‘Why did I wait until the last minute to do this?' A young cat anthro said. He wasn't so excited about culture day tomorrow, but he was excited about getting a Japanese item. He wished he hadn't waited so long. He was in the Asian district in his town, where he found a small Japanese shop, and he noticed there was an array of lucky cats on a shelf. He was pretty sure lucky cats were Japanese, at least originally, so he had to go with that. Though, he knew a lot of Chinese restaurants that had lucky cats as well, but that would make it all the more interesting to talk about! He picked out a white cat with Japanese symbols in front of it and a black tipped ear. With a huge smile on his face, he held up the delicate figurine, only slightly bigger than his fist, and showed it to the clerk. "I'd like to buy this please."
His smile immediately faded when he saw who was on the other end of the street counter.
A mostly brown colored equine anthro stood at the other end of the counter, a very familiar looking one. She had a white splotch on her muzzle, and she smiled smugly at him. "It's nice to see you again, Luna. So, you are interested in that Japanese item for culture day, are you?"
Luna was still annoyed from the last time the two had a bet. While the bet felt as if it were ages ago, he felt as if it were only yesterday. "Oh god, not again." He rolled his eyes. He was ready to put the cat down and get an F on culture day now. Better yet, maybe he'd bring in a video game and say it was made in Japan. It wouldn't be a great grade, but anything was better than dealing with this horse.
Myu kept her smile. "Now, now. There's no reason to be so cold. I have just the thing you might need. See, a lucky cat could be interesting, but I know your budget. You would rather like something cheaper, perhaps even free?" She reached underneath the counter and pulled out a Hannah tattoo with three symbols on it, 日本人. (Author's note: This is probably not going to translate in all uploads. They're Japanese symbols.) "This is the price of 110 yen. Or, the equivalent of it. However, since you won the last bet, the least I can do is give it to you for free." She put the tattoo down on the counter. "Consider it your reward."
Luna looked at the item with a puzzled and somewhat annoyed stare. "What good would a tattoo be for my presentation? Am I supposed to lift my arm and show it to everyone? Moreover, the tattoo is almost the same shade of black as my fur, so likely nobody would be able to see it anyway. And lastly, this is my reward for those 5 days of torture? Is this supposed to be a scam or..."
Before Luna could finish ranting, Myu quickly and calmly interrupted the young cat in the middle of his speech. "Now, now, you should know me better than that by now. That tattoo has some special properties. Which ones? I won't tell you. But I know you're as curious as me to see what it would do. So do we have a deal?"
Luna had no idea how the tattoo was supposed to help him. Although, it was cheaper than most things, if only because it was a rub-on tattoo. He could get it, put it on, and then show it off for a day before washing it off. He remembered his very money conscious mother would approve of something cheap for culture day rather than some expensive novelty item he'll wind up never using again after, no matter how much he might like it. "Fine." He groaned. He grabbed the tattoo and walked away. He was curious to look around the town more, but he wanted to deal with that horse as little as possible. The last time he dealt with her he swore he nearly died.
As he arrived home, he quickly ate dinner and went about his nightly routine as he usually did. He prepared for bed by taking a shower, and then putting on his cozy red pajamas. He had a variety of pajama colors, and just figured it was a red night tonight. He then went straight to his bed afterwards. Luna quickly applied the tattoo on his right arm and glanced at it with a hint of disappointment as he peeled the sticker off.
'You can't even see it at all...' Luna thought to himself. 'Ah well, let's see how tomorrow will go.' He covered himself with his blanket and quickly dozed off.
Luna awoke the next morning with help from the massive amount of light coming from the sun shining in his room. It was hard to stay asleep with how brightly lit his room became. "Uhn." He groaned.
He pulled away the covers of his bed and looked down at his pajamas. He froze the moment he saw that he was no longer in red pajamas, but blue. Moreover, it was Asiatic sleeping wear, not just regular loose pajama pants and a t-shirt he once had. ‘I know I didn't wear this to bed.' He thought. He pinched himself, as if to make sure he was awake, and he winced at his pinch. "Okay, so it's not a dream."
Luna briefly wondered if maybe he was too tired, but he then remembered the tattoo he got from Myu.
"Ah right. Typical." Luna rolled his eyes and decided to just go about his day as if nothing was different. He was sure Myu was watching from a distance, but he didn't want to give her any satisfaction by acting shocked.
As he shuffled himself out of bed, his underwear felt a bit off around his rear, as if it had been pinched together from underneath. While he really liked the color and design of the clothing, he was concerned over the prospect of how Myu had put it on him while he was asleep
. He walked into the bathroom and tore off his clothing except for his underwear, but he froze at the sight. Luna wore a fundoshi instead of regular underwear. Rather than go into descriptive detail of what a fundoshi was, he stormed out of the bathroom and back to his own room, thankful the two were so close together so nobody could see him. He opened up his dresser to find some new underwear, but he quickly realized that all of his underwear transformed into fundoshi style underwear. In addition his socks were tabi socks. For a cat anthro with paws, the tabi socks split with half his paws on one end, half on another, and a split down the middle, whereas a normal sock wouldn't split at all. He went to his closet and saw that he had shirts that looked normal, but they all had Japanese symbols on them. "Oh you've got to be kidding me."
Luna dug through his dresser to find something, anything that wasn't Japanese. It wasn't that he would never wear Japanese clothing. On the contrary, he very much enjoyed the idea. He disliked that it was obviously Myu doing this to him, as if trying to control his life, or even his very actions like he were a character in a story she was writing.
One massive mess of throwing his clothes everywhere later, the young cat anthro found nothing but yukatas, harem pants, fundoshi and tabi socks, along with several other types of Japanese clothing he couldn't name. He gave in and picked out a blue shirt with Japanese words that stuck right out front, as if the very words portrayed an action hero. He then picked out his underwear, which felt quite odd as it barely covered his privates.
Of course, before Luna could even wear any of that clothing, he had to take a shower in the morning. With a defeated sigh, he walked back to the bathroom, glanced at the mirror briefly, and froze. ‘Wait a minute.' Luna glanced at the mirror's reflection and noticed two problems. First, as he looked closely at his face, he noticed that his eyes were fully slanted, as if he wasn't quite from his own country, but somewhere more... Eastern.
Furthermore it felt as if all the items surrounding him looked the tiniest bit larger than they normally did. With a sense of curiosity he decided to check on the height chart behind the mirror. He put his back up to it and quickly realized that he was shorter than his last measure. While height did vary from time to time, this was a noticeable difference of at least three inches.
‘So, my clothes are different, my height, and my eyes. What else?' Luna closed his slanted eyes while he tried to think. He also tried to think if there was anything off at the same time. He knew Myu was a tricky pony at times. He knew he was still Luna, he recalled his address, and he knew based on his bedroom and bathroom that he was in the same house as he was in before he went to bed. He wondered just what was going on with all of these other changes, but with nothing really to go on, and with the changes being relatively minor at best, he mentally shrugged. ‘Okay, whatever. You want to play a game? Let's play your game then.' He took his shower, cleaned himself up, put on his Japanese clothing, and began his day as he would any other normal day.
