The Occult Research Club

Amari High School, Aoyama-Itchome, Tokyo

I think I had already said it many times, but I will repeat it again, I am not excited to be having to go back to school after so long, but it seems that I have no other choice. Normally the first lessons are the most boring as they are usually either math or history. The fun classes like chemistry are on Friday and to make matters worse I heard that our physical education teacher will be back next week from her disability due to a lesson, and I honestly don't know what to do when those classes come around. Tamamo can hide his ears and tail, I can't do that, so I'll be screwed if they put swimming for example, although I can also use the card that I can't do outdoor activities due to my albinism, yes,  I can use that to get rid of my physical education classes. 

Tama and I are still talking in the first break of the day when Haru came excitedly towards us, it seemed that she wanted to talk about something urgently, so we stopped what we were doing to listen to her. But after hearing it I think it would have been better to have ignored her completely.

"Form the occult research club?"
"You are kidding, right?" I said nervously

"No not at all"
"I can get the permits quickly, the president is a friend of mine so it will not be so difficult"
"In addition, there are still several unused club rooms"
"The only thing I need is to get the initial members and our manager"

"You know the amount of prejudice that the people who form those clubs receive right?"
"It's not like being teased the most makes me excited"
"If you really plan to do it anyway at least don't involve me"
"What if you better make a video game club"
"In that, I can help you"

"But the main reason for creating it in the first place is the two of you!"
"Can't you imagine it!?"
"Just think about it, a paranormal investigation club"
"With two magical creatures like the two of you as members!"
"I think we will be able to solve various mysteries and help people!"
"Isn't that exciting!"
"Maybe we can even solve the mystery of the origins of you two!"
"That you are not interested in knowing who you really are?"

"First, I would like you to keep our secret hidden"
"You promised, remember?"
"Second, I don't want people to see me as the weird antisocial girl, I've had a lot already"
"And third and most important, I already know what I really am and it's not something that makes me very happy either"
"So I want to leave all that behind and just live in peace"
"Why don't you ask someone else?"

"Okay, if you leave me no other option!"
"What about you Tamamo?"
"Can you try to talk your girlfriend into joining?"

"Wait a minute, why do you treat her like the second choice?"

"Of you two, you seem to be the one in charge of the relationship"
"So surely Tamamo is the one who can talk to you and make you change your mind"
"Wouldn't you like to investigate paranormal things, things like ghosts or dark magic?"

"Magic Research!?"
"I'm pretty good at it!"

"Tama!"

"We seriously can't?"
"...."
"Okay, okay, your wish is my command"
"..."
"I will follow the path that my "darling" has wisely chosen for me"
"As her faithful lover, I will follow her to the end, even though she forbids me...."

"This is dirty play"
"It's alright, stop"
"You can stop acting like this in front of others"
"You don't have to put on that pity face to see try to convince me"
"I have not forbidden you anything, I was just saying that you already know me"
"You know this will become a major problem later on"

"Come on, it will be fun as always"
"Also if something goes wrong I can take care of everything"
"I want to see what can happen or what new I can learn!"

"Damn it's, alright"
"Only  because you ask me"
"Ok we will join"
"BUT!"
"ONLY if you got everything else first!"
"Until the club is 100% formed, don't count on the two of us?"
"All right?"

"Okay, so it's a deal!"
"You better not back down when everything is ready!"

Right after chatting with her the bells rang and we went back to class. This time it was home economics, aka learning to cook, aka learning, aka we almost had a fire and I almost died of a stomach ache when I tasted Tamamo's food, she was really happy that we are cooking together, but the happy moment made me almost finish at the hospital. The next lesson I spent completely in the bathroom without being able to move from my seat.  I'm sure she was living in the forest by herself, so at some point, she had to cook something for her to eat, right? Or is it that she ate everything raw because I can't think of how she is still so bad with food, she has already spent a couple of months practicing. Is she doing it on purpose? 

When I was able to return to the salon I am sure that I weighed much less than this morning.  The classes for the day were over, I was just gathering my things, but by chance, I ran into Haru again, who was talking to Xian and Tamamo who had both her bag and mine. 

