A Fox's Maid (6 page)

Chapter 2

Mall Time Troubles

Half-an-hour after leaving the ice cream parlor Lindsay and her soccer friends, along with Kevin, Lilian and Eric, met up with Justin, Alex and Andrew.

Several minutes after that, they ran into Christine.

“
Let go of him! Can’t you see that Kevin doesn’t like you yanking on him like that?!”

“
Me? Ha! You’re the one who’s pulling his arm off, ya damn vixen! You let go!”

“
You first!”

Standing on the sidelines of what looked to be an epic argument between a certain fox-girl and a snow maiden, Eric, Lindsay, Alex, Andrew, Justin and the rest of Lindsay’s soccer team all watched the ensuing conflict with their best “I have no idea how this happened” faces.

“
Wow, those two really don’t want each other to have Kevin,” Katy, one of Lindsay’s soccer teammates, said, her eyes riveted on the battle.

Lindsay watched the tug-of-war between Lilian and Christine—who had appeared a few minutes after they’d left the ice cream parlor—worrying for her friend caught in the middle of this fiendish struggle. Kevin wasn’t looking too good, what with the eyes rolled up in the back of his head and the arm yanking and everything.

“
Do you think we should stop them, Eric…” Lindsay trailed off, her expression deadpanning when she saw Eric viciously biting his T-shirt and glaring daggers at his best friend.

“
Damn that Kevin!” he grumbled, though, because his mouth was full of shirt, it sounded more like “mam ma Feffin!” Lindsay did her best to translate the boy’s unusual tirade. “Foof Af Fim, fanfing fere wif fose fomen fifing ofer him! Fuffy Bafard! Fam fu, Fefin Sfif!”

Somehow, Lindsay actually managed to translate the string of unintelligible mutterings: “look at him, standing there while those women fight over him! Lucky bastard! Damn you, Kevin Swift!” At least, that was what she thought he was saying. It wasn’t like she had ever listened to someone speak while they were gnawing on their shirt.

Standing to Eric’s left, Alex and Andrew were also discussing the dilemma of Kevin, whose arms looked like they might tear at the seams if they were pulled any harder.

“
I am feeling this strange combination of envy and sympathy for our friend.” Alex’s frown expressed his conflicting feelings quite accurately. “Is that natural?”

Andrew took a good, long look at Kevin. The blond teen’s limp body dangled between the two girls as they yanked with all their might. Each time one of them pulled him toward them, Kevin’s head would flop around like a wet noodle, making him look more like a ragdoll than a human. Neither of the girls fighting over him seemed to notice that he was already unconscious.

“
I am not sure. I certainly do not believe feeling pity and envy for one person at the same time is natural, and yet, I cannot help but share your sentiments. I am unsure as to whether I envy him or feel sorry for him.”

“…
Cat… fox?… cold…”

Everyone within Justin’s generally vicinity stared at the boy very, very oddly.

Lindsay turned back to the tug-of-war, frowning.

“
I’m still not even sure how this happened,” she mused. Should she stop those two before they hurt Kevin even more? She wanted to, but…

“
That,” Andrew started, also turning back to the
War of the Kevin,
“
Is something I believe the rest of us would like to know as well.”

His words were met by several nods all around, as it seemed everyone wanted to know the exact same thing. Lindsay tried recalling the events that had led to this moment.

***

Not long after Eric joined the group, they met up with Kevin’s other friends. The twins joined their expanding party first, having met them just as they were leaving the ice cream parlor. Justin was the third person to join them after he saw the group coming out of a sweet shop with several bags of candy.

With the group having expanded, they all decided to travel to the arcade. None of the girls were big on arcade games, but that didn’t mean they weren’t into earning tickets to win prizes. Some of the stuffed animals at the ticket booth were just too adorable.

While on their way to the arcade, they ran into Christine. The yuki-onna dressed in gothic lolita fashion had been coming out of a store that sold, well, gothic stuff, just as the large troupe walked past her. It didn’t take the girl much effort to spot Kevin within the group. It also didn’t take very long for her face to turn a lovely shade of “beach-ball blue” as she remembered her dream that morning.

“
YOU!”

The entire group halted in their tracks, turned, and watched as Christine stomped over to Kevin with a face that could outshine a star.

Kevin blinked several times as the snow maiden marched up to him with DOOM in her eyes, or embarrassment—no one present could be sure. With
tsunderes
, those two things tended to go hand in hand.

“
Eh? Christine?”

Kevin was about to smile at his friend and give her a proper greeting when he noticed something unusual about the girl.

“
Hey, are you feeling okay? Your face is all, um, blue.”

“
You… you… you…!”

Christine’s face became, surprisingly enough, even bluer than before, shifting from an icy hue to a deeper ocean blue. The temperature around her also began dropping at an astonishing rate, causing several girls to cry out when they were suddenly struck by icy winds and hoarfrost that froze their skirts solid.

“
My Gothic Hottie!”

Eric, completely oblivious to the mood, as well as Christine’s embarrassment-induced rage, rushed toward the pretty girl with snow-white skin. His hands, already extended, made creepy grasping motions that had all of the girls shivering in disgust and fear, or maybe they were still shivering from the cold. Perhaps a combination of both? Kevin wasn’t sure.

“
Oh, how I’ve missed those tiny titties of yours! Please give me the honor of squeezing―guh!”

