Yokai: Paper Leaves.: Yokai, #1

By Michael Palmer-Cryle

She isn't human, he is. Can they ever be friends? Can they ever be more?

 

 From the moment Winnifred raised her long elegant ears to their friendliest position, plastered a wide smile across her softly furred face, and greeted her new class, everything went straight to crap.

 

 As the first Yokai to ever attend an all-human school, she expected the intolerance... though she never expected every member of her class to be a worthless bag of dank teenage farts and bad attitude.

 

The one exception to the worst group of students to ever belch their way into a classroom was Jexa, a human boy, beautiful and sad with an unfortunate past and a very unusual name, a Yokai name.

 

They were impossibly different but could a hidden act of kindness and an origami leaf be enough to spark a forbidden love?

 

Set in a vibrant world where she is seen as less than human, and he is at the forefront of a conflict that will probably get them both killed. Together they will fight for their fractured world... and each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Palmer-Cryle
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648892816

Michael Palmer-Cryle

Michael Palmer-Cryle began writing at an early age and his first illustrated children's book, "the Punk Puss" was published in the pages of his hometown newspaper when he was ten years of age. it was dreadful and embarrasses him deeply to this day, you will never be allowed to see it... ever. with the mortification of that event behind him, he now focuses on young adult fantasy fiction, as well as illustrated children's books. His debut novel 'Hieronymus Jones and the teacup squid' is available now and book two will be released soon. Michael is an independent (indie) author, publishing under the imprint of Sleepy Goblin Press. Michael lives in Brisbane, Australia with his partner and two cats

Book preview

Yokai : Paper leaves

Michael Palmer-Cryle.

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Sleepy Goblin Press.

First published by Sleepy Goblin in 2021.

Text and illustrations copyright © Michael Palmer-Cryle, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews or specifically permitted under copyright law.

ISBN 978-0-6488928-2-3

Contents

1. Chapter One.

2. Chapter Two.

3. Chapter Three.

4. Chapter Four.

5. Chapter Five.

6. Chapter Six.

7. Chapter Seven.

8. Chapter Eight.

9. Chapter Nine.

10. Chapter Ten.

11. Chapter Eleven.

12. Chapter Twelve.

13. Chapter Thirteen.

14. Chapter Fourteen.

15. Chapter Fifteen.

16. Chapter Sixteen.

17. Chapter Seventeen.

18. Chapter Eighteen.

19. Chapter Nineteen.

20. Chapter Twenty.

21. Chapter Twenty-One.

22. Chapter Twenty-Two.

23. Chapter Twenty-Three.

24. Chapter Twenty-Four.

25. Chapter Twenty-Five.

26. Chapter Twenty-Six.

27. Chapter Twenty-Seven.

28. Chapter Twenty-Eight.

29. Chapter Twenty-Nine.

30. Chapter Thirty.

31. Chapter Thirty-One.

32. Chapter Thirty-Two.

33. Chapter Thirty-Three.

34. Chapter Thirty-Four.

35. Chapter Thirty-Five.

36. Chapter Thirty-Six.

37. Chapter Thirty-Seven.

38. Chapter Thirty-Eight.

39. Chapter Thirty-Nine.

40. Chapter Forty.

41. Chapter Forty-One.

42. Chapter Forty-Two.

43. Chapter Forty-Three.

44. Chapter Forty-Four.

45. Thank you

46. Hieronymus Jones and the Teacup Squid.

About Author

Also By

Chapter One.

The boy brushed a little of his dark brown hair from his eyes, choosing to ignore the fact that his grandfather had told him he needed a haircut only that morning. What did that old bear know about haircuts anyway? His grandfather didn’t even have hair of his own, so was hardly a reliable measure in the needing of haircuts. Though in this instance, his grandfather had been quite correct, the boy was in serious danger of being considered shaggy in the hair department.

The boy shuddered involuntarily at the memory of his grandfather offering to cut his hair for him once again. To this day, the trauma was still fresh in his mind, nearly a year after the boy had been foolhardy, or delusional, enough to accept the old bear’s previous offer of a haircut. The boy had been wooed by his grandfather’s tales of profound and near god-like abilities to take a mop of unruly hair and mold it into a ‘do’ worthy of gracing the pages of a magazine. His grandfather had lied to him, he had lied hard.