"Luna, breakfast is ready!" An all too familiar voice called out, signifying it was time for him to eat, and then head for school.
Luna casually walked into the dining room and saw his mother and father with eyes slanted just like his own. He assumed their height changed too, but he couldn't quite tell without measuring them closely. Moreover, his mother wore a light pink and yellow kimono while his father wore a black yukata. ‘So, you change my parents too? Very interesting.' Luna sat down at the table, glanced at his breakfast, and paused.
Typically, Luna's mother would serve him pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, or at the very least cereal with a few fruits and orange juice if she wasn't feeling well. Today however, there was an omelette in front of him. A yellow omelette with red sauce he identified as ketchup. ‘She NEVER serves omelettes.'
Curious about it, he picked up his fork and took a bite out of the egg. As he lifted the fork to inspect the food more closely, he noticed some sort of filling inside the dish made of rice, among other ingredients he didn't quite recognize. The dish didn't smell bad, but it reminded him more of a dinner sort of meal, or maybe brunch.
"Is there a problem with your omurice, Luna?" Luna's mother asked sweetly.
‘Yeah, I think you left something Western in my dish.' Luna softly squeezed his lips together. "No." He opened his mouth and took another bite of his omurice. The japanese omelette was tasty enough to clean his plate at the very least. ‘Well, there are some new Japanese aspects to my life, but I wouldn't say any of these are bad changes. Hah, you're losing your edge, Myu. I might actually like this.' With his meal finished, he hopped out of his wooden chair, automatically bowed to his parents without a second thought, and left for school.
Luna waited outside on a typical day. He glanced around the house, and the neighborhood as if to see if anything else had changed. He took a deep breath as a warm breeze brushed over his fur delicately. He was still in his own country as far as he could tell, and he noticed the school bus coming just at the end of the block. ‘So I'm a little more foreign. Big deal, bango. Maybe she'll give me a bunch of anime and manga. Oh, what a nightmare that would be bango.' He paused momentarily. He swore he thought something strange, but maybe he was just tired. Turning Japanese didn't save someone from being tired after waking up at seven in the morning.
Luna watched as the bus arrived, the same bus with the same bus number as any other morning. He watched the doors open up, and the air filled with chatter and laughter of students. Once he stepped onto the bus, he was greeted with the hot air from inside that bus. He walked up the steps, turned, and paused. His heart pounded heavily and he clenched his chest. He couldn't explain it, but everything felt so... foreign. He felt as if it were his first day at school, and this was his first time on the bus. He knew such a feeling shouldn't exist as he had taken this bus every single day, and he hadn't transformed that much.
Just as soon as he got on the bus, the chatter from the countless students fell silent. Luna felt dozens of eyes staring right at him. It was something straight out of an old western when a new cowboy walks into the bar. ‘Okay, what's with the silence? I get on this bus every day.' He pondered. He wore strange clothing, sure, but that wasn't enough explanation to get so many gawks.
‘Psssh, it's the new exchange student' One of the students whispered to the others, just loud enough for Luna to hear.
Luna knew he wasn't an exchange student. Sure, he had an interesting choice of clothing, and maybe physically he looked different in ways he probably didn't realize, but that shouldn't have mattered. Students went to foreign schools all the time and lived in his country. He wrapped his hands around his chest and slowly walked forward. The only sounds to accompany the idling of the bus were the sounds of his feet brushing against the ground as he took step after step. He paused to see one seat open next to a white cat that was bigger than he was.
Luna knew this cat! His name was... He paused. What was this student's name again? He was sure the student's name started with an S, but that was all he drew. He recalled a student from his old school, but then he paused. ‘Matte. This is the only school I went to, wasn't it? So why...'
He heard a honk from the bus driver. Luna quickly turned and saw the bus driver's impatience. He immediately sat down on the empty seat next to the white cat so the bus could take off, which it did not a moment later. Luna couldn't keep his eyes off the cat though, and he was quick to realize that the cat sitting next to him was also staring at him.
The various other students scattered around the bus began to ignore him and started talking among themselves again.
"You look familiar. Do I know you?" The white cat commented with a poke on Luna's shoulder. "Like, your clothing looks weird, but you... What's your name?"
"Luna." Luna was quick to respond, though as he spoke, an accent showed. It took every ounce of effort to avoid calling himself ‘runa' to this cat.
The white cat nodded. "Yeah, that name sounds familiar. Do you know my name? It's..." He paused as his phone rang. "Sec." He pulled out his phone and opened it up. "Hello? Yeah. No, I did that before I left. Mom, come on..."
Luna wanted to knock that phone away from the white cat's hand to get his name! He continued to try to think of what his name was, but he could only think of Sam as his name, and he was sure that wasn't right. Unfortunately for Luna, the cell phone conversation lasted the entire duration of the bus ride, so he didn't get to hear anything from that white cat before the bus arrived at school!
"Sorry," The white cat said as he hung up the phone. "Mom was just talking about how I didn't do all these things before school so now I got to do them all after. I'll talk to you on the ride home, okay? I swear I know who you are and I want to try to figure it out." The cat grabbed his backpack and walked off the bus with the massive crowd of other kids.
Luna wanted to yell at the white cat to stop so he could at least get his name, but as the cat stood up and walked into the aisle, he was lost in the sea of other cat anthros. Just as quick as he found the white cat, the white cat was gone, and Luna was left alone on the bus with only a very annoyed looking bus driver glaring at Luna angrily.
"Alright kid, your turn to get to school, now."
"Gomen, gomen." Luna quickly bowed his head. He held onto his books with both his arms crossed over the stack and quickly marched forward off the bus with a frown on his face. He had a sudden sensation of feeling... alien, and yet he knew he had gone to this school several times before. He rushed off the bus, but froze as he took his first step onto the concrete sidewalk.
Various students piled into the stone school in front of him from various buses parked along the lot. He turned his head from side to side and tried to recognize some of the students, any of the students would do, yet he couldn't remember a single name. From what he remembered, he wasn't exactly a popular cat, but he was far from a hikikomori.
‘What am I thinking? I'm not even Japanese!' He wanted to smack his head, but he was using his hands to hold tightly onto his books, as if he couldn't trust any of the students around him.
Luna wanted to wait for a chance to walk in alone, but that didn't seem like a possibility as the various students continued to flood in. He wanted to try to remember his school behaving like this, yet he couldn't! He had memories of some students walking in, others remaining outside and talking amongst one another and his school being much smaller. He stepped forward slowly as the bus doors shut behind him quickly. Just as he stepped forward and glanced at the double doors leading into the school, he saw what he swore was a familiar face that wasn't the white cat, but someone else entirely. He wished he could remember the name of that cat, but nothing came to mind.
The loud bell from the school caused Luna to jump and his fur to stand on ends. He had no choice but to march in with the rest of the students. He was thankful that the other students seemed to ignore him, that was until he started to walk inside himself. He glanced from side to side as the students seemed to distance themselves from him, as if he had an illness he could spread. He stepped inside the school and glanced around again. His surroundings felt so strange, yet he knew he had gone to this school so many times before.
