Chapter Twelve

Better

(Part 1 of 2¹As for all two-parters, the second part will be released tomorrow since it's the same chapter. Halved due to w/c.)

After being restrained several times by Izumo Head Priest's Bound dummies, Nekohiko didn't dawdle much more before he decided to run. Run from the School, run from the Shrine. Back to his sweet Saho, and old man Kusaki, however annoyed he'd be at Nekohiko, and to loyal Hachiro. He didn't need this place. He didn't belong. He hated it here, and everyone here hated him in return.

Above all, he wanted to go back home.

By the third week at Izumo, his Spirit Binding studies didn't get better apart from theory and rote learning some dull old laws and literary classics. His martial training was also inhibited by the fact that girls weren't trained nearly with the same level of vigor as the boys. Ah, by now, Nekohiko had learned the difference between the two genders. Perhaps not a visible one, or any intellectual or strength-based one because some of the girls in the dormitory were just as mean-spirited and quick to throw a punch as any boy. No. He learned the difference in the treatment. Regardless of any individual child's personality or capabilities, as groups, girls were treated gentler yet also more condescendingly than the boys. But boys were given more initial respect, though they paid harshly for it later if the adult deemed that their respect had been somehow abused by the boy.

Martial arts classes embodied this difference to its fullest. Like all girls, Nekohiko wasn't being taught how to be hit and endure pain, or how to hit back. Mainly, he was taught to avoid either -- and thus, he ended up too apathetic to train at all. He would still not be trained well, so why bother?

Tonight, he dug up his old drab clothing from the storage building and took it to the dormitory, stashing for later use. When the darkness descended, he slowly got to his feet in the thoroughly-hushed room of sleeping girls. The young adept girl who took care of all the girl novices, Kotone, had moved back to her own room next door after the first few days. Without her presence, the dorm was free reign for any kind of abuse and bullying the girls wished. A couple of times last week, the lanky tall girl had poured warm water on Nekohiko's blanket around his crotch area so that it looked like he peed himself at night. Ah, it was so hi-la-rious in the morning when everyone woke up and started pointing fingers at him and making repulsed faces.

"Kitten, eeew. Bad Kitten, bad!" some girls from around the lanky one clamored, all but high-fiving each other in glee. "How embarrassing! Isn't it, Sakami?"

Timid girl Sakami of the Great Hisome family was the one who most other girls flocked around. Nekohiko didn't feel like she actively participated in his bullying, but she didn't stop her friends and peers either. The majority of the time, she only looked sad. Or flushed with distaste as she was whenever she saw the aftermath of someone else's prank on Nekohiko.

Now, Nekohiko couldn't help but look over to that side of the dorm. All the girls from Hisome Lordship slept there like a tight pack of hunting beasts circling their pack leader. More than the third of all the beds were clustered in that area of the room: a miniature Hisome Ladyship, as others called it. Yet the rest of the Great Lordships weren't underrepresented either: Towa by the opposite corner, Nagare in the middle on Nekohiko's side. Utsuro were, as always, rare. But even they had formed a small trio to protect themselves and their Lordship's honor from being bullied by others.

Hira groups were represented the most in the girls' dorm, although not as flamboyantly as Hira Lordship boys had theirs. Because of the Magnificent and Splendid Abihiko, the beloved ward of Hira Lord's himself, all Hira boys were essentially the ruling class among the other novices. They could bully everyone they wanted, and no one said anything back to them.

Naturally, Nekohiko had managed to piss off both Sakami's and Abihiko's supporters in those first few days at Izumo. So his issues outside of the girls' dorm didn't stop at mere warm water-on-his-butt pranks. Trips, "accidental" meal spills, doors closing and then locked for hours right in front of his nose as he was leaving a class after everyone else, his clothes "magically" getting dirtied, his lesson materials broken or missing. And the amount of pushing and kicking him around...

Abihiko himself was the biggest instigator when it came to face-to-face. Did it seem like, compared to the other boys, he was never that miffed about pushing or hitting Nekohiko? All the boys were aggressive and mean to him, yes. But also polite -- in the same condescending manner they were to any girl they didn't like.

But unlike them, Abihiko wasn't stopped by girl-boy gender rules whatsoever. He would kick the girl's ass as naturally as the boy's if the girl was pissing him off. And seeing as Nekohiko was the only girl who constantly managed to do that...

So, in the end -- when it came to being bullied, it didn't seem to matter if he was a girl or a boy. Equality had never felt so frustrating.

Enough was enough.

He changed into his peasant robes, leaving the spring-green uniform folded on his pillow, then crept down the dorm aisle and out the door. He never looked back.

The owls hooted, unseen, and the bats swooped above the roofs with shadowy grace. Nekohiko craned his neck to see the feeble crescent of the moon through the branches of the cedars. Everything was quiet in the inner courtyard trapped within the center of the novice and neophyte dorms, but from further away, where the older pupils lived, came subtle trails of conversations and even peals of girly laughter as adepts skittered through the covered wooden galleries with lanterns in their hands.

