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Mai woke up with a jolt. It felt like she’d managed barely ten minutes of sleep before it was disrupted. She’d already struggled to fall asleep that night, feeling oddly restless in spite of her tiredness, and this was just another setback. At this rate, she was going to be exhausted during classes tomorrow.
What a pain, she thought with a sigh as she stared up at her ceiling.
She’d been feeling weird all day, something making her skin prickle and her hair stand on end. It was like she was being warned of some great danger, her body recognising the signs before her brain could catch up. It was something she’d never really felt before, gut instinct was something that generally alluded her, most of the skills she had coming from learning rather than natural talent, so to feel this primal sense of danger so intensely put her off.
She preferred to follow her head than her gut, Maki was the impulsive one between them, always all too happy to never look before she leapt.
Mai propped herself up on her elbows, turning to peer out of the window into the night. It wasn’t that late all things considered, only a bit past midnight if she had to guess. Momo was probably still awake; Mai probably had a couple hours until she actually went to sleep so she could bother her for a bit if she wanted to kill some time. Todo was still up too; he’d made sure that all of them knew that Takada-chan was doing some stream that required her to stay up all night so he was sure to be sat in the common room until it was done.
She tipped her head to the side as she thought about it, her eyes still staring outside. It might settle her to be around one of them, take her mind off of whatever was putting her so on edge, though it certainly wouldn’t help her get any closer to sleep.
She wished she knew what was bothering her. Just having that knowledge would probably help calm her nerves.
She’d felt just slightly off kilter since getting bitten by that cursed spirit a couple of weeks ago but brushed it off as some sort of extended shock response and not thought too much more about it. But right now the bite itched. The scabbed flesh on her calf tickling uncomfortably.
With an exhale, she flopped back against her mattress, her pillow refreshingly cool to the touch. The cursed spirit had caught her on the unawares, she’d been looking down her rifle’s scope and providing some cover fire for Miwa and Noritoshi when the wolf shaped curse tracked her down and jumped her. She’d been scratched up and dragged around by it’s biting grip on her leg before she’d gotten her pistol out of its holster and exorcised it. Utahime coming to pick her up from her rooftop perch and getting her stitched up afterwards.
She slid her knee up the bed, her hand reaching for the injury and trailing over the rough scabs covering the individual teeth marks. The itching feeling didn’t subside completely but it helped, the sensation grounding her. She continued to stare up at her ceiling feeling all too awake, the room brightening as the full moon emerged from the clouds and lit up the night.
She flicked her eyes outside again, taking in the pockmarks and craters on the moon’s surface. She’d always found it odd that the moon and sun were seen as a pair, equals even, despite just how much brighter the sun was than the moon. The moon relying on the sun to even be seen, moonlight being just a reflection of sunlight, a total solar eclipse being so much rarer than a lunar eclipse. Did the moon ever get tired of playing second fiddle to the sun?
She was stirred from her thoughts as her ears pricked up as she heard footsteps padding down the corridor outside, her eyes trailing along her wall following the noise as whoever was there moved down the hall towards her. At first she thought it might be Todo, maybe Takada-chan had taken a five-minute break, but she dismissed that quickly enough. There were too many footsteps, like two people were walking really close together, and unless Todo had began crawling around on all fours it couldn’t be him.
She sat up, her body tense, as the being approached her door. She hoped that it would just continue past her room like had already done for Miwa and Momo, why would she be any more interesting than either of them?
As the footsteps slowed and came to a stop outside of her door, she shut her eyes for a moment and took a silent breath to try and sooth the apprehension within her. This surely must have been what her instincts were warning her about. Quickly, her eyes never leaving her door, she tried to take stock of any weapons that she had left inside her room.
In her closet was were two rifles but she didn’t know how much ammo she had left for them. The handgun in her nightstand had been removed last month and moved to the common room after Utahime found out about it and deemed it unsafe for a teenager to keep by her bed, no matter how proficient she was with firearms, she’d replaced it with a short knife that Mai was significantly less confident in using. Lastly, was the disassembled sniper rifle propped against the wall in the corner, which she did have ammunition for, and knew for a fact wouldn’t have time to put it back together.
