As we drove home my father queried me about what happened and I answered him honestly about how I’d run into Damian and had been trying to comfort him when Biff and Steve had come over to harass him, and how I’d stood up for him, been attacked and then when we ran had been chased.
“Good lad,” my father nodded proudly. Although he didn’t like the idea of me getting into fights, he was proud that I’d stood up for another person; he’d brought me up with the philosophy of ‘don’t throw the first punch, but make sure you throw the second’. After that discussion turned to what I knew about being a kemoman and I repeated everything I could recall Rin-kun telling me. My father nodded along and when I’d finished said “I wish I could offer a treatment for the pheremones, but everything my lab has tried has failed to pan out. Of course finding kemoman to test treatments and therapies on is difficult, what with you being so rare. Plus, as far as we can tell differences between male and female kemoman mean they’ll require different ones.”
“That’s okay dad,” I replied with a shrug, “I’m sure I’ll cope. Especially with Hadashi-Sensei to mentor me.”
“Like I said, it’s a good thing Rin’s your teacher. And I’m glad the two of you already get along so well.”
I nodded and replied “And I’m glad you’re on such friendly terms with him. That should make things easier.”
“Oh? What things?”
“Well...um before you and mom showed up he was telling me about how the whole pheremones thing works and how they have a different effect on kemoman to kemonomimi,” I swallowed “He said they’d make me and him consider the other to be like a brother and I kinda think that’s already starting to happen.”
My father chuckled, sounding pleased at that. A short time later we arrived home. Despite my protests, my father insisted helping me out of the car and into the house, carrying my things for me. While he went to make me a cup of his signature tea and a snack, I headed upstairs to my room and sat on my bed, propped up with some pillows. It wasn’t even lunch time and already a lot had happened today.
I pulled out my phone and smiled at the sight of a text from Karyn saying the incident was all over school and asking if I was alright. I texted back saying I had a big bombshell I wanted to talk with her about in person and asked for her to come round after school.
I spent the remainder of the day in bed, my father staying home to fetch me drinks and snacks and make sure I obeyed doctor’s orders concerning resting up. Around lunch my mother rang to say she was back in the office and to fill us in about what had gone down. She sounded furious at how limpwristed the school was being and had arranged a meeting with one of the lawyers in her office for later this afternoon to discuss how to go forwards with things. After that the afternoon dragged on but I was reluctant to use the stone before I’d had chance to fill Karyn in on everything, so found other things to occupy myself.
Eventually I heard the doorbell go and my father answer it. After a brief muffled conversation I heard my father call up “Jon you have a visitor.” and a few seconds later there was a knock at my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I called, and the door swung open to reveal...