"I have good news for you!"
"The Occult Research Club is officially formed!"
"I needed you and your girlfriend to come to the room at the back of the third floor of the club building"
"It's to end the registration of you two"
"...."
"Are you OK?"
"Did you happen to run into a Facehugger?"
"Because you look like he's about to make his exit"

"I wish it was a Chestburster"
"At least that way will end my suffering"
"...."
"But leaving that aside, is it ready?"
"Isn't that a little TOO fast?"
"I thought it would take you a couple of days at least"

"It wasn't really that hard"
"There weren't many requests yet to create more clubs"
"The room that we will use has been unoccupied for a while so they did not give it in exchange for cleaning it"
"And with respect to the manager, I got Professor Xian to be the person in charge of the club"
"She seemed to be quite excited about it too so it was easy to convince her"

"She made me think this was your idea"
"I thought that this way we could have her more "insight"
"I am also a victim here" Said Xian whispering to me

"Okay, I guess the teacher still has a lot to do"
"But what if you accompany me so I can fill out the entry forms as soon as possible?"
"Follow me!" Haru said excitedly as she took my hand and Tama's so we wouldn't run away.

The building we were going to or wasn't far at all and we got to the place corresponding to the club pretty fast.

The building we were going to was not far at all and we arrived at the place corresponding to the club quite quickly. As Haru mentioned, the place hadn't been used for a long time so other clubs and teachers had used it as a storage room to store things that they no longer used. The first thing we did was help clean the place and once everything was clear we went to get a couple of tables and chairs to at least be comfortable. After that, Haru took out the entrance papers, but also a notebook and several colored pens. 

"Okay, I need you to fill out these papers with basic information."
".... "
"And that you answer me to this questionnaire that I will do "
"Don't worry, these are simple questions"
"It is to see what we should focus on with the club activities"
"It is to collect basic information before starting and have a procedure guide"

"Yes, exactly like those!"
"But this is before that, this is to get to that point"
"Well I'm going to start"
"How likely do you think ghosts really exist?" Haru began to ask and write even though we still did not answer.

"Well, I would say that it is quite probable that they do exist"
"I have no proof but no doubt either"  I tried to say it in a way that didn't sound like I really believed it, while at the same time reminding me of the time I hunted a Ghost Dragon in Atlantis. 

"I preferred not to comment on the subject" replied Tamamo, surely remembering the time she was a cursed stone.

"Ok, it's ok"
"Next question, do you believe that Gods exists?"

"Now more than ever" I replied immediately.

"Perhaps" Tamamo said trying to hide his smile.

"Hey, can you not give me such short answers?"
"I needed to have information to see what we will do as activities!"
"..."
"Oh wait, you guys do know but you can't tell humans!"
"It's okay, it's okay, I won't bother you with the subject anymore, I think"
"Okay, the next one is, where are you guys really from?"
"Do you come from another world? The world of Yokai? Were you born in a temple?"

"Not at all, I was born in Central America"
"I would pay you if you can say the name of a country there"
"But since I know you don't know better, let's leave it there"

"Mexico?"

"No, my country is north of the Panama Canal"
"It's the best direction I think I can give you"

"Canada?"

"That is north of the United States!"
"At least if you know where that is, right?"

"I really thought that the United States was the entire continent of America"

"Yes, it is exactly the problem that we have the rest of countries"
"Even they consider that they are in their country when they visit mine"

"Ho, no, Anyway"
"What about you Tamamo?"

"I was born in Kyoto!"

I elbowed Tama to remind her not to be so direct and remember what we had told Haru before.

"At least that's what we think because the things they had were from there"
"Adelis's husband found me when he was on police work and raided a property with a lot of illegal wildlife"
"I was among them, I was a little fox when that, supposedly I was very sick, but Elise's family decided to take care of me during, and later one day I had become human"
"Since then we've been together ever since"

Wow, what a good move Tamamo made there.

"Okay, that's pretty interesting"
"Elise you already told me that you always had that look"
"But knowing that Tamamo was once a fox is incredible!"
"Which leads me to another question, I started to investigate a bit and I came across the Legend of Tamamo-no-mae, which curiously seems to have the same name, do you know by chance if you are related to it?"

A question that brushes pretty close to the truth. I knew that if she used that name one day this would happen. It was easy to connect the dot.

"...."
"...."

