Chapter Eight

Bonding

(Part 1 of 2)

The first night at Izumo Shrine School was a nightmare. Nekohiko went after the lithe, graceful woman in a red Binder's uniform who immediately reminded him of his young nurse, Saho. This woman was responsible for all the little girl novices. She had white ribbons in her silky black hair and had an air of such sentimental, airy youth that it was hard for Nekohiko to be wary of her like he was of all others.

All the novice girls had flocked out of the big welcoming hall and gathered outside, waiting for the teacher to lead them to the dormitory. The boys huddled on the other half of the courtyard, already listening to a young male teacher who instructed them where they could go to get anything they needed in school. Nekohiko was the slowest one to stumble out of the hall, so this young woman ran up to him and took him by the hand. However harmless she appeared, Nekohiko still squirmed from her touch he perceived as too invasive and tried to worm his wrist out. He hated being touched by strangers. Nothing he could do about this.

But the woman didn't notice his discomfort.

"My name is Kotone, and I am going to be your Elder Sister from now on," she announced brightly and swung her and Nekohiko's hands back and forth as though mistaking his struggle to free himself for playfulness. "Now come on, let's go explore the place you will call your home for the next six years! Isn't that exciting!"

"Stop doing that," Nekohiko said hollowly.

All of Kotone's ribbons fluttered around as she leaned to peer into his downturned face. "You said something, Little Sis?" Kotone asked.

Nekohiko swallowed with difficulty.

Why was everyone mishearing him? Back at home with his guardians, he never had to actually raise his volume to be heard. But here, his voice was simply too quiet compared to all the others. Besides, with so many children around, no one even cared enough to listen to any particular child unless they were loud, or hurt, or misbehaving.

So instead of answering and risk not being heard again, Nekohiko forced his hand out of Kotone's grasp. He curled away from being grabbed again and stepped aside from the other girls while not nearing the boys either. He preferred to stay far from either.

Muffled snorts came from the girls, but Nekohiko didn't know if their derision was directed at him or not. Because at the same time, on the boys' half of the courtyard, several small scuffles were going on at once, and naturally, everyone's attention was drawn to those.

Using the fact that their male teacher wasn't paying them much heed as he mumbled his monotone announcements, some boys dangled their arms around, others skipped over the tiles in the gallery, and a few more had a pretend-play wrestling match in the middle. Though it was hard to tell. Maybe it was an all-out fight to the death, for all Nekohiko understood.

Other boys and girls couldn't help but gawk at the fight and chortle in excitement.

"You little--" one of the fighting boys gasped at the other. "Biting is cowardly!"

"Yeah?" a familiar voice rang back. "How about this?"

And he struck the other boy full force with an arched kick. From that powerful strike, the boy flew right into Nekohiko. The impact took all breath out of Nekohiko's lungs, and he crashed into Kotone who caught him just in time.

But the other boys and girls didn't even notice, solely laughing and mocking the one who'd been hit.

"Loser, loser!" a few started chanting.

"Koki, you're such a pathetic loser, aren't you!" The kicking boy's voice was especially loud. "Stay where you are. You clearly belong on that side of the yard."

Almost all the surrounding boys burst out in barely-restrained laughter. "Yes, he does! Koki is a girl now!"

"That's enough, that's inappropriate," Kotone was telling everyone as she tried to navigate the started ruckus, all in vain.

"No, you're the girls!" the boy named Koki screamed back at the boys who mocked him. "You are all pathetic!"

The boys' laughter only grew louder.

Immediately, from the girls' side, the majority of giggles stopped. "What's that supposed to mean?" one of the girls demanded. "Is being a girl a bad thing?"

"Yeah," another girl added. "What do you mean -- pathetic?"

And just like that, most boys lost their vigor. "I dunno. What? Who cares," some of the boys mumbled in a disordered choir from all sides.

Although Nekohiko didn't want to take part in the other children's petty grievances, he was intrigued all the same. What was that "insult" supposed to mean? Was being a girl... something unpleasant? Just from looking at them, he didn't see much difference from the boys. Though by now it seemed like he wouldn't get his answer from the boys because of how uncomfortable they all became.