Luna slowly walked around the hallways as they slowly became barren while the students rushed to their classes. He inspected locker after locker, trying to remember which locker was his. He squinted at the numbers on the lockers, but he struggled to read them unless he did so one number at a time. ‘What number was mine? It started with Ichi, didn't it? Wait... Ichi? That's not English. Ichi is... um... right, Ichi is one. But these numbers have three digits. What's the English word for ‘hyaku?' He could read the numbers one at a time with little difficulty, but he couldn't think of the word for the number when they were all added together. Still, even adding each number one at a time didn't help him find his locker, and the students in the hallways were going into their rooms faster and faster. Luna knew he had to get to his own classroom, but as he wasn't sure what locker he had, he also wasn't sure what room he had to go to!
With another bell ring loud enough to flatten Luna's ears to his head, the hallways soon emptied and he was alone. His mind raced a thousand miles an hour while he could barely step forward.
"Hey you!" A female voice shouted, an older woman clearly a staff member or teacher. "Get to class!"
Luna quickly scanned his surroundings and saw the teacher behind him. He didn't know every staff member, but the moment his eyes laid upon this one, she looked... foreign, though the more he stared, the more he realized that she looked like everyone else in the school. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and she appeared to be in her 40s. "Ai... Ai do not know where to go." He said honestly, and slowly. Sure, he had some time off from school before, but today he truly felt lost.
"Ah, you must be that new foreign exchange student." The woman marched up to Luna with a look of disgust on her face. Once she was close enough, she stared down at him with her arms crossed. "What's your name, new kid?"
"Ru..." Luna paused and coughed. "Luna." He said with a slight nod. He wasn't sure if the staff member would even recognize his name. The school wasn't big, but it was large enough that he wouldn't know all the teachers and staff members. He wanted to argue that he wasn't a new kid, but maybe the staff member would give him a break if she thought that he were.
"Luna, huh?" The teacher pulled out a small tablet and typed in his name. "Ah yes, Luna... hm, there seems to be an error retrieving your last name. Well, there's only one Luna in school. Your class is 24B. Second floor, third door on the right." She pointed to a large staircase. "Bring your stuff with you. They won't write you up if you're only a minute or two late."
With a rapid series of nods towards the staff member, Luna walked over to the staircase, but kept his body locked towards the staff member. He wound up tripping on the first step when he bumped into it from behind, but he quickly recovered, continued his rapid nodding, and soon rushed up the staircase. It took him a minute to find the room, longer than it should have for him, but once he found it, he quickly walked inside. He felt a rush of humiliation, not just because he was late, but because it wasn't something his culture was known to do was to be late, ever. He felt his face flush red and his heart pound heavily as he stepped inside the classroom.
Just as with the bus, the entire class fell silent. Luna felt the eyes of what must have been at least 25 students all on him, as well as the teacher. From what he could tell, class hadn't even started yet and they were all focused on him.
The teacher, a slightly chubby older cat with thinning fur at the top of his head and thick fur around his face, a beard and mustache. "You must be the new exchange student. We have a seat for you, right next to Lisa." The man casually pointed at an empty desk at the front of the class. "Have a seat. We were about to get started."
Luna barely had time to study the rest of his surroundings. His feet shuffled along the hardwood floors as he made his way to the desk. It took him a moment to unclench his belongings and set them down on the small table in front of him before he sat down with his tail back behind him through an opening in the desk. He glanced to his left and saw one male student staring at him as if he were an alien. He then turned to his right and saw a female student looking at him curiously. Luna recognized this female student, but he wasn't sure how he did. He wanted to kick his head in an attempt to jog his brain. It was only his first class, yet it felt as if this morning was really taking forever. ‘I'm never going to get to the class where I have to present my... what was my homework again? I swore I had to show something from a far away land.'
As class began, Luna tried his hardest to pay attention to the teacher, but he found himself unable to do so. While he understood most of the language the teacher spoke, some of the larger words were hard to grasp, and it often felt as if the sentence didn't add up. He'd rub his head and try to focus, but he paid so little attention that it was hard to keep track of what kind of class he was in, just that he was in school and in some class learning something about... history? He knew plenty about history! He knew about the samurai and how the capital moved, but the teacher was talking about American history, something that Luna swore he knew a bit about, but the more the teacher spoke, the less he thought he knew.
Luna shook his head to get those confusing thoughts out, but it was hard to think clearly, as if a cloud blocked his vision of thoughts. He knew he went to see a familiar horse who gave him a tattoo. He wasn't sure if that tattoo was still even there or not, and he'd feel even more embarrassed by checking to see if he still had it. He then went home and went to bed, and then awoke with things transforming... western? Or was it eastern? While holding his head he pointed a finger to the left and right of him, as if to figure out how his life was changing. He knew he went to this school before, but the fact that so many students acted as if he didn't go there worried him. He already established that he wasn't popular enough for students to know him, but he should have been average enough that students didn't pay so much attention to him!
Luna's fur quickly jumped on ends when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He gripped his desk until his knuckles turned white and noticed the female from before, smiling at him faintly. She handed him a small slip of paper folded up before quickly going back to paying attention to the teacher.
Luna cautiously unfolded the paper. The female student was undoubtedly brave to hand him a note right in front of class. He read the note carefully.
‘I know who you are.'
Such a message made Luna's heart jump. He took a deep breath and glanced at the female again, now looking forward as if nothing happened. He noticed the teacher had his back to them, so he used the time to read the note again. It felt as if nobody knew who he was in this school, and this student knew who he was? He'd have to talk to her when he got the chance. There were short breaks between classes, but he doubted they would last long enough to have a good conversation with the woman. Plus, he had to figure out where his other classes were in this school. He couldn't just sit in the same class all day.
At one point the bell rang and many of the students grabbed their belongings and proceeded to head to their next class. Luna glanced up at the whiteboard and noticed the teacher wrote down an assignment for homework, but he had to squint and read it slowly to understand. Deep down, he knew what was going to happen to him, but he wanted to deny it. If he took things slowly, so long as he read things slowly, he'd be fine, he hoped.
"You probably have a similar schedule to me." The female student said as the other students left. "Can you let me see your planner?"
With a raised brow and a nod, Luna handed the female his planner. He had a planner that resembled that of a notebook with a list of his schedule on the next page, just like every other student had. Unlike other students though, his planner was largely blank, as if he had never attended the school before. "What is your namae?" He wasn't sure if he asked that question correctly and wanted to kick himself for not taking his time to think about his words before saying them.
"Lisa." She opened the planner to the second page in the book and tapped the top of it. "Here's your schedule with a list of your classes. They made us all write them down on our first day here. If it starts with two, it's on the second floor. If it's one, it's the first. That should get you by for now." With a slight bow of her head, she grabbed her things and took off. "I won't see you at the next class, but we'll have one more together before lunch. You should get going though, I'll see you soon, Luna!"