Damn, Tamamo is immobile

"Hahaha" I laughed in a panic trying to buy time while thinking of something
"Of course not"
"...."
"We think she is from Kyoto because she had a fan with her when we found her"
"When she became human, the first thing we started was to search for her origin, but we never reached anything conclusive"
"The fan was a craft from there, nothing more"
"While we were investigating we came across the legend and my mother thought her name was pretty, so we say call her that"

"It's fine if you want to leave it that way, I'm not going to continue with the topic anymore"
"What about what you girls have done in the past?"
"You was told me that you hunt supernatural creatures, and that's how you discovered Lisa, right?"
"What else can you tell me about hunting? It is dangerous? Have you ever seen a fight against something? What kind of enemies have you faced?"

"Well, about whether we have hunted, I really don't know what to tell you"
"Lisa is the only creature that we are completely sure is also a supernatural entity apart from us"
"And even so she was quite small when that happened, once again my mother decided to take care of her and that's how she stayed with us"
"Despite how she may look or behave she is sometimes a good person"
"Out of that...."
"Once we hunted a giant wolf on my grandmother's farm, it was huge, it almost looked like a horse"
"But we didn't fight him, we just left some poisoned meat, and the next day we found the body nearby"
"And once I had to rip the head off a coral snake, but that's a normal creature, does that count too?"

"Wait a minute, the story of your father and you against the wolf was real?"  asked Tamamo surprised.

"Yes Yes it is"
"We have a photo of him in some relative"
"We need the help of a neighbor with a truck to be able to move it from there"
"It is as exhibited in a museum of natural sciences of the national university there is at home"
"Thanks to that we have free tickets there"
"But once again, I think it was just a big dog"

"That doesn't help me much, but seeing as Lisa and you guys exist we can't it's almost entirely likely"
"That's good, it means that we hope that we can find amazing things in our investigations of the club and make real progress"
"The next question on the list, On the internet I have seen stories of ghost hunters or monsters"
"What do you think of them? Is the work they do real, is it fake or is that type of work done by other types of people?"

"That's a question I can easily answer"
"I can assure you that most religions have at least one group of hunters in case something could happen"
"But they are not dispatched at once, they obviously want to have their hunters hidden from public knowledge"
"That's where the ghost hunters come in, the ones with the haunting videos and the scary photos"
"They are the ones who check the places first to make sure they are not false alarms"
"Or if there is a real danger try to get as much information as possible to the team of real hunters"

"So are you saying that ghosts do exist?"

"It's ok, I accept it"
"Yes, ghosts also exist, and I recommend you stay away from them!"
"If you think that maybe it is real that there is one just call us and stay away from there"
"We will make sure to make the place safe again"

"AHA! So that was what you hid!"
"You two don't hunt monsters, you two are dedicated to hunting ghosts!"
"That's why you don't have mystical things in your house!"
"Because there's nothing to pick up to start"
"So that's what we'll do! The main function that we will do as members of the occult investigation club will be to investigate ghosts!"
"I'll be doing some research to see what we can start with"
"With that I will leave you for today, I have to check several internet pages to be able to start as soon as possible"

"You heard the part where I said that it can be dangerous, right?"
"Do you think your grandfather will leave you? What would he think?"

"Come on, isn't this what your family does for you?"
"Surely you already have enough experience, and also with this club, we have an excuse to be able to sneak away more easily from the others"
"Also, you don't have to worry about my grandfather"
"I can handle it easily! After all, I will only tell you that it is a club activity that we are only going to try to see ghosts"
"It's something he'll think is harmless like putting a camera in a hallway at school at night and that's it"

"To be honest, the thing about the camera in the hallway is something that we will do a lot if we will really hunt ghosts"

"Excellent, thanks for the advice."
"I will put video cameras among the things in the club budget"
"...."
"Wait!"
"Does that mean we need equipment?"
"How expensive will all this be?"
"..."
"No, leave it, you just take care of telling me what we need and I'll take care of getting it for you"

Haru gathered her things and left immediately, it seemed that she was in quite a hurry. Is he really excited about all this? I thought she wanted to be a police investigator like her grandfather, not a ghostbuster. Or is she just excited because for now, it's the only thing her grandfather could let her do for now? She sure wants to be such a good investigator as her grandfather that she is willing to even go against him.  Now I'll have to talk to Xian to help me keep Haru safe, but it's her fault for getting in the way in the first place, now she has no right to complain.  I just wanted to go to school normally and now I'm forced to join one of the weirdest clubs there could be.  It seems like I can never get away from being the weird guy.