  “Next? I… I don’t know, I just wanted to show you this place today. I usually have places to be otherwise…”

  “Oh, come on! We’re friends now, aren’t we?” Arisu insisted, stepping closer and grabbing Mana’s hands. For a fraction of a second, she saw something odd in Mana’s expression after she said the word ‘friends’. Something resembling pain and inner turmoil. She didn’t have any idea what the cause for that could be, but she released Mana’s hands again and gave her a little smile.

  “Alright, then. I won’t pressure you. But promise me that we’ll hang out? And that you’ll protect me from Okumo?”

  Mana nodded, stepping a little closer and putting a hand on Arisu’s shoulder.

  “Of course. We’re friends. And as the older one, I’ll protect you.”

  Arisu giggled in response.

  “Only by a year!”

  “Don’t get pedantic with me, Arisu, or I might remind you that you were born last month after your moms married.”

  “Boo!”

  ***

  After their excursion, Mana brought Arisu straight home with her portal magic. She waved Arisu goodbye and she went upstairs to her apartment. She could hear Mama Miori in the bedroom, peacefully dozing as she slept in preparation for her shift at Snack Starlight. Deciding not to disturb her, Arisu quietly retreated into her own bedroom, letting out a little sigh as she pulled the soaked books out of her bag. Mana helped her dry them, but the pages were wavy, now. Luckily, the ink didn’t run from the treatment.

  I’ll buy replacements with my allowance later.

  She put the books away again. For now, she wouldn’t burden her mothers with the cruel treatment she received from that strange classmate of hers.

  In fact, she would dig a little deeper and investigate her, as well as that strange feeling she had looking at her.

  ***

  The next day, Arisu arrived at school normally, just like she did yesterday. She changed into her indoor shoes at her locker, thankful that she didn’t find anything weird or gross inside her indoor shoes after checking them over a few times. She, however, heard a little whimper from a locker over. She walked over to check what was happening, and saw one of her classmates, a timid girl with glasses, stepping away from her shoe locker.

  There were spiders and centipedes that spilled out of the girl’s indoor shoes, and said girl covered her mouth in a grossed-out reaction while taking several steps away from the lockers until she hit the next row behind her.

  Cruel giggles could be heard, and as Arisu turned her head, she saw Okumo and her accomplices again, watching the scene unfold. The dark presence still lingered around Okumo, and Arisu narrowed her eyes before she stepped in. She grabbed the infested shoes and quickly changed into her outdoor shoes before she stepped outside. The crawling creatures were all over her hand in no time, but she didn’t mind. In this moment she was thankful that she wasn’t squeamish about bugs like Mama Miori.

  As she reached a bush, she simply emptied the crawling creatures out, shaking the shoes thoroughly until even the last one was out, then she went back inside to hand the shoe back to the girl.

  “Ah, uh… thank you… Takeuchi,” the girl stammered and looked to the side, with tears already gathering in her eyes.

  “Why did you help me?” she added, quietly.

  “Because no one should go through that,” Arisu answered, narrowing her eyes as she made eye contact with Okumo, who grimaced.

  “But I didn’t help you yesterday. I laughed…”

  “And now I see why. If you hadn’t, she would have targeted you next. And now she does it anyway, because someone else stood up for me.”

  Okumo turned her back, with her two helpers following. Now, for the first time, Arisu saw her strange presence take on a vaguely tangible shape in front of her mind’s eye. A dark aura, almost an abyssal black, shrouded the girl, with tendrils expanding from her back like legs. Eight of them. Whether she was from another world or local, Arisu still couldn’t tell.

  I knew you weren’t human. But now the question remains: how will I be able to confront you?

  For now, Arisu continued her school day. She would have to find a solution later; she couldn’t rely on Mana for everything, after all.