(Re)Turn – Chapter 02

“Who are you and what do you want with us?” I heard my father’s voice as he skidded to a halt before my mother.

 

Father was a quite unique figure. He was scrawny, like, really thin to the point that he looks a bit sick, the fact that he already is pretty pale doesn’t exactly help him either, as the long black hair made quite the contrast.

Feeling a tinge of nostalgia as I saw him wearing his usual social clothes that he wore when working, I couldn’t help but feel that, as usual, seeing the scrawny looking father of mine holding such a large and dangerous looking knife didn’t exactly match what people would think of him.

 

Hmm, actually, I don’t think I know that one. Is it new to the collection?

“What are you doing in my son’s room? You better speak before I have to do anything drastic.”

 

Probably because I looked like a girl now, he sounded a bit more courageous than what I actually remember, but I still couldn’t help but notice how the knife trembled in his hand. Finding it amusing, I couldn’t help but let out a soft giggle.

 

The couple looked at me confused, and feeling as my fox side started to act up, I couldn’t help but decide to play along with a joke for now.

 

I quickly sat up straight on my bed and put on an authoritarian smile while crossing my legs.

 

If I’m not mistaken, this is what Sophy and Magnum liked to call “Maou mode”, as I only looked like a demon lord when I was putting on this expression. That’s basically their way of saying that I was an useless fool all the other time.

 

Well, I’ll prove them wrong.

 

Father and Mother both took a step back in surprise at my change in demeanor, which meant that things were working my way. Satisfied I quickly went on with the farce.

 

“I see, so this place have an owner already, huh?” I asked while looking around as if it was my first time in the room. “Well, it seems that we have a dilemma here. You see, I took quite a liking to this place.” I said while picking up the pillow and testing it with my hands, letting my tail make a brief wag to show them that I was indeed pleased. “Why not do the following. You give me this room and I may let you two carry on your daily life as usual… Mostly.”

 

The couple stared at me in shock for a moment, and I replied with a small smirk while trying to hold back the laugh.

 

Father was the first to recover, as he shook his head and turned to me angrily.

 

“Look here, young lady. I don’t know who you are and what you want, but don’t think I’m willing to let you use my son’s room like that!” He said while taking a step forward and waving the oversized knife in his hand.

 

I made an amused smile at the scene before staring down at him. Looks like that he was still wary of me despite having such a weapon.

 

Wait, now that I think about it, using weapons isn’t that common in this world, right? Damn it. I might need to rework my common sense.

 

“Hmm… You speak of a son… But I don’t see no such son around.” I said deciding to play along and also get some info. From my parent’s expression, it seemed that I hit a sore spot, as they looked at each other in hesitation for a moment before turning to me with a: It’s none of your matters! “I take it that this room hasn’t been used recently then? Even one less problem, isn’t that right?” I asked.

 

“Look. Just because my son hasn’t been in this room for a few days doesn’t mean that you can go and take it!” My father said.

While looking at him and choosing my next words carefully, I noticed that mother was holding her cellphone in her hands while fiddling with it. While wondering what she was doing, I reminded myself that we could call the police to come without the need to send magic nor anything.

 

Amazed at how advanced my own world was, I couldn’t help but smile satisfied as she turned to me and said.

 

“I have my phone ready to call the cops, so you better leave right now. And don’t even think of taking anything with you.” She said while making her finger hover over the call button.

 

“So you really think that calling the cops will work?” I said amused while resting my chin on my hand. “Go ahead and call them.” I said in a taunt while smiling and showing my canine teeth.

 

Mother quickly became startled and tried pressing on the button to dial, however, it was a bit too late as I used a paralysis spell on her hand, so no matter how much she tried to make the call, her fingers just wouldn’t move.

 

“What happened dear? Why did you stop?” Father asked while looking back. I took the chance to quickly stand up and start a deliberately slow approach.

 

“I see… So you really decided to go against me, huh? That’s rather… Unfortunate.” I stepped in slowly, my wooden sandals making a loud noise on the ground with each step, quickly getting their attention again. “It seems like… I’ll need to take some…Drastic… Measures.” I said while taking step after step.