Nekohiko slid into the shadows of the buildings. He followed the line of the structures to the pine forest at the edge of the School grounds. There weren't any monumental walls around the enormous School complex at Izumo. Only the forest and the rising slopes of the mountain that began at its back. The murk thickened there, and so did the echoing, foggy silence.

Nekohiko directed his feet into that darkness, leaving all of the warmth and light of the Shrine behind.

A bird flapped wings above, and in the pine-scented darkness, Nekohiko flinched with fright. His breath caught, and he quickened his step, weaving through the trees and double-checking his footing over the slippery, prickly underbrush. But he had to hold himself off from hurrying. Running around the woods in complete darkness was bound to end up a failure.

"Quiet, shh, quiet," he reminded himself. Even if the voice soothing him was only his own, it helped, too. Any sound helped in such an otherworldly, chilly silence. 

Yet the longer he went, the jerkier his movements became. And the louder his heart thumped with how dark and lonely and scared he felt. Shaken, he tripped over a mossy root and fell, scraping his palms over the pine-needled ground.

"Aah!"

He immediately shut his mouth, so much he hated the childish, weak way in which his voice sounded. With frustrated motions, he struck his trousers clean off dirt and shook his hands to get the majority of pine needles out of his palms. His skin stung, but he pushed through it.

And as he straightened up to resume his escape, he heard.

Along the nape of his neck, tiny hair rose in horrifying premonition.

A footstep. A soft, even graceful footstep slipped over a firm surface like a wooden board.

A wooden board? Here?

More than that -- that footstep had come from the above. Up, higher, hidden in the hushed leafy rustle of the trees overhead. Nobody was there. Not even a flicker.

"H-hello?" Nekohiko asked meekly, then gulped. His head upturned, he felt like plummeting upwards and into that nightly darkness above from staring so intently into the swaying branches.

A crackle.

Nekohiko backed away, too unnerved to ask again. The way the thing above him crackled wasn't like any branch or twig or a leaf crunch he'd ever heard. It was something else. Almost like a person's knuckle or knee caps snapping. But rigid and cold and... inhuman.

Dead leaves and twigs crunched under his feet as he drew back. But he didn't hear them. His hearing was drowned out by the rush of blood to his head, and by the harsh heaving in his chest.

On both sides of him, far off beyond the dark tree trunks  -- a pale motion caught his eye. He didn't know which way to turn to check the source of that motion. Left or right.

Something moved through the bushes and pine branches on either side of him.

"Stay back," he croaked. "Or I'll scream!"

A deer or a boar? he hoped wildly. If so, he didn't need to threaten them or to speak to them at all. Any animal would be spooked by a splitting scream and might run away soon after. These were the wild woods, after all. What else was supposed to live here but wild beasts?

But then, from beyond one of the trees the pale thing was hiding at, came a sound unlike any made by a beast.

A tired sigh.

Then another, from the other side of Nekohiko, far, far hidden behind the trees. He swiveled one way, then another -- to try and see. His feet were so weak they felt glued to the ground. The last of his strength seeped out of them when he saw what the pale figure looked like.

On his far-right, out of the cluster of spruces, a naked man shambled out. His skin pale, almost white in the scant moonlight. No, not white. Greying, with traces of green veins popping along his skin and dark splotches of bruises patterning him. The man's hair was all disheveled. Long, greying, hanging like a veil of straw over his face and chest. Even from far away, the sheer rigidness and terror of that body made Nekohiko's heart stutter in his ribcage.

A... ghoul? But...

Ghouls only existed in fairytales!

With ponderous, unnatural movements, the man trudged at Nekohiko. From behind the boy, another set of slow, dragging footsteps crumbled over the leaves, and Nekohiko jolted to look there too.

Another ghoulish body of a dead man. A young man, this time. But just as bruised and beaten as the old man.

"Do you recognize them, child?"

Nekohiko snapped his eyes upward, to the branches overhead. A woman's slow, indifferent voice, though sounding stilted as if belonging to a foreigner unused to local language. However much Nekohiko peered into the darkness, he could not see the owner of that voice. But he felt the presence. The heavy, chilling presence -- one that radiated not even from the ghouls who advanced from the sides at him. No -- the grimmest chill came from that woman high above.

"You are a boy, aren't you?" the voice went on, hidden. "How old are you?"

"I--" Nekohiko had trouble breathing, so cold and panicked he felt. "Who are you!"

"I asked you a question first. How old are you?"

The way that last sentence sounded cut right through to Nekohiko's marrow, freezing it deep within him. He remembered the last conversation Hachiro and old-man Kusaki had had back in Tanzawa hut. Right before they had to run and give Nekohiko up here, in Izumo.

Ten-year-old boys with affinity to Spirits. Tortured and killed and hanged in pieces over the tree branches.

"I'm eleven," he lied.

"That's close enough for me," the woman's voice answered.

The two ghouls on his sides lunged forward at him.