Chapter Notes: Yuri schoolgirl possession TG. Suicide flashback.

Click here to listen to the audiobook version.

After working things out with the school nurse's office, the satellite school, the online shopping website Minato-senpai originally offered to help you buy clothes from, and Ha-chan, you and your headmates crash in your apartment for the night.

Minato-senpai has you brought there in her limo, so you don't have to walk home on crutches.

You'll wake up in your new bodies tomorrow, so you don't have to worry about bringing them home.

Ha-chan is letting you borrow her Nintendo Switch, so you can try Warframe out.

She doesn't give you a peck on the cheek. You assume it's because so many people are watching. She grins and says she looks forward to seeing you at school tomorrow, though. "And also Aizawa-san!"

Yeah ...

Yeah, you think.

You say your goodbyes, then lean on the handrail to go up the stairs to your apartment. Once inside, you close and lock the door and then lean against the wall, trying not to cry.

"This is our last evening together, isn't it?" Tamamo-née sounds pained. "All those years I spent wishing for you both to come back, somehow, from wherever you went ... only to find out you're both dead for real, and now so am I."

She sighs. "Then I explode and screw up our reunion, and get sent to a mental hospital in the anime afterlife. Because I'm literally too broken for yuritopia."

Aizawa-san wraps your shared arms around you. "Doesn't it sound like exactly what you need, sis? This 'Twenty-Four-Seven Hugs' place."

"Judging by the photos in the brochure," you say, "I am not sure the title is literal."

You want to just crash on the futon, but you never finished setting it up last night.

You want to change out of these clothes and take a bath, but you'd first have to figure out how to take off a kimono. And where to put it.

Also, you're hungry.

Also, Tamamo-née's super depressive.

You guess you can't blame her for that one.

Aizawa-san squeezes you tighter. "Think about it," she tells your big sister. "They aren't punishing or isolating you. They said you could come back anytime. This is a chance for you to get all the reassurance you've needed, for so long."

"I just wanted to be with you two again!"

Tamamo-née breaks down in tears.

"I-it's okay," Aizawa-san chokes out. "We'll visit you as often as we can, right?"

You nod emphatically, your moist eyes squeezed shut.

Tamamo-née staggers into the tiny kitchenette, grabs a handful of paper towels, and blows her nose on them so she doesn't have to use the kimono's sleeve.

She tries to catch her breath. "Thank you ... it's just ... this is my fault. All of this is my fault. I should have accepted what I was given."

"Like I did?" Aizawa-san asks.

Tamamo-née facepalms.

"I didn't know what was happening," you say quietly. "I grasped the situation we were in, but I could only interpret it as a horror story. I couldn't see any way for me to be given what I needed, so suddenly, that wasn't a trick or a set-up. And when I ... 'found the body' ... I knew I was right about what was happening, and went into survival mode."

"I think we all fucked this up," Aizawa-san says. It's the first time you've heard her say 'fuck.' "All of us, except Ai-chan."

"Yeah." Tamamo-née sighs. "She's genre-savvy. I mean, she was Wrong Genre Savvy, but it came in handy when I literally turned yuritopia into a ghost story." She grins in spite of herself. "You're so brave, Ai-chan ... I'm glad you were able to face your fears like that. You're the only one of the three of us who did so without breaking."

"That does not make me better than you," you tell her. "I'm also the only one of us who didn't come into this vividly remembering her own death."

You remember it now, though.

You logged on to Tumblr and saw that there were no direct messages in reply to the one that your big sister sent. You decided your friend hadn't responded yet.

You browsed through your timeline and unexpectly saw a brief glimpse of the response.

The kind of language it used.

The abject condemnation.

The negation.

Your eyes started to glaze over, and you could feel yourself dying inside. The kind of death that comes from just knowing there's nothing to live for.

You are an abomination. You should not be alive. Your existing is hurtful to people you care about, like your friend.

It would be better if you did not.

I would like some kitsune udon, your last flickering neurons think.

