Chapter 12 – Truths and Lies at Mecchen House

I noticed another wave of wind this time, but I immediately knew the source. Nathan darted with all speed to Ami’s side. Even I couldn’t match that.

I did follow closely behind him. Nathan lifted her into his arms. He held her with the care a mother holds her child. He had a little difficulty, but Miki helped.

Ms. Ishida came from the stairs, gingerly lugging a futon across the floor. It was meant to be Nathan’s, if he stayed on the first floor. Nathan used it to make sure Ami was comfortable. She was still unconscious. Katsumi went to go get a moist pad to put on Ami’s head. Ms. Ishida brought some smelling salts and water.

My head was a storm of bewildering, unreconciled conflicts and questions. Ami’s state of being took precedence over all the rest, but in the back of my mind, I wondered if Katsumi was serious about what she’d said about Nina. I figured Katsumi knew more about Nina than I did, but Nina’s reaction seemed to reject it like superstition.

I watched Nina a few moments more. She noticed me watching her and turned away. Her reaction was hard to read. I looked to Jamie. He was staring at me and one hand was holding up his pants. I was worried he’d gotten shorter. Then, I felt the draft. I looked down and saw my pants had fallen around my feet.

I crouched down and pulled them up. I could feel a painter’s hot blush accenting my cheeks. I scooted back to the couch. Nathan’s pants followed a moment later, much slower. We both sat back on the couch.

Ms. Ishida checked Ami’s cheek, then said, “Katsumi, could you get these boys some pins from the kitchen drawer?” Jamie sat down too. Katsumi’s typical smirk and huff were absent. She simply said, “Boys for now.” Mami set her camera aside and asked Ms. Ishida, “Is Ami going to be okay?”

Ms. Ishida’s face was still gentle and calm. “It seems like she just has a fever. She’s breathing alright.” She touched Ami’s cheek again and added, “But could you make some egg sake just in case?” Mami nodded and rushed off in the same direction as Katsumi went. Miki checked Ami’s pulse and smiled. “Dai-chan in track and field had the same thing happen to her. She pushed herself too hard when she had a cold. But, to be sure, did anything weird happen to Ami lately?” She glanced around.

I bit on my lip. Now wasn’t really a good time to bring it up either. No one mentioned anything. Miki nodded and said, “Well, that’s a relief.”

Tara rubbed Ami’s leg and said, her eyes moist, “Don’t die, Ami-kami! I love you!” Ms. Ishida gave Tara a little hug. I could see Ami’s breath raising and lowering her chest. I let out a long, slow breath to free the knot in my stomach.

I heard a cough. Katsumi held what looked like a safety pin out to me and said, “It’s for your pants.” She passed one to Nathan and uttered, just loud enough for us to hear, “Thankfully, your underwear stayed on.” The blush of a moment before returned to my face. Jamie snatched the pin she handed him and pointed it at us like a tiny, rounded dagger. “Your waists shrunk.”

Katsumi folded her arms, watching the girls around Ami, and said, “Just figured that out, huh?”

Jamie tucked the pin in and tested how his pants held. He rolled the legs up, but they kept falling down. He tucked them in carefully and finally stood. “As I said, your waists shrunk but your hair didn’t grow like mine did. What gives?”

I didn’t know what sort of answer he was expecting from me, especially at a moment like this. Nathan tugged at his own locks, fixed his pants with the pin, and said, “Mine grew.”

“Yeah, but way back this morning. And his hasn’t grown at all. It just turned red.” I was going to mention that mine had gotten slightly longer, but I figured it wasn’t worth the nitpicking argument that would follow. I fixed my pants too and crouched beside Ami.

I asked Ms. Ishida, “Do you think she’ll be okay?” She sighed. “She’s never told me about any health problems. Some days she sleeps a lot, but I figure it’s just normal for her. I did find her huddling in the closet one day. She said it helps her to relax.”

Jamie took a step back. “What if she has some sort of weird, infectious disease?”

Katsumi inched nearer to Jamie. “And what if that’s what is turning the three of you into girls?” Jamie’s eyes widened and he asked Katsumi, “Are you serious?”

Katsumi smirked with upturned eyemarks. “Nope, but it sure is fun to speculate.”

Miki glared at Katsumi. “This isn’t really the time for jokes. Wait. I think she’s waking up. Ami? Can you hear me?”

I heard a very quiet groan come from Ami. A sliver of her colorful eyes blinked open and traced the world around her. Then they blinked open all the way. She breathed out once and coughed, then curled forward with her hand to her stomach. The pad slipped off her forehead and dropped into her hands. Her hands darted away and launched the pad into the air. It landed flat on Katsumi’s eyes and stayed there.