 

Letting out a bit of pressure from my presence, and I mean just a tiny little bit. Like, almost nothing. I still remember what happened when the hero party appeared and I used half of my pressure. I had to nurse them back to sanity for a good time. Seeing that the people here have no resistance against pressure, it’s better to not take it too far.

 

Anyway, it was just enough to leave them unsettled, so I took my time approaching them while smiling.

 

But I kinda forgot to take in account father’s personality. Not being too courageous, but being overprotective of mother, he quickly gave in under the pressure and tried attacking me with the knife.

 

I could have stopped him with a paralysis spell, but I felt like playing along with it. I raised my finger up high and took it out of the kimono, letting a bit of my claw appear as I raised it and parried the attack. Well, for them, it probably looked like I simply stopped it with my finger-tip.

 

Well, I could also do that, but it leaves my skin tingling, so it annoys me.

 

“…Whoops…” I let out surprised gasp as I saw the knife fall, split in half.

 

For a brief moment silence reigned in the room, caught unaware by the happening, I even ended up dropping the pressure.

 

“WAAAAH! GENEVIVE!” Father shouted before crouching to the ground and picking up the severed part of the blade. “MY DEAR GENEVIVE! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

 

As father hugged the blade to his chest and shed tears over it, mother simply stared at him in shock for a few seconds.

 

Well… I started feeling guilty. I kinda forgot that steel is the most used metal here, so I went as if going to parry Magiron.

 

I REALLY need to rework my common sense.

 

“Erm…” I crouched besides father with an awkward smile. “…Well… Could you lend me the blade for a moment?” I said.

 

He turned to me and gave me an angry glare before turning away as if protecting a child with his arms. Yeah, I’m not going to get it from the way things are going. So, I did things a bit forcefully and used [Steal] on him.

 

Seeing as the two parts of the knife disappeared from his hands and appeared in mine, father and mother became shocked.

 

It probably didn’t help that I used [Repair] on it afterwards, making the knife go back to its original form. Still, looking at it right now, the craftsmanship of my world is really something else. Magic is good and all, but I guess that machines are better at precise works like this. If only the material wasn’t so bad…

 

“Here… And sorry… I might have gotten carried away a little bit.” I said while giving him the knife back, which he accepted with a stunned glance.

 

“Wha… How… The knife… ” Mother said shocked while staring at me confused. Feeling as my ears flattened against my head and I started fidgeting while touching my fingers together, I looked at her sheepishly and said.

 

“…Magic?”

 

“M-Magic?” Father asked confused. “Wait, does this means that you can do that again?” He asked brightening up again.

 

“As long as it haven’t broken a long time ago, yes.” I nodded before frowning. “You aren’t going to have me repair every single knife in your collection, are you?”

 

“Well, Bianca do need a makeover, and Ulisses do have that nasty scratch… Wait, how do you know about that?” Father asked surprised as it finally dawned on him.

 

“Well… ” So it finally came to this, huh? “…Would you believe if I said I’m your son?”

 

Yeah, just as expected, they looked at me as if I was some kind of crazy girl who hit her head and now have gone senile. Oh well, while it does hurt being doubted by your parents, it is the usual reaction.

 

I really hope it is. I’m almost getting depressed here.

 

“You never really forgot to buy mother your anniversary present, and most of the time you would even have it ready a few weeks prior. You just found it cute seeing her sulk when she thinks you forgot the present. ” I said bluntly while looking at father.

 

Mother simply frowned in confusion as she processed the word, but father almost choked on saliva before staring at me in shock. However, I didn’t exactly stop there, so I turned to mother and said.

 

“Mom, at the start you didn’t really like the lemon pie that father made for you, but you always ate it because it was the thing he made the day he asked you out. But you have grown to enjoy the taste these last years.” This time it was mother’s time to become shocked and father to look surprised. “So, believe me now?”

 

“But… How… I mean…” Mother said shocked. Well, I was the only person who knew about that, so it’s no wonder she looked shocked. “I mean… Sam was… How…”

 

“I will explain everything, so why don’t we go down and have a bit of coffee meanwhile?” I said while motioning to the door. “You have no idea how much I missed coffee while I was gone!” How come a fantasy world doesn’t have coffee? That’s a crime! “…And I’ll try not to play any pranks meanwhile… No promises there, though.”

