Having a secret partner-in-crime was awesome. Kizawa and I were inseparable. We trained, we did homework, we talked about everything. For the first time, I didn't feel like a ticking time bomb, just a girl with a really weird, really powerful secret. And Kizawa didn't think it was weird at all. He thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
"Maybe you're a descendant of a sun goddess!" he'd suggested one day, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
"Or maybe I just have really weird static electricity," I'd shot back, laughing.
It felt good to joke about it. But the laughter always died when I got home. My grandparents' wary gazes had intensified. They'd follow my every move, their faces etched with a tension so thick you could cut it with one of Kizawa's bokken.
The breaking point came when I invited Kizawa over for dinner. It seemed like a normal thing to do. My parents were thrilled to finally meet the boy I never shut up about. Dad was already planning his embarrassing dad jokes, and Mom had made my favorite curry.
But my grandparents… they were a different story.
The moment Kizawa stepped through the door, a chill descended upon the room. Grandma, who was setting the table, dropped a pair of chopsticks. Grandpa, who had been reading in his armchair, stiffened, his newspaper crinkling in his tight grip.
"Mizuki, who is this?" Grandpa asked, his voice low and strained.
"This is my friend, Kizawa," I said cheerfully, ignoring the sudden iciness. "Kizawa, these are my grandparents."
Kizawa gave a polite bow. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
They just stared. They looked at his blue hair, his calm violet eyes, and a flicker of something-recognition? Fear? Hostility?-passed between them.
My parents, sensing the awkwardness, quickly swooped in. "Welcome, Kizawa! We're so happy to have you," Mom said, her smile bright but a little forced.
Dinner was excruciating. Dad tried his best to keep the conversation light, but my grandparents' stony silence was a black hole, sucking all the warmth out of the room. They barely touched their food, their eyes darting between me and Kizawa. Kizawa, to his credit, handled it with quiet grace, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. I was mortified.
As soon as we finished eating, I practically dragged Kizawa outside to look at the moon.
"I'm so sorry," I mumbled, my face burning with shame. "I don't know what's wrong with them."
"It's okay," he said, though he couldn't quite meet my eyes. "Your grandparents… they looked at me like they knew me."
"Knew you? How?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. But it wasn't a friendly look."
He left soon after, and the house felt heavy and suffocating. That night, I couldn't sleep. The memory of my grandparents' faces kept replaying in my mind. Around midnight, I heard voices from downstairs. My grandparents.
I tiptoed to the top of the stairs, my heart pounding.
"...can't believe she brought him here," Grandma was whispering, her voice sharp with panic. "A Kizawa. Of all people. Does she know?"
"Of course not," Grandpa's voice rumbled. "But his presence could accelerate things. The seal is already weakening. I can feel it."
Seal? Kizawa? What were they talking about?
"Her power is growing," Grandma continued. "That incident at the park… it was a massive flare. It's drawing them closer. We should have told her parents the truth from the beginning."
"And what truth is that?" Grandpa scoffed, his voice bitter. "That our family is cursed? That our granddaughter is the vessel for a power that could destroy her? That the demon that slaughtered our clan is still hunting for her? It would have done nothing but terrify them."
Demon? Cursed? My blood ran cold. I pressed my ear against the door, desperate to hear more.
"But what do we do?" Grandma's voice was trembling. "Tonight, the barrier around the house feels… thin. Strained."
Suddenly, there was a sound from outside. A low, guttural snarl that made the hair on my arms stand up. It was a sound that didn't belong to any animal I had ever heard. It was wrong, unnatural.
Downstairs, my grandparents fell silent. I heard the scrape of a chair, then my dad's voice, low and urgent. "What was that?"
"Stay here with Mizuki's mother," Grandpa commanded, his voice no longer frail but hard as steel.
I peeked through the banister and saw my father rushing to the living room window. He looked out into our meticulously kept garden, and his face went pale. Then, my mom was beside him. And the look on her face wasn't fear. It was a grim, focused fury I had never seen before.
"It found us," she whispered.
My dad nodded, his joking demeanor gone, replaced by a stone-cold warrior. "Get Mizuki. Go to the safe room. I'll hold it off."
"Like hell you will," Mom shot back, and to my utter shock, she slid a panel on the wall, revealing a hidden compartment. From it, she pulled out two gleaming, crescent-shaped blades. Dad, meanwhile, retrieved a long spear from behind a scroll painting.
My parents? My goofy, fun-loving parents were secret weapon-wielding badasses? My nine-year-old brain couldn't process it.
I saw a flash of movement in the garden. A creature, hunched and grotesque, with skin the color of dried blood and too many limbs, was clawing at the invisible barrier Grandma had mentioned. It let out another horrifying snarl. A basic-level demon, though I wouldn't know the term for years.
My parents moved in perfect sync, slipping out the back door. They didn't shout or scream. They fought. Mom was a whirlwind of silver light, her blades carving arcs through the air. Dad was the anchor, his spear a deadly, precise weapon, keeping the creature off balance. They were a well-oiled machine, a deadly dance under the moonlight.
I was frozen, a silent spectator to a battle I never knew was being waged. They dispatched the creature with ruthless efficiency. It dissolved into a cloud of black dust and foul-smelling smoke.
They stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, before their heads snapped up, their eyes locking directly onto my hiding spot on the stairs. They had known I was there the whole time.
They quickly hid their weapons and rushed back inside, their faces a mixture of guilt and panic.
"Mizuki, sweetie," Mom started, her voice shaking slightly. "You need to forget what you just saw. It was… it was just a wild animal."
But I wasn't a little kid anymore. I had seen what I had seen. And for the first time, I looked at my loving parents, my weird grandparents, and my perfect, happy home, and realized it was all a lie. A beautiful, carefully constructed lie designed to protect me from a truth so terrible, they fought demons in the backyard to keep it hidden.