‘Lisa? That name sounds so familiar...' Luna briefly thought about how Lisa even knew his name, but he realized his planner had it. He had several questions to ask her though. She was the only student that seemed so normal around him! He picked up his things and walked out of the room before he went to his next class. His eyes kept on his belongings that he clung tightly to his chest and he only briefly raised his head to make sure he was going to the right room for his next class. He barely paid attention in history class. He kept trying to think about his own version of history, and why it sounded so off. He didn't know anyone named George Washington, yet history class expected him to treat this person as if they were like, a leader long long ago or something! With a frustrated sigh, he walked into his next class, which was math. He hoped that he could at least focus more in this class, though he knew he wouldn't have Lisa's help.
Luna had more time to pay attention to the surroundings of this class, unlike the first. He took a seat and continued to grasp firmly onto his books while he looked around the white walls and noticed another teacher, a rather large female teacher. ‘All of these teachers have big face. Many students, too.' He remembered his exchange student he spoke with before...
‘No! I did not!' He set down his books so that he could grab his head, as if to try to pull those thoughts from his skull. He didn't know any exchange students, not even himself! He was going to fight this thing! He was from...
Where was he from, again?
The bell rang again to signal the start of class. Luna tried to keep his thoughts silent while he turned his attention to the front. He swore he felt the eyes of several students upon him again, but he dare not look back. He was thankful the class was math class and that numbers were generally a universal thing, though it still took more time than usual for him to translate the strange symbols on the whiteboard. He pulled out an empty notebook and tried to keep track of what the teacher wrote down by writing himself, but as he checked his notes, he realized that the numbers he wrote down were both a combination of English and Japanese, around fifty-fifty of each with one number in english, and then one number with the Japanese symbol for that number.
Despite mixing up the numbers and symbols, Luna was still able to understand enough of the math to figure out the problem. He kept his head buried in one hand while he wrote with the other though. He said nothing the entire class and just kept thinking to himself, though his thoughts were as bad of a mixture of English and Japanese as they were on paper. He briefly recalled a story he got, a commission from Myu's Patreon involving becoming Japanese. He never thought such a thing could actually happen! If he knew such stories were real, he'd never support it.
Luna briefly glanced at the door, and then at his planner. He had a good three more classes before a break for lunch, and while he might encounter Lisa in a few of them, it was impolite to talk to her during class, especially if the two of them were up front! It was far more important to pay attention to their sensei. Luna glanced down at his hands briefly and noticed they appeared thinner than before, though the change was small, it was substantial enough for him to notice. It made him wonder how much he had changed.
During the end part of class, the teacher gave everyone an assignment to begin working on. Rather than begin his work on complex math, Luna stood up and walked to the front with his planner in hand. He looked down at the teacher at the front desk and said one word. "Toire?" He asked, handing the planner over.
"A strange way to pronounce bathroom, but alright." The chubby teacher nodded up at Luna. He opened up to a page of passes and signed his name as well as the date and time. "There. I hope you know where it is."
Luna hadn't paid much attention to where a lot of things in the school were, but he'd figure it out. He may have had problems reading, but he could still understand signs! With the planner in hand, he walked out into the hallway.
Luna's wooden shoes echoed throughout the empty hallways. He raised his head and quickly noticed the signs for the bathroom, one with a male sign and one with a female sign. He paused at the entrance and looked at the two pictures of the bathroom signs. The signs were largely asexual with the only difference between the female bathroom had more of a triangle shape to the torso. With a raised brow, he stepped into the bathrooms.
Luna wasn't so much interested in examining how the bathroom worked so much as he wanted to look at himself in the mirrors.
As Luna looked at the mirror, he saw himself in the reflection, as well as more than a few smudges on the glass and the walls behind him. He also picked up a scent in the air he'd rather not describe, and more filth that he wanted to think less about. His own reflection was enough to fascinate him. He stared, and he saw slitted eyes looking back at him. He still retained his face, although it most definitely had an Asian heritage to it now rather than...
He really had to figure out where he used to live.
Luna's fur color was the same dark color it was before, but his face, even his own body had a thinner look, not that he could check his weight. He wished he could recall what his face once looked like, as it had undoubtedly changed to gain his new heritage, at least he think it did.
Luna briefly thought to himself that he couldn't stay in the bathroom for that long, but as he had such a thought, he realized it was entirely in Japanese! He figured if it was like the last story, then becoming emotional over anything would mean that he was likely going to be talking a lot in that new language. ‘Now Nani?' He took a breath to calm himself, only to be interrupted by the sound of the bell from outside the bathroom.
He immediately knew it was time to get going back to class, get his belongings, and move on to his next class. He walked out into the hallways and was immediately greeted with the rush of several students marching out of their classes and running to the other, seemingly in chaos with the sound of stomps and chatter of language he barely understood filled the halls. Luna traversed the side of the hallway, got into his math class and grabbed his belongings. He then glanced at his planner and walked to his next class, art class. He hoped that art class would be easy to understand. Despite this transformation into an exchange student slowly losing his grasp on English, his classes were easy! He walked with a stride in his step and a smile on his face. He briefly looked at his last class, and then his stride immediately faded. ‘English.' Of course it would be the hardest class before lunch. He just prayed Lisa would be there.
Luna arrived at art class and glanced around at the various students in hopes of finding Lisa, but alas he found no sign of her. A few of the students looked at him, but by now he was becoming less important. Sure, he was the new kid with strange clothes and a tail that swayed in ways that none of the others likely did, but even students grew bored of new students at one point. He was glad none of the teachers made him introduce himself to everyone or someone wanted to bully him. The moment the thoughts ran across his mind, he wanted to kick himself as such things meant they were surely going to happen soon. Regardless, he took a seat at a desk, this time over at the side, and kept quiet like he did at his other classes.
As class began, Luna watched the teacher speak, but he could still only understand some of what the teacher spoke about. It wasn't just about art, but also about the style of art. If there was one thing Luna knew, it's that art was universal, but the styles could be very different. Where one person might like realistic, another might want cartoonish, and those were two styles out of... he didn't even know how much! He watched as the teacher began to play a series of slides of a cartoon, and his mind went to anime, the cartoons he grew up with. He didn't even second guess the cartoons speaking in Japanese as he flashed back to those younger days, that was until he heard the mother in his flashback speak Japanese to him. Only then, he realized his surroundings in the flashback was that of a modern Japanese home, not the style of the home in the land he was in now!
"Luna, are you paying attention?" An older voice spoke up.
Luna's eyes blinked rapidly as he was brought back to reality. He raised his head to see the teacher looking over him with a stern look on their face.
"Hai?" Luna replied with his ears and whiskers down. He tried to look beyond the teacher's torso to see the white board as to what the teacher was drawing, but the teacher kept blocking his view.
"Then perhaps you can tell me what the superhero said in the comic when the villain asked him whether he'd save his girlfriend, or the world?" The teacher asked with a frown.
Luna took a moment to think about what the teacher said. He really couldn't think about what the teacher was talking about. Wasn't this art class? What did superheroes and supervillains have to do with art, unless they were talking about comics or anime? He had to tell the truth. "Ai don't know."
