Chapter 12 - Truths and Lies at Mecchen House (cont.)

Ms. Ishida cleared her throat. “I’ll begin, and we’ll go clockwise.” That settled it. Tara would follow Ms. Ishida and so forth around those standing and seated. Ami would be the ninth and final player. I checked the clock on the wall. I had to wonder how many rounds we would get in before players had to leave to do other things. Maybe that even figured into Mami’s play strategy. I knew Miki seemed to have an early bedtime, and she already came back tired. Miki finished off the last of her dinner and set the plate and tray aside.

Ms. Ishida opted to be the points counter. She selected the first card. “It’s an open one… okay. Hmm… I was the smallest girl in my first-grade class, my mother made and used to wear this outfit I have on, and I laugh during horror films.”

That wasn’t a toughie. Apparently, if Ms. Ishida stumped all of us, she’d move forward the maximum number of spaces or one space for each person she stumped till the maximum. The second one sounded too normal. So, I picked that, suspecting it was some small variation on the truth. I was right.

Ms. Ishida explained, “As some of you know, I was really small for most of my life until I sprouted up in high school. People tended to ignore me for quite a while due to my small stature. I rather got used to being overlooked. But I used it to my advantage. I’ve learned to move stealthily. And I’m still open to being a part-time ninja since I’m not a bad fighter.” We all chuckled a bit.

“And I laugh at horror films, which is something I’ve done for a long time. I have a real morbid sense of humor, as Katsumi can attest with my treatment of many things. And apologies on the lie. My grandmother made this outfit, not my mom. Though she did wear it often.”

The outfit looked nice, simple, and evoked a motherly presence. It seemed durable as well, which was probably why it lasted so long. Ms. Ishida moved two places for stumping Nathan and Jamie. It was Nathan’s turn next. He picked up the card and read over it a few times. He stared into it like someone would stare into an image with a hidden picture. Ms. Ishida put a hand on his shoulder and told him, “You don’t have to go by the card question if you don’t want to. This is your first play after all.”

Nathan looked over. “No no no. That’s okay. I just want to make it a good one. The topic is ‘interests’.”

Miki clapped her hands. “Alright! That’s a cool one! I can’t wait to see yours, Nathan!” That didn’t help Nathan, judging by the look on his face. I told him to take a deep breath and just “have fun”. Tara cheered the same. Mami shut her eyes.

Nathan finally managed to get out, in a voice which his nervousness made even smaller and cuter, “Umm...I-I don’t like tennis. I’ve always wanted to dance in a play. And…uh…I really want to see Pretty Yumeko Hime Galaxy.”

Mami and Ami both missed it, despite how obvious it seemed to me. They guessed the dancing one. Nathan blushed and explained, “I love tennis.” Miki grinned and he continued, “It’s always been a dream of mine to dance in a play. I once auditioned for The King and I… as the King of Siam. I didn’t get it though.” Mami listened with interest. None of them seemed to know the play though.

Miki gushed. “Oh, man! I think you’d be awesome when dancing!”

Nathan shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m not graceful enough for dancing. I’m really clumsy.”

Miki tossed her head back and waved her hand. “I know you’ll be awesome if you really get into it. I used to be super clumsy at hurdles. But, after a while, you do it so much it becomes like breathing. Dancing is the same way.”

Mami huffed, her eyes slicing at Miki, “What do you know about dancing?”

Miki ignored the look and said, arms folded in pride, “My grandmother used to be a ballerina. She taught me all about it. I was going to be a dancer to follow in her legacy. But I got into regular sports.” Mami didn’t say anything to that.

Nathan bowed his head and uttered a little “Thank you.” Miki waved her hands. “No problem!”

Tara followed next. She darted her card around like a little plane before finally reading it with her massive eyes showing over the horizon of the card. She giggled and said, “Music! Yay!” Well, at least we were covered if she spoke about the music from her favorite show. Her selections were, “My favorite bit of music goes…” then she hummed a catchy rhythm I didn’t know. It sounded somehow familiar. “My first CD purchase was the opening single to Pretty Yumeko Hime Galaxy, season two. And my mom loves to sing ‘Leaves Falling from a Tree’ when she’s sad.” None of those were easy. I didn’t know anything about Tara’s mom. I took a chance that her first CD wasn’t that.

She tricked me there.

“That’s not my favorite bit of music… My favorite is ‘Melting Raspberry Marshmallows’ by the same singer Jamie-kun sung for karaoke. You gotta try it too. I think you’ll sing it just as well as her!” Jamie gulped but didn’t respond further.

Tara continued, “That melody was the first music I remember. I can’t really remember how old I was when I heard it, but I must have been really young because my mom doesn’t even know it!” She beamed and went on to the next one. She confirmed that was her first CD and she still owned it. She gushed about her mother’s love of music.

Tara even sang a few lines of the ‘Leaves Falling from a Tree’ song.