 

…

 

It took me around three hours to explain everything for them. Luckily, while not exactly gamers, father and mother had an idea of how games worked, so explaining the system part was fairly easy. It took me more time to explain what happened to me than anything else.

 

I also managed to convince them for good that I was their son. At least on the inside, as it’s kinda hard to accept that a girl with an actual moving tail could be a son.

 

Meanwhile I also got some information on what happened since I was gone. Firstly, although a lot more time went by while I was in the other world, in here only eight days have passed. According to them, all my classmates were just fine, and acted as if nothing had happened, and only I had disappeared. Looks like they don’t have memories of the other world.

 

This made me heave a sigh of relief.

 

I was worried when Sophy told me that dying in that world would send our spirit back to the same time and space where we were first found here, but I was still worried about that being true or not. Even more when I killed a couple of classmates myself.

 

I left nothing out of my story while speaking to my parents. From my hardships as a young fox who was hunted left and right by humans and demons alike, to the fun moments as a young and reckless demon, and the times I killed humans so that I could survive.

 

They were shocked at my words, but thankfully, they didn’t reject me.

 

It was only at that time that I noticed how much I missed them, because it was the first time since I made my first kill that I ended up crying.

 

But such disgraceful moments doesn’t really fit my image. So I quickly recovered and had to explain to them my hardships as I found out that I was stuck as a girl.

 

This one rendered me many embarrassing moments. But at least served to cheer them up as mother started having ideas on how to dress me.

 

“Still, this will kind of get in the way.” She said while stroking my tail.

 

“… Yeah. Though luck. If it’s not custom made I can’t wear it.” I said in monotone.

 

“…does that mean that you have a way around it?” Mother asked sharply.

 

“…No. Nothing I can do. Nothing. Nanimo. Nada.” I said, but it only worked to make her stare at me even sharper. Guuh, I miss the fools who wouldn’t see through my bad lies.

 

While I tried avoiding mother inquisitive gaze, I ended up meeting with father’s eyes. Different from mother who was quick to accept the situation, it took me a bit more of effort to convince father. That, and he was also quiet since the middle half of my story with a deep thinking expression.

 

“Sam… No, you said you are going by Ina now?” He asked and I nodded. “It’s… Kind of hard to swallow everything you said, but you do have some good proofs with you.” He probably meant the dragon head I took out earlier, seeing how he made a disturbed expression for a moment. “But, what do you plan on doing from now on?” He asked doubtful. “I mean, you are still judged as missing… And you also aren’t registered as a citizen nor anything of the like. Actually, the current you probably shouldn’t even exist in this world, if what we heard from you is correct.”

 

“I talked with Sophy about that.” I said briefly. “While she isn’t sure about what will happen to my old existence, she said she should be able to do something about the current me.” I explained.

 

“Does that includes living quarters and such?” He asked me. “Or do you plan on living with us again?”

 

“I don’t know.” I replied sincerely. “But whether I get a place to live or not, I don’t plan on spending more than a couple of days here.” I said with a dejected expression.

 

“Ah… That… [Trouble magnet] title, right?” Father asked and I nodded.

 

Thanks to that trashy title, I am destined to get into some kind of trouble whether I want or not. And trouble may either mean losing my money when going out to buy food or having to deal with a coup d’etat when on my vacation.

 

Yes. That’s a fact.

 

Thankfully, the title have a cooldown period, so I don’t need to worry about things happening all the time, and I still have three days before it becomes active again.

 

“Hmm… I see.” Father nodded. “Then there isn’t much to do besides waiting until this Sophy finish sorting things out, huh?”

 

“Well… Then we have a dilemma.” Mother said in a fake sad tone. “Your old clothes are too big for you and you only have this japanese robe as your clothes, right? It seems we’ll have to go out to buy something for you… Oh dear… What do we do?”