The teacher smiled and walked away. "Ah good, you were paying attention. Now, moving on. See, story is incredibly important and, in of itself, is a form of art. Exposition as an example is incredibly crucial. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and describing a picture is, in of itself, a form of exposition. It does not advance the plot, but merely describes what is going on in regards to the surroundings, or perhaps as to what the person is thinking within that moment."
Luna managed to understand that statement from the teacher, but as the teacher babbled on, it was as if he were speaking another language. He grabbed onto his head with one hand as he tried to write down what the teacher said with another, and carefully in English at that. He wrote down each word slowly, every letter painstakingly at a snail's pace, far slower than the teacher spoke. He looked down at the sentence and noticed that the words he wrote made little sense when he read them in his head. Certain letters were pronounced differently, usually vowels, depending on what consonants were near it, and it confused him to no end. Why did vowels sound differently all the time? Maybe it was something he never asked himself when he always spoke English, but did Japanese words work the same way? He didn't think they did, but he also didn't think much about that either.
Luna concluded that English was a stupid language.
With the sound of the bell, it was time for dismissal. Luna's stomach grumbled hungrily with thoughts of sushi and special brown sauce that he couldn't quite think about the name of at the moment. He still had one more class to go to, and he knew it was going to be the hardest. Art class might have been easy, and he got away with math, but English was going to be so difficult. He walked through the hallway as if a prisoner walking in death row, though with a large number of students running around him to their own class.
Luna walked into his last classroom with his head low and an emotionless expression. He raised his head and his spirits immediately lightened when he saw Lisa at the front! He was about to race to Lisa before a chubby older woman stopped him, the teacher of English class no doubt.
"You must be Luna." The teacher said with a smile. "I hope you did the assignment we asked you to do before you came here?"
Luna looked at the teacher for a solid few seconds with a blank expression, staring at her in utter confusion, as if she had invented an entirely new word. "Assainomento? Ai don't understand." The black cat felt a bit intimidated by the teacher using such complex English words. Would the entire class be so difficult? He was one of the better students in his school in Tokyo in English, but he feared if he'd even be able to make it through these classes without failing.
The teacher glared at him angrily before she let out a frustrated sigh. "Homework, the... maybe it got lost in the mail. Just take your seat." She pointed at one side of the room. "The desk that has your name written on it."
Luna briefly wondered why the teacher would have names on desks when the desks were used throughout the day by many students, unless she changed the names between periods... regardless, it was nowhere near Lisa, which while a bit upsetting, was unsurprising to him. With a mental sigh and a word in Japanese better left untranslated, he marched to the desks and read the name on the first desk slowly. Rather, he read the first letter and noticed a lack of L which allowed him to move on to the next. He thought at least this wasn't as bad as the time when the teacher kept calling the ‘L' names up to the front like some sort of horror novel.
However, as he slowly moved through the rows of tables, he couldn't find a desk that started with L and had his name on it. "Sumimasen sensei, where is mai teburu?" Luna asked with a frown.
"Your teburu? Ah, your table. They're all alphabetically sorted and yours is back there under R for Runa." The teacher explained with an ambivalent gesture.
"But... my namae is Runa, I mean... it's R... R..." Try as he might, he just couldn't get himself to make an L sound. He felt as if it should've come naturally to him, but his tongue kept rolling off into an R. Suddenly something inside Luna's mind clicked. ‘Of course! Japanese doesn't have an L! Why would my name be Luna?'
The bell rang once more as the seats began to fill. Luna, or rather Runa, took his seat as the teacher began her lecture. It was both a blessing and a curse to be so far in the back, as there were less students that could look at him without making it incredibly obvious, but there was no way he could pay attention to the teacher at all. It was bad enough for him to be far in the back, but also in English where he understood far, far less of what the teacher said.
Runa spent the hour trying to focus his thoughts on English, but his thoughts were a mixture between English words and Japanese symbols that would rarely, if ever, work together in a proper sentence to coherently translate.
He wasn't sure what exactly the teacher was talking about, only that it had something to do with different tenses, with a particular focus on the future tense. The teacher started with a simple sentence, the words ‘I will arrive' written on the board, and went into detail about what was the future tense. The ‘will' part sounded so confusing to Runa. It was a simple enough sentence to read for as Japanese as he was becoming, but stating that ‘I arrive' made much more sense to him than what the teacher wrote.
"Sumimasen, who is this Wiru person?" Runa suddenly asked out loud in genuine confusion.
There was a long pause as the teacher looked back at Luna's puzzled look. Several students looked back as well, seemingly facepalming at a failure to understand such an easy English sentence. "Will, as in, will do. It's a word that can be used to describe that you are going to do something, as in the future tense."
The idea still puzzled Runa. Future tense? What was there to be so tense about the future? He still concluded that English was a dumb language and just hoped Lisa would be able to help him out. A thought briefly ran through his head about how much worse this could get, but not the future tense of that sentence as the idea of thinking into the future seemed bizarre, especially when describing it in a sentence. "Nani?"
With a smile and likely not understanding what Runa said, the teacher leaned down underneath her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. "Now, to continue with the future tense, you are all going to take a short test about future tense sentences. It's ten short questions asking you to circle what sentence is the future tense."
Runa wanted to bury his head in his hands at the idea of a test, let alone a test for something he didn't understand. He let out a groan and mumbled a word that was best left untranslated again. He briefly raised his head to look at the board, but the sentence looked far more jumbled than it did before, all while the teacher walked around the class handing everyone a sheet of paper.
"Front and back side, ten questions." She instructed, and paused once she reached Runa. "I know you're struggling with English still, so I won't count it against you if you do poorly, Runa." The teacher handed Runa his test before going to the other classmates.
Runa turned his attention to the paper below and stared at the white sheet with letters. Every letter on the sheet looked stranger as he read them one by one. One letter was just literally a straight line, while another letter was a shorter straight line with a small dot atop it. He knew this was English, he identified it as English right at the top of his head, but he could barely comprehend the full sentences. Runa read one word at a time to help understand it better, but even then it didn't make sense as a sentence. The class went quiet with the exception of the sound of scribbling on sheets. Runa could tell the eyes of Lisa went on him on occasion, but she would unlikely be of much help.
The test might not have accounted for his grades, but Runa felt obligated to try to score as high as possible. He read the first few lines for the future tense, and then he read it again. Unable to figure out what the right answer was, he went on to the next one to see if that might be easier. He then moved on and on until he got to the last answer, unable to answer any of them.
Runa was grateful that at least this would kill time until lunch. His mind briefly drifted away to the thoughts of food, but he knew the food that the cafeteria would serve would likely be alien to him. At least it would be unlike the morning where it was all Japanese food, but at the same time, he now recognized the Japanese food as normal.
Runa's mind kept drifting to other things as he looked at the paper. He continued to see the strangely shaped letters identified as something so odd, like one letter looked like a snake of sorts while another resembled a house. He briefly pondered if English people saw Japanese letters so strangely, that they just saw them as strange symbols rather than an actual word, but that was just silly.