She slowly reached a hand for the drawer of her nightstand. Any knife would be better than no knife at all, but she hesitated to be too loud in case it alerted the intruder outside. It must have come at night for a reason, it probably assumed she was asleep. As she started tugging the drawer open, the thing on the other side began to scratch at her door. She didn’t have the time to try and be sneaky she decided and wrenched her nightstand open, pulling the handle of the knife towards herself and quickly stuffing it beneath her duvet.
The scratching stopped and Mai snapped her head back to the door just in time to see it slide open, an inch gap now appearing in the doorway. A massive paw tugged at the door’s edge and pushed it wider, revealing a hulking, canine figure standing just outside of the moonlight. She could scarcely make it out its figure under the inky black fur coating it, the only thing clearly defined being the brilliant golden eyes staring directly back at her.
The beast, stalked forwards into the room, stepping directly into the moonlight. Mai could clearly see its lupine figure, the sheen of sleek green-black fur, the long muzzle and the thick swishing paintbrush tail dragging against the floorboards. Why on earth was there a wolf in her room!? she seethed internally, hand tightening further around her hidden blade, And why was it so large? Wolves aren’t normally this big are they?
The massive wolf continued towards her, pausing at the foot of her bed for a moment before leaping onto it, the bed frame creaking under its weight. Mai’s jaw was clamped shut as she watched the animal take a slow, measured step towards her, its enormous paw sinking into the mattress. She watched with bated breath as its eyes flicked down to her covered hand for a moment in an unnerving display of intelligence.
Did she even stand a chance here? Mai thought, She could scream and try and wake up some of her friends but by then it would probably be too late for her. If the wolf could navigate through the campus to her room than it would be smart enough to go for the kill, surely.
Her body tensed even further, coiling like a spring, as the huge wolf moved even closer to her. Its face not even a foot from hers. She looked into its gleaming golden eyes and was able to pick her own reflection gazing back at her in its dark pupils. It didn’t seem to be outright aggressive to her but it was still a predator, she was certain it wasn’t exactly safe to be around either.
With a final moment of hesitation from the beast, its head shifted forwards going directly for Mai’s neck, almost lackadaisical in its movements. These were going to be her final moments, Mai was sure, but by god if she didn’t at least try and fight it. She wanted to live goddammit!
Suddenly, she wrenched the short blade from her sheets and lifted it overhead, before sending it plummeting back down towards the wolf with as much force as she could manage, adrenaline pushing her even further. The wolf jolted at her movement and followed the knife with its eyes with an almost human surprise, the blade approaching its face with an alarming speed.
It was all for naught though. At the last minute, the canine pulled back sharply and the knife missed. Mai almost stabbing herself from the momentum behind her swing if not for the wolf clamping its mouth around the steel and wrenching it from her grip, throwing it to the side and sending it clattering to a corner of the room. Mai toppled out of bed, having not released the blade from her hand fast enough to avoid being knocked over as the knife was ripped from her grip.
She landed on the floor with a bodily thump. Half-laying, half-sitting against the cold ground, looking up at the wolf still stood on top of her bed, poised to jump down on her any moment now.
She was proven right when the wolf followed her to the ground after a brief bout of staring at her. It was oddly gentle as it dropped from the bed, being almost silent in its dismount despite its enormous size.
Its legs blocked her in this time, close enough to her to stop her from moving too much, her arms practically pinned at her sides. She could only watch as it crept closer, her mind racing a mile a minute trying to find a solution to her imminent death.
She had been disarmed by a fucking dog and the rest of the guns in her room weren’t even certain to work, not that she could reach them anymore anyway. If only her cursed technique would actually be useful for once!
There was a thought, she pondered, With her technique she could make a single, lonely bullet. Would that be enough? It didn’t matter; it had to be.