The shame the boy felt, for months after that most egregious affront on his follicles, still burned brightly in his memory. On that day, when the boy had looked into the mirror his grandfather held in front of him, he had discovered what his own vomit tasted like, as he threw up into his mouth. Long story short, it was not a good haircut and it would be a cold day in the very depths of hell before he let his grandfather anywhere near any part of him, while holding a pair of scissors.

The boy languished in front of a shop window for a moment, regarding his reflection in the glass. He flattered himself that the shaggy look was working for him, made him look wild and untamed, which was significantly better than shaggy. The boy took a moment to check that he didn’t have something embarrassing on his pale face, then turned from the reflective glass to continue on his way. That’s when he noticed the shopkeeper’s face staring back at him from the other side of the window.

The face wore an unfriendly expression, her lip curled very slightly and her whiskers twitched in annoyance. The boy smiled as cheerfully as he could, then nodded and turned to leave. The yokai woman tended to her wares as she kept a watchful eye on the human boy outside her store, her long tail flicking from side to side in an agitated manner. She clucked her tongue at the boy’s passing, then returned to her customers, grateful for his absence.

The boy’s pale skin was made even paler by the chill in the morning air, he pulled the collar of his school uniform around him in a fruitless attempt to stave off the cold. He lamented the fact that the sadists on the school board insisted that the students at his school wear the summer uniform, even in temperatures as frigid as these. True it technically was summer, but after the ocean currents changed when the continents were torn apart and reformed in ‘the fracture,’ the global climate became far colder than once it had been. The fracture happened forty years ago, you would think that the friggen school board could get with the times. Also inflicting shorts on a seventeen-year-old was atrociously unacceptable… how dare they? Shorts. He silently cursed the school board and their inexplicable choice in uniforms once more, as he tried to pretend his naked knees were not freezing to death, then continued on his way to school.

Perhaps he dawdled a little more than he would on another day because he was not looking forward to the day ahead. His dawdling may well delay his arrival at school, however it may also cause his nipples to freeze, then snap off, if he took too much longer to get somewhere warm, so he quickened his pace. The boy liked his nipples and wanted to keep them firmly attached to his body if at all possible.

The city he strode briskly through and where he made his home, was barely a city at all. Pretty much just a town that had made it over the population threshold for a city, by forty-two people. However unreasonably, it was officially a city. A tiny, tiny city. If yokai were counted in the census then there would have been no issue in upgrading the status from town to city, though as in most things, yokai didn’t count.

There were only three high schools in the city, two for the humans and one for the yokai. Both human schools were on the west side of town, whereas the yokai school was in the yokai quarter, the poorest part of the city. The yokai quarter was a patchwork of different architectural styles from many disparate species, each with their own distinct culture. The boy enjoyed seeing so many different styles of buildings in this part of town, many humans did not.

Most yokai lost everything when the fracture happened, so many came to this world with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some were more fortunate, land and buildings also came through when the worlds broke, some families made it through with their homes. They were the most despised of all. For every building, every piece of land that came over in the fracture, another building, another piece of land, was taken away. A perfect preservation of mass. Every yokai that had their home, meant a human, didn’t. The many species of yokai were blamed for an event they had no control over, there was a lot of hatred, even after so long. Many humans would greatly prefer to see the yokai quarter wiped from the face of existence. Some more than others.

As the boy crossed into the hallways of his school, he briefly checked his nipples. They were mercifully not frozen solid, though he thought he saw that some errant icicles had begun to form there. He chuckled at his own foolishness and then remembered why he was dreading this day.

Race traitor. The boy had been called that by a classmate from a previous year, they barely knew each other. He smiled sadly, this was what he had expected, no reason to complain about the inevitable.

This was the first day of his final year of high school, the end could not come soon enough for him. The last five years had been unpleasant, to say the least. The boy adjusted his button-up, short-sleeved, uniform shirt. It was three sizes too big for him, an attempt to better hide his form. Four more students muttered the delightful nickname of ‘race traitor’ in his direction as he passed by and entered his classroom. The boy forced his lips to adopt the slight smile he always wore as protection. The hell with them, who needed them anyway? The boy’s brain shouted at him that he could quite easily beat the entire classroom full of students into a barely recognizable paste, with little to no effort. His brain went on to suggest that mass beatings weren’t really a crime if they happened to awful people. The boy considered that his brain was becoming quite concerning of late and he should probably look into the increasingly regular invitations to extreme violence, his mind was making. Perhaps at a more opportune moment, but not today. Today the class would remain recognizable… probably.

