Midas Journal 17

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Entry: May 2

I can't say for sure if I'm in love with Brie because, well, I don't really know for sure what that's like. But I'm definitely infatuated with her, or something like that. This morning I would be thinking about something else and suddenly I'd imagine her face in front of me or think about what that hug and kiss yesterday felt like, and I'd have to shake my head to snap myself out of it.

That doesn't really have anything to do with what this entry is about but it happened again when I was trying to think about where to start writing this. I guess it doesn't matter how coherent this is since nobody's supposed to be reading it anyway. I mean, other than the Kayla who wrote in here before, but we're both kind of the same person to some extent. Also, she hasn't said anything in forever and I'm starting to wonder whether we even still have the same file, or if something else got changed somehow? If you're there, edit something in maybe.

Anyway.

I walked over to the ice cream shop after lunch and waited out front for a few minutes, looking around and trying not to think about Brie again. After a while, someone walked up who I only sort of recognized. He looked like Aden, except he was blonde and a little shorter and had fox ears and a fox tail. “Hey!” he said, walking up to me, grinning and acting like I knew him. “Hiya Kael, been a couple days, right?”

I slowly realized who I was probably talking to. “..Adena? You, uh, found a way to turn back into a guy?”
“Well...I wouldn't say back exactly,” he said. “I mean look, I'm still a blond kitsune. Also this form is, like, really temporary. But this is what I wanted to show you!” He twirled around, showing off how definitely-like-a-guy he looked. “Isn't this cool?”
“Yeah. Uh. It's pretty cool.”

He frowned, putting his hands on his hips, and I realized that his stance and the way he was expressing himself was actually still really feminine. “Aww come on, this was really hard to figure out! You could at least pretend to be impressed.”

“Look,” I said, “The fact is that someone being to change into an almost unrecognizable other person is pretty cool, but my own recent experience has made it a lot harder for me to appreciate. It's cool, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” he said. His hair started to grow longer, and he pulled on one of the bangs with another frown. “Oh, dang it. Just stay for another minute..!” He closed his eyes, apparently concentrating fairly hard, and his hair stopped growing. “So I also have a slight problem. A really..ngh..interesting problem.” His body shape had started trying to change back slightly. “I'm sure you can tell this is kind of hard to keep up. I'm trying to practice with it, but I'm just not all that skilled or powerful with transformation. This is my first..mrngh,” He crossed his arms like he was attempting to physically hold his body's shape together. “Like, the first thing I've tried to turn into that isn't really basic stuff like disappearing my fuzzy bits.” His voice was higher in pitch now.

“So, that's a problem?” I asked. “Uh, you can just go on and change back if you want.”

“No, no, I want to explain this while I'm a guy,” he said. “So, yesterday I was practicing this form out in public, seeing how well I could act like a guy, and I noticed this cute neko girl. Well, like, actually I've seen her around school before. You know who Rhia is?”
“..Yes.” I wondered if I should tell him she'd been a guy at some point. “So you noticed her?”
“Well, I noticed that, because I was a guy at the time, I noticed she is really cute.” His body reshaped itself and his hair grew out a little more, and he paused to put his hands together, close his eyes, and make it stop again. “I mean, like, a ten. Right?” His voice and body were completely androgynous by now. “So, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could act enough like a real guy to convincingly ask her out. And I went and did that. And she said..ugh, whatever.” He visibly let go of what he'd been splitting his concentration with besides the talking, and immediately changed all the way back to Adena in similar clothes.

“So, guess what she said?”
I remembered her speech earlier about answering 'guess what' questions. “Since you just told me it was a problem, I'm guessing she said yes.”
“Uh-huh! So now I really need to get good at this. But it's really tiring. You wanna get an ice cream?”
“I thought that was why you wanted to meet here in the first place,” I said, and led the way in.

Once we had the ice cream, we sat down in a booth to resume the conversation. “So, part of the problem is like I said I'm not used to doing this kind of magic yet,” she said, “so I have to use up a leaf every time I change forms.”
“Er..is it okay to talk about magic stuff in public like this?” I said quietly.

“Pssh, it's fine.” She leaned forward and spoke just as quietly, “everyone just assumes you're talking about some video game or comic book or show or whatever. It's so easy to get away with it in this day and age, it's not even funny. Anyway,” she leaned back again, “so I have a pocket full of leaves right now which would be a little hard to explain. And even after I use a leaf as a catalyst, I have to spend so much concentration to stay transformed I can barely even walk straight, let alone carry on a whole conversation. The leaf helps me stay in that form for like five minutes before my body starts wanting to go back. Plus concentrating that hard and using magic is exhausting and makes me really hungry after.”

Adena dug into her ice cream. “So,” I said, “do you want me to, help with this?” She looked about ready to spit some of it out, but opted to chew and swallow instead.

