Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Hidden in the alleyway between two stores on the brink of bankruptcy lay a small cottage nestled in a pocket dimension. Foliage wreathed its borders, fireflies made residence in lamps, the rays of the three moons spilled into the windows and splayed silver over the golden warmth of the lit hearth. The ocean nestled outside, dappled with small islands with tall reeds, held the sky’s twin in its loving cradle that would be occasionally disturbed by migrating herons during the second moon’s forthcoming. Untouched by mortal hands, Doppo was allowed the perfect space to work witchcraft in the confines of a forest in the outskirts of her realm. It was a limited area that bordered the barrier of Summit, the main city, but it was enough for Doppo to keep to herself.
She’d never been a big fan of crowded spaces, not when she was born with the ability to absorb the emotions of others without physical contact. It was too much sometimes—being unable to block what people felt—to the point where it overwhelmed her and nearly caused her magic to surge unhealthily. A short-circuiting, you could call it, when people’s feelings mismatched her limbs until she couldn’t feel herself. In a way, having this ability was like becoming a sponge. Like those sea sponges shaped in a brain’s structure, just sitting there in the middle of the forsaken ocean soaking up water and water and more water and water and it made her want to burst sometimes. More than sometimes, actually.
So, over the years, she’d learned how to bar herself out from society by doing the most remote of jobs and isolating herself. It wasn’t so bad. Solitude was her friend, after all. A very quiet, tender friend whose presence she could bask in without needing another solid body at her side.
At least, that was how it was supposed to be. Well, all up until one night when Doppo was busy creating another batch of stingray-clownfish growth serum to sell on the markets the next day. The formula required precision, precision she didn’t have when some weirdo started hollering at the top of their lungs outside as Doppo held a stingray’s tail in her mouth and clownfish scales in her hand. She’d nearly dropped both of them at the same time (which would have caused her very many distressing hallucinations) the moment she heard the noise.
Doppo dropped everything in surprise with a squeak and briefly ruined her concoction by adding another scale of clownfish in before she added the stingray’s tail, and now she wasn’t going to be able to make enough for the market tomorrow, and she still had to go to her convenience store shift in the upper world because heavens forbid she got paid enough to purchase enough mystical supplies and actual, edible food to survive, and—
Another yell of “Hello?!” cut through the air, and it snapped Doppo so hard out of her thoughts that she felt her brain slosh around violently in her head.
It must be some stupid traveler again, Doppo grumbled incoherently to herself in a spark of hot rage. She threw on her coat as the brooms behind her swept up the mess and she woefully lamented the loss of another batch of supplies. What a pain; this is why she can’t seem to get enough sleep. Too bad the potions she made doesn’t fucking work on their own creator, so she doesn’t even have the ability to cure her own insomnia and sleep-deprivation.
“Are you seeing this shit right now,” she told her tanuki, who just awoke from a nap and was staring disappointedly at Doppo. “Damn right.”
Huffing, she threw open her door with the intensity of a thousand burning suns at her heels and trailed fire from her feet as she dragged herself out into the gardens. In the midst of her tomatoes, another woman around Doppo’s age with brilliant blonde hair crouched in front of the stalks, poking the screaming vegetables with a stick. A soft feeling of joy ebbed over Doppo from the stranger at this distance.
“Hey!” Doppo yelled at the figure, irritation swamping her features. If it wasn’t tengu, it was some lady trying to destroy her tomato patches. Could she ever get a break. “Stop poking my genocide tomatoes!”
The woman turned to look at Doppo with the most innocent expression plastered over her face. “Genocide tomatoes? What’er those? Can you believe these things can talk? Waow…” she stabbed another shrieking tomato with the twig in hand, and it nearly bit her finger off had it not been Doppo who pulled her back from the bushes. She landed on her backside with an oof, rubbing her hip with a pout on her face.
Doppo squinted at her. She emitted no hostility, yet she didn’t seem to fit in with the dark and dreary scenery with how her color palette contrasted with the night. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Oh, hey! I thought no one lived around here until I found your house.” The blonde got up, dusting dirt off her skirt. Upon closer view, she looked like she just came fresh out of some club they have in Doppo’s realm; glittering eyeshadow coated her eyelids, mascara nicely done, hair curled, gray silk blazer tucked in the crook of her elbow, and rising-dawn-red lipstick drawn delicately across her mouth. She looked like if a star dropped from the heavens (which happened once, and it was so bright that Doppo nearly blinded herself trying to extract its core). “I thought I for sure was lost, y’know, and that no one would find me ever again, ‘cuz—”
“Hold up.” Doppo stopped her in her tracks, and the blonde blinked at her with the largest smile spread across her face. “You’re… not a witch, are you.”
