I Fell In Love With A Girl Who Died Before I Was Even Born

Earlier Azuki said the cart would be "helpful."

Necessary would have been a more accurate description. I don't think she found a flavor of ice cream that the tanuki wouldn't try.

"Chocolate marshmallow fudge chunk? Yes! What's this? Pistachio? Oh, momma, don't you tease me, yes! Peanut butter and sugar cookie! Azuki, your time has come!"

I watched as the bottom of the cart began to bulge.

"Hey, Azuki," I said. "I get that you've just discovered your love for ice cream, but how are you going to pay for all of this."

Suddenly, she stopped and looked at me like I'd just kicked over her sandcastle.

"Pay?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Ryu-sama… the store wants me… to pay… for ice cream? You mean..."

Her eyes lined with tears.

"It's not, like, a gift for being alive?"

I shook my head sadly.

Beside me, Yuki sighed softly and lowered her head.

I expected Azuki to begin to empty the cart. I should have known better.

She doubled down.

She got up, on top of her pile of ice cream haphazardly tossed into the grey metal cart and began to preach, voice indignant about the absurdity of having to pay for something like ice cream.

"No!" she said loudly enough to get everyone in the frozen aisle's attention. "There's wrong, and then there's damn wrong! There's abysmal wrong! There's… there's… no cartoons on Saturday morning wrong, and I won't have it!"

I wanted to step away from the cart to distance myself between the tanuki tirade, but a small crowd was already beginning to gather around us.

Azuki pointed a finger at the freezer behind her. The Inari shrine drawing that Sorane created was still visible behind her.

"You know what's wrong with society today? I'll tell you what's wrong! We invent something as glorious as ice cream, sometimes lovingly wrapped in mochi, and then we're expected to pay for the privilege of eating it? I just want to know why? What's the point of pure, dairy-dessert created fun if you have to have an acceptable level of disposable income to even afford it! It's criminal I tell you! Not even a comic book villain would stoop so low!"

I couldn't believe it, but the crowd around her shouted in agreement.

"Yes!" some of the people yelled.

"Preach on!" someone in the front shouted.

NO, my brain screamed. Don't encourage her!

Then I heard someone yell from the front of the aisle.

"Look and behold! The tanuki has the holy symbol of Inari appearing in the frozen dessert freezer behind her! The gods have spoken! She is our messenger!"

I turned to see who would yell such an absurd thing, only to see Sorane herself, red hair framing her long, pointed face, as she pointed at Azuki.

The crowd around her gasped.

I heard Yuki giggle beside me.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Wow, Ryu, who would've thought a class field trip would turn into a gathering of the faithful on aisle five?"

I shook my head in disbelief.

"Not me, Yuki. Certainly, not me."

It was less than two minutes later that they began to hand out mochi ice cream balls as though they were communion.

"All hail our tanuki soft serve savior!" they hailed.

And suddenly I remembered something that hit me straight out of nowhere.

"Hey!" I yelled over the chanting mass.

Azuki turned and looked at me confused.

"You can shape-shift, you mischievous little tanuki!" I shouted. "You never needed me to hoist you into that cart at all!"

She looked like a cat with its paw caught in a goldfish bowl.

"Well, uh," she stammered. "Whoopsie."

The I heard Sorane from behind.

"He's been tricked by our tanuki queen of dairy!" she said darkly. "Cast him out!"

Suddenly, I didn't feel very safe with the crowd closing in on me.

Then Yuki flew in front of me, her arms extended like a barrier.

"If you want to get to my precious Ryu, you'll have to go through me first!" she said.

They walked straight through her because she was a ghost.

"Ryu, I'm sorry! I failed you!" she cried.

The look on her face was worse than anything the crowd could have done to me.

And just before they got to me, I felt a strong, steady hand on my shoulder.

Kurogane-sensei had come to save me.

"Ryu," she said. "I asked you to help. Now, please, explain to me how starting a dairy based cult in the freezer aisle is helpful in ANY way."

Then I felt her fingernails digging into my shoulder and realized that Kurogane-sensei had come here to condemn me.

Before I could say a word, she dragged me away from the crowd towards the front of the store.

I stood beside a pyramid of canned creamed corn next to Azuki and Hotaru, my two appointed guardians after Kurogane-sensei told me how "disappointed" she was that I wasn't more helpful.

I didn't care. I just wanted to leave at that point.

Outside, the bus waited patiently, like a hungry ogre waiting for a line of children to feed its empty belly.

But before any of us could leave what was left of the Piggly Wiggly, I heard Kurogane-sensei ask Fushineko-sensei a very important question.

"Mayumi," she began. "Have you seen Yugazumi-san?"

The nekomata's eyes flashed with intense anger. Apparently, she was ready to leave too.

"Nnnyyyaaaa, what?" Fushineko-sensei spat. "She's missing again?"

Her hair bristled, and for a moment I swore that she was about to hack up a hairball in front of the entire class.

Then I spoke up, still trying to be helpful in spite of the universe working against me.

"Last I saw her she was part of the crowd gathered around the freezer section in aisle five," I said.

Kurogane-sensei sighed deeply and rubbed her forehead.

"Great! Now she could be anywhere," she muttered.

Just then the Piggly Wiggly's PA system squealed to life and the store echoed with loud, static feedback.

"Uh… hello?" a breathy, dreamy voice asked. "Oh my gosh… is this thing on?"

I recognized it immediately. Sorane had found the store's microphone!

"Hey… I was once in a band with a Hungarian sound technician," she continued. "We had a Czech one too."

Hotaru snorted laughter.

"Is she doing one-liners?" Hotaru asked.

As if in answer, Sorane carried on, unabated, delivering lines in her breathless, dreamy, too-serious for the room delivery.

"I went to see the doctor, saying 'Help me doc, I think I'm a needle,' and he said, 'I see your point.'"

I groaned out loud. The jokes would've been bad delivered by a professional comedian. But with Sorane's soft-spoken Japanese deadpan delivery, they were torture.

"The doctor said 'Ma'am, may I numb your nipples.' Sure. And the doctor went 'num, num, num.'"

Azuki's face turned cherry red, and she grabbed her sides to stop from splitting in half with laughter. I thought she was going to fall over.

"Oh no!" she howled. "Sorane! NO! I told her that one!"

Fushineko-sensei covered her ears and made a grating feline whining noise.

"Mrreeeeoooow, those are just awful! Where's the PA system? Someone needs to shut it off!"

Hotaru stepped forward.

"It's normally in the manager's office," she suggested.

The nekomata raised a curious eyebrow.

"Then how come no one's shutting the mic off?"

Azuki gasped, and everyone turned to look at her.

"Oh boy," she said, nervously shifting from one foot to the other. "I think I might know why. He was, um, one of the people gathered in the frozen aisle. At first he was mad about me wanting free ice cream, but eventually he came around."

Wait. No.

"Hold up," I said, raising my hand. "The manager of this Piggly Wiggly was okay with you selling his store's ice cream because you made an impassioned speech?"

Azuki nodded.

"Yes, Ryu-sama," she said. "But not just any impassioned speech. It was an impassioned speech about ice cream."

She looked back at her cart.

"Speaking of which, you'd better pay for that. I don't think they're going to give it to me for free anymore since someone had to be a sour puss and break up my newly formed cult."

She crossed her arms and looks straight at me.

I didn't even want to argue anymore. Instead, I just pulled out my wallet and headed towards the checkout lane.