Katsumi plucked the pad off with a glare and wiped her face furiously with a sleeve. Ami gave a sweatdrop-look and glanced around. “Is something wrong?”

Ms. Ishida and Miki explained the situation to Ami, who turned a vivid shade of red. “Oh, dear! I’m so sorry to cause so much trouble. Please, forgive me.” Miki patted her back. “Forgiven. Now would you like to sit on the couch or on the futon for a bit longer?”

Ami tried to get to her feet. She staggered a bit. Miki was there to support her. Ami shook her head. “No, I’ll stand. It’s alright. I’ve caused everyone far too much trouble.” Mami, returning with a small cup, rolled her eyes. “Too late for that now. Now sit down and get well. I won’t lose my best customer.” Ms. Ishida smiled, took the cup, and set it aside.

Cautiously, Ami accepted sitting on the couch. She was still a little shaky. I sat beside her and put an arm on her shoulder. She turned and a slight smile washed over her mouth-line.

Nina had receded from sight. I figured she’d gone back into hiding.

Nathan attended to Ami on the other side with encouraging words like, “You’ll be okay. Just relax.” Tara gave her a big hug and added, “Be well, Ami-kami! I want you to be around for ever and ever. Please don’t die!” Ms. Ishida set the bed aside for the moment and offered Ami a few words of encouragement as well.

She seemed a bit embarrassed by all of this and bowed several times. I noticed out of the corner of my drawn-eye that the distress of Ami had seemingly passed to Jamie. He fussed about and quivered. Katsumi took note and sighed. “So, what’s wrong with you?”

He clawed at his long hair like before and said, “We’re changing and turning into girls.”

Katsumi plopped back on the couch with a cough. “You’re a real queen of the obvious tonight.”

“I have to get out of here. I have to run. These books are useless. Something weird is going on, and it wants to turn me into a girl. I thought I could ride it out somehow, but it’s no use. I have to get as far away from here as I can.” Jamie turned, tripped over his pooling pants, and landed right on Katsumi’s chest. The landing wasn’t soft at all.

She sniffed like an irritated cat as he rolled off. “You’re gonna go and deprive me of a gender-change in-progress?”

Jamie didn’t respond to her question. He just stood and looked to us. “Don’t you get it? We gotta get out of this place. We’re going to become girls! Girls! Something is changing our gender! It’s happened before to others, and it’ll happen again.”

I asked the obvious question. “Where do you suggest we go then?”

“Away! It doesn’t matter where as long as it’s far far away.”

We’d gone over all this before. I made my same points to Jamie. He stammered through the same rationalizations. Then the tears started to fall from his eyes. They were little crystalline diamonds. I’d seen a hint of them once before. Now, they were a flowing torrent. The words, framed with his girlish voice, spilled out of him just as freely.

“I’m scared! I don’t want to be a girl. I want to be me. I want to go home. I don’t want to be afraid of the unknown. I want to be where things make sense, not some world where everything looks like it came from an ink pen. I don’t want to be in a place where the air feels like it’s hot pink. Sure, some parts are fun…” His eyes lingered on Tara and her wide, curious eyes.

“But it also reminds me of what could happen to me and what the end result might be. I don’t want to wear bras and panties and have to worry about all sorts of girl stuff. I learned enough about that from my sister to be utterly terrified. But I also don’t have the will to fight it. I just want to sleep.” He looked to Ami. She looked back sympathetically.

He sighed. “I really don’t want to be here. But I feel more and more like I have no choice, like I never had a choice. I’d gladly have both of my friends turn into total girls if it meant I’d be saved from that fate…sorry…But it looks like it’s gonna get all three of us. And I’m gonna be the girliest of all. And it scares me so much I just want to run, like a nightmare I can’t pinch myself enough to wake from…” The flow of soft words stopped. It seemed like he was about to start a fresh sentence, but that was all. He just sat there, crouched, with his hands gripping his legs and his hair flowing like a curtain around him.

Tara came forward a moment later with a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry, Jamie-kun. Can I do anything to help?” He wiped his brown eyes with his hands and looked down at Tara. She clung close to Jamie. He answered her, “I suppose I’ll need some sorts of hairpins or something until I can actually do something about all this hair.”

Miki clapped her hands. “I know just the thing!” She returned with a multitude of pins. “My sister and I both used to have long hair when we were kids. I still have some of the stuff from back then. I had to cut mine for sports.” A wistful look suddenly crossed her face but was evaporated by a smile of encouragement. She asked if Nathan needed something for his hair. He said he was “Alright for now.”

She told Jamie to turn. Miki worked quickly. When she was done, Jamie’s hair rested on his shoulder in a thick series of curls. It still looked big but at least it didn’t extend as far. Miki didn’t have a compact like Sumi had for Nathan, but she did lead him to the nearby bathroom for a thorough look-see. Katsumi had been suspiciously quiet since Jamie burst into tears.