 

 

I said nothing and simply stared at her, then with a snap of my fingers, my hakama changed into another model entirely. I repeated the same process a couple of times before letting it rest on my usual blue with sakura model and smiling towards mother.

 

She clicked her tongue.

 

“So you really don’t want to go buy clothes with mom, huh?” She said annoyed.

 

“Mom. I still have a trauma from the day you took me and Clarisse to buy clothes. She looked like a zombie when you were done with her.” I said bluntly.

 

“…I have no idea what you mean by that.” Mother said before looking away angrily.

 

“And speaking of Clarie… She’s coming here right now.” Father said suddenly while taking the cellphone and looking at it. But not even had he finished reading the message, the doorbell ringed. “Ah, nevermind. The message is from a couple minutes ago.”

 

Mother prepared to go answer the door, but quickly stopped once she remembered me, so she gave me a worried glance to which I replied with a brief nod.

 

As she went out to answer the door, I quickly took the chance to change back in my animal form. I had a couple of theories about what would happen if she were to see me, but right now I decided to play it somewhat safe. And in the best case scenario, I could simply escape by faking being a normal fox.

 

Well, the truth is that I didn’t feel like explaining everything again, but there’s no need to take that into account.

 

Seeing my change for the first time, father raised an eyebrow amused before shaking his head and making a motion for me to approach. Tilting my head confused, I still shrugged before jumping down from the sofa and making my way towards him.

 

“Just a warning, but we’ll have a long talk later about the prank you did earlier, okay?” He told me in a serious tone.

 

I felt a chill run down my spine before nodding fearfully. Knowing that I had already screwed up badly for the day, I still had one more thing to go through. Well, at least I hoped I didn’t have to go through it, but knowing my luck…

 

Mother quickly came into the room, being followed by a girl. She was a bit taller than me… not that it means much, seeing how I’m fairly short in this body, with blonde hair tied in a ponytail and  wearing some loose clothings that seemed fit for exercising.

 

Clarisse. My childhood friend in this world. Also…

 

“…till didn’t find him. Sorry.” I heard her saying before she noticed father. “Ah, Uncle William.” She greeted my father as she noticed him. “…I’m sorry, but I couldn’t find Sam yet.” She said apologetically.

 

“Ah… Don’t worry, Clarie.” Father said with a wave of his hands. “There’s not much you can do anyway.”

 

“That’s… Not true.” She replied by shaking her head. “If only I…” She started saying before her eyes landed on me. Widening her eyes in shock, I already knew what to expect. Yeah, this is really close to the worst case scenario right now. “…INARI! You… How… What are you doing here?” She said surprised before jumping back.

 

She suddenly flinched and gave a look towards both mother and father, hesitating for a moment before shaking her head.

 

At her hands, light gathered and a long silver sword appeared.

 

Yup. Worst case scenario.

 

“Uncle, Aunty, please get away. That fox is dangerous!” She said nervously while glancing at mother and father. However, the two simply stared at her surprised for a moment.

 

I sighed before laying my head on the floor.

 

“I really hoped this wouldn’t happen.” I said annoyed.

 

“…Huh?” Clarie said surprised.

 

“So you also kept your memories and skills here, huh?” I said annoyed.

 

“What?”

 

“Wait. What’s happening here?” Father asked confused before eyeing me.

 

“Well… Clarie, also known as Elena in the other world, was one of the greatest swordswoman. And also one of the heroes I met in my lifetime.” I sighed once again. “And from the looks of it, she still have her memories and skills.”

 

“Wait… Uncle, you know about Inari?” Clarie asked surprised.

 

“Did I ever mention that you were really annoying in that world?” I asked her while pouting, leaving her confused. “I mean, I do like you as a friend but there’s a limit to how much I could take of you trying to come up against me!”

 

“What do you…” She started saying confused, but stopped as she finally understood my words and lowered her sword in shock. “Wait… Sam…?”

 

“Yeah. Hi.” I said lifting my paw. “Also, sorry for killing you. Don’t hate me, please?”

 

(AN:Longer chapter! Yay!)

(AN2: On a monster hunter related topic… ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN! CHOO CHOO!)

 

Chapter 03