Except for one specific boy. He didn't seem even remotely inconvenienced.

"No?" he answered the girl's question. "Girls are just not that interesting." His red lips smiled like sunshine. "Or that cute. Sorry. So Koki belongs with you just fine."

Several girls turned away at once. "Idiot."

Nekohiko recognized the boy. That annoying little child who'd dared call him "meow" earlier. Abihiko. So this Abihiko was a kicking, biting, and rude bully as well as a jerk in general. How surprising.

"I will destroy you!" Koki already pushed himself up from the ground. With a mad growl, he flew right back into the battle, trying to land a hit on Abihiko.

Kotone stomped her foot. "Takara!" she called to the boy's male teacher. "Please pay attention to your wards. This is unacceptable."

"They're just children. It's in their nature," Takara answered lazily. "They're fast to hate, but then they're even faster to make up. Plus fighting is a kind of bonding. And also a perfect way to establish boundaries in a new environment."

A perfect way to establish boundaries?

Though Nekohiko hadn't ever heard such words before, it astounded him how much sense they made. He made a note to himself for the future.

"What nonsense." Kotone flipped her hair and gestured for all the girls to hurry and leave this messy courtyard.

Where they went, it was darker and calmer. A small artificial brook purled amidst the dense trees, and scents of nightly flowers perfumed the air. The dormitory houses each had their own small yards and gardens around them, but in such darkness, Nekohiko couldn't tell how much of the surroundings were made of Spirit-bound materials. The dormitory for girl novices was a single huge room, with beds rolled up and tucked under two opposite walls, waiting for the girls to choose their spots and unwrap their beddings.

Kotone only lit up a small house-shaped lantern in the middle of the room, so the place was swaddled in shadows, eerie and mysterious. She knelt beside the lantern, expectant. "What are you all waiting for? Pick your spots, girls," she commanded.

By now, Nekohiko had noticed that the other children had indeed found themselves a friend or two to bond with. So when the girls began darting from bed to bed, choosing which one they wanted more, their choices were already governed by their fast friendships. He was relieved that he was free from such concerns. He only needed a spot far away from the others, and nothing more. But he also knew he didn't want to be viewed as a "girl" who accepted the scraps and leftovers after everyone else had their pick. He wasn't going to be a pushover, would he?

So he strolled to the bed in the farthest corner and pushed aside the clumsy girl who was kneeling there. He stepped over the girl's legs to get to the bed, only to flinch from a shocked scream.

"Girls! What are you doing?" Kotone cried at them.

The pushed girl under Nekohiko began sobbing, so brokenly and openly that everyone in the room stopped mid-action. The sight frankly stunned Nekohiko. What was this? He hadn't even pushed her too hard. Not compared to how strongly Abihiko and Koki had been pushing and shoving before. But Kotone was already at them, sweeping the girl in her embrace and raising her anxious eyes at Nekohiko.

"This is not the way we behave here!"

But... he saw with his own eyes that other children fought all the time. And that teacher, Takara, said that it was beneficial in the long run?

"Why not?" Nekohiko asked cautiously.

"It's against the School rules. And we are not boys either, are we?" Kotone chided. "Girls don't solve problems with fighting, girls--"

"Yes, they do!" the tall, lanky girl from the opposite side said, marching over to Nekohiko. "Do you know whom you just pushed? Do you?"

He didn't even get to react as she rammed him full force into the wall. So much for all those School rules against fighting!

"I'll beat you till you can't stand up," the lanky girl gritted out in his ear.

"Fight," several other girls gushed, quickly skittering over to observe. "Fight!"

Kotone let out an exasperated huff, then rushed in between Nekohiko and the tall girl, pulling their clawing, spitting, and kicking bodies apart. "No! How dare you misbehave! I'm going to call the Head Priest's Bound Servants here right now! Do you know what they will do to you?"

The sole mention of the Head Priest was enough to pacify any further misdemeanor. As Kotone hounded over all the quietened, yet still vengeful-looking girls as they unrolled and prepared their bedding, she whipped out the threats to go and tell the Head Priest at every opportunity.

