Mermaid

Chapter 28

"Are you feeling any better Erika-chan?" Shigeru asked the next day when Erika had entered the large dining room, he sat there watching her with slight concern over his face.

"I'm fine." She said sitting across from him, but when he frowned at her she became slightly more honest with him. "Well, I'm kind of fine, I still don't know what to think of all this now that I know that I'm really a..."

"A mermaid?" he finished the rest of her sentence before moving to sit next to her. "Erika-chan, what you are going through right now in your life would be almost incomprehensible for a regular human being. But you have seen the signs about your body and such." He took out a comb and started combing her hair going off topic. "Your hair is a mess; you need to take better care of it."

"I... wait, why are you doing that?" She asked seeing how he changed topics from one thing to another so easily; it almost reminded her of Sherrie.

But then he pulled back, moving back to his original seat, Erika was about to ask why when the sliding doors opened, Alison and Takashi came into the room. "Erika!" Alison rushed over and nearly tackle hugged her friend to the floor, but thanks to Shigeru, who placed a hand against Erika's back, that didn't happen. Alison pulled away with a look of concern. "You're okay now right? You keep fainting on us so much a lot of us are going to start thinking you anemic or something."

Erika laughed slightly but then stopped when she noticed red marks peeking out from the collar of Alison's shirt. "Maybe you should be more worried about you're health Alison."

She looked at Erika with slight confusion. Knowing that her friend wasn't getting it Erika did a slight example with her own body, pointing to the center of her chest just a few inches above her cleavage. "Right here, there's a red spot showing slightly above the collar of your shirt, looks like a bug bite." But then Erika frowned when she saw Alison's reaction, her face was bright red, and turning a darker shade by the second. "What? Alison, you alright?"

"I... uh... Yeah, I'm totally fine, I'm A-Okay! Nothing to worry about!"

Erika just looked at her with a frown, although she needed to tell Alison about what she had found, it'd be a little difficult to do so with people listening in. How do you tell your best friend something extremely important without drawing attention to yourself? Both girls thought but for completely different reasons, Hisa then entered the room and without so much as acknowledging her grandson, she walked over to Erika and looked down at her with a narrowed gaze.

"You, come with me."

Something about the tone of voice that Hisa used felt unsettling, but then she knew that the old woman hated her because of what she was, which seemed rather unfair since she wasn't the one that caused what happened over a hundred years ago. With a mere nod Erika followed her with just a glance to Alison, telling her mentally not to worry and then followed her all the way to sacred ground once again. It was after her fit of crying that Erika learned through Shigeru that his family the Mikazuki had always hated mermaids since then, including his younger sister Chiyuki, hated them even to her death bed. She felt bad for Shigeru but these things were in the past and she knew what she was, even if she didn't like it.

"What is it?" Erika asked when Hisa said nothing. "If it's about me leaving, I have every full intention of doing so, now that I know the truth, so." She bowed her head to her. "Thank you for showing it to me."

"Don't thank me." the woman said causing Erika to go still. "What I did was not out of an act of kindness, it was to show you the true monster that you are. You may look human but your nothing but a thing, a monster in the guise of a human being, something that should have never been born on this earth."