“Away I sail on a windy wing.
So long it’s been since the sunny spring.
Sailing towards the silvery ground.
I twirl and turn but make no sound.
My love lies on a distant shore.
But together we’ll be once more.
Together we’ll be… once more.”

She had a very nice voice herself. Mami looked a little irritated. She asked, “Are we ever going to get to my turn?”

Miki picked up the card for her turn. “Just relax. You’ll get a chance to play. Oh yay! I got an open card!” She explained, “Just so you guys know. That means I get to use any three topics for my choices. It’s the most-valued card because it’s the easiest to give answers for. Now, let’s see. I need to come up with a good one. Okay, first, I once ran a race in negative time. And, every day, I wear a tiny piece of paper taped to my body with a word like ‘courage’ or ‘strength’ written on it. And, finally, my great-grandfather was an Onmyōji mystic.”

That one was a little bit tougher, but I knew the absurd first one had to be correct somehow. I went with the last one because it was the most common-sounding one. I missed it and so did a lot of others, including Mami, who grumbled and protested, “I’ve seen you wearing those things taped to you before and I know about your great-grandfather. And I know the whole story about the ‘negative’ race. What gives? All those were true.”

Miki folded her arms. “Not quite. You gotta listen carefully. While it’s true the coach accidentally set the timer to count down instead of up once and my great-grandfather was a noted mystic, I don’t wear those papers every day. I only wear them when I have a school competition or an exam.”

Mami grumbled over the semantics but eventually let Miki count out six places on the board. She was halfway to the finish. Jamie was to go next. He rubbed his cheek as Miki cheered him on. Tara joining in the cheers made him blush. His legs fidgeted. I wondered if another change had happened.

He asked for a pass. Mami had no problem with that since that would automatically make her next, but Tara and Miki were both disappointed. They even said he could skip using a card. Eventually, Jamie opted to just play with a quick, “I like movies. I’m afraid of becoming a girl. My hair used to be curly.” He wasn’t even trying. I knew his hair was naturally straight. He still wound up with two stumped, Ms. Ishida and Tara. I had to wonder if they gave them intentionally.

Mami cracked her knuckles and prepared for hers. She picked up the card. “Likes and dislikes. I need to bring out the big guns. I like stuffed animals. The smell of money makes me sick. I enjoy conflict.”

Well, that one was pretty obvious. I went right for the second. I was sure everyone else did too. When Mami admitted the lie was the third one, I had to admit I was stunned. Stuffed animals weren't a stretch, she was a girl who dealt in material possessions a lot. She gave a brief note on her first, “I have a lot of them. I like a diversity of critters. I’ve sold some of them.” So far as conflict, she admitted, “I hate the nature of conflict, even if it sometimes works to my advantage. It makes me uncomfortable. I’d rather deal diplomatically with any situation than see people yell over it.” But with regards to money, she offered, “The smell makes me gag. I never said I didn’t like money though. I just go by the sight of it.”

It seemed like another case of working from a technicality, but I had to admit that Mami’s response was rather interesting. I wasn’t much for smelling money myself. I knew that it tended to get icky over time as it passed from one person to another. I figured Mami just said it because she wanted to win. And it did get her the maximum number of spaces. She pushed Miki’s piece aside a little as she moved it to the same square. Mami’s display went unnoticed by Miki, who was chatting with Tara.

Ms. Ishida offered Ami all sorts of comfort foods, which she declined. I knew Tara and Jamie had a misunderstanding with offered food, but I supposed that was connected with us being guests, so I figured Ami’s refusal wasn’t an insult. Nana was still watching her figurine, and Nathan was watching Ms. Ishida, who held her hands close in her lap. I leaned forward and told her, “I’d like something light and sweet if that’s okay.” She jumped up and said, “I have just the thing!” She returned with a cake shaped like a fish with chocolate inside. She looked happier as I ate.

Mami looked to Nana with expectation. Nana looked over and reached for a card from the stack. She stared at it for a long time before finally saying, “The topic is ‘relationships’.” Nana looked around at the girls and said, “Wavelength times frequency equals the speed of light. Flux equals four times pi times the path between two given molecules squared times the square root of eight times Rekani’s Constant times the temperature in metric measurement over pi times the number of gaseous particles. If an unaffected area contains a compact region, and if the topology of the Transit is of the formless structure or similar to the radius times the circumference, where the circumference is a three-manifold of nontrivial topology, whose boundary has the topology of the form recognized and if, furthermore, the hyper-surfaces are all space-like, then the region contains a quasi-permanent inter-universe wormhole.”    

My brain was on screensaver-mode till the last word, which certainly sounded significant but not all that different from the theorems quoted in the book I’d looked through. That felt like the most I’d heard Nana say in one turn.

Jamie was too deeply zoned-out with his hands over his large eyes to really take note and Nathan wore a sweat-drop similar to Ms. Ishida’s as she told Nana, “Umm… sweetie. You don’t have to go the difficult route with the questions. I know theorems are called ‘relationships’ but really I think they meant your relationships with people or even relationships between people you’ve seen.”