“Huuuh?” The other tilted her head so much that her hair tumbled down over a shoulder and the faint scent of roses wafted across Doppo’s nose. “A witch? You mean those old hags in stories who do the ‘bippity-boppity-boo’ thing?” She lifted up her hands and drew them in an arc. “See? No magic or whatnot.”
“What are you doing here, then?” Doppo hissed with a bit too much hostility for someone who’s meeker in the Unconscious. The woman didn’t seem to mind, though, twirling a strand of her hair around a manicured finger.
“Ah, um, me?” She pointed at herself. “Well, you see… There was this really weird guy followin’ me, like, weird, weird. He came to my hostess club and requested me but I was already, like, totally freaked out when he started doing questionable stuff, so I left early. Buuut, he followed me back to my apartment and I was like, ‘Oh, no, not this again,’ and then got trapped in an alleyway when—” she made a grand gesture with her hands, throwing them into the air, “—Boom! I stumbled here. And then now I’m here in fronta you.”
Oh, goodness, Doppo thought miserably to herself. A human. Just when she believed nothing could get worse. He’d heard from people in the town square who had found lost humans in their domains that they could breach through the barrier for some reason. Now, not all stories ended with a happy ending for them; rather, Doppo’s heard of Summit’s arcane and twisted activity of trading humans and their organs. She shuddered.
“So, magic’s real or something here?” The blonde asked, surveying Doppo from every angle. “Oh my gosh, that’s totes crazy. You can do magic, then?”
Doppo inched away from her, but no matter how far she leaned backward, she couldn’t escape the other’s dead-set stare. “You’re not supposed to know about this.”
“But I’m here already.” She kicked her feet into the ground, throwing soil unevenly to the side. Her poor soil, Doppo could only think. “Might as well!”
Touché. Doppo clicked her tongue. Maybe she could wipe this woman’s memory. That would be easy, but it would take an exceedingly long time to brew a lizard’s tongue until it turned bright red, not to mention she would have to go into Summit to purchase the mushrooms she didn’t have.
When Doppo declined to answer, the girl tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and carried on with the conversation.
“So, anyway, name’s Izanami Hifumi, but you can just call me Hifumin for funsies!” Hifumi offered her hand to Doppo, diverging from the entire question about magic itself. Blinking at it for a while, Doppo reluctantly took her hand and was greatly surprised by how soft her skin was. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t divulge names to strangers. Besides, I could potentially kill you right here,” Doppo deadpanned. “You shouldn’t trust me.”
Hifumi didn’t look fazed, like she was used to death threats or something. Peculiar. Or maybe she didn’t have the affinity to care too much, given by how she so brazenly nearly had her hand eaten by the tomatoes and how her mood was consistently the same throughout these few minutes. “Well, I mean, like, you saved me from those genocide tomatoes earlier, didn’t ya? You could have totally blasted me to smithereens on sight if you wanted to if you really are a witch or whatever. But you’re not.”
That… Doppo can’t argue with. Not that she could argue with anything, really (and she definitely couldn’t argue with her manager, whose bald head made her think her own hair was going to fall out one day).
“But I’m not,” Doppo sighed, admitting defeat. “Name’s Kannonzaka.”
“Is that your last name? D’ya have a first name?”
Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.
“Not yet on a first name basis,” Doppo said, and then promptly changed the conversation before Hifumi could milk more information from him. “You should go back before it gets late in your world.”
“Um,” Hifumi shifted her feet in the dirt, pursing her lips. “I dunno how to.”
Doppo looked at her, flabbergasted. “I mean, if you found a way in, you must also have a way out, right? Since you’ve proved that you’re special or whatever.”
“I thought you’d know how to send me back. I told ya, I just somehow walked in here.” Hifumi pouted, crossing her arms and furrowing her brows. Doppo could feel her sanity slipping by the moment. “You’re the one who’s supposed to know magic, right?”