The boy walked to the front of the classroom to peruse the exam scores from the previous year that were posted on the board. The scores from the last year had been combined into a single figure, an overall percentage. A subtle reminder from the faculty that you were always being graded and compared… built character probably. He had long since given up on being treated kindly by his peers throughout the school year. He had given up on having friends, sure as hell had given up on having a girlfriend, but seeing how much better he was doing scholastically than the others in his class gave him a cheap, albeit brief, thrill. It wasn’t that he liked showing off, quite the opposite, he did all he could to go completely unnoticed. Even though, from time to time, he wanted to feel a small measure of revenge for the way he was treated at his school. Surely he could be forgiven that.

He found his score next to his name, Jexa Taylor, 99.8 percent. The person below him on the list was a bookish girl with glasses and an attitude, who had only gotten 92.3 percent… sucks to be her. Jexa allowed himself a brief smile before narrowing his eyes at the only name above his. Anna-Marie Malone. She had scored 99.9 percent and was clearly some kind of witch. Jexa banished the thought of Anna-Marie potentially dabbling in the dark arts in order to raise her score. She had no need, she had always been just a little bit smarter than him. She was the one who was smarter, she was the one who whispered about him, the one who hated him, the one he still missed.

Jexa turned from the board, ready to run the gauntlet of unpleasantness on the way to his desk near the back of the room. When he turned, he found himself looking into pale green eyes, Anna-Marie’s eyes.

Hello Anna… how are you? Jexa asked his question knowing he would not get an answer, she had not spoken a word to him in five years. Not since the day it happened. Anna-Marie’s green eyes remained fixed on his blue ones. She stared through him, her expression blank but with unbridled fury hiding just beneath the surface of her angelic face. There were notes of something else hiding beneath the mask she wore, though Jexa could not place what they were.

Anna-Marie was stunning, every person in that class thought so, every person everywhere thought so. She was as tall as Jexa, taller than any other girl at the school, never lanky or awkward, just tall. Her olive skin made her green eyes all the more vivid, her waist-length black hair elegantly fell over her left shoulder and partially covered her left eye. Jexa reached up on instinct to brush the hair from her eye but thought better of it and lowered his hand, those days were well and truly gone.

Anna-Marie scowled at him, the rise and fall of his hand had been noted and it angered her. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. She reached out her hand and without ever breaking eye contact with him, casually drew a line through his name on the board. Replacing ‘Jexa’ with the word ‘Boy’ before she turned away from him and walked toward her desk in the first row. Anna-Marie loathed that Jexa had taken that word for his name. It was a yokai word, it was a betrayal. As Anna-Marie elegantly glided to her seat, she leaned in to whisper to three boys that always seemed to be hovering around her. Jexa had not heard what she had said, but he could guess. An order, a command, phrased as a sweetly delivered request.

The three boys who received Anna-Marie’s whispered words marched toward Jexa with purpose. The first to arrive pushed Jexa against the wall as the other two pinned his arms. The first of the attackers held his fist aloft, poised to strike, he turned to look at Anna-Marie who simply nodded. Jexa closed his eyes and adjusted his slight smile, ensuring it was still present.

Sorry dude, but you deserve this… race traitor. The assailant barely got the words out before he was quieted by the approach of the teacher.

Settle down. the teacher’s command was lackluster and more of a suggestion than an actual order, but the words worked well enough. The three attackers made the usual threats of later violence but returned to their desks at the teacher’s suggestion. Each received a cheerful smile and a nod from Anna-Marie as recompense for their loyalty.

Jexa sat at his desk in the second last row of the classroom and resigned himself to his fate. Another year, one more year then high school would be over and all of this would be nothing but a memory, a deeply psychologically damaging memory… hooray. Jexa’s brain once again reiterated the awesomeness of punching people really hard and often in the face and throat. He tried not to listen, though his brain was making some really good points.

