Book 1: Chapter 14: Fright and Education

Book 1: Chapter 14: Fright and Education

Scarlet

Stop giving me that look, I tell Tar after nearly an hour has passed, and my wound has healed up almost all the way. I am never going to let anyone touch my ears. Period.

Tar just gives me an amused look from his place sitting in my lap. A look that only grows even more amused after I hear the next thing said by the people in the bunker.

I heard from my friend who was able to touch the tail of Panther once that it was as soft as silk! Do you think that girls ears are the same?

Why wont they just drop it already? Is there nothing else to talk about but me in there?

If its not my ears theyre talking about, its who am I, why I was in this building, how old I am, and so on and so on.

But a lot of them just seem to want to touch my ears. Which, as it turns out, are incredibly sensitive to touch.

I tried it myself.

Which only makes me double down on the no touching rule.

Anyways, I finally begin to get up from the floor, not bothering to warn the tanuki who falls onto the ground from my lap. I stretch a little bit with a faint smile on my face at the sight of the tanuki glaring at me from the floor before heading out towards the stairwell again.

Its time to hunt those hounds above us.

So as it turns out, the hounds had already gone up three more floors judging by the faint scents and rather dirty pawprints they left behind on the stairs. And after going to the thirty-first floor to check things out? I simply find them both growling at me directly in the entry chamber.

I wonder why they didnt

My thoughts trail off as I hear some strange cracking sounds from further into the floor. Similar to that of an egg hatching.

Of course, itd ignore the important part.

Well, I begin by speaking out loud as I walk down the stairs, since thinking my answers still feels weird like Im talking to myself in my head, but not, I was an orphan in a Tier 3 city. Which basically meant that I had very few prospects in life. The most I could hope for was a job that might be able to pay my bills paycheck to paycheck with a home living below what most people would consider good.

I jump down the last few steps of the stairs to the twenty-eighth floor.

So I devoted myself to studying as hard as I could, even going to the trouble of asking Belle my best friend and the daughter of the orphanage director to lend me her own textbooks from her higher level school as an extra boost, I continue while walking over to the staircase down to the twenty-seventh floor, where I hear nearly half a dozen voices from people who are obviously not in a bunker. Thanks to that, I managed to become the top graduate in my year, earning me a scholarship which I then negotiated into the chance to come here. To a Tier 1 city.

Tar just slowly follows me through the air as I talk, not saying a word in the process.

And thats about it. I learned all about a lot of the demons through the textbooks for history class and demonology class, I finally get around to answering his implied question. Right as I reach the halfway point of the staircase.

After several seconds, the tanuki finally responds, Okay.

I blink in surprise at the rather lackluster answer.

Just okay?

I stare at the tanuki for a few seconds.

Huh.

Just okay.

Why am I spilling my life story to a tanuki, anyways?

I jump the rest of the way down the stairs to the twenty-seventh floor before focusing on the conversations Im hearing on the floor itself.