Your big sister takes charge and cooks for you lovingly.

She doesn't realize until it's ready that you're gone. For good.

She throws it in the trash.

She sits down at the computer with her head in her hands. She does not move for a long time.

She doesn't read the response or any of the reblogs.

She deletes your shared account, and never visits the site again.

You're all verging on panic breathing as you come out of the flashback.

"Okay ... " Tamamo-née manages to regain her composure somehow. "Being hugged twenty-four-seven is starting to appeal to me now."

"Do you know what appeals to me, sis?" you ask.

"Fox noodles?" Aizawa-san asks.

"Yes. Very much."

"Then I'm making us some kitsune udon," Tamamo-née says, and digs through the cabinets for a pot. "Because I owe you ...

"I owe you both so much."

While the noodles are boiling you finish setting up the futon, awkwardly hang up the kimono in the closet (it trails on the floor), and change into some fuzzy pajamas that were wrapped up in one of the packages your apartment came with.

You decide not to bathe after all, because you don't want to fall asleep in the bath again. Nobody knows how to dry off Tamamo-née's tails, anyway.

The three of you stay up late slurping sweet-savoury noodles, with the glorious brown "meat" from Ha-chan's bento that turned out to be fried tofu.

You try Warframe for her, but the introductory mission hits just a little too close to home. So instead, you lounge on your futon, watching Aizawa-san play the original Star Fox on Ha-chan's Switch.

It was always her favourite game.

"What I don't understand," Tamamo-née says, "is how Hazawa-san's signed up for Nintendo Switch Online when we're in the afterlife."

"Or how you uploaded a video to YouTube," you say.

"I could only access the Japanese internet," Aizawa-san says, in between flying through arches reminiscent of torii gates. "All my emails back home bounced."

"What about Ha-chan?" you ask. "She's from Japan. Do her emails to family and friends go through?"

"Something tells me it probably doesn't work that way." Tamamo-née makes a face. "Maybe the knowledge that we're anime girls in the afterlife is antimemetic somehow."

"Huh?"

"It's an SCP thing." Tamamo-née is referring to an archive of horror stories. "It means it's the opposite of a meme. It doesn't spread. No matter how hard you try or how many times you explain, it just doesn't take. Nobody understands."

"Oh," you say, and watch Aizawa-san put her skills to good use on the first boss.

"That's just like when we tried to tell people who we were inside, isn't it?" you ask.

Aizawa-san suddenly bursts out laughing. She always did laugh at morbid or horrible things, when they were pointed out so clearly.

She takes her hand from the controls, to cover her mouth.

And now your big sister is fucking dead.

In Star Fox.

"No need to be so dramatic." She giggles, and pets one of Tamamo-née's tails.

Sorry.

"It's okay. Just ... remember that now things are different. Now everyone here understands, because it's something that we have in common with them. We all dearly wanted to be this. Okay?"

Tamamo-née sighs. "I had a lot in common with the trans folk in my FC. The, uh, other trans folk, since I was also MtF. They just didn't realize it."

"Well ... if this is really a schoolgirl anime we're in, then maybe someone will watch it. Maybe someone will learn. Maybe someone else in the same situation will think, 'this is real, I'm not making it up, and I have the same right to be myself as anyone else does.'"

"Yeah," Tamamo-née says, "and then they'll go in yellowface to cosplay as me."

Aizawa-san laughs again, but her hands don't slip from the controls this time. She clears Stage 1 with 100 percent.

"You two are weird," you say. "But also I love you, and I'm glad to have you back."

You're not ready to use the 'l' word to describe your feelings towards anyone else, just yet. But for now?

You're glad this horror story has a happy ending.

And you're glad that being yourself doesn't have to hurt anyone.

miyakolily

This is as far as the audiobook goes, so this is as much as I am uploading for now. If you'd like me to narrate (or simply upload) the next chapters, where you have your real first day at school and a budding romance with Ha-chan, please leave a comment.