Chapter 15

Their walk across town was rather uneventful, which was mostly due to how few people were walking across town at this time. Laura had half expected someone to run into her, currently invisible, tails, leading to an awkward conversation of some kind, but she barely passed 5 other people on the sidewalks.

While there were more people to be found on the Campus of Yamatanuki than both in town and compared to the days before, by walking around instead of through the main building the Kitsune managed to minimize the risk of people running into her illusions.

But as she approached the entrance of her dormitory, Gabe just stepped out of the men's one and, after spotting her, walked over and waving a hand to draw her attention. "Hey Laura, where you out in the mountains overnight? I didn't know you had brought a tent with you."

"I didn't, I slept in a hole in the ground after getting lost in the forest after night fell." The young woman explained, her ears twitching nervously, letting their tips slip out of the illusion for a moment.

"Well that explains all that dirt in your hair and face." Gabe commented before taking of his glasses and wiping them off with a handkerchief.

Laura gave a short nod in response before speaking up again. "It wasn't really comfortable, so if you don't mind, I'll go get myself cleaned of and take a nice long nap."

"Sure, see you at dinner in the cafeteria then?" Gabe offered as he turned to walk towards the cafeteria, presumably for breakfast.

"Yeah, see you then." Laura said before entering the dormitory. After taking of her boots and slipping into her slippers, she dropped her backpack, which had been hiding Takeko since she made her way onto campus, off at her room. Then the young spirit made her way to the closest bath. To her immense relief no one else was around at the moment, so she dropped the illusions hiding her tails to actually be able to clean them as well. Walking past the mirror, she realized why neither Gabe or Akiko had commented on her new hair color. With all the dark brown earth stuck in it, the new orange color of her hair and fur was barely visible, easily mistaken as the light playing across actually brown hair.

Walking over to the showers, Laura began to wash her hair, getting a lot of water stuck in her ears in the process, until she figured out how to fold them against her head and how to hold her head under the showerhead to minimize the amount of water getting trapped in the fox ears.

Those troubles were really just a minor nuisance though, compared to the pile of issues her tails caused her. Not only did each of the nine tails take twice as much shampoo to fully get clean as her hair, getting them all dry afterwards made her really glad that she had grasped the fundamentals of her pyromancy, as it still took at least fifteen minutes until they were dry, even with flames as hot as the Kitsune dared to make them circling around each of them.

But when she was finally all dry again, and had put on a shirt and a comfy pair of yoga pants, covering barely enough when stopped by the base of her tails, Laura made her way back to her room, where Takeko was sitting on her desk chair, looking a bit bored.

"Well I'll be taking a nap for now, should I open the window so you can get out?" Laura asked the little spirit before her, who simply nodded in reply. Thus after sliding open the window, she pulled the curtains closed and began to get comfortable on her bed. It took a while to find a position that was comfortable with nine tails, but in the end the Kitsune settled on lying on her side, her tails wrapped around her in lieu of a blanket, being softer and warmer than any blanket she had ever used anyways. Bundled up like this, Laura soon found the exhaustion of the last 24 hours catch up to her as she fell asleep moments after she had closed her eyes.