Nekohiko only received his corner bed because the little girl who'd been pushed refused to take it. She still occasionally sniffed and wiped her face as she spread out her sheets on the opposite side of the aisle, and Nekohiko almost began feeling bad about it. He didn't want to hurt anyone, and back in the courtyard, the boys surely looked different when they fought, as well as that lanky monstrosity of a girl that had punched him a few minutes ago. In any case, this was all insignificant. He'd gotten his bed spot, well-removed from the others, and all he'd had to do that was push someone over and get beaten a couple of times afterward.

A fair exchange as he saw it. Life outside his dreamlike childhood must surely be rough, and because he had nothing to compare it to, he didn't think much about it.

He was guarded and suspicious against everyone here -- and he didn't mind if it were mutual. Six years couldn't be such a long time if at the end of it he would reunite with his guardians once again?

Saho? Kusaki, Hachiro? His heart squeezed from the simple memory of them, or from the memory of their small hut back in the mountains. His bed corner there, and his wooden chimes over the door, and his shadow twig dolls in the box beside his pillow. Tonight, was that hut also very lonely and sad now that nobody was inside it?

"Hey Drowned Kitten," someone hissed from the other side of the aisle between the beds. "Kitten!"

Nekohiko didn't want to engage for the fear that the girls would hit or insult him again, so he didn't turn. But shutting down his hearing wasn't as easy.

"Remember whom you've pushed tonight, Kitten." That lanky girl's voice was so shrill even when she whispered. "You pushed Sakami of House Hisome. And we all will make you pay for it."

"Don't," the little girl that Nekohiko had pushed, spoke up. "Or Kotone will hear you."

Nekohiko kept quiet, diligently spreading his bed.

So the girl he had pushed was... Sakami? Sakami of House Hisome.

Sakami was small and thin, her hair coiffed at the back of her head with precious butterfly ornaments. She had a tiny mouth and big, bovine eyes that always looked down. Out of all the people he'd met here tonight, Nekohiko paid special attention to remember this girl's appearance. It might come useful for his future. After all, the Hisome family belonged to one of the Five Great Lords under the Emperor.

And Sakami herself might, one day, end up being the Great Lady Hisome. The Lady of the Mists.

Not so now. Now she was only the Lady of the Angry, Vengeful Little Girls who glowered at Nekohiko with such ferocity, Nekohiko felt his scalp tingling in discomfort.

"I will personally murder you," the lanky girl who slept beside Sakami mouthed at him when he glanced at them in passing.

Mortified, he turned away momentarily.

Kotone spent the entire night with them, having dragged her own bedroll from the adjacent room in the dorm. She said it was only to check that they all have a full night's rest before tomorrow, but Nekohiko suspected it might have been because the room buzzed with agitated whispers and gossip even with her present. Most of it involved the tight pack of girls around Sakami, even though Sakami herself rarely spoke.

But when everyone else, including Kotone, fell fast asleep, Nekohiko couldn't. He was overtired and wrought in strange feelings of apprehension, and though he closed his eyes almost immediately, he kept twitching and curling tighter and tighter into himself through the night, too wary of so many strangers breathing uncannily in the same room as him.

When the morning came and he finally woke up from a restless daze, his uniform clothes were the only ones that had been thrown out the window and drenched in dew to such a degree he had to ask Kotone for a spare set.

There seemed to be many more devious ways of fighting in School other than merely throwing punches, huh?

Queenfisher

I recently researched this site's overall tendencies for reading longer/shorter chapters and realized that my chapters are simply too long to be read with ease (they run around 4-5k mark). And so reading them on devices gets increasingly inconvenient the longer they are. Splitting them in half (2-2,5k chapters instead) would get rid of this problem. However, there are a couple of such long chapters in the already-published list, so I'll have to half them as well. This announcement is here to not cause confusion because the already-published chapters might suddenly increase -- but that's only an illusion! Everything stays as it was, content-wise, only the surface-level splits will take place.

But if you think it will be bad for the story, please tell me! I want to improve the reading experience of my story, not become more confusing to potential readers!