Puppet Skin [OHSHC]

Chapter 10

"I went too far with my recruiting methods, huh?" Iiyo asked Umehito while they spent their lunch making cell phone charms—she was making a pumpkin jack-o-lantern, and he was making a ghost. After she said 'We aren't soul snatchers,' she saw scared faces and knew her speech went south.

"Yes, but at least we still have a few people willing to learn divination." It was probably less than if she had just left the last sentence out, but it was better than no one volunteering.

Surprisingly, the first to stand up to volunteer was her cooking partner, and after that, a few more girls and one boy stood up. Iiyo definitely would thank her when they met up at home economics.

"And who knows, maybe a few more would volunteer after a few days." They were both praying for it so they would be too busy teaching than to make the cutesy charms. Iiyo had been looking forward making cat, dog, rabbit, bat, and crow skull charms, but the president deemed it too creepy. She couldn't even make turnip jack-o-lantern—what was originally used before pumpkins—because no one would understand and the fear that it wouldn't sell. Iiyo silently vowed to get more members just so she could prove him wrong one year. Since it was already apparent that not a lot of people would want real talismans, Umehito and Iiyo agreed to start making them later.

By the time lunch ended, they had an array of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, cats which would be painted black when they dried, different kinds of candy, bats, little discs that were going to be red moons—the one thing the president allowed of her suggestions, with the silent insistence of Umehito by her side. Just thinking how their class president treated her ideas made her visibly annoyed.

. . . . .

"Oh, I didn't do it for you," Tsukishima Sayoko, Iiyo's cooking partner, stated, responding to Iiyo's thanks. "The only reason I did it was so I wouldn't get my hands dirty with clay—look at yours, your fingers, they're stuck in your nail beds—and so I wouldn't have to bake."

"Well, thank you anyway." They were making grilled shrimp today, and Iiyo was taking the heads off, peeling off the outer shells along with the legs, and deveining the shrimp, while Sayoko was putting them on skewers and onto a plate, waiting to be cooked. After a few more shrimps, Iiyo asked, "Why are you in this class if you don't like cooking. You seem to be good at it well enough."

Without any hesitation, Sayoko answered in a droll, "Because my parents are chefs, and because they want me to be just like them, but, really, I want to be a beautician. I want to own my own salon, paint someone's nails, fix hair, airbrush on make-up, I just want to do my own stuff."

Iiyo could very much relate.

By the end of the class, which ended early because someone was allergic to shellfish and developed a serious case of hives, Iiyo and Sayoko didn't dislike each other as much. They weren't friends per se, but they could tolerate each other. "So are we going to this demon-worshipping club of yours now?"

"For one, we don't worship any demons, and two, not yet. I have to go back to my writing class first. You can come with me if you want. Nekozawa-san will be rounding up the other volunteers so we'll be going to the club room ourselves anyway."

Sayoko shrugged and went with Iiyo, feeling it was better than being alone with the freakish president. She'd rather have Iiyo teaching the divination. "So, basically it's cards right? Tarot?"

"Yeah, tarot is one method, but there's also different kinds of scrying, I-Ching, you can tell someone's fortune with dice, dominoes, mahjong tiles, normal playing cards, runes, oghams, geomantric figures, there are oracle books, palm reading, face reading, basically almost anything can be a divination tool. Even a certain place where you itch can be considered a divination method."

Sayoko's eyes widened in disgust. "Really?"

Iiyo's face winced, and nodded, understanding the semi-grossness in having an itch a method of divination. "Because we don't have much time, we'll probably be doing simple readings, like with dice, dominoes or mahjong tiles—Nekozawa-san will be doing the more intricate readings."

"Not you?"

"I've only been reading about them, not actually learning how to use divination techniques, so I'm in the same boat as you mostly." They arrived at the classroom, empty except for the teacher because this was his break period. Iiyo reached into her bag and got out her small red journal that she fills with story ideas. "Sensei, I have the story idea for the Halloween contest. I decided to go for the children's book category."

"And let me guess. It has something to do with demons, witches, or black magic." Her teacher looked at her with a bored expression.

"No. It's about two girls with two different Halloween traditions. One goes trick-or-treating, and the other creates an altar and casts a spell—."

"Hold on. You just told me your story wouldn't be about witches or black magic."

"It's not. The little girl is pagan, and the spell is to thank the gods for the harvest, which isn't black magic." Iiyo fibbed a little, since the title of black magic was a label from outsiders, so from an outsider's point of view, it was black magic. "The point of the story is that the girls become friends despite their differences of tradition."

The teacher sighed. "I'm glad that, for once, this isn't a horror story, and that for once, you want to try something different and are going for a children's book, but spells, pagan? They're what you've been writing about since the beginning of the school year."

"Well, it's been a new interest of mine since the beginning of the school year." Iiyo hadn't meant to sound offensive, especially to a teacher, but she wasn't getting the point. Every story that she had turned in had seemed different. She wrote about monsters from the original lore—vampires that weren't always drop-dead gorgeous—or stories from the demon's point of view that showed not anger or trickery, but sympathy, or high school teenagers who fall into witchcraft. They seemed very different to her.

"All I'm asking is that you spread your wings a little. Try and stay away from the black magic stuff." He wasn't trying to stop her from writing, but he could see that Iiyo was getting upset from her narrowed eyes and her crooked jaw.

"So I can't turn my story in at all?"

"No, go ahead and do that. You're a good writer—very talented—it just gets routine when I know that you're going to turn in something that deals in the same circle you've been writing in."

Iiyo put on a smile, but it wasn't because she was happy. "I can enter in more than one category, right?"

"Yes, you can, and because you've been doing a wonderful job keeping within the ratings system and the genre, you don't have to show me your idea to sign off on. Surprise me."

Iiyo nodded and walked out of the classroom. Sayoko could see Iiyo was in a bad mood when her smile twisted into a scowl, so didn't say anything as they headed to the Black Magic Club, still early. When they arrived, Iiyo unlocked the door with the key Umehito gave her because he knew he would be later than usual, lit the candelabra and went inside. Until the last bell of the school day rang, she was writing down her ideas for her new story that she was going to surprise her teacher with.