Runa smacked himself mentally. He had to stop procrastinating, he had to get this test done before the bell rang! Rather, he assumed he had to get it done before the bell rang. He could see other students already handing in their papers and going to play on their cell phones. He then realized that maybe he could use his cell phone, but that'd be cheating. Morally, he couldn't do that.
‘Read them one at a time. Okay, question one. Will did his homework, Will will do his homework. Will is doing his homework. Which one of these is the future tense? Will will? Will will what? Is that who Will is?' Runa took his time to go through the strangely worded sentences. He glanced at the last question. ‘Will will willfully will his will to Wilson.'
Part of Runa just wanted to drop his pencil on the ground, grab his stuff, and walk out as he processed that sentence. He briefly recalled a song about a rapper just... being done with it and wanting to be out.
Runa kept thinking about the question and tried to process it slowly so as to retain his English thoughts, but it was challenging. Will ‘do' his homework didn't sound like a future tense, but rather someone telling Will to just do his homework. Will ‘did' his homework was most definitely past tense, but Will ‘is' doing his homework was present, wasn't it? That would mean Will ‘do' his homework would be the logical answer, but it made no sense how that was future tense.
A lightbulb went off in Runa's head. Of course! If Will did his homework, then Will was thinking about the future when he did his homework! If Will was going to ‘do' his homework, or was doing his homework, then Will surely wasn't thinking about the future tense. Luna circled the first answer, ‘Will did his homework' with confidence, and went on to the next question, again talking about Will.
‘Will is going to the movies. Will went to the movies. Will is at the movies. Will is going to be going to the movies.'
"..." After a brief moment of silence staring at the next question. ‘Runa is going to punch Will.' Runa thought to himself in annoyance.
Runa went through question after question, using his best judgement to guess the correct answer. Every single question involved some person named Will, as if it were some kind of sick joke. In some sentences Will was included in the dead center of it! "What is ‘He will do his dishes?' supposed to mean? Why is Will talking to himself in third person?" Luna felt furious, as if the teacher was mocking him. He'd just continue to guess using the best of his abilities after thinking about the three sentences. He knew he was struggling compared to the rest of the students as more of them were getting done while he kept struggling.
Runa's heart pounded heavily. Sweat dripped down his body. He swore he could feel the massive sweat drop drop on the floor one at a time. He breathed in and out, and the sound of his own breath felt as if it were another distraction of itself. He had to focus, he had to finish this test he had...
The bell rang before he could finish his thoughts.
He had to finish this test now. He glanced down at the paper and picked the answer he thought was best again and again. He tried to tell himself that it was alright to fail, that if he got his paper back and it was a big fat zero on his test that it wouldn't change his grade, and that this turning Japanese was hopefully temporary and everything would be back to normal tomorrow morning, though he felt the twinge of guilt and disgust at the thought of getting such a low score. He had to score high, even if it was entirely optional! He could nearly feel the tears swell in his eyes as he finished the last question, wiped his face, and turned it in before he walked right outside the class and bumped into one of his classmates, Lisa!
"Let's go to lunch. We have more than enough time to talk in line before eating, and then during." She held out her hand.
Runa glanced down at Lisa's hand. He wasn't quite familiar with the customs of the land of... well, he thought he was in America, but maybe he was somewhere else. He wasn't sure at this point. Maybe he was in England. Regardless, he held onto his things firmly and then looked at Lisa. "Nani?" He could tell she was being kind, but that was all he really understood.
"Um..." Lisa paused. "Food?" She tilted her head.
Runa understood that perfectly. Sentences were complicated, but a few words were easy to grasp. "Hai." With a nod, he followed Lisa to the cafeteria where chatter filled the hallway just outside of it, and inside the massive room. Even if Runa understood English perfectly, there was no way he'd be able to hear every conversation that went on. Both Runa and Lisa paused at the line, just inside the massive cafeteria.
"Do yatte me know?" Runa asked, a sentence broken between English and Japanese. Something he had been meaning to ask Lisa. How did she really know him? Not even his best friend, at least someone he thought was once his best friend, knew who he was, yet Lisa seemed to recognize him in an instant.
With a light sigh, Lisa pulled out her phone and opened up an app. "English to Japanese, and Japanese to English. I knew this app would come in handy, even if it called that one dish a surprised egg. Now, what was your question?" She pressed a button on her phone screen. "Speak slow English, or speak normal Japanese." She released the button, and the phone automatically translated her sentence, although it added something about English snails.
Well, the phone made a little bit of sense. Still, he wanted to try to speak as best English as he could. As he walked with Lisa in the lunch line, he replied. "Know... me? How?" He feared that he'd lose every last bit of English by tomorrow!
"To be fully honest, I have no idea at all who you are. For all I know you're just a random Japanese exchange student whose English is way too bad for it to make any sense that you'd study in the middle of a random English speaking school in the middle of nowhere." Lisa spoke into the translator app, leaving Luna with a disappointed and almost heartbroken frown. The translator would successfully translate most of that sentence correctly, with the exception that it mentioned English in general was terrible, not just his own, and that he was studying in the middle of some random school.
"But... that's exactly the point. What would someone like you be doing here?"
Runa was a bit puzzled. Why was English terrible? Or maybe it was his English. Moreover, why was Lisa wondering what he wanted to do there? Alternatively, maybe it was asking what he was doing there? The translator worked to some extent, but all it took was the wrong pitch of a voice, or the wrong word, and things became so much harder to understand. Regardless, he was grateful that Lisa knew something was off.
"Senses o ushinatta koto o remember imasu ka?" He tried to ask about the time he lost his senses, but even though his English was bad, it was likely that his Japanese also wasn't perfect either, especially when it went through a translator. Losing his senses was a very, very faint memory, but he recalled a time when it happened.
The translator did not translate Runa's sentence well at all. No doubt it was from the English that mixed in with his words. She understood the part about senses and remembering, and while that was faint, she recalled it too. "Yes, I don't remember who lost his senses. However, I do know some student made a bet with an omnipotent horse. It's not too difficult to conclude that the only random Japanese student walking around this school must be that friend. Moreover, it shows that you really should stop making bets with horses." She ran that through the translator.
Hearing the entire translation in Japanese also didn't work for Runa as he couldn't understand perfect Japanese either, but he didn't want to get to that point. He was astonished at her ability to deduce such things though. Well, that and also astonished at her sentence in particular as, translated to English or Japanese, he was having problems understanding it. He just assumed she knew who he was, or had a basic idea of who he was. "Fix?"
The two of them arrived at the part of the line to grab their trays. Lisa grabbed one for her, and one for Runa. "I want you to tell me what you can about yesterday. I want to know what you did, where you went, and the last time you spoke to that omnipotent horse and what she did for you. We'll figure out where to go from there."
Runa just did the same thing Lisa did in order to get his meal. Pulling the simple ‘monkey see monkey do' made it easy to get his food, and pizza was universally understood by just about everyone in the world as to what it was.