“I couldn’t send you back even if I tried.” Doppo’s shoulders sagged, and she rubbed at her temples with two fingers. It was late. She was tired. There were still about thirty vials of growth serum she needed to make by daylight. If she kept wasting her time out here with this strikingly attractive lady instead of doing her work, she was going to go broke and be unable to afford to eat and work herself to the bone at her convenience store shift in the upper world and get yelled at her manager again for being a minute late because she slept in for a moment’s worth before teleporting to the back of the store and then—
“Hellooo?” Hifumi waved a hand in front of Doppo’s face, suddenly all up in her personal bubble. Doppo recoiled as Hifumi’s fingers came up to brush away the overgrown bangs curtaining her forehead. Too close for comfort. Way too close. There wasn’t even enough space to push her away. “You look like you’re about to fall over at any moment. Whoa, your eyebags are huge.”
Doppo sputtered harder than pufferfishes when bloated. “You—I—Augh!” She shook her head and contemplated laying down in excruciating pain right here. “Just—Just come in or whatever. Spend the night here and then leave in the morning. That’ll probably work.”
“For realsies?” Hifumi took both of Doppo’s hands in hers, and Doppo’s ears flushed incarnadine. Oh, how embarrassing it would be if her hands were sweating so much in Hifumi’s. Doppo would never let herself live that down. “You would do that for me?”
“Would you rather stay out here and let the tengus eat you?” Doppo snorted, dissimulating her embarrassment by pulling away from Hifumi “I wouldn’t like to have to clean up a dead body outside in my gardens the first thing when I wake up.”
Hifumi hummed gleefully to herself as they made their way back into the cottage, her heels clicking obnoxiously on the wooden floorboards. Sure, the living room was messy and all, but Hifumi didn’t seem to mind when she craned her neck toward the one-way clear roof and admired all the plants whose vines snaked down from above to curl kindly around the perimeter. The fireflies flickered happily in the lights at Hifumi’s presence and caused the shadows in the room to waver slightly with mirth. Doppo flicked her wrist at the kitchen, bringing the brooms resting idly next to the stove to life as they swept and mopped the floor clean of debris. She busied herself with nudging away a stack of books on the ground with her foot for a while before addressing her guest.
“First rule,” Doppo turned toward Hifumi, and then proceeded to stop full brakes in her sentence as she noticed her goddamn tanuki in the other’s arms, “I was going to tell you not to touch anything, but it seems like you already did.” Geez, what is she going to do with this finicky visitor of hers? Doppo resorted to blinking at her raccoon instead. “You let her hold you.”
The tanuki, her forsaken tanuki, laughed at her. Hifumi looked nothing more than lost, cuddling the thing against her chest like he was a jacket to her.
“Hey! You never let me hold you! What the hell?!” Doppo stuck a finger at the creature, who returned the action with a shit-eating grin. “You—”
“What’s his name?” Hifumi asked in the midst of their heated conversation. “He’s so soft.” She buried her nose in the raccoon’s fur, and Doppo threw her arms into the air in exasperation. She let out a guttural sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Kirimichan. That’s his name. The little menace. The crime against humanity.” Doppo walked over and tried to pull Kirimichan from Hifumi’s arms, and even when the blonde’s hold slackened, the tanuki would not let himself be removed. He chittered his teeth, and Doppo almost couldn’t hold back the string of curses that threatened to fly from her mouth.
“Ok, fine. Be that way. I’m going to finish my work before you interrupted me by hollering outside.” Doppo returned to her work station, hustling over the counter with countless vials. She ignored Hifumi’s attempts at turning on her phone, failing, and then diverting her attention toward cooing at Kirimichan. Unbelievable. Doppo rolled her eyes. She shot a narrow glare at her tanuki. You coddling little shit, she seethes with her eyes, and Kirimichan only rolled onto his belly for Hifumi to snuggle into. Doppo restrained herself with the remaining ounces of her will from tossing the creature out the door. Whatever, she huffed. At least he was taking Hifumi’s attention away from her while she was working.
Eventually the curtains pulled themselves together to bar out the moon, and what remained of the cottage’s inside included dim fire, a sleeping Kirimichan, and Hifumi, who had gone silent observing Doppo from the sidelines. She felt Hifumi’s eyes on her as she worked, the calm that radiates off her mind in ebbing waves similar to the ocean. To be honest, it made Doppo nervous. Being stared at; being looked at in general irks her. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as her eyebrows furrow deeply to concentrate.
“Heyo, Kannonzaka,” Hifumi said behind her, “can I use your kitchen?”
Doppo plucked another scale off a clownfish and dropped it into her mixture. “Mmm.”