“No! No way. I know you have crazy powers and could probably do that, but that didn't even cross my mind 'till now. Nah, I want to earn this. If I can pull off having an entire date with this girl never finding out I'm really a girl too, it'd be a grand deception! It might be enough to earn me a third tail! And if I fail, the look on her face will be hilarious, too.”

“Back up, I thought you only had one tail,” I said.

“Nope, it's two. But most kitsune just leave one tail out at a time so nobody has a clue how powerful we really are. Each new tail multiplies the amount of power a kitsune has, I should mention, in addition to being a reward for being good at fooling people, using magic, or preferably both at once. They're like a status symbol and a power booster all in one.”

“So, uh, why did you want to talk to me specifically about this?” I said, curious.

“Well, I wanted to vent to somebody who probably wouldn't tell anyone else. I mean, you seem like you're pretty good at keeping your own secrets from people who don't already know about it, so I know you can keep mine, too. Anyway...we're friends, right? I mean, I didn't stop being your friend just because I grew boobs and a tail, did I? I feel like we haven't talked, like just the two of us, in forever.”

“Oh. Y-you're right,” I said, feeling a little ashamed of myself. “I guess I've just been busy lately, trying to figure my own stuff out. It..well, to be honest it doesn't help that after I specifically tried to get to know you better because you were someone I thought I wouldn't accidentally change, it happened anyway. I mean, I know you're happy about it, but I'm still, trying to figure out whether or not I'm hurting people.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. “I dunno what I'd do with a power like yours. Probably wouldn't be anywhere near as responsible with it. It's probably a good thing I won't have any really ridiculous powers for like a century, for the sake of a looot of people I've met or will meet in that time. So what exactly have you been doing to figure it out, huh?”

“Well, uh,” I tried to mentally skip over Adena implying that not only would she be alive for a century, but it would be a relatively small part of her lifespan. “I got in contact with a powerful witch, who gave me some advice on how to figure out what's going on. I've talked to Lue some about it. Um..I also talked to someone else about it, who volunteered to help me find out what's going by changing for a week and then going back.”

“Oh, who's this someone else?” said Adena, grinning mischievously. “Your heart skipped a beat when you started talking about them~.”

“W-well, I guess you'd know them as Brie now? A friend of Lue's I met as a guy named Brian. Uh..we're kinda, going on a date Monday night.”

“Ohh, Brie?” she said with a look of recognition. “She's a super cutie, congrats. Not that I know her personally, but yeah I've seen her around.”

“Wait, what are you congratulating me on? I mean, it was basically her idea after, um, changing,” I said.

“Hmm..I dunno. It seems like a natural thing to tell someone who's scored a date? Besides that, I guess I assumed you had something to do with her looks, or at least your power was responsible for them?”
“I'm not sure if I consider that to be something I did or not,” I said. “I mean, I kinda hope it isn't because it means I'm kinda imposing my idea of what looks good on other people..”

“Hmph. Well I like the way I look, and I bet she likes the way she looks too, right?”

“I...didn't...exactly ask, but it seems like it. But I'm not sure if I did that either. This is part of why I want to figure this stuff out.”

“Hmm.” Adena took a few more big bites of her ice cream. “It really sounds like you're overthinking it. If everybody's happy, is there really a problem?”

“Well...”

She leaned forward a bit. “The kitsune philosophy, Kael, is that all's well that ends well. So even if your deception makes a few people upset along the way, if there's a happy ending you can still feel good about it. I mean, y'know, as long as nobody gets killed or whatever. I think you'd really be a lot less stressed if you adopted something similar.”

“That's, fine, I guess,” I said, “but the problem is I'm not sure if I've 'or whatevered' people at this point. Like, caused people to stop existing and get replaced by other people, which feels a little to me like killing.”

“Pfft. If being made different is the same thing as killing, then I died every time I learned something new in school this past week. Heck, I died when I figured out how to change into a guy, because before that I didn't know that thing, and afterward I did.”

“But those aren't, those are like normal, small differences,” I said.

“Well, how different is different enough to worry about? What if I learned seventeen things at once? Or two thousand? What if I suddenly forgot how to brush my teeth tomorrow morning? That process is complex enough to count as tons of different individual things, right?”

“I..guess so.” I didn't really agree with her point, but I couldn't think of any way to deny what she was saying, either.

The rest of our conversation wasn't about magic stuff, so I don't feel like repeating it here. I've realized it's still nice to hang out with her, the same way it was with Aden before. We wished each other luck on the coming dates (hers is on Tuesday) and she made me promise to tell her how mine went before we left.

Heya! I'm still around. I've been really busy lately so I sorta just caught up. But hey, it looks to me like you're doing just fine! It's May 3 where I am so I guess you're not reading right now, but I'm A-OK around here! I thought I'd just put this in at the end so you can see it easier. Good luck on your date Kael, Brie sounds like a real keeper ;)