Upon hearing Lisa's comment, Runa said everything that he could recall yesterday, though there were more than a few dozen plot holes. He met the horse, she sold him something Japanese and he used that Japanese thing. Maybe she sold it to him in Japan, or maybe it was in another part of town. Though with how horrible his English was, and how it got mixed up with his Japanese, and with a translator to top it off, it was an explanation that came out as one big massive complicated jumbo of a puzzle.
And the translator included something about a rhino.
"Okay, slow down." Lisa brought Runa to a long table and sat down on the end of it with no one near the two of them. "So you met up with her and she sold you a bunch of Japanese items, or she gave you one item, or what happened?" She knew the translator might have problems with long sentences, something she only realized after she began to eat. "What did you buy?" She simplified the question.
Runa tried to remember what exactly it was he bought. He knew the thing he bought wasn't complicated. In fact, he thought it was free as a ‘win' from the previous bet he made with the horse. He just couldn't remember what it was. He looked down at his shirt and wondered if it was something on him. Maybe it was a statue? Though no, for that he'd want to have a house with a statue spot in the wall.
Whatever it was Runa bought, he knew it was initially cheap, at least until the horse gave it to him. He briefly thought it was the shirt, but that couldn't be right. Then again, it had to have been something Japanese, but something very clearly Japanese, and most definitely cursed.
"I can tell you're having problems recalling. Let's see... what would you have gotten... you probably would have tried to get something for culture day, and I can imagine it was cheap." Lisa thought as she tapped her chin. "Something Japanese, and very clearly Japanese at that, and something you'd know how to translate, so also something simple, maybe one or two symbols at the most, and something small enough to carry. Maybe you still have it on you."
Runa opened his mouth to say what he had, but he didn't recall having anything out of the ordinary. With a shrug, he emptied out his pockets and revealed his wallet with a picture of an anime catgirl winking, his keys, and his cell phone. He patted his neck and wrists to search for an amulet, but he found nothing.
"Nothing clearly Japanese here except the wallet. It wouldn't surprise me if the old you had it either." Lisa picked up the wallet and scanned through it briefly. "No, it has to be like an amulet or a necklace, or maybe a tattoo. How about this, we meet after school, you take me to your house and you show me everything about you. Like, you let me see if you have a tattoo, or if you have some strange glowing toy, or some weirdly unique Japanese thing that stands out at your house."
Runa heard the translator, and as he heard the translation, he found it easier to understand the Japanese part than the English, more so than before. "Hai." The tattoo sounded familiar, but he wasn't sure why he'd get one to show off for an event that he had never heard of. It was his first day at this school after all!
... wasn't it? Not even Runa was entirely sure about that. How would he have known Lisa if it was his first day, or the other cat for that matter?
Lisa put her hand on Runa's own. "You should probably eat. We can figure this out after school. Just head outside and wait by the doors once the bell rings. I'll text my dad and we'll be at your place solving this curse before tomorrow."
Runa heard the translation and nodded with a faint smile. He let his hand rest while he felt Lisa's momentarily before he began to eat. The food was a bit bland, but it was school cafeteria food, he was expecting it to be pretty bad. Eating was universal, though he tried to be as polite as he could about it.
"Just try to make it through the rest of your day. You've only got three classes left, you can do this." Lisa spoke with high confidence and a smile to Runa. "Oh by the way, what was your name again?" She tilted her head. "I believe I already said mine was Lisa."
Runa took a moment to swallow his food before replying. "Runa." With a rough voice that sounded heavily Japanese, as if there was not a hint of English to him.
Had anyone asked him, even he'd admit the name didn't sound right. It sounded as if someone just took a letter of his old name, whatever it was even if he had an old name, and just changed a letter. He'd definitely give that person a low grade in the creativity department.
"Okay Runa. I didn't see us having any other classes together, so please just try your best for the rest of the day." Lisa said with a nod. "I'll see you after school."
The lunch break was just long enough for the two to eat, though the long line beforehand didn't help them. With the sound of the bell, it was time to get back to class.
With his belly filled and a newfound confidence, Runa went to his next class. Things would be challenging without Lisa, but he just had to get through today and then they could work on getting him back to normal. How bad could things get?
As Runa would slowly find out, while things wouldn't seem to get bad to him, his English would get so progressively worse that he couldn't understand a single word the teachers said. It sounded as if they were all speaking foreign tongue, and the writing on their boards made less sense. It made so little sense that Luna couldn't even tell what his remaining classes even were! They were just... classes of some sort. Worse yet, he was forgetting about why he was meeting Lisa after school in the first place. At first he thought it was something regarding his Japanese. Maybe it was that Lisa was going to help him speak English? It wasn't as if he knew a speck of English, or at least much of any. He knew a few words, hello, good bye, the basic greetings and being able to ask about the bathroom or certain monuments, the amount of English a tourist might know and not much else. He wondered why he was even coming to this school in the first place! An exchange student must have known more than such basic English! Unless he wasn't even that, but something else... maybe he wasn't even supposed to be in this school.
Class after class, and Runa's language became worse. By the final class, he understood not a single word the teacher spoke about beside his name. Runa tried to pay attention, but it was nearly impossible. It was as if he were watching a show in another language, a boring show talking about rocks and crystals. Maybe he was in a geology class, he wasn't sure.
After the last bell, Runa grabbed his belongings and walked out of the school. Strangely, the other students behaved as if he was just another random schoolkid, unlike before where he was some kind of massive stranger. Though he couldn't think of a single person he knew at the school. It was only when he walked outside and turned his head to see a smiling and waving Lisa that Runa remembered that, oh right there was someone at this school that was willing to help him, but who was this girl again? Her name started with some weird English letter, something that didn't exist within the Japanese language.
"Are you ready for me to come to your house so you can break this curse?" Lisa asked through her translator, perfectly translating the language for Runa to understand.
Runa tilted his head questionably. Curse? What curse did he have? He'd admit there were a few strange things going on, but nothing about a curse. "Anatahadaredeshita ka?"
The translator translated Runa's statement perfectly. "You don't know who I am?" Lisa frowned. "It's okay, Runa. This must be doing a number on you. Let's just get back to your place and we'll figure out what's going on with you."
Runa briefly recalled a conversation about Lisa coming home with him, but he couldn't remember for what. It couldn't have been to break some silly curse as he wasn't cursed! Sure, he had several questions about what was happening with him, but none of it involved some weird curse. "Nani?"
Lisa slightly frowned at Runa. "I mean... I was going to help you with your English lessons." Lisa spoke through the translator.
Ah, that made much more sense, Runa thought with a light bow. Yes, coming over to help him study English so he could better understand everything in school, as his last classes were just miserable not being able to understand, well, anything. He'd walk to his bus slowly with Lisa behind him.
Once he got on the bus, he glanced around at the various students. His eyes briefly paused at a white one sitting alone, but then he noticed the empty seats right behind that lonely cat. He walked to those seats and sat down with Lisa by his side.
‘Tabun kare wa aoidesu ka? Taiyo wa kare no kegawa no iro o kubetsu suru no o muzukashiku shimasu.' Runa thought in a complete Japanese sentence about the cat that was now in front of him.
