Content note: Yuri schoolgirl TG horror. Suicide. Gore. Transphobia. Remember that you are loved.

Click here to listen to the audiobook version.

 

 

 

You wake up and gasp, jolting upright. Then you flail all around because something is in the bathtub with you. What is it?! Where-

It's the (former) new girl's notebook.

You had it on the edge of the tub. You think? You must have.

You turned it on while grabbing it. The home screen now shows the time.

It's midnight.

---

You stagger tiredly into your bedroom, wrapped up in bath and hair towels. Clutching the notebook.

You drag your futon out of the closet. It's wrapped in plastic and doesn't have any bedding on it.

You intentionally don't feel anything at the sight.

You set the notebook down and get to work.

Partway through, your towels fall off. You don't see much of yourself because the desk lamp is behind you.

You are cold.

You try not to feel cold.

You start to shiver anyway.

You look in the closet for clothes, but it's too dark.

You pick up the notebook to turn on its flashlight. When you unlock it, it's already open to a YouTube video.

You jump when you see what it is, and fumble the notebook and drop it, falling backwards on your butt on the futon.

"Sorry to keep you all waiting ~ "

You snatch the notebook up off of the floor, almost drop it again, and stare at the "Hundred Lights, Hundred Nights REBIRTH SPECIAL."

The room is almost pitch-black. There are three candles lit on a desk in the foreground. They are surrounded by dozens of burnt-out candles.

You can hear muffled sobs.

You feel sick.

You aren't just shivering from the cold.

The shadows on screen are shifting.

You jump, when an inhuman face comes into view. It's a fox mask, attached to a woman in a dark blue kimono.

"Konkonbanwa, motherfuckers ~ as you can see, this channel is under new management! You can call me Tamamo-chan." The woman presses the middle two fingers on her right hand to her thumb, and raises her pinky and index fingers high, in the "fox" hand gesture.

Something swishes and shifts, in the shadows behind her.

More than one something.

Many somethings.

"Oh, but what happened to the old host? Let's see." She rummages around beneath her. "Ah-ha! Here he is!"

Tamamo-chan pulls up the body of a schoolgirl whose head is covered by a paper bag, and who's wearing a blood-soaked first-year girl's uniform. The parts of her skin you can see are a shiny, unnatural white.

You want to scream.

It's the new girl.

Tamamo-chan flops her into a chair, then begins rolling up one of her sleeves. "As you can see, the pervert died of-"

She holds up the new girl's bare arm. Her ghostly pale, bare arm, streaked with white scars.

"autoexsanguination!"

You cover your mouth to stifle a scream.

"Which means he's a ghost now. Right? You wanted a ghost story, you got one!" Tamamo-chan presses her own hands together, just under the mask. "Of course, having been dead for hundreds of years myself, that puts him neatly in my domain ~ "

"Please, no," you whisper.

Your whole body is shaking now.

The new girl hasn't stopped crying.

"Shut UP!" Tamamo-chan screams. "I haven't even started yet, geeze!"

The new girl chokes, and coughs, as she tries to stifle her tears.

"Anyway, this is the fate that awaits EVERY idiot who tries to be something they're not. Who spends their whole life dreaming of it, waiting for it, doing what they can to get there. Because mark my words, motherfuckers ...

"You DON'T deserve it.

"There IS no happy ending.

"And I WILL devour your liver."

You can't even process what she said before Tamamo-chan's hand sprouts inch-long claws, and tears something wet and swishy out of the new girl's abdomen. She shoves it under the fox mask and eats it messily, the last remaining drops of the new girl's blood splattering all over her kimono, as the new girl screams and writhes next to her.

You scream as soon as Tamamo-chan does so, and you don't stop until the new girl flops out of her chair. Tamamo-chan does a double-take, then tosses the bloody leftovers aside and pulls the new girl up by her hair.

The paper bag's fallen off.

You can see her face.

You curl up in a ball with your arms over your eyes, crying and crying and crying. Unable to stop. Unable to think. Unable to stop shaking. Unable to block out the screaming, and ripping, and tearing.

You know that this is your fault.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, tearfully.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm so sorry ... "

The screams and cries end with a sickening CRUNCH.

You glance at the notebook before you realize.

Tamamo-chan's holding the new girl's head by its hair.

"That's our show for tonight, motherfuckers ~ " she says in a cheery voice, and tosses the head behind her. "By the way. Inori Academy?" She puts a finger to her chin. "That's where he was crossdressing, right? You know, that place that accepts all the tran-"

She ends the sentence with a slur.

"Well. Inori Academy students. Have I got an offer for you.

Oh no.

"Don't want to end up like THIS piece of work? Want to pass on to the big sleep, the hereafter, and not get TORTURED EACH AND EVERY NIGHT?" She punctuates each word by kicking the new girl's headless corpse, under the table with all the candles.

"Then do me a favour. Do all the REAL girls there a favour. And kill yourselves. You get amnesty for one night." She picks up a knife from behind the candles, in both hands, and offers it to the viewer.

"If you don't wanna make a mess, do it in the boys' room like he did." She jerks a thumb over her shoulder. "Because that's where you fucking belong. Disgusting freaks."

You're shaking so hard now, you fumble the phone and drop it onto the futon. Facing the ceiling.

"I'll see you tomorrow night in person if you don't, kid-fuckers! 'Cause we all know that's the only reason you put skirts on over your hairy balls here, is because you wanted to fuck a schoolgirl." She leans over and pinches one of the three candles out, then stands back up and waves brightly to the camera. "Bye-bye!"

