Went Left, Mind Flayers

Chapter 1

Still Seeing Unicorns

Something about today was different, Arihiko decided. There was something in the air, he thought, some strange beat by which the day turned. Or something he might have forgotten. It nagged at the corner of his mind.

It was only just after four in the afternoon, not even time for dinner, not even anywhere near dark yet. As he was not a part of a club, the only after-school activities he regularly pursued were in the company of friends. However, as of recent, Shiki had been spending more and more time being lovey-lovey with Ciel, so the regularity of goofing off after school had died a silent and unnoticed death. Not that Shiki could have done much even when he did not have a love life since his little sister was an iron fist and wanted her brother home as promptly as possible.

So the off-feeling had nothing to do with going home early, at least. Though he often just went to the arcade or shopping center and wandered aimlessly, it was not irregular for him to just go home and laze about. His sister would not be home for hours, so he would go unmolested for a while. And he never felt like studying.

"Should've gotten food," he said, plugging his keys into the door to the apartment. "Don't really feel like take-out." He wondered how far that would go, though, since today was a Tuesday. Tuesday was sales day for the local market. By the time he worked up enough effort to head out into town, the stores would be doing end-hour markdowns and he didn't really want to contest with the old hags that clogged up the stores then.

"Dahahahahahaha~"

Laughter bubbled out into the hall the moment he opened his apartment door. The sound of a laugh track on a game show was enhanced by the girly laughter emanating from in front of the television.

"So that's it," he said, not really sure if he was complaining or in apathetic acceptance. The ghost-spirit-beast-girl-thing was back.

After kicking off his shoes and without thinking much about it, he went and retrieved two of the juice boxes he kept in stock on the occasion that the animated weapon came calling. He then lazily meandered into the living space and plopped onto the couch, only acknowledging the blond girl in front of the television by dropping the juice box into her lap. The spirit happily accepted it, somehow managing to hold the box and perforate the seal with the straw without the use of digits.

Arihiko vaguely took in the stupid game show she had on, some standard variety show that had contestants playing an oversized version of whack-a-mole. When the next player began their round, he kicked his feet up and brought his heels down onto the head of the little girl like he was playing. "You, trespasser. Next time I see you in here without permission, I'm getting one of those hammers, too."

"Hee." Nanako made a more subdued giggle from her earlier outburst. The blond fluff that hung from her lower back pinwheeled through the air a couple of times. "Master has said that too. She used a real hammer."

The high schooler otherwise ignored the spirit, too lazy to truly complain, too brain-numbed to think of anything proactive to do, whether it was to rid himself of the nuisance or figure out some kind of entertainment that involved her. He simply let the dull comedy on the show play out, idly hoping his feet smelled enough to insult the beast-girl-ghost-spirit into doing something on her own.

His grand plan failed as Nanako allowed herself to be a footrest so long as the show was on. He chewed on his drink straw alone for a while before piercing it into the box without removing his hands from the box. He sipped and evaluated the qualities of apple juice versus fruit punch.

"Arihiko-san, what do Master and Shiki-san do at love hotels?"

Arihiko would have done a spit-take if he weren't drinking from a straw. Instead, the action rebounded on itself as neither air nor liquid could get out of his mouth and back into the drink box at the same time, so he ended up choking instead.

The television show had gone to commercials. The Softbank dog once more presided over a multinational family. Nanako was watching intently, tail straight up.

With no idea how this conversation had come to be, he said, "Huh?"

"Master. Shiki-san. Love hotels. What for?" She did not look away from the television.

"Uh…so," speaking of television, he suddenly understood that cliché he saw often enough from it, where a parent would use elaborate and overly stupid metaphors to explain stuff. "They…uh, damn. You know the birds and the bees…right?"

"Bees suck. Just because you want some of the honey they make they'll go and sting you all over…"

"Er…about that." He could not believe he was about to say this. "Love hotels…are where bees go…to, uh, sting people."

Finally, the spirit-ghost-girl-beast looked up at him, her drink still clasped with her hoof-hand. "What are you talking about?"

Feeling heat rising in his face but absolutely refusing to let it show, the teenager scowled. "I mean, bees are people! Keep up if you want me to explain anything!"

Nanako's eyebrows alternated up and down as she attempted to piece that together. She frowned, considered for a long moment, then seemed to come to a sudden conclusion, grinning brightly. "Oh, you mean sex. So they go to hotels to fuck." She appeared proud of having deciphered Arihiko's nonsensical explanation.

This time, the redhead was still in the process of raising his drink straw to his mouth. He slowly set his drink down without taking a sip and looked quite pleased with himself. "…Yeah," he mumbled. "That's what they do." He failed to resist the urge to place his face in his hand, however. "How does a kid like you know those words?"

"Arihiko-san really is an idiot sometimes. I told you, I'm a lot older than you are. I just don't age." She gave a shrug. "Besides, I heard Master say it before. Over and over. She was screaming, in fact."

Arihiko pinched the bridge of his nose like it could ward off the explicit images running through his head. It did not help at all.