"Now, the first word you learn about is curse." Lisa instructed him through the translator, doing her best not to use the future tense so as to not mess up the translation of her sentence. "Especially from magical horses."
Runa wondered what it was with Lisa and this strange affliction over magical horses. With a slight shrug, he just accepted what it was Lisa was going to teach.
"Take the sentence ‘I was afflicted with a curse.' It says you were cursed with something. A curse is generally a bad thing. Maybe you got an item on you, or something like a tattoo or some jewelry of some kind. Something that cursed you."
Runa was familiar with the concept of what a curse was. Magical happenings were universal after all, but he didn't know the English word for it. Lisa telling him sort of helped, but it was a strange first word to learn. He then heard her mention something about a tattoo, and something about that tattoo sounded awfully familiar...
"Ta...tu?" Luna's eyes seemed to light up a bit when he said that, as if he remembered something important.
Once the bus arrived at Runa's home, Runa hopped off the bus and escorted Lisa with him. The home's exterior had the same look as the house next to it, but it was easy to see inside the home how Japanese the interior really looked, far unlike that of a modern home with much smaller tables and pillows used for sitting at dinner, and that was just a view of the dining room.
"So, the first thing I want to see is everything you have in your room and everything you're wearing. I'm hoping it's blatantly obvious whatever this cursed thing is." Lisa spoke through the translator. She wished she could say she knew what she was looking for. Maybe he wasn't even given a cursed item, but just cursed to live like that for a few days, or maybe he'd wake up tomorrow being something like a Russian cat. She wished she had a better idea, but she doubted Runa knew.
Lisa recognized that Runa's condition must have gotten worse over the day. Knowing her, it was likely she kept details about their encounter at lunch, and was even keeping track now. She could only logically think that Runa was still being transformed somehow, and that he likely had the cursed thing on him.
Runa was a bit uncomfortable with that, but deep down, he had a feeling he should trust Lisa. He still doubted a curse impacted him, but he could let her look. Besides, they'd be in his house anyways. Alternatively, maybe it was some weird custom in this country he was not aware of. "Hai..." He said with a disappointed sigh. He opened the front door, slipped off his shoes, and proceeded to walk to his room. His parents were both still at work for the next hour, leaving the house for Lisa and him.
Lisa took off her shoes and walked in behind Runa. She glanced around at the various Japanese decor, a little too much for her to go into great detail, but the interior definitely looked as if it were something straight out of Japan with the plain white decorations and even sliding panels for doors instead of normal doors. She'd walk into Runa's bedroom and close the door behind her before turning to Runa. "Okay, take off any jewelry you own and let's see if you have a tattoo on you anywhere." She firmly instructed. While Runa was doing that, she decided to examine his room to see if there was anything very obviously cursed. His room appeared to be that of a standard bedroom with a desk that had various anime figurines atop of it, not far from his computer screen, but none of them with glowing eyes or anything obvious.
Lisa was hoping this would be simple. She mentally prayed that Runa didn't make some crazy bet to ‘transform into different cultures every day' like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and dear god please no, American.
Then again, that might make a good story. Ideas for later though, and curse solving now.
"Watashi wa fukaidesu." Luna mumbled. He raised his furry paws and revealed to Lisa he was in fact, wearing no jewelry on them. He then raised his head and showed a lack of necklaces on his neck. "Piasu nashi." He raised his shirt just enough to show his belly button, but didn't want to show her any more than that.
"Okay, so no jewelry, and no clearly cursed item that I can see. Though I'd call Sailor Kitty a pretty cursed anime."
Runa's ears fumed at the comment about Sailor Kitty. He began to go into a rant about how Sailor Kitty was a highly underestimated show with wondrous plot points and that the English dub ruined so much of it.
"I'm glad I don't have the translator open." Lisa commented casually during Runa's rant. She'd wait for him to calm down before she opened the translator back up again.
"Okay, did you buy something yesterday from an omnipotent horse?"
Runa scratched his head as he thought back to yesterday, which felt like little more than a jumbled mess. He remembered buying something, something small and cheap. Rather, it was given to him. Surely, that one thing he got couldn't have ‘cursed' him as Lisa said, could it? Still, the item in question he briefly recalled. "Tat... tu." He showed off his right arm, the same arm where he got the tattoo and revealed a lot of fur. Underneath his shoulder though, he showed the symbols of the tattoo that he got.
"Better than a glass statue or being cursed to change races repeatedly." Lisa held up her phone to the tattoo and got the translation of what was on his arm. "Okay, so that looks obvious enough to be cursed." She reached forward and ran a finger along it, rubbing a very, very tiny fraction off him. "Give me just a moment."
Lisa walked out of the room but returned a moment later with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. She poured some of the rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and dabbed the writing on Runa's arm at first. Seeing some of it come off, she then rushed to get the rest of the tattoo off his arm. "Good thing this just washes off. I did not want to go through the process of removing this at a clinic."
Runa was puzzled at why Lisa was getting rid of the tattoo on his arm, but if he was ‘cursed' as she described, then so be it. It was free to get anyways. Really, he didn't even know why he got it in the first place. It wasn't like tattoos showed well underneath fur!
Lisa removed the tattoo from Runa and tossed the cotton balls away. She glanced around and frowned as she saw no immediate change. "Well, shoot. Maybe that wasn't it? Maybe it really is a cursed item, or... maybe there is no curse at all? What if I just imagined it and you really are just a Japanese exchange student?"
"Risa, yu okay? What isu wrongu? Yu sound sad." Luna suddenly spoke up in very broken, but understandable English. "And wai am ai wearing weird clothes? Also mai Engrish sound bad? Notto sure, but think Engrish words hard."
Lisa went quiet. She stared at Run...no, Luna with her mouth agape and wide eyes. She couldn't believe it. Was it really that simple? Maybe there was a catch? She didn't know, but she was appreciative that he could speak English, albeit not great, but enough for her to understand without the translator. Maybe it was the tattoo, or maybe it was just sheer determination. Luna already sounded so much better at English than he did a moment ago where he was speaking nothing but pure Japanese.
The translator didn't quite help Luna's words, but Lisa understood them well enough, just like Luna would suddenly be able to understand Lisa much better without that translator.
"You sound better than you did five minutes ago." She said with a slight sigh of relief, forgetting to press the translate button on her phone.
Luna tilted his head to Lisa. "Ai try. Engrish words hard." He said with a hint of repeating himself.
Lisa nodded. Maybe Luna would get better over time without the tattoo, or maybe he was stuck that way? She wished she knew all the answers.
"Well," She said with a deep breath. "I'll just have to teach you so it's not as hard then. "Let us work on your future tenses. Repeat after me. I will not make deals with shady horses."
"Moro schuru after schuru? Ai wish ai had day off not deal with curses. Wai not have fun nao and later schuru, Risa?" Luna looked at Lisa with big kitten eyes, or at least as big as they could be with their still somewhat visible Asian appearance.
Lisa rolled her eyes. "Fine. Tomorrow after school first thing though, we are going to teach you not to deal with omnipotent horses."