“Oooookie dokie.” Doppo heard Hifumi saunter over to the stove next to her and rifle through the cabinets for ingredients. “How come ya got nothin’ in here? Whadd’ya even eat?”
“Dunno.” She poured the liquid into a bath of vials, careful not to spill any or the money would come out of her own pocket. Her hands bleached a clean white while she tilted the bowl over into each glass encasing. At the other end of the room, Hifumi was concocting her own whatever it was that she was mixing. Doppo didn’t have time to supervise her.
“Yoohoo, Kannonzaka—”
“What?!” Doppo snapped, eye twitching with a lack of sleep. She nearly spilled the bowl’s content as she whirled around furiously. “What do you want now? If you want to be this irritating for the rest of the night, the door is right there. You can see yourself out. I’ll dispose of your body or something in the morning.”
Hifumi’s eyes widened and the filled mugs in her hands shook slightly at Doppo’s outrage. Doppo’s heart stopped in her chest, her throat constricting at her actions. Oh, no. Oh, no, she’d done it now. She’d gone and threw her crankiness at some pretty girl who just wanted to bring a drink for her, and now Hifumi was going to hate her and maybe report her to the hunters in the upper world, and everything she had worked so hard to gain would be loss in the blink of an eye. Burning tears gathered behind her eyes, and her mouth quivered with the intensity of an earthquake.
“Hey,” Hifumi kneeled next to her while Doppo clutched her own head with two hands, on the verge of hyperventilation. The darkness of the ground under her stool began to swim before her sight, and she resisted the urge to throw up the bare contents of her stomach. “You good?”
“I’m sorry,” Doppo gasped out, folding over herself and trying to make her body as small as possible. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrangling the strands of her hair between crazed fingers and tugging at them so hard she felt hot fire against her scalp. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry…”
“I’ll just leave this here.” Hifumi put the steaming mug on the counter. In her peripheral vision, Doppo saw hesitation lace her features when she turned away. She shouldn’t have invited Hifumi into her house like this—Doppo was never any good when interacting with others, especially not when she was working. She should apologize, she thinks numbly, but Hifumi had turned her back to Doppo already. So she should apologize, but her fear of finishing things late choked her by the neck, and Doppo ended up returning to her work with unsteady hands. Midway through, she remembered the cup that Hifumi dropped off on her way to the living room. A mellow, sweet citrus aroma wafted over to her nose when she made her way to the counter. Well, she thought as she took a sip and let the warmth bubble over her tongue, this could act as her dinner. (It was also really good; what the hell did Izanami put into this thing?)
By the time she finished, Hifumi had fallen asleep on the couch with Kirimichan in her lap, and Doppo was nearly going to fall flat on the floor from exhaustion. But she needed to get herself to bed before she could turn her brain off (for fuck’s sake, maybe she should have just put the bed in the middle of the living room; then she wouldn’t need to go through the entire trouble of struggling to get to her bedroom).
“Hey,” Doppo said groggily. “Hey, Izanami. Wake up. You should sleep in a bed. I have an extra mattress for you.”
Hifumi let out an incoherent mumble as she curled into herself on the couch, unwilling to move. “Don’t needa.”
Doppo let out an irritated huff that melted into one of assent. “Okay, if you want to.” With her magic, she pulled a blanket from her closet and draped it around Hifumi’s shoulders. Hifumi’s eyelashes fluttered at the movement, sparkling with glitter under the dimming lights and catching Doppo’s attention. She has on light makeup, but wouldn’t it be better if Doppo helped her wipe it off? Surely, it can’t be good for the skin if she leaves it on overnight. Doppo frowned. Ah, she thought dully, whatever. It wasn’t her problem; she shouldn’t touch a stranger’s face without permission, anyway.
As such, Doppo dragged herself to her own overfilled bedroom stacked with decades old books and scattered notebooks stained with ink that she never bothered throwing out. The lights that hung down in droplets quietly clinked against one another as Doppo threw herself onto her bed and passed out on impact.
It didn’t even feel like she slept for long before a fuzzy warmth tickled her face. God, not again. Doppo batted at the sensation with a languid hand. “Kirimichan, get off me.”
There’s a low groan next to her, and, oh. Doppo’s eyes flew wide open.
“Iz—Izanami?!” Doppo jumped out of her bed, limbs flailing as she almost collided with the wall in the process. The volatile action compelled her head to swirl due to the lack of blood. It was too early for this shit. “What the hell are you doing—?”
