The morbid beginning of a peculiar relationship, part 2

Despite the pain, Shin felt physically stronger than he ever did in his life. Demonic power was filling his body.

He probably could kill a person with bare hands now.

With that thought, Shin opened the door of 'his' bedroom and raised his eyes at 'his' mother.

Two inhuman eyes with black whites and green pupils stared back at him from the face of an ordinary middle-aged woman. Her lips stretched into a toothless smile.

"Hamada-kun, you woke up already? I made you breakfast. Come, come!" the creature pretending to be Hamada's mother said and walked away.

Shin stared after it in shock.

Already! He barely got summoned, and he already met a monster! At least this was one of the less dangerous ones…

A skin-snatcher. This creature ate people from the inside and wore their skin, then searched for new prey. It was physically faster and stronger than any human, but cowardly. As soon as Shin didn't show it his back, it wouldn't dare to attack.

Shin wrote an entire story about a skin-snatcher eating its way through a class of high-schoolers. Was he a character of this story, then?

'What was that?' Tetsu asked. 'She didn't smell like a human. Not sweet at all, but spicy… Will we eat her?'

'Sure,' Shin thought, adjusting his plans.

He followed the skin-snatcher to the kitchen, where a plate with an English breakfast of eggs and toast was already laid out for him. The skin-snatcher stood behind the single chair, expectant.

"Hurry and eat, or you will be late, Hamada-kun!" it said.

Shin frowned. In his current state, he couldn't risk a face-to-face confrontation, and he couldn't sit in this chair. Then his back would be to the skin-snatcher.

He looked around the kitchen until his eyes fell on the salt shaker on the counter.

"Yeah, just let me put some salt on this," he said, watching the skin-snatcher's reaction.

The creature watched him with the same unnerving smile, but didn't act, too afraid to attack face to face or risk suspicion. It wasn't smart enough to realize how suspicious it was already.

Carefully turning his body to look at the skin-snatcher at all times, Shin reached the salt shaker and went to his seat.

Instead of setting down, he hid the salt-shaker from the skin-snatcher behind his side and unscrewed its lid. Then Shin threw its contents in the skin-snatcher's face.

"AHHHHHHHH!" the creature howled in pain as the salt hit its vulnerable insides, visible through the eyes and mouth. It rushed to the sink and turned the tap on to wash the salt off its face.

Salt was the biggest vulnerability of skin-snatchers—with their squishy insides, they feared it just like slugs and snails!

Shin dashed to the kitchen knives and grabbed the biggest one before stabbing it in the skin-snatcher's back.

Instead of blood, black sludge poured out. The skin-snatcher shrieked again and turned towards Shin. Its disguise broke at its seams and sharp claws poked out of the tips of female fingers. It flailed its hand blindly, hitting Shin's shoulder.

He fell to the ground, but barely felt any pain. Without standing up, Shin swung his knife where he could reach: at the skin-snatcher's legs, then its shoulders, and finally, its face. He stabbed and stabbed, until the stolen skin became unrecognizable, and he wouldn't have stopped if he didn't feel a pair of hands on his wrists.

'Shhhhh,' Tetsu crooned. 'She will nourish us better alive, my friend. You did a great job—I will take it from here.'

The hands that stopped Shin came from his own elbows. He watched them in mild shock, panting as he sat on his knees. Shin absentmindedly hoped there was no one else in the house.

Slowly, the demon crawled fully out of Shin's body. There was no discomfort from the action, like Tetsu was incorporeal, but its footsteps were solid and heavy. Its bloody figure blurred in front of Shin's eyes.

The demon kneeled next to the dying skin-snatcher and reached for it with clawed hands.

Morbidly fascinated, Shin watched as it ate the monster's flesh, ignoring old skin and humming in pleasure. He felt the demon's aches lessening and saw the wounds in its body healing rapidly.

In half an hour, there was nothing left from the snatcher except for its skin, and Shin with Tetsu felt much better. By then, Shin got a grip on himself and went to wait for her on a kitchen chair.

Finally, with one last lick of its lips, the demon straightened up and stretched.

Because of all the black and red blood covering it, it was still hard to make out its features, but it looked much more humanoid now. Slender and elegant.

"Thank you very much, Shin," Tetsu said, grinning at him with a pair of full cherry-red lips. "I feel sooo much better! Just gotta get rid of all this dirt."

The surface of its skin rippled, shedding the dirt together with a layer of scales which covered the ground like morbid confetti. Underneath them was shiny metallic chitin and a figure that was absolutely, distinctly feminine.

Shin did a double take.

Tetsu, who now looked like a tall, big-chested woman with an hourglass figure, smiled sultrily at him. Most of the demon's body was covered in armor that fit her like a second skin—she was one step away from being naked. Long white hair fell down her shoulders, and a large helmet with several horns covered the upper half of her face, hiding her eyes.

"Do you like this, partner?" Tetsu purred, walking up to Shin and leaning close. The movement put her chest even almost into his face. She grinned, showing two rows of pearl-white sharp teeth. "You look just as hungry as I am. Does that mean I did a good job?"

Shin swallowed the lump in his throat and turned away, ignoring Tetsu's palpable disappointment. This wasn't a part of his stories! Tetsu wasn't supposed to look like this!

But demons COULD change their looks if they wanted to, and… did that mean Tetsu changed her looks for his sake?

No, Shin was NOT going to even think about this entire thing.

He coughed and focused on other things. Survival, information, rules.

"First, don't go out of my body where other people could see, unless we are in danger, Tetsu. Second… Yes, let's go. We should go to the school and find out if there's anything else going on."

Half of Shin's stories started because of a rumor or a story spread by bored schoolgirls. They could know something about the Fourth God's ascension. And school toilets were good places for murder.