"So why a hotel? Isn't that expensive?"

"Tohno lives with his family, you know? Probably doesn't want his little sister walking in on him."

"Master's place is small, but she doesn't live with anyone else but me," Nanako said. "I don't think they need to go out like that when Master's place is just fine."

Arihiko eyed the beast-spirit-ghost-girl and wondered whether he should point out the obvious. He decided it should just be said now before she got any wrong ideas. "You'd be there, dumbass. Pretty sure they don't want you in on their lovey-lovey time."

Nanako blinked. "But Master treats me as part of the furniture usually—"

"You're also another girl. I don't think your Master would want another girl in on what she does with Tohno…" he felt like adding something like the bastard, but decided he'd just sound jealous then. "Tohno'd probably be embarrassed too. I think."

"Maybe," Nanako said, sucking on her drink straw in thought; the box was apparently already empty, as it made an obnoxious slurping noise. "I 'ppose."

Their exchange hinted at the reason Nanako was at his place, somewhat—if Shiki and Ciel were in fact getting busy regularly, Nanako might have decided to get out. Arihiko himself felt that way occasionally at school—his friends' behavior sometimes got almost too cutesy for him to tolerate. It did not explain, however, why she would come here if they had decided to venture out to a hotel to have privacy. He decided against voicing that, however, since he had a suspicion it would invite more trouble. Or at least, more annoyance.

When she kept quiet long enough for the show to return and go through an entire contest, Arihiko allowed himself to relax a bit and return to his earlier musings: what to do about food. Now he would have to either get enough food to also feed the intruder or he would have to put up with her whining if he did not. Take-out was now sounding expensive, but he now felt even less drive to muster up motivation to go to the store himself. Especially if that meant leaving Nanako alone in his place once more. Even if he trusted her not to steal stuff, it was just not right, his space, so invaded.

"So, I heard your class is going somewhere?"

Dully, Arihiko returned to chewing on his straw, eyes fixed on the television. Already he was feeling overtaxed by this one's presence. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Master took Shiki-san to the love hotel because they're not gonna be together this weekend."

"Something like that. It's our senior trip." He eyed the apparition warily, his own curiosity getting the better of him. "Senpai went on one too, you know. She didn't take you?"

"Feh." Nanako stuck out her tongue. "Master said something about wanting to separate me from her school life or something like that."

"Makes sense." Arihiko nodded to himself. He bet Shiki was a bit of the same way, from the bits and pieces he had gathered about what exactly set Shiki apart from the rest of the school. "Nobody'd want to take care of someone like a bratty little kid when they're supposed to be vacatio—"

"So, if your class is going somewhere, could I go along?"

Arihiko cursed. He had a feeling the conversation was going in that direction, had a feeling this might be why she was here when Shiki and Ciel were out to begin with. "No."

"Pleeeeeaaaaase? I'd be good! I wouldn't do anything wrong!"

"No, I mean, literally, you obviously can't go. You're not in my school, or my class, or even, you know, real." He did not mean that quite the way it sounded, though he figured it got the point across.

Nanako's tail was wagging instead of drooping; this was not good. "Of course I can. Remember, it's not that everybody can actually see me. You're just special 'cause you understand strange stuff. And 'cause you bled all over me that one time."

Apparently she decided to get him back for the "real" jab. If his sister had walked in at that moment to hear the "bled all over me" comment, he was sure she'd have him committed to a facility someplace for sexual deviants or something. "Then you can't go 'cause I'm not feeding another mouth while I'm there. Or talking to something that nobody else can see." Because even if he explained that one to his sister, if she got wind of that, probably the same thing would happen. He took comfort in all of this that if Ichiko got rid of him, she'd probably be up to her nose in junk piled around the apartment within a week.

For a moment, he puzzled over why exactly both he and Shiki were, in their own ways, whipped by their family.

"Weeeellllll, if I got to go traveling a bit, I could do without the food," Nanako said, one hoof to her chin in thought. "I don't actually need to eat that much, it's just kind of habit."

Arihiko's eyebrow twitched.

"And I can be quiet when I wanna be. I mean, I'm pretty silent when Master's off fighting and all. It is pretty important to not be distracted when doing our job." She stared at Arihiko intently for a moment, eyes squinting. "And for you, school'd probably be your job. So that's important."

There was an impending headache in Arihiko's immediate future.

"So, can I come along? I proooooomise that I won't get in the way."

He looked at the girl-spirit-monster-ghost with an annoyed glare. "There's no way you'd not get in the way. You know how these things go on television. I say yes, and all hell will break loose no matter what. No, no, no, we're not talking about this. You just sit down and watch your show and then you go bug your Master about how she didn't take you and that she ought to fix that." Looking proud with himself, he added, "In fact, you could do that while we're gone. It'll give you both something to do."

"But Master's no fun when she isn't with Shiki-san! Total stick in the mud! At least Arihiko-san, you know, talks! And not all about baking, or cosplay!"

Arihiko scratched his head at that, trying to reconcile just exactly what it was his beautiful senpai was like when nobody was watching. "No. You're not going. No can do."