The idea of Jamie suddenly crying struck me deeper than his worries, which I shared, about our future here. As he’d bluntly put it, he didn’t feel emotions. Sure, I’d always had my questions about how much of that was trained into him, but what had just happened stuck in my head. Was it just a fluke or was it a sign that our changes were more than skin-deep?

I noticed Nina’s head peek around a corner. Katsumi seemed to notice her as well. I didn’t say anything. She walked in Nina’s direction as the other girls clustered around Ami again with Jamie gone.

Ami seemed embarrassed by her entourage. Tara had begun recounting all the fun stuff they would do when Ami got better. “We have to find the magic crystal on the highest peak in the land! The diamond wand will help us. And Mr. Snookums will be your defending knight! You can be the wizard, Ami!”

She bowed to Tara, thanked her, and patted her on the head. She passed further thanks around to everyone and asked if there was anything she could do in return. Mami made her lie down and said, “You’re gonna recoup. Rest. You won’t do anyone good if you’re passing out every five minutes.”

After putting away the cup of egg sake for later, Ms. Ishida warmed a bit of light soup for Ami, which she picked at. Nathan and I offered to transport the futon the rest of the way to what would be Nathan’s room.

The inside looked good. There were a few wards on the walls, apparently Katsumi’s doing. The room looked bare but nice. A few of the boxes were left to the side, but they just had men’s clothes in them. Nathan walked around the room. I asked him if he was okay with staying on the first floor.

He whirled around and bowed. His long hair fluttered with him. “Oh! I’m fine with it. I’m fine with any floor. Are you okay with being… up there with Katsumi?”

[Map of Mecchen House]

I shrugged. “We’ll find out. I figure she’ll be nicer to me now because I present her with the chance to see a gender-change in action.”

He nodded carefully and asked, “Well, if it’s bad for you, I’m more than willing to trade. Also… what did you think about what Jamie said?”

“You mean about us probably turning into girls?”

He looked embarrassed about bringing it up. “Yes. I know we haven’t talked about it too much, except in the sense like ‘we need to fix it’. But now, we’re kinda without any way to really figure it out…”

I thought to myself that there were still leads to follow, like Nana’s Hitomi and this “demoness” accusation of Nina by Katsumi, but I gave him a little nod and said, “You mean… we haven’t really come to terms with the enormity of that possibility, right?”

“Some… umm… yeah.”

It wasn’t as though it was easy to forget the changes, even though my red hair tended to slip my mind. Nathan and Jamie didn’t have that luxury. Voices especially reminded me of it. We’d talked about it, but we hadn’t really dealt with it.

There had just been so much to absorb. From turning into anime to nearly getting squished by a truck to being dressed up in drag to mysterious phenomena and phone calls. My mind traced Shiori’s experience and Carolyn’s. Neither seemed to be in a panic over their situation. Even Jamie’s little outbursts up ‘till this point were more in line with frustration than losing himself.

I mused on that as the air seemed to whisper something. I turned. I dismissed the sound as the house settling but I checked the wards, just in case.

“I dunno. I mean there’s still a bunch of leads we could follow. We just gotta take things one step at a time. How do you feel about this?”

He rubbed his arm. “I’m concerned. About a lot of things. About what my mom would think about what’s happening and about what my family would think. Would they even recognize me anymore? And, just now, I couldn’t carry Ami as easily as I expected. I just feel worried about how much trouble all this will cause others…”

I nodded and said, “You know how I feel about all this, Keiko.” Nathan blushed and said, “That’s okay… umm… well, we should go back over there. Umm… Sorry.” He had nothing to be sorry about, but I decided not to press the issue.

We rejoined the girls a moment later. Nana was back, and Miki was filling her in on current happenings. She was dressed in pretty, casual clothes. They looked similar to the school uniform all the girls wore.

The top was brown and had thin shoulder straps. Washed out, yellowish lace traced around the sleeves. She wore a straight, vividly-red skirt. Dotting the skirt were what looked like little, blue kittens. They went well with the small, blue-green socks on her feet. What struck me more than her interesting choice of clothes was the smell about her.

I’d never really had much of a perception of fragrance in this world, other than the stairs and that touch of dust in the darkness of Ami’s room. But now, it was like my sinuses had suddenly been cleared and I was aware of a cacophony of fragrances. In the background was a freshness that came from diligent cleaning.

I could pinpoint what seemed to be Nana’s smell. Nana smelled like warm metal with a very faint, clay-like aroma. I figured she’d been working on the massive computers in her room. I made an idle note, after I’d asked all the important questions of her, to inquire about what she used them for. Jamie had somewhat implied she was a computer geek, but we’d never gotten much of an answer from her about them.