The video ends.

You do not have balls anymore, you think. Hairy or otherwise.

Was Tamamo-chan talking to you, or not? You are confused.

You've never thought of yourself as a t*****, either.

You're still shaking, and hugging yourself.

At least no one else from school will watch this video, you think. It's such an obscure YouTube channel. It's English-language. It'll definitely get pulled by morning.

The only way another student would watch this video is if they'd subscribed to the channel, understood English, and either stayed up 'till midnight to watch it or had their notebook set up to notify them of new uploads. For this very channel specifically.

No one would do such a thing. Right?

Absolutely no one. Especially no one who had broadcasted on the walk home that they were trans.

You grab the (eternally damned) new girl's notebook and race to find contact info. You never got Ha-chan's number, so how can you-

She's on the new girl's friends list.

How is she on her friends list? Is it automatic? Did the notebook listen in on your conversation, and decide that you were friends now?

You silently thank Google, or Apple, or whomever made this school notebook, for being a massive creeper. Then you write Ha-chan a text message.

"Please don't watch the new episode," you type. "It's ... cursed."

You don't know how else to describe it.

"Please," you beg her in a second text.

Why are you immune to it, though? you wonder. It hurt to watch. You blame yourself for letting this happen. But mostly, you are confused by it. Why would anyone do this? Why would they say the things that Tamamo-chan said? Did she actually mean them?

You don't understand.

You get a text message from Ha-chan.

"too late."

The notebook says she disconnected.

You want to scream, but your breath catches in your throat.

There's only one thing to do, you realize.

Ten seconds later you're running back towards the school, stark naked except for your shoes, biting down on the notebook with your teeth and using both arms to keep your breasts from jiggling.

Something feels right about this, you think. It's the most normal you've felt in awhile.

You wish you could kick the shoes off.

---

The school is a couple of kilometres away, up a long, curving road that leads to the top of the hill. Ha-chan probably has a head start, since she had to turn back around to go to her house after dropping you off. Which is why you don't stop running until you get to the front gate, panting and staggering and dropping the notebook right next to it.

As soon as you do, a light on the front gate turns green, and it opens.

So that's how Tamamo-chan expects girls to get to the boys' room at school.

You see another green flash, far ahead, and hear the locks on the school's main doors open.

"Fuck," you whisper.

You pick up the notebook and bite down on it again, then let adrenaline carry you the rest of the way.

Inside the school, you hear the squeak of indoor slippers rounding the corner towards the boys' room.

You are treated to a flashback of watching the new girl do so, far ahead of you.

You want to yell "stop!" To say "wait!" But there isn't the breath in you. Every gasp of air goes straight to your oxygen-starved leg muscles. And sweat covers you, threatening to chill your body to dangerous levels as soon as you stop moving.

Better not stop moving, then ~

Fuck you, you think, and put everything you have into closing the distance.

Hee.

Are you an athletic Japanese schoolgirl? you wonder.

More to the point, are you athletic enough?

You round the corner into the high-ceilinged hallway. The lights are turned off throughout. Shafts of moonlight shine down on Ha-chan's hair and pajamas, as she pulls something thin and rectangular out of her pocket.

She doesn't stop walking toward the boys' room.

You can't stop running.

There's a plastic click, as her thumb deploys the box cutter's blade.

She's almost there.

Go, you tell yourself.

She's pushing the door open.

Go go go go GO GO GO-

With a jerk of your head you toss the (tortured) new girl's school notebook away, and then leap into the air over Ha-chan, tackling her like an animal. Biting down on her arm.

SHE SCREAMS.

You don't care. You are fighting for somebody's life.

You bite harder, and harder, trying to pin her down with your feet. Trying to grab the box cutter away. Trying to force her to drop it. Her hand twitches and writhes in your grip, slashing it every which way around.

She's almost as strong and desperate as you are.

You work your way up her arm and bite down HARD on her bare fingers. She screams again, and the cutter twitches, and something bleeds onto her hand ...

Then she drops it, and you kick it away and let go of her, panting and gasping for breath. Facing off on all fours with the terrified schoolgirl in her pajamas, who shared her lunch with you yesterday.

She backs up into the wall, staring at you, gasping for breath. The moonlight illuminates her face.

Something drips blood onto your shoulder.

In the shadow you cast on the wall, your fox ears and bushy tail twitch.

Why do I have these all of a sudden? you ask yourself. You appear to be a girl everywhere else.

"Wh-why are you naked?!" Ha-chan asks.

You blink.

"For some reason," you say slowly, slurring your words, "I did not anticipate that becoming a problem."

You stagger.

Ha-chan rushes forward and catches you, kneeling and hugging and clinging to you. "It's not," she says, and cries. "It's not."

For some reason, you're crying too.

You feel like your sweaty back and legs are covered in ice water, as Ha-chan hugs you tight and sobs into your hair. Your right ear keeps twitching and dripping blood, and you squeak whenever she bumps it.

But that feeling you had, at lunch break? Where you just needed all the hugs?

It's so strong, right now.

It's so strong.

And so are you.

 

 

 

Author's Notes:

Konkon・こんこん・An onomatopoeia, for "coughing," "tapping," "knocking," "banging," and "the sound a fox makes."

Konbanwa・こんばんは・"Good evening."

Autoexsanguination・Causing oneself to bleed out.