1.11: Courting DeathWhat the hell was she?A bouncer?A thug?A loli thug?A pint-sized Yakuza boss in training?

  Her attitude easily rivaled mine. And mine wasn’t exactly gentle on a good day. I’d spent years pretending to be tough whenever I was bitter about how people treated me… but pretending to be a Yakuza only made the rumors worse. All I accomplished was feeding the fire.

  I stood there, staring at her closed door, weighing my choices.

  Option 1: Go home, accept being a monster, lose my mind, lose myself.Option 2: Stay here… and get murdered by a tiny demon with a baseball bat.Option 3: Colpse dramatically at her doorstep and starve to death like a depressed raccoon.

  A fwless list of bad options. Truly inspirational.

  But I still needed answers. Information. Help. Anything.

  So I crept toward the door like it was a sleeping bear. Very carefully. Very quietly. If I made even one wrong move, she’d burst out again and smash my skull like a watermelon. My brain conjured a hundred little animations of the door flying open and her bat smming down in a single, perfect arc.

  Every simution I ran in my head ended the same way:FLAT-chan crushes me.Instant death. No respawn.

  I squeezed my hands together, trembling, and forced myself to look again at the faded metal pque on the door… the one she’d pointed at before assaulting me.

  “Sh-Shinohara Spiritual D-Detective Services…” I read out loud.

  Too loudly.

  I spped my hands to my helmet.

  Why am I reading this out loud?! I know where I am!

  I scanned around the door for more clues… and found a little handwritten sign taped nearby. It was crooked. And childish. And extremely ominous.

  It read:

  NO MALE SOLICITORS ARE WELCOME RIGHT NOW!

  Below the text were doodles. Horrifying doodles. Childish crayon drawings of male anatomy with big red Xs through them and fire underneath. A massacre on construction paper.

  My noh-eyes widened so much it felt like my entire mask stretched.

  I staggered back, hands raised like I needed to shield myself from its evil aura. That sign radiated enough hostility to be used as an ofuda to ward off unwanted spirits.

  This girl…She wasn’t just a loli dragon.She was an oni.

  And the sign’s message was clear:

  “Men will be sughtered on sight.”

  I swallowed hard, dread crawling up my spine.

  But time was ticking.Reiko’s st message echoed in my mind.If I didn’t act today, I would disappear.My self. My memories. Everything.

  I stared at the sign. I was alone. Cornered. Afraid.

  And somewhere deep in my gut… something hot bubbled up.

  Anger.

  A lifetime of being stepped on. Laughed at. Judged. Gossipped about. Stared at. Avoided. Abused by monsters and humans alike.

  The fme ignited.Roaring.Overturning the pot inside me.Heat surging up my ribs, into my throat, into my hands shaking at my sides.

  I snapped.

  Like my father once had.Only I had an even worse sense of self-control.

  “GRAAAAAAAAAARGH!” I roared, stomping on the floor. Jumping. Thrashing like an enraged goril. The sentai cape fluttered dramatically with every furious movement.

  Finally I hurled myself at the door, smming both fists onto it. When that didn’t work, I spun around and began ramming my armored butt into it like a man possessed.

  “PIMPLE-COVERED-GANGSTER-ONI-OGRE-DEMON-DRAGON-YOKAI-POOP-EATING CREATURE!” I shrieked.

  At the end of the tirade, genius struck me.

  “FLAT!”

  “FLAT-CHAN!”

  “FLAT-CHAAAAAN!!!”

  I devolved into screaming FLAAAAAAAAAT over and over.One unexpected perk of becoming a yokai was that I could scream indefinitely without needing to breathe.I had become an infinite shriek engine.

  I knew full well this would summon my doom.

  I was practically ringing the dinner bell for the apocalypse.

  And sure enough…

  The door exploded open.

  There she was.

  Bat in hand.

  Hair wild.

  Eyes bzing with the rage of a thousand cursed dolls.

  Her lip curled over her teeth as she growled like an ancient oni.

  She stepped forward.

  I froze mid-shriek.

  “...shit.” I squeaked.

  Relwing