The wolf closed in, its face approaching her throat again. Slowly, Mai bent her arm at the elbow, pointing a finger gun up and into the neck of the wolf from below, if she was lucky she might hit the spine or something else that was suitably lethal. With a final breath in, she prepared to face her death, eyes boring holes into the ceiling in what she was sure would be her final moments.
She felt the wet nose of the wolf nudge against her skin, surprisingly gently, and began to collect her cursed energy in her outstretched finger. It was time to bite the bullet, here’s hoping it would be literal in the wolf’s case.
She felt something soft and hairy brush against her ankles with a quiet rustle as it swept against the floor and she triggered her cursed technique; a bullet would form from her hand barely a second later. The enormous wolf excitedly licked a slobbering stripe up her neck and began to rumble happily in its lupine attempt at purring.
Mai could feel the bullet forming into reality at the tip of her finger. The wolf wasn’t killing her, it was doing the opposite actually, it was being affectionate, nosing against her jaw and licking her. She could even feel its tail wagging by her feet. If she didn’t move her hand, she might actually be able to kill it.
But… , she thought, as the wolf happily licked a striped up her cheek, is it actually evil? If she didn’t make a choice now it might die…
She sucked in a breath sharply, before coming to a decision and yanking her hand to the side. She couldn’t dispel the bullet after it had been formed but she still had a split second to change its trajectory.
Her hand moved from the canine’s throat as the bullet fired. Hot, red blood splattered against her face and the wolf flinched to the side, falling clumsily to the floor next to her with a high-pitched whimper. Feeling awful, Mai sat up, scrambling towards the animal despite it probably being even more dangerous than before. What was that saying again? A hurt animal is a dangerous animal? She dismissed the thought, now really wasn’t the time.
She looked for the bloom of red against its dark fur and found the tunnel her bullet had bored through the column of the wolf’s neck. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to have hit anything vital, not that Mai knew all that much about canine anatomy. The real miracle though, was that the wound was stitching itself back together before her very eyes, cementing the idea in her mind that the wolf was a cursed spirit of some sort, or at the very least not just a wolf. Nothing could naturally heal that fast.
Mai tentatively threaded a hand into the wolf’s fur, beginning to gently run her hands through it once it didn’t try and bite her hand off. She felt that the least she could do was try and comfort it after being the one that caused the damage in the first place. It whined softly as its flesh knitted itself back together, tongue lolling out of its mouth as it panted. After its breathing evened a bit, it tilted its head into her hand, seeming to settle under her, shutting its eyes in contentment.
As she sat there watching it, Mai could feel her adrenaline ebb away, exhaustion taking its place. She knew that as soon as her head hit the pillow she would fall asleep, none of the dithering from earlier would keep her from rest anymore. If she stayed on the floor for too long she’d probably collapse into sleep as she sat there, but she knew that the crick in her neck would never be worth it.
With a slump of her shoulders, Mai slowly removed her hand from the wolf’s coat, fighting the desire to continue petting it as its ears twitched in wanting, instead she placed a hand under her and pushed herself to her feet. She made her way to her bathroom and splashed some water on her face in an attempt to clean herself from the wolf blood, the adrenaline crash paired with actually using her technique was leaving her too tired to care enough to be thorough.
Not bothering to dry her face, she stumbled out of her bathroom and towards her bed, the wolf perking up its head as she passed, she trailed a hand in its direction in an aborted attempt to start petting it again but ultimately just collapsed face down into her bed next to her rumpled sheets.
She could feel sleep start to claim her as she heard the soft padding of feet moving again. With the wolf apparently not wanting to kill her just yet, her sleep addled mind figured it was probably fine to just wait to deal with it in the morning.
The movement on her floor paused and after a moment, the only noise left being the happy swipe of the wolf’s tail against the floor, the giant dog leapt onto the bed again, somehow managing not to stand on Mai in her sprawled state.
Her mind was beginning to grow fuzzy with sleep. She could feel the dips in the mattress as the wolf maneuvered itself around and could vaguely sense her duvet being pulled over her body and tugged up to her shoulders by lupine teeth. The sheets then shifted as the wolf burrowed under them too and struggled its way up to be near her head without jostling her out of her own bed, its body heat pressed next to her lulling Mai to sleep even faster than her own exhaustion.