“Hmmm?” Hifumi roused from her sleep, rubbing her eyes, but still somehow looking like she had never gone to bed at all with how her hair was still perfectly in shape and her makeup unsmudged from last night. It had to be a crime to look that refreshed right after waking up. “Oh, mornin’.”
“What—” Doppo blinked rapidly, the sensation of arms around her waist still lingering in a phantom touch. She tried to shake it off by shivering, but to no avail. “What are you doing in my bed?”
“It was cold,” was all Hifumi said before she went back underneath the covers and curled in on herself. Doppo could not believe the audacity she had, let alone the lack of cautiousness of being unconscious next to a stranger. “Still cold.”
“I could have warmed the living room for you!”
“You were asleep. Didn’t wanna wake you up.”
“I—”
“You make me feel safe,” Hifumi yawned, and then probably fell back asleep with how tranquility filled the household once more. Doppo could only stare at the rising and falling of Hifumi’s side, waking mind unable to grasp the situation quite right. How could someone—a human, no less—be so brave, or utterly stupid, to trust themselves with another person they just met only a day ago? This Hifumi, in all her golden valor and gleaming luminosity, only perplexed Doppo. It was true that Doppo’s presence could calm someone since she absorbed some of their emotions, but to trust her all this much was a different matter that lay outside her ability.
“You—” Doppo sputters. “You don’t even know me? I’ve only met you for a day.”
“Bleh,” Hifumi said, and stole some of the covers back.
“Hey, hey! Don’t go back to sleep! We gotta get you back to your world. I don’t even know when the portal for that is going to close. Izanami!” Doppo pulled the covers off and shook her shoulder.
“Weeeeeh, I’m uuuup!” Hifumi wailed, batting half-clenched fists at Doppo, who avoided them by an inch. “Stop it, stop it! Can’t a girl get her beauty sleep?”
“To the abyss with your beauty sleep.” Doppo rolled her eyes, trying to ignore how Hifumi didn’t even need her beauty sleep to look beautiful. Her mascara from last night stayed unsmudged, the glitter still sparkling under the fuzzy lights, and there was still powdered rose on her cheeks that was exceptionally pink after just waking up. Doppo tore her gaze away and scrambled off the bed once she noticed their proximity. “Come on. Get your stuff.”
“Lemme use the bathroom first, wouldja?” Hifumi stretched her arms into the air and fixed a bra strap that fell off her shoulder while she was sleeping. She let out a massive yawn, grabbing her pillow and hugging it to her chest before toppling over onto the mattress.
“Izanami!”
Hifumi shot upright. “M’kay, m’kay! I’m up, I’m up. Geez, that champagne call last night reaaaaally took me out, huh. Mmmm…” She swung her legs over the side of Doppo’s bed and nearly tripped over a stack of journals. Doppo could only watch and let out an exasperated sigh.
As Hifumi fixed herself in the bathroom, Doppo went and fed Kirimichan (who, for the past two weeks, refused to eat the burnt scrambled genocide tomatoes and robin eggs that Doppo fried), harvested some more genocide tomatoes (that were unusually rowdy today), and wandered around the perimeters of her house a bit to find a way for Hifumi to get back.
“Ya found anythin’ yet?” Hifumi sauntered over to where Doppo was, somewhere near the entrance of the forest across her cottage.
“No,” Doppo groaned. “Nothing here. Usually I can see it, but I didn’t even see you coming out from anywhere yesterday, so I think this portal’s as good as invisible to me. You see anything?”
“Nah. This forest’s pretty cool, though. Do the tomatoes in there bite?”
“No… there aren’t any tomatoes in the forest… Can we get back on track, please?” Doppo grabbed Hifumi by the wrist and dragged her to the other side of the cottage where land kissed the sea alongside the isthmus. Hifumi followed along with a skip to her step, heels clicking against the stone. “Do you even remember the place where you came out of?”
“Emmm.” Hifumi tapped her chin. “Was somewhere near the water. Dunno. I was kinda drunk.”
Doppo let go of Hifumi’s wrist and brushed her bangs back with a hand. This is exhausting. Hifumi’s peppiness didn’t make anything better, either. “Okay. Of course you were. Fine. Just. Just search somewhere around here and let me know when you find it so I can patch it up and you can go home. I’ll look at the other end so it takes us less time.”