"Yes!"

"No!" He decided he would head out to get dinner, dropping this one off at her Master's place first. By the tail.

"Yes yes yes!" Said tail pinwheeled.

"No, no, no!"

Arihiko never had issue with skipping classes or skiving off his work every once in a while. He never felt guilty on the occasion that he sneaked into a movie or hung around an arcade when he had no money. Perhaps owning to his own strange history, he just did not feel the kind of fear or rush from doing such things most delinquents might get addicted to—it was just something that he did when he was bored and he never actually had a problem going either way.

"Class, over here!"

Despite all that, he could not help but look over his shoulder this day. As the students all swarmed the train platform at the behest of their homeroom teacher, Arihiko nervously glanced this way and that, still convinced that everything would come crashing down at any moment.

"I'm telling you, nobody else can see me!" Nanako said for the third time.

Even Arihiko did not exactly "see" her per se. Since meeting up with him on the way to the station, the spirit-animal-thing had truly taken on a ghostly form, almost transparent, like a mirage or strange hallucination. If he did not look at her for a minute or two, he could actually lose track of where she was, her presence was so faint.

Still, it did nothing to settle his mind. He was sure one of two things would happen:

1) Someone would manage to see her, question the additional person who only seemed to communicate with Arihiko, and then the entire class' eyes would go to him, or

2) He would be caught talking to thin air, inviting a question from the teacher or rumors from the students that would somehow complicate his life.

He did not exactly care about the students themselves—he and Shiki already made something of an outsider clique that had little to do with the rest of the school body—but he rather liked things plain and simple. Inviting rumors of insanity was not a simple issue. Especially if the teachers thought there was something to it.

His attempt to get rid of Nanako was thwarted when his sister had returned home early that evening. For some reason completely above his head, the two of them got along well and always ganged up on him when in the same vicinity, so his attempt to just shoo the spirit back home did not go unchallenged. When Nanako had brought up the school trip and her desire to go, Ichiko had, in ways that broke his brain, agreed to the idea, even inviting up ideas about what to do and where to go.

"Since we know you and Tohno'd never figure out something intelligent to do. You'd just loiter around all day until it was time to eat," Ichiko had said.

"Buzz off, that's our choice."

"'Sides, what is it with denying a girl the chance for a trip? Aren't you a man? Shouldn't you be excited about the idea? Maybe you could kick your roomie out for a couple of hours and really grow up."

"That's not—"

"Or are you the kind of man that makes girls cry?"

At that, Nanako had of course played her part by immediately bursting into tears.

They argued over dinner—he'd resorted to take-out in the end—and had only managed to discover his battle was an uphill one. By the time Nanako had returned home of her own accord, the deal was set, and she would be accompanying him on the class trip whether he wanted her to or not.

Arihiko decided that he would begin to keep a lookout for a man, any man, that he could someday dump his sister off onto so he never had to deal with her again. Of course, he was certain nobody in a hundred kilometer radius was that desperate for female company.

He spotted Shiki making his way onto the platform, late as usual. The dark-haired boy seemed both only partially awake and unusually dull in the eyes; Arihiko thought that this one was in fact desperate for female company, just not with his sister. Even at school, the guy was a little too lovestruck sometimes.

"Three minutes 'till we leave. Cutting it close," Arihiko said.

Shiki yawned. Twice. "Almost overslept." His voice fell to a stage whisper. "Uh, what's Senpai's partner doing here?"

Arihiko smacked himself in the face. Of course this guy would see her. "Just ignore her. That's what I'll be doing."

They both looked at the weapon-girl, who regarded them with a shrug. Somehow, though, true to her promise, she refrained from speaking—though her lips formed a strange, cat-like grin that spoke of not keeping to her guns at some point. Probably at the most inconvenient time.

"Tohno's here?" the teacher asked. "Good. Get on board, everyone."

The train ride was mercifully uneventful. When Arihiko gave a short explanation to Shiki over Nanako's presence, Shiki had accepted it with a shrug. "I'll just, um, pretend I don't see anything. Right?"

Nanako had nodded at that, amazingly silent the entire time; part of which must have been the preoccupation of watching the scenery out the window, even though it went by fairly fast due to the bullet train's speed.

Kanazawa was one of those old-time cities that had been spared during the war. In many ways it was a cheap alternative to a location like Kyoto for a high school senior trip. Arihiko himself did not have any specific attachment to the prospects of their visit; he just did not want to be left out. He thought that Shiki might have been marginally more interested in some of the traditional locales—Shiki always struck him as something of an old soul in that way—but the bespectacled boy was clearly preoccupied with being separated from his girlfriend, not taking in his surroundings but staring off into the distance.

"Man, you're even more spacey today," Arihiko said. "Not that I can fault you, but, at least pretend like you're here."

"Shut up. Three days feels like a long time to me."

"If you spend three days like this, then yeah, it's gonna be too long." He spared a glance at the spirit that followed them, who was looking up at him with that same cat-grin as before.

Definitely too long.

To be continued.