Sun Linghua waved and sprinted toward Kyūri and his students with uncanny speed and grace. Still holding hands with Linghua, Nariko flapped in the breeze behind her. The little kappa girl cheered excitedly, even as her head water flew out into the grass.
"BACK!!!" Linghua chortled as she reached the others. "Nice dorm ya got there. Bit spartan, though, but that's sorta cool in a Zen way, right?" She then glanced down at the limp, paralyzed kappa child clutching her simian hand. "Oops. Sorry about the kid. Forgot you kappas can't spill that stuff you keep in your heads. Where I come from, the only thing you need to keep in your head is your brains." Linghua giggled a little at her joke.
Kyūri casually refilled Nariko's sara from a bucket he kept for these kinds of kappa emergencies. "Perfectly alright," he croaked. "She has accidents like this all the time. Curious and hyperactive girl, you see."
"My kind of kappa!" Linghua grinned. "She'd have made a good hóu yaoguai."
"Say sarugami, you snooty gaijin!" Shizuka hissed. "You're in Japan now, not China!"
"Do not forget your hospitality, Shizuka-san!" Kyūri growled. "I know recipes for weight loss food as well, you know! I could shrink your plump form into a willowy twig if I wanted to! And that's assuming I don't chop your dick off with the meat cleaver and serve it as sausage!"
Shizuka slipped to the back of the crowd, grumbling to hirself. Ellie shuddered at the thought of magical weight loss food. Shi made a not to never get on Kyūri-sensei's bad side.
"Thanks, Kyūri," Linghua smiled gratefully. She then turned to the jonokuchi. "Hey, I just had a brainwave! You rikishi are allowed free time to get out of the heya and explore, right?"
"Some," Beck nodded.
"Well, I'd like to treat you tomorrow to mark my arrival," Linghua beamed. "How would you jonokuchi me to take you to Kyoto Concert Hall to see Koneko Mikazuki."
"The famous J-pop idol?!" Misaki gasped.
"The same!" Linghua chuckled. "Figured she's make for an appropriate outing, seeing how she's a yōkai and all."
"Koneko Mikazuki is a yōkai?!" Misaki gasped. "But I've been a fan of hers since I was still a human!"
"That's the thing about nekomimi," Linghua explained. "Japan's celebrated catgirls and catboys live among humans in plain sight. They can use magic to hide their kitty-cat ears and tails, you see."
"Disgusting half-breeds..." Shizuka grumbled from the shade of the cherry tree shi was sulking under. "They're the shame of the bakeneko!"
"What does shi mean?" asked Misaki.
"Nekomimi are a bit of a new yōkai breed," Haia explained to the newer student. "They were first sighted in the 1920s and acknowledged by magizoologists as a confirmed species in the 1930s. They're believed to be the fruit of interbreeding (consensual or otherwise) between humans and bakeneko. Their population's exploded since. They breed like rabbits... with humans, bakeneko, and other nekomimi alike."
"And they LIVE among the humans!" Shizuka spat. "They live in their cities, ride on their trains, go to their schools and buy from their shops! Disgraceful!"
"Don't knock it, Shizuka-san," Natsuki said. "A lot of nekomimi become famous actresses, models, and idol singers in the human world. There's some seriously rich nekomimi in Tokyo."
"Yeah, you're just jealous," Yoshino smirked, quickly tucking hir tanuki ballsack back into hir loincloth as it spilled out.
"I just hate to see the bakeneko bloodline being polluted by intermingling with the blood of our ancestors' tormentors!" Shizuka snarled, baring hir sharp teeth.
Linghua waved her staff in the air for attention. "Hey, no fighting! This is supposed to be fun! You're not even coming, Shizuka. You're a sandanme like Haia, Yoshino, and Natsuki, not a jonokuchi. This trip's for them so they can have a little relief from adjusting to old Kyūri's hardass training regimen and chores routine."
Kyūri crossed his blubbery arms at that remark and muttered something under his breath about letting a female other than Nariko into the heya being a mistake... especially a Chinese one.
Linghua hopped onto a bucked and raised her arms. "So, who's in?! Who wants to see Koneko Mikazuki in concert?!"
All the jonokuchi cheered.