“Oki-doki! I’ll holler when I find anythin’, ‘kay?” Hifumi winked at her and had the gall to laugh sweetly when Doppo pushed her away.
And it wasn’t like she didn’t like Hifumi. Doppo’s usually kinder to the customers at the convenience store she works at, but that was only due to social norms of politeness and not wanting to be fired by her boss. Something about being in her own home, surrounded by everything she’s lived with since a child, gave her the audacity to be herself around Hifumi. Hifumi didn’t mind it either; if she did, she would have looked more hurt—those wide amber eyes and mouth parted open in shock, the freeze in her limbs and slightly trembling hands. But Hifumi had been nothing more than compliant and bubbly (way too bubbly, even), so Doppo supposed it wouldn’t hurt to show this side of her. Even so, she should still apologize to Hifumi for what happened last night. She grimaced, and pivoted on her heel so hard that it dug a clean circle into the dirt.
“Izanami!” she yelled. “Izanami?”
No one replied. The waters stood clear against the shore, the several lilies protruding from its depths still and silent as if watching Doppo with their petals. Had Izanami fallen in? It didn’t make sense; there hadn’t been any noise or thrashing or the distressed calls of the herons staked on the small islands around the sea. Doppo’s lips pursed into a thin line. First she gives Doppo a heart attack by infiltrating her gardens, and now she disappears without a trace to give Doppo another scare? This wasn’t good for her health at all.
Ah, screw it. She didn’t care. Whatever. She had more pressing things to attend to, like her growth potion sales and her shift at the convenience store. This was fine. But what if Izanami really had fallen into the water? No way, the other part of her mind parroted. She would know. Doppo could detect if there was something underwater that had dragged her in, but so far in these past fifteen years, there had been nothing living there. Maybe, her mind reels to a stop in a fulfilling possibility, maybe Izanami found the portal already? And she left without telling Doppo? She snorted. So much for hospitality. Doppo pulled at her hair until it burned her scalp, turned on her heel, and stalked off back to her house with a list of grievances in her hands.
Whatever, she thought while she was in the market and sold a majority of her potions. Whatever, she thought at her convenience store shift in the afternoon while she dealt with another pesky customer who complained that the complementary water wasn’t hot enough for his instant noodles. Whatever, she thought while she trekked back into the pocket dimension and fell onto her couch, letting Kirimichan bite at her ears in a way to wake her up to be fed.
Whatever, whatever, what—
A scream strangled itself from her throat when something knocked against her window in the tapping that belonged not to a bird or some tengu, but human knuckles.
“Heyooo!” Hifumi pressed her face to the window at one a.m., nearly scaring the living daylights out of Doppo. “Hi, hi!”
Doppo flung open the door and stared at the person whom she thought she would never see again for the rest of her life. “What are you doing back here. Scratch that. How did you get back here?”
“Fell through the void again,” Hifumi giggled, obviously tipsy from what, Doppo didn’t know. She waltzed into Doppo’s cottage like she owned it and collapsed on the chair, cheeks and ears flushed red.
“Kaaanonzakaaaaa,” she drawled, fluttering her eyelashes at Doppo, “your ceilings spinning.” She hiccuped happily, and Doppo had seen enough drunk people on the streets outside her convenience store shifts to know that Hifumi was certainly intoxicated by alcohol. She also was literally bathed in the scent of overwhelming champagne that made Doppo’s nose wrinkle. “I want to throw up, hehe.”
Hifumi stretched out both her arms, fingers wrapping themselves around Doppo’s arm and trying to tug her down onto the couch. “Sit with me, sit with me! It’s loooonely.”
“Oh, goodness,” Doppo said to no one in particular, pulling her arm away as tenderly as she could without hurting drunk Hifumi’s fragile feelings. She hustled over to her messy kitchen, sweeping all the remnants of her last concoction test trial to the side before hastily putting together a new potion.
“Kannonzakaaaa,” Hifumi continued to say as she craned her head over the chair. And then she promptly was distracted by Kirimichan, who began to bat at her hair with a paw.
“Here, drink this.” Doppo handed Hifumi a cup after a couple minute’s worth of magic making. “Detoxification potion. It’ll sober you up.”
Hifumi took the cup skeptically, peering into its contents with a scrutinizing eye. “There’s almost nothin’ in here. It’s not alcohol.” Gradually, she took the rim of the cup to her lips and downed the liquid with a dissatisfied expression. Doppo could feel her disgust, which made her lips twitch upward in amusement. Serves her right for drinking all that alcohol to begin with. Certainly could not be good for her liver.