The school was small enough that the students had the same class each year, everybody knew everybody else to one degree or another. No introductions were needed, so the teacher made none. His name was Mr. Garrety, he had been their homeroom teacher the year before and the year before that. He wore glasses, had less hair than he would like, and was of average height and build, the very picture of ‘blah.’ Mr. Garrety sported shorts, knee-high socks, and looked ever so slightly like a man who had given up on happiness. Hunched shoulders and a weak chin pushed out too far added to the unfortunate effect.

As Jexa considered just how much his teacher looked like he should be weeping into his morning coffee, he saw her. He arched his neck to get a better view of the girl standing in the hallway. She was yokai. She peeked around the doorframe of the classroom wearing a smile… that was about to fade.

Chapter Two.

Mr. Garrety gestured curtly to the girl waiting in the hallway, she trotted into the classroom obediently. The class stared at the newcomer with the slack-jawed gaze of those who are deeply confused. The girl was yokai. She was yokai and standing in a human school, wearing their uniform and she was yokai. This made no sense to the class at all, human schools do not have yokai students.

Through the stunned silence the students began to soak in the details of the newcomer. She was the same age as everyone else, seventeen. A little taller than most of the girls in the class, she gained a measure of extra height due to the digitigrade structure of her legs. Jexa guessed she would have been perhaps a head shorter than him normally, but the way her lower legs were formed gave her an extra half head of height. Jexa moved his hand to subtly cover a smile that had begun to creep across his lips, she appeared as if she was standing on the tips of her toes. Jexa was strangely embarrassed that the shape of her legs had caused him to smile. Her legs were long and sleek as was usual with her species, she was athletically built, lean and svelte. Her athleticism had not deprived her of a feminine form, however. Jexa’s embarrassment grew when he found his eyes lingering over her feminine hips and the gentle curve of her chest.

Jexa punched his brain repeatedly in its face as punishment for its unacceptable behavior. His brain eventually relented and allowed him to move his eyes to less inappropriate areas of the new girl’s physiology, specifically her face. The bridge of her nose was a little wider than it would have been if she were human and ended in a pale pink triangle that was almost completely hidden by her fur. She had no hair, of course, none of the yokai did, instead, there were a pair of long ears sticking straight up from her head, giving her an almost inquisitive appearance. She was covered head to toe in fur that was short and sleek and the color of fresh snow. Her species was Leporidae, at least that is what her species had been renamed upon their arrival. Members of her species were also known colloquially as rabbits since that is what they most closely resembled.

The newcomer appeared to be getting ever so slightly nervous, due either to the dead silence in the room or the less-than-friendly expressions on several students’ faces. She held her bag to her side and stood a little taller, raising her chin and wearing a wide grin that picked up on one side a little more than the other. It was a cheerful grin, slightly mischievous, and wholly inappropriate given the situation.

Why is there a ‘lepor’ standing in our classroom? Anna-Marie had not actually asked the question, she had simply suggested in a whisper to one of her friends, Jessica, that she should ask.

Calling someone a ‘lepor’ is extremely racist… perhaps you were unaware? The yokai girl asked in a tone that was sweet, friendly, and at the exact same time, deeply concerning. The term ‘lepor,’ a shortening of Leporidae, was a derogatory term, one of many that had sprung up over the years. Each of the forty-seven distinct species of yokai had all seemed to earn an unfortunate term to describe their race.

Perhaps you are unaware that you are a filthy ‘lepor’ animal, you ugly piece of crap. Jessica spat back without the aid of Anna-Marie’s prompting.

And perhaps YOU are unaware that you look like somebody poured half a metric ton of rotten potatoes into a school uniform and tried to fool everyone into thinking it was a woman. Nobody was fooled. The yokai girl stated in a surprisingly effective display of how not to make friends. The stony silence in the classroom was cut only by the sound of a room full of students’ jaws hitting the ground in unison. When the yokai girl had finished speaking, she narrowed her eyes at Jessica… who actually was vaguely vegetable-like in her appearance and manner. Jessica curled her lip into a sneer and slumped back in her chair, possibly to provide her a more comfortable position to continue her sneering from.

Quiet. Mr. Garrety interjected, shutting down any further conversation. You will not disrupt this class, am I understood? It took the yokai girl a moment to realize that Mr. Garrety was talking to her and not to the girl who had just used the racial slur. The yokai girl inhaled deeply and smiled widely.

