Kotori entered the room with the girl once again
She gently shook her awake.
"Mmmmm, 2 more hours" She mumbled and then turned away.
Kotori got a closer look at the girl's face. She had very refined features. Almost as if she was a girl who had come from high-class birth. She was wearing a Miko outfit though, it seemed a little shorter than a typical Miko outfit
Her tail poked out from underneath the blanket she was using.
[I want to pet it!] Kotori thought.
She began to touch the fluffy tail.
It had an excellent fluffiness
[Yep yep 10/10!] She thought
"Okaaaa-sannnn, Don't tease me mmmm," The girl said
"Kotori felt like she was venturing into dangerous territory but kept petting the tail.
[Mofu Mofu]
"Oka-sannn" The girl said steadily awakening.
Her face then turned into shock. She looked at her tail which Kotori was touching, and then Kotori.
"KYAAA!" she screamed then ran out of the room.
She noticed the figure of her mother and then proceeded to run up to her
"Oka-san there's a pervert in my room!"
She noticed the presence of other people in the room and proceeded to hide even further behind her mother clutching her mother's tail with her ears twitching
[Too cute!] Kotori thought
"Who are these people," She asked watching Kotori's party who was standing awkwardly in the room where this was happening.
Kotori walked out to an Amelie with a bad expression on her face
"Kotori, what did you do to that girl," She asked
"I just pet her tail…" Kotori said
Amelie looked shocked
"Kotori!"
Kotori could only look sheepishly.
"She's a spirit ok!"
While it may have been highly taboo to touch a beast person's tail. Kotori had touched the girl's tail under the assumption that she was a spirit. In this case, touching her tail without her permission was akin to touching someone's head or holding their hand without their permission.
Amelie's face changed slightly, but she still looked at Kotori with disgust.
Kotori tried to give a pleading gaze
[I'm not guilty!] She thought.
Okateratsu seemed to laugh slightly. Though she had changed back to her fox form and it was a little hard to tell. Okateratsu snout moved in such a way that Kotori inferred it at least.
The girl continued to hide behind the imposing figure of her mother. Her mother seemed to speak to her. The girl gave a troubled expression and then whispered to her mother again.
After their conversation was done, she carefully walked out.
She quickly bowed.
"H…Hello, welcome, Hahaue* said I will be going with you," She said her ears twitching slightly.
[Too cute!] Kotori thought.
"What's your name," Kotori said her voice echoing in the cavern.
"A name?" The girl asked quizzically.
"Like what does Okateratsu call you?" Amelie asked trying to be helpful
The Fox Girl tilted her head in confusion
"She doesn't call me anything but 'daughter'"
[That won't do] Kotori thought
She began to think of a name
"How about Layla?" Kotori asked
The girl nodded hesitantly
"I don't really see the purpose, but I guess you can call me that," Layla said
Okateratsu gently nudged Layla towards them.
Layla walked over to them and moved closer to the figures of Amelie and Kotori's spirits than Kotori.
She stuck her tongue out at Kotori
[This Ojou-sama] Kotori thought
Layla acted a bit like a sheltered princess. The way she talked was very formal all things considered.
She seemed to glare at Kotori.
[Ah, I think she doesn't like me]
"How do you know how to speak," Kotori said
In this room with only two people, Kotori didn't understand how this girl could speak to eloquently when she was alone with a spirit who didn't seem to speak at all.
"Hahaue taught me of course!" Layla said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world
"Then why doesn't your mother speak?" Kotori asked
"She only speaks to papa," Layla said
"Who is your papa then?" Kotori asked her curiosity piqued. For one, this dungeon was already vastly different from the other dungeons. She had been in before. It seemed more like a place to keep Okateratsu than a dungeon proper.
"Papa is gone," Layla said flatly
"I'm sorry for asking" Kotori immediately backtracked.
She shook her head
"It's not your fault, the bad angel took him away from us."
"Bad Angel?" Kotori asked. The only angel she knew was Gabriel who had overseen her reincarnation and afterlife.
"Mother used to work for him and then she fell in love with Papa, and Mr. Angel didn't like that and split them apart and put Hahaue down here," Layla said
"Do you know the name of this Angel?" Kotori asked
"You with the 'names' again," Layla said
"I don't know, Ok?"
Kotori was even more confused
[So Okateratsu taught this girl to speak perfectly, but never taught her the concepts of "names"?]
Kotori looked pleadingly at Okateratsu
She felt the mental image of a handsome angel in her head
[That looks similar to him] The man in the mental image looked like Gabriel but Kotori could not ascertain it. The image was a little blurry and dyed with hatred.
"Why do you want us to take her," Kotori asked Okateratsu
She was shown a mental sequence…
*Hahaue means "mother" in a formal way
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Kotori Spirit Molester! She will be on Spirit Megan's List!
Layla as In the one from mlb?
Some quick edits:
how this girl could speak to eloquently -> so eloquently
(You did rewrites? No wonder I was so confused about how many people were complaining)
"Kotori felt like she was venturing into dangerous territory but kept petting the tail.
Remove "
For one, this dungeon was already vastly different from the other dungeons. She had been in before.
Combine sentences into "from the other dungeons she had been in before."
The sewer scene definitely bugged me a bit when reading it.
Im curious to see how you rework it.
I think the general plot points were fine, but the execution of it was shoddy. It was able to display
1. Meeting Yooma
2. Explaining adventurers in a way that wasn't a content dump
3. Explain how Kotori and Amelie become adventurers when I intentionally set it up to be difficult.
Where I failed was
1. setting up the scenes to account for character motivation. Especially, when my earlier chapters were all about developing Amelie into a more assertive character.
2. Deus Ex saved my characters from an impossible situation. TBH I wrote them into a bind because I needed Kotori to fail, but I didn't consider how to get them OUT of that bind.
3. I honestly needed another chapter to set up the city which would make more sense as to why Kotori would accept such a suspicious smuggling job in the first place. I wanted to make her over-confident but that doesn't make sense considering I spent time developing her to be MORE cautious.
The pain of being a discovery writer right here. When you don't explicitly plot things out sometimes you forget what your characters have already gone through.