She snuggled closer to the oversized dog, the canine deciding to tuck its muzzle under her chin and rumble softly in contentedness.
She could deal with the massive wolf that broke into her room in the morning.
That would be fine.
Probably.
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Mai woke up to a beam of sunlight landing directly on her face. She blinked her eyes open, bringing her hand up to cover her face from the light. She’d slept surprisingly well last night, even though it was difficult for her to initially drop into sleep. She pulled her hand away from her face, looking up at her ceiling, the dream with the wolf was nice though, her eyes wondered across the blank surface and caught on a small divot in the ceiling, like one of her bullets had skimmed it, she was sure that wasn’t there before.
She shook her head as she dismissed the thought, it was too early to be thinking about bullet holes in the ceiling, and sat up, the sheets falling from her shoulders and back onto the bed. Mai looked at her room, feeling off. Her door was open for some reason, it had happened in her dream sure, the giant wolf opened the door somehow and she’d been too focussed on it to remember to close it again. But that hadn’t been real though, had it?
If her door was open, then maybe, she turned to look at her side. She vaguely remembered the wolf burrowing itself under the covers with her whilst she was in her half-asleep delirium just before she’d dropped unconscious. If it had been real, and that was a big if, then surely there would be at least some sign of the wolf left behind, or maybe even the wolf itself.
She could make out a lump under the sheets by her side, the rise and fall indicating something alive, though it was smaller than she expected considering the sheer size of the wolf. With a tilt of her head to the side, she lifted the edge of the sheet closest to her.
She could see a mass of shiny, green-black hair pressed against the mattress and as she continued to lift it she realised something.
“Maki?” Mai looked at her sister, baffled. How had she gotten here? Why?
It took a moment for her sister to stir, the idiot reaching a hand up to pull the duvet back over her again and only waking after Mai pulled the sheets from her head completely.
“Mai?” Maki asked, her voice muffled and thick with sleep, not bothering to raise her head from the mattress, “Why are you in my room?”
“Your room?” Mai scoffed, distinctly more awake than her twin, “Why are you in my room!?”, she continued, sounding offended at the idea that this could possibly be mistaken as Maki’s bedroom. She knew just how much of a slob Maki could be given the chance, no way did Maki’s room look even half as clean as hers.
Maki gave her a confused, half-asleep squint before shifting a hand underneath her and lifted her upper body from the bed slightly and actually surveyed the bedroom, “Huh,” she said, turning back to face her sister, “Why am I in your room?”
“Why would I know!?” she shouted, before spying the bare skin of her twin’s shoulder, “And are you naked!? What the fuck Maki!” The audacity of her sister to appear here during the night and sleep in her bed naked too. Stuff like this was exactly why they could never sort their problems out, Maki just loved to step on her toes all the time, so what if Mai did the same back, it was only fair.
Her yelling didn’t seem to wake Maki up any faster, though it did wake someone else. Momo peered in through the open doorway just in time to see Mai begin to clobber her twin with her pillow, Maki not responding other than raising an arm over her head as an attempt at to block her.
“Mai…?” Momo asked bewilderedly from the doorway, her hair a mess as she stifled a yawn.
Mai froze with the pillow raised overhead. She turned to look at Momo and then after a clear moment of contemplation and self-reflection, she turned back to Maki and stood up with a huff, throwing the pillow at her sister and storming over to her wardrobe. She quickly yanked out an outfit and flung at her twin that was still burrowed under the covers before walking out of her room, tugging Momo away by the hand as they walked to the common room in their pyjamas.
Momo gave Mai a sidelong glance, “Sooooo…” she was interrupted by another yawn, “Why is your sister here?” she asked confusedly.
Mai halted in her walk down the hallway for a moment, sucking in a breath giving a long-suffering sigh before responding, “I. Have no. Idea.”