Of course, sir, my apologies, didn’t mean to cause a fuss. Mr. Garrety curled his lip at the yokai girl’s ‘apology,’ which was slightly less than sincere, then simply pointed to the only empty desk in the classroom. She nodded and strode confidently toward her desk, she made it four paces before someone stuck out their leg to trip her.

The yokai student stepped over the outstretched limb, stared at the offender with their leg stuck ridiculously into the aisle, allowed her smile to drop for a moment, then continued on her way without ever breaking her stride. The desk she had been assigned was against the wall in the far back corner, directly behind Jexa’s desk. As she passed him, he took the chance to get a closer look at her face, specifically her eyes. They were so dark brown that they were almost black, lined with long dark eyelashes. She smiled down at Jexa, something close to hope flashing across her face. He immediately looked down at his desk, avoiding her gaze. Her smile disappeared for a moment but was replaced almost instantly.

Mr. Garrety sighed in exasperation at the increasing levels of disturbance in his classroom over the appearance of a yokai student. They were eight minutes into the school year and he was already sick to the back teeth of this friggen class.

Look, I’m not any happier about it than you are, but it is what it is. Mr. Garrety began in a tone that practically shouted at the class to sit there, shut up and not make him regret the fact that he had returned to teaching for another year. You can all thank Y.E.R.A for this. The new laws went through and apparently, we have to integrate… them, into even more aspects of our society, starting with the schools. Hence her. Mr. Garrety pointed at the newest student sitting at her desk at the back of the room. The yokai girl hunched her shoulders and seemed to shrink for a moment, but only a moment. She is a test subject… so to speak. Mr. Garrety finished his brief explanation with another sigh. There was a brief giggle from the same girl who had called the new student a ‘lepor.’ Her giggle was joyless and cruel.

That’s all rabbits are good for, being test subjects. Jessica gladly accepted credit for the joke, basking in the laughter of the class, though the words had been delivered to her by way of Anna-Marie’s whisper.

Y.E.R.A, an acronym for Yokai Equal Rights Association, first began in the early days after the fracture. It had taken them nearly ten years after that event, to enact laws that made it illegal to kill a yokai without provocation. Another twenty years to earn the vote. The penalty for the murder of a yokai was only recently increased from two years in prison or an eight thousand dollar fine, to a sentence similar to the murder of a human. The yokai were not considered to legally be ‘people.’ They were instead given the moniker ‘non-human sentients.’ At least they were now considered to be sentient, that too was a fairly recent addition to the law.

It was technically illegal for a human to abuse a yokai citizen but provided you had adequate funding, there really was no large deterrent to doing so. In fact, the severest injuries could be dealt to a yokai citizen without provocation, and provided that yokai did not die, the human responsible would only be forced to pay the appropriate fine. There were even organizations like the ‘dog catchers’ who were known to provide funding to certain loyal members of their organization when the need arose. The dog catchers were also known for other, less pleasant reasons.

The dog catchers and similar hate groups were becoming a major force in the fight against yokai rights. Y.E.R.A was on the other side of that war and they were getting ever closer to passing the laws that would mean equality for the yokai. The latest of the laws that had been pushed through, forced integration of the schools, though in a limited form. There were test subjects for this program all over the country. The yokai girl sitting at the desk, in the back of the class, was the test subject for this school.

Y.E.R.A had taken a massive hit when the dog plague began to claim its victims. The plague had pushed the movement back, almost to the first days after the fracture, Y.E.R.A had been clawing its way back ever since the vaccine had been found. That plague was short-lived but devastating, it claimed almost a third of the global population a decade ago.

Influenza, common enough, present in most of the sentient species on the planet. The trouble began when a human strain and a Canidae strain came in contact with each other and became something new. The human and Canidae populations were especially hard hit and the hatred for the yokai had swelled to levels not seen since the first yokai appeared in Japan in the hours following the fracture. Yokai, Japanese monsters of folklore, was a name that stuck and became the collective name for all of the non-human species to appear across the planet, after the fracture, when worlds collided.

Some blamed the Hadron super collider, some said it was always going to happen, the multiverse ironing out its wrinkles, some claimed it was a gift of the gods or the punishment of the devil. Whatever the reason, it happened. Yokai were a part of the world now, no getting around it and they were not going anywhere, couldn’t if they wanted to.