Nana turned her head a little. “Yes. We have discussed this. My apologies for making the game more difficult for others.” It seemed like this happened a lot. Nana bowed and added, “If you would prefer… I could draw another card.”

Mami pressed her palm against her head. “I don’t mind. I’m not competing against her anyway. Anyone else mind?” No one objected. Ami shook her head. “Not I. It is just a friendly game, for most of us.”

Miki scratched her hair, looking towards the ceiling. She mimed some words with her mouth. Finally, she said, “Well, I only know one of those. A friend of mine might know the second but I figure it’s well enough within the rules. I mean it’s just us figuring out when the player is lying to us… I have no objection this time either.” It kinda defeated the purpose of learning something about other players, but I should’ve figured it would be tough to get much out of Nana in the way of personal information. And judging lying was pretty hard with that poker face of hers. Most of us got lucky, Nana just fooled three people with the fictitious “Rekani’s Constant”. At least she was brief in giving the real part of the theorem.

That made it finally my turn. I reached over to pick up a card when I heard a familiar stomping of feet across the floor towards us. I looked up. Katsumi stood and pointed at me like her finger was a dart. She said, “Come here. We need to talk.”

I looked at everyone. She pointed again. “Just you there, redhead.” Mami looked up too, and she added, “The one who may or may not still be a boy.” Mami nodded and put her camera aside, making no effort to snap a picture of me as I left.

Nathan and Jamie didn’t protest being excluded. I begrudgingly passed my turn, which went to Ami. Shame, I would’ve liked to have heard her responses. Katsumi led me to the computer room and beckoned me inside. Nina was sitting, her legs wrapped close. Katsumi slid the door closed behind us. She bent forward and inspected me. First, she asked, “Well? Anything else change since?”

I offered an honest shrug to her. Her eyes flicked over me. “I don’t see anything obvious. Okay. Well, we had to talk.” I noticed Katsumi was keeping her distance from Nina.

“Talk, huh? About what?”

“I need to go study with Reiko soon, so I’ll make this quick. Nina tells me that while this house is mostly clear of spirits, there’s ‘something’ clinging onto Ami.”

Nina lowered her head cautiously, her eyes avoiding Katsumi’s eyes. Nina continued, “It feels like a bad spirit. I think it’s what made her ill. We need to confront it and find out why it’s here in this world if we want to banish it from Ami and send it back where it came from.”

Katsumi added, “She told me we can’t use it for making boys into girls.”

I figured that wouldn’t be far from her mind. For my mind though, everything seemed far away, particularly any semblance of understanding. I held my hands up and said, “I’ll assume for the sake of this that I accept ‘something’ is causing strife for Ami.” With what I’d seen, in Ami’s room and in general, I was willing to make certain leaps. “But I need a few questions answered first…”

Neither offered any objections, so I posed to Nina, “Who… or what… are you?”

She blinked a bit and said, with careful words, “I’m… Nina.”

“And where are you from, Nina?”

She just stared back at me like a cornered rabbit. I relented on the question and asked, “So, what do I need to do for Ami to protect her from this ‘bad spirit’?”  

Nina still looked perplexed as she answered, “I really have no idea but, from what I’ve heard of her, I think it might be a good idea to start by cleaning her room and purifying it.”

“That’s all?”

Nina made a long, slow shrug. I sighed and asked, “Why should I trust you?”

Another shrug. “Dunno.”

I felt exasperated, so I let out a quick, “Is there anything you’re sure of?”

"I'm sure you'll be a pretty girl."

That took me by surprise. It was more like something I’d expect Katsumi to say. Katsumi did seem pleased to hear her say it though. I rubbed my legs together through my pants. Something about them definitely felt strange, but all the important parts of my anatomy were still around.

I shook my head and said to Nina, “Is that so? Alright. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“No.”

A silent moment passed before she added, “It’s getting late and I need to get home.”

Katsumi moved closer to Nina. “Need me to walk you home?”

“Don’t bother. It’s okay. I’ll be fine.” Her face looked a little brighter than usual as she scooted around us, slid the door open, and left.

Katsumi shrugged and said, “She’s my friend…” Her words seemed to trail off as if she wanted to say something else, but she walked out and gestured to Reiko’s room. “Anywho, it’s time for me to do some studying. Don’t change sex any more until I get back!”

Not as though I had any control over it, but I gave her a little nod. She nearly left for Reiko’s room when she swung back and asked, “Have any of the others changed more?”

I shook my head.

She smiled. “Good. I won’t be long.”

I gave her an emotionless thumbs up as she knocked at and listened to Reiko’s door. I listened a bit myself. I heard a sound coming from it. It was regular and high in tone. It seemed almost like sobbing. I tried to wiggle my ears a little to hear, but a much-clearer sound burst out from another direction. I could hear excited yelling from the living room where Ami and the others were.

I ran that way.