“It’ll take some time before the potion kicks in—”
Doppo, in her negligence, didn’t notice as Hifumi put her suit over her dress and walked up to Doppo until they were only a breath’s width apart. Those glistening eyes again, Doppo’s voice caught in her throat. Those gold facets like polished and cut gems from the jeweler, a sharp contrast against the bold red against her lips.
“Hm,” Hifumi said, and took Doppo’s chin between her thumb and index finger. Her half-lidded gaze was absolutely burning, turning Doppo’s insides into cinders. She balked to the extent where her limbs were wrung dry of movement. “You’re exceptionally cute for a puppy. Say, wouldn’t that make you a kitten instead? I’d be honored to have you as one of my kittens, darling. Would you delight me by spending your time with me tonight? I’ll be yours until morning.”
How Hifumi’s thumb travels across her cheek and takes a strand of her hair to caress was criminal. Doppo froze with a horrendous blush on her cheeks that she was sure to spread to her collarbones. Hifumi must have noticed this, with how close they were, so she smiled gracefully, seductively, and gave Doppo a wink that had Doppo seeing constellations. Goddesses weren’t real, Doppo knew for a fact, but the woman before her posed a challenge to that belief. Beautiful, stunning, crafted delicately by the sun’s hands smelling of roses—what the hell even was Hifumi Izanami?
“Are—Are you still drunk?” Doppo was only able to sputter out amidst her precarious thoughts.
“Hmmm, not really.” Hifumi leaned back and twirled a lock of her blonde hair around a finger. Doppo’s heart inhaled before collapsing into a heap of rapid relief. She wanted to bash her over the head, she wanted to kick Hifumi out of her house, she wanted to let the tengus at her for being such a stupid flirt, but Hifumi’s enchanting gaze pierced her chest to the countertop until she couldn’t move. “Your wonderful potion surely did the trick, my magical kitten. Would you like for me to be drunk, though?”
“I don’t have any alcohol.”
Hifumi’s laugh was deep, full, bewitching, hidden behind a polite hand unlike her childish giggling from before. “Oh, kitten, who says I need to drink alcohol to get drunk? Your presence here is enough to make me tipsy.”
“Oh my gods.” Doppo turned away, no longer able to face Hifumi. “Turn back to normal already. I’m going to kick you out if you don’t.”
“Kannonzaka-san,” Hifumi purred behind her, a hand placing itself on her shoulder as she leaned in with her lips near Doppo’s ear. “Are you perhaps embarrassed? There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re certainly adorable.”
That’s it. No more. Doppo snapped her fingers and teleported to the other end of the room, her ears flaring a bashful crimson. She swallowed the heart in her throat and tried to calm the quivering thing to no avail. Agh. She hated people. She hated interacting with people. She hated socializing, society, and stupid, attractive women who waltz into her house after midnight like some Cinderella. From the kitchen, Hifumi looked stunned, but only for a split second before she started laughing again.
“Haha! Kannonzaka-san, there is a softer side to you. It’s fun to tease.”
“It is not.”
“Whatever you say, my magical kitten.” Hifumi shrugged off the suit, and the flirty, coquettish Hifumi dissipated to make way for the regular Hifumi. The regular Hifumi blinked twice. “Kannonzakaaaa! I’m baaack. Did ya miss me?” She held up a peace sign and struck a pose that had Doppo feeling like she got backhanded to the face.
“Huh?” Doppo gaped, not quite understanding. Being a witch and not understanding supernatural forces was certainly a new concept. “What—You’re back to normal.”
“Ah, hehe, yeah. Gigolo’s amazing, isn’t she? She’s like, never afraid of any guys. Like, ever. A real lifesaver, really.” Hifumi picked Kirimichan from the ground, and started petting his stomach. “Can’t do my hostess work without her.”
So. Gigolo is the flirtatious Hifumi. Not the strangest thing Doppo’s seen. But, just one question: “Why?”
“Men are scary. I need my suit to work or else I freak out reeeaaaal bad, and that’s not what my manager or my puppies like, y’know?” Hifumi scratched the back of her neck with a lopsided smile on her face. “But you don’t scare me, Kannonzaka. So I don’t have to wear the suit in front of ya.”
“Um,” Doppo said, quite out of things to say without her questions being too sensitive and potentially digging too deep into Hifumi’s past, “thanks…?”