Jexa turned his head slightly in order to look behind him as subtly as possible. The new yokai student was staring straight ahead, a slight smile on her soft pink lips. He recognized that smile, it was the same one he wore when he was being hit. The new girl had lowered her ears, they no longer stood proudly at attention, they hung to the sides of her head giving her an heir or melancholy that was unmistakable. Jexa lowered his head and stared at his desk, he closed his eyes and felt the shame well up from within. He should have smiled back.

Chapter Three.

With the unpleasantness of the morning behind her and a loud obnoxious buzzer announcing lunchtime, the newest student in the class stood up. She adjusted her shirt, grabbed the brown paper bag that held her lunch, and made especially sure that her long ears were standing upright proudly. She was a warrior, she could certainly handle a bunch of humans that were being mean to her. True, this particular bunch of humans took being mean to a whole new level and could probably make it all the way to the Olympics with their meanness. Assuming of course the Olympics ever created an event based upon being snot-nosed little craps to the new kid who was only doing her best in a very difficult situation. To date, the Olympics had announced no such plans. She was well aware that this wasn’t going to be easy but it was an important step for her species, so she had stepped up.

After a brief and deeply annoying bout of getting hideously lost, the brand new student made it to the school’s cafeteria. The cafeteria for the most part was a depressing kind of place that smelled of burnt French fries and an ill-defined foodstuff that had been forgotten about, for far too long. Still, she was there and ready to make friends. She donned her best ‘I will forgive you for being uproariously racist to me if you will only pull the massive sticks out of your butts and be nice to me’ smile, and headed in.

She passed by the table that had Jessica and Anna-Marie sitting at it without stopping, because screw those trollops, instead she headed for a table with three less offensive girls from her class sitting at it.

Hi, my name’s Fred, can I sit with you? Fred asked jovially, she held her ears in their friendliest position and her pale fur practically vibrated with happy thoughts.

Ewww, no. The three at the table turned their backs on her in unison.

Ok, well thanks anyway, hope you don’t die hideously in a fire or anything. Most of that sentence was muttered under Fred’s breath as she walked to another table to try her luck again.

Jexa lurked by the entrance to the cafeteria, doing his best to be invisible, which to his credit was largely successful. He watched Fred go from one table to another, only to be turned away from each in turn. He watched her elegant ears droop a little more every time she was turned down. Each table offered a new and inventive insult to Fred as she asked to join them. The insults ranged from how she had a boy’s name and looked like a boy, to suggestions that she was diseased and the whole school would probably need to be disinfected because of her. The insults about Fred looking like a boy seemed to affect her greatly, though she hid it well. By the time she gave up and sat by herself her ears were once again by the side of her head, drooping sadly. Even her tail seemed to be sad, which was especially depressing given its fluffy nature.

Jexa allowed his eye to drift to Fred’s tail as she sat with her back to everyone, eating the sandwich she had brought from home. Jexa had seen a great many yokai tails in his time. From the long graceful cat-like tails of the Felidae to the short stubby tails of the bear-like Ursadae and every species in between. He had watched those tails flick in annoyance at his approach and he had watched them wag excitedly at his departure. Very few tails, or their owners, ever seemed happy to see him. That was to be expected, the yokai had learned to be wary of humans. Most of them anyway. Fred’s tail stuck through a specially designed opening at the top of her skirt, he imagined it would not be happy to see him either. Though he acknowledged he had given neither Fred nor her tail any reason to be happy with him.

Jexa turned to leave the cafeteria, he never ate his lunch there, he was less welcome than Fred seemed to be. It would probably have been a tight race between the two for the title of ‘least wanted person at the school.’ It was a crappy title that nobody wanted anyway and would almost certainly not have resulted in a race, to claim said title. Just as he had almost left the room, a sound froze him in his spot. It was an overproduced snippet of music that took itself far too seriously and was played at the beginning of every official ‘dog catcher’ video.

The dog catchers first fell into the public consciousness when they started releasing their videos to the stream, around the time of the dog plague. The Canidae species which were actually fourteen disparate species of canine-like yokai were not to blame for the plague. They were blamed nonetheless. The dog catchers began posting videos at the height of the disease’s spread. Terrible videos that should never have come to be, yet were surprisingly well-received by the terrified human populace.