Several globules of saliva flew from Eric’s mouth as Christine embedded her fist into his gut, driving the wind from his lungs in one fell swoop. As the perverted young man fell to the floor and curled up in a fetal position, gasping in agonic asphyxia, the pale-skinned girl stared down at the new target of her anger and embarrassment.

Tsundere protocols: activated.

“
DIE!”

“
GYYAAAA!”

“
YOU DISGUSTING, LECHEROUS PIECE OF SHIT!”

“
GAAAA!”

“
DIE! DIE! DIE!”

“
MOMMY!”

“
What’s this girl’s malfunction?” Lindsay leaned over and cupped a hand to her mouth, whispering into Lilian’s ear.

“
That girl’s a
tsundere
,” was Lilian’s very succinct answer. She didn’t seem to care if Christine heard her or not.

“
Tsundere
?” Lindsay blinked, then again for good measure. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“
Um.” Lilian decided to educate her new friend, pulling out her handy-dandy book, “TvTropes for Dummies,” and flipping through the pages. “Let’s see, there’s…
yandere
, nope.
Dandere
? Nope.
Kuudere
. Uh uh.
Himedere
? Um, that’s not it either…”

Lindsay watched the redhead flip through the pages of her book, then turned to look at Kevin. “What is she doing?”

“
Don’t worry,” he reassured her, “this is just a part of her character concept.”

“
Her what?”

“…
Never mind.”

“
Ah-ha! Found it!” Lilian cried out triumphantly. Coughing into her hand, the redhead adopted a lecture pose, her left arm bending at the elbow to support her right arm, the hand of which held the book up to her face. She then began to read.
“
The Japanese term
tsundere
refers to a character who alternates between two distinct moods:
tsun-tsun
which refers to someone who acts cold and irritable, and
dere-dere
, which is when someone acts demure and shy.”

Lindsay didn’t get it. “Um, what?”

“
This term was first used to describe characters who had a cold and sometimes even harsh personality, but over the course of a story would reveal a soft and vulnerable side. In recent years, this character archetype has become flanderized, and now people generally associate it with characters who flip between these two emotional extremes at the slightest provocation.”

“
I am so lost,” Lindsay muttered.

“
Don’t worry,” Kevin reassured her again, “you’ll get used to it.”

For some reason, his words made Lindsay groan.

Lilian ignored them and continued. “The character’s
tsun-tsun
side can range from giving their crush ‘the silent treatment’ to ‘shoving their face in a blender while shouting obscenities and threatening with murder.’ Anime enthusiasts have theorized why a
tsundere’s
behavior can vary so wildly. Most generally agree that the reason has to do with the conflicting feelings of affection they have toward a love interest, and their reaction to having those feelings in the first place.”

“
Uh…”

“
Basically—” Lilian snapped the book shut and put it back into her Extra Dimensional Storage Space— “
Tsunderes
are people who have a tendency to act really bitchy and cold, but are actually really nice people on the inside.”

“
I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL MURDER YOU DEAD!”

“
OH, GOD NOOOOO!!”

“…
Most of the time.”

Lindsay looked at the gorgeous redhead for a moment longer, before deciding to ignore everything Lilian had just said. She didn’t even want to consider what this girl was talking about.
Tsun-tsun
?
Dere-dere
?
Tsunderes
? Count her out. She had no interest in that Japanese stuff Kevin and his friends obsessed over.

Instead, she looked over to where Christine was laying waste to one of the boys in their group… only to wince when she saw the pale-skinned female stomp on Eric’s better-left-unmentioned male anatomy. The squeal that followed, reminiscent of a pig being gutted, nearly made Lindsay reach down to protect her own non-existent gonads. That had to hurt.

Lilian adopted a thoughtful mien. Her left hand rose to cup her chin, while her right hand held her left arm aloft at the elbow and her hips cocked at an angle.

“
Although, considering she’s beating on Eric and not Kevin, I wonder if this girl is a true
tsundere
or just a really, really violent girl.”

“
Ugh, whatever,” Lindsay grimaced. “A-anyway, don’t you think we should stop her before she kills him?”

“
I don’t see why,” Lilian replied, gazing at the scene with an expression of apathy. “While he did not do anything extremely perverse today, I am sure he did something to deserve this. It’s probably karma.”

“
DIE INGRATE!”

“
SOMEONE, HELP ME! JESUS? ALLAH? KAMI?”

Looking at the violence taking place several yards away, Lindsay considered the salacious teen as he screamed for help, then slowly nodded her head.

“
Yeah… I think you might be right.”

Lindsay had to wonder why neither she nor any of the people present were bothered by the violence being committed in front of them. It might have had something to do with the recipient of said violence.

Eric Corrompere was a well-known peeping Tom. Every girl knew of his unabashed licentiousness. They also knew that, if given the opportunity, he would peep on them without a second’s hesitation. His lecherous actions were so bad that all of the older high school girls warned the freshmen about him and had even put several contingency plans in place to deal with Eric, in the event that they discovered him doing something that put their virtue in jeopardy.

Kevin Swift also watched the massacre taking place. He knew that he should feel bad for his friend, but for some reason, he didn’t. It was probably because of that strange feeling he had seconds before Eric tried pouncing on Christine. He didn’t really understand, but it felt like he had just barely dodged the bullet.

Justin just stared at Eric with unusually round eyes. He was not one for showing emotion often, but, when he did display something other than boredom, it was only under the most dire or perplexing of circumstances.

He turned to look at his friends, his normally half-lidded, apathetic eyes were somewhat wider than normal. “… help…?”