Hifumi gave a laugh. “So, watcha doin’ tonight? More potion brewing?
“See you later, Kannonzaka!” Hifumi waved.
Despite herself, Doppo watched Hifumi swing her hands wildly above her head in a farewell and couldn’t stop herself from replying.
“Yeah.” Doppo waved back. “See you later.”
Chapter 2
“Y’know, you’re pretty handsome for a guy.”
Doppo balks in so many ways.
teleportation paper
Doppo was anxious. Not for a good reason, usually, but she can never seem to pinpoint what exactly is causing her mind to wander off into a spiral of nervousness and fear of something that hadn’t happened yet. She bit her nails as she finished “cleaning up” her kitchen, which was still littered with dirty dishes and discarded potion ingredients.
“I don’t feel well,” Doppo told Kirimichan as he came over and sat on the armrest of the chair the witch settled into. “Something bad’s going to happen, but I can’t tell what!” Her hands gripped the roots of her hair and she tugged frustratedly at them, certain to pull out a couple in her endeavors. “Why does this always happen! I’m not even born from the Oracles! Somehow the stuff I feel ends up coming true.”
Kirimichan looked at Doppo. Doppo looked back at Kirimichan. And then she let out the biggest sigh before folding over and collapsing over her knees. She ruined her hair a little more, leaned back, and spread her arms out at her sides in the same way she would set a fish on the cutting board to gut.
“I—” Doppo began, but didn’t make it through another word when a loud pop resounded through the air and proceeded to blow out her eardrums. Something heavy landed on her chest, wrapping arms around her neck, and the next thing Doppo knew, she was hit by the strong scent of rose.
“Hi—” Doppo struggled to breathe through the proximity. “Hifumi? Are you okay? Did you just—?”
She must have used the teleportation scroll that Doppo handed her a couple days ago. That fast already? Doppo didn’t expect her to tear it this quickly, not even a week after Hifumi received it.
Heavy breathing sounded from next to Doppo’s ear, and she could hear Hifumi’s pounding heartbeat slowing to a low flutter, but not once did the arms around her neck cease to embrace tightly. With a hand, Doppo dared to place a hand on Hifumi’s back, rubbing circles until the hostess slackened in relaxation.
“Are you alright?” Doppo furrowed her eyebrows, drawing her fingers over Hifumi’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. “You were breathing really hard.”
That’s when the smear of red appeared stark against Doppo’s fingertips. Glistening like salamander pearls against her skin, a blot of it smudging under her nails.
“Holy shit,” Doppo breathed out, removing herself from Hifumi in a swift motion to lay the other on the chair. She crouched in front of Hifumi, observing the damage dealt.
It was only a cut, thankfully, but a rather deep one that needed to be bandaged quickly. Ruby liquid with the texture of wine leaked from the wound that pulsed an angry crimson. It bled into Hifumi’s hostess blazer, turning the silky gray fabric into a terrible black. At most, it would leave a scar.
“Who did this to you?” Doppo said with a voice that wasn’t hers. It simmered in a calm rage, like the tranquility before a storm, but as it left Doppo’s lungs, it left a murderous tremble in its wake. To touch someone as effervescent as Hifumi, let alone harm her when she had done nothing wrong—it just about made Doppo tear apart the space time continuum right here in her house and target the assailant. Seeing Hifumi trembling more than a leaf burdened by the weight of morning dew compelled Doppo’s heart to shatter and the waves of wrath to rise in high, unyielding tides.
“It was the same guy,” Hifumi whispered, her words unusually steady for someone who was bleeding. “He followed me back and he had a knife—The way he grabbed my wrist—” She sucked in a breath, choking on her sentence.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Doppo began to gently ease the jacket off her to dress her wound. “You’re safe here. He can’t touch you here.”
Hifumi’s cold, cold hand wrapped around Doppo’s wrist, stopping him briefly. “Could you—” she said meekly, so soft that Doppo almost didn’t catch it, “—could you hold me? After you take the jacket off. I'm not too good without it.”
Doppo nodded, gnawing at her bottom lip as the rest of Hifumi’s persona peeled off. The tears came hot against Doppo’s neck as Hifumi leaned forward and held onto Doppo so securely that she thought the blonde was trying to anchor herself. Doppo could only run a reassuring hand through Hifumi’s long hair as she carefully brushed it away to clean the injury with the first-aid kit that she had Kirimichan bring over.