Very few humans realized that it was Canidae bio-engineering that developed the cure to the dog plague. They didn’t care, they only wanted vengeance for the lost human lives. They got their vengeance vicariously, by watching the hate that spilled onto the stream from the dog catchers. At first, it was rants, then it escalated to beatings caught on film, the Canidae were targeted first, which is where the name dog catchers came from. The dog catchers expanded their campaign of hate in short order, to include any yokai, Canidae or not. Thankfully the number of dog catchers remained fairly low, they stayed out of the yokai sectors for the most part. Every once in a while, however, they ventured into the yokai parts of a town or city and recorded a video like the one that was being played now. Jexa clenched both of his hands into fists, he didn’t even need to turn around to know who was playing that video.

Anna-Marie held her digicom in front of Fred’s face, its thin holographic display flickering with images nobody should ever see. Anna-Marie smiled all the while. The video showed a middle-aged yokai man on his knees sobbing. The dog catcher stepped in front of the camera and made a short statement, he wore a black suit with a red tie and spoke of hate. He also wore the signature of every dog catcher, a gas mask with a splash of red paint upon the canister and a series of gleaming white triangles, representing teeth, meticulously painted over the top. The man’s voice was altered electronically by a voice modulator in the gas mask he wore. The screams of the yokai on his knees received no alteration. Jexa’s eyes grew wide, he knew what was happening in the video that Anna-Marie took such delight in showing Fred.

The yokai in the video screamed as his ears were removed by way of a butcher’s knife. The man lost his tail within the blades of a pair of gardening shears. The yokai in the video would not be killed, that was not the way of the dog catchers. A dead yokai is just a corpse, a living yokai disfigured in such a way was a message… a powerful one. Fred covered her mouth with both of her hands as she watched the horror on the screen.

The first time her father had shown Anna-Marie that video she didn’t even realize she had smiled through the whole thing, through the screams and the begging, through everything, she smiled. Anna-Marie had smiled the second time she made her father play it too. She also smiled now as she watched the horrified expression on Fred’s face. Anna-Marie firmly believed the yokai deserved whatever pain was visited upon them after what they had taken from her. So she felt no compunctions whatsoever for her current actions.

The video finished and Anna-Marie flicked off the holographic display and returned the device to her pocket, awaiting Fred’s reaction. Fred stood up calmly, moved one foot in front of the other in a very specific way, and dipped her head. Jexa widened his eyes, he recognized the stance that Fred was using, things were about to take a turn for the worse. Fred’s ears moved back and flat against her head as she stared at Anna-Marie and clenched her fist. Anna-Marie inhaled sharply and took a small step backward as she braced herself for a blow she was certain was coming, she also, almost imperceptibly, smiled. Anna-Marie’s plan was coming to fruition, as Anna-Marie’s plans always did.

Fred’s concentration was broken by a cacophony of clattering as a large tray of dirty plates and cutlery fell to the floor. Fred looked over in the direction of the sound to see Jexa standing over the pile of broken plates and displaced forks. Fred noted a strange coincidence, the boy’s feet were placed one in front of the other in a very specific way, just as hers were.

Sorry… I didn’t want that to happen. Jexa spoke sheepishly as he bent down and started clearing up the debris. Fred used the time that Jexa’s loud distraction had given her, to reconsider the stance she currently assumed. This was not the place for a stance like that. She cleared away the remainder of her lunch and left the room without a word.

As Fred passed Jexa, she looked down at him, she should probably be grateful for his clumsiness, it likely kept her out of prison. Had she struck Anna-Marie as she had planned, she would certainly have been arrested. The penalties for a yokai that raised its hands to a human, were severe.

Jexa became acutely aware that every eye in the cafeteria was pointed squarely at him. Somebody began laughing, it was a nervous kind of laugh, an attempt to break the tension more than a reaction to anything funny. Anna-Marie stared at Jexa as he cleaned up the mess he had created, she scrutinized each of his movements. So careful, so exact. The others may believe he had allowed a moment of clumsiness to overtake him, but Anna-Marie did not. He always was a smart one.

Fred resolved never to eat her lunch in that cafeteria again as she walked down the hall, feigning a calmness she did not actually possess. She knew that what she had chosen to do would be hard, but that was why she had volunteered to be the test subject for this program of integration. She was a warrior and