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(CYOA) HUMAN STUDIES: SUPERSTITIONS



AJ passed by the notice board one day, one with elegant handwriting caught his attention easily. "An extra-curricular class that takes you to the human world, I'm in." He missed the opportunity in class last time and normally students are not allowed to go there yet. It also mentioned they were going to see something unique so he definitely didn't want to miss it.

On the said day, he knocked on the door of Professor Winter's office, he wasn't alone. She explained the schedule and all the things they needed to pay attention to, she was serious like how she was in class. After that, she handed them a pile of papers. He read the first few lines to confirm they were not demon contacts of any type, he finished a few pages but he began to glaze over as they seemed to have no ends and he was so excited. As a result, he casually signed his name on them. Her eyes rolled over the documents they signed and resumed her explanation on the purpose of the trip.

Observing wasn't really what he is good at as they got distracted easily. AJ shrugged and simply hoped nothing would go wrong. Before leaving, the Professor sprinkled them with glitters and handed them temporary passports and led them to where the portal set up was.

"Welcome to the human world, Bro." The silver haired boil seemed excited about it. Upon arrival, his eyes were too busy to stop from roaming over the walking humans and their infrastructures. They all looked very impressive in the duos' eyes.

It seemed that the kind professor had divided them into group, the boil smiled at the sight of a ghoul with fluffy ears and a tail not far away from them. She was making the exact expression as they did, it was quite a hilarious scene to imagine from the viewpoint of a third person. Therefore, he burst into stifled laughter.

Casually, he walked towards her. "Good Evening," he greeted the ghoul with a smile. "It seems like we'll be in the same group for this activity." AJ took a good look at Kieran. "Hmm, you look a bit familiar, did we possibly meet in the past? Anyway, I'm AJ. Would you like to get into a human's house or stay outside for our observation?"

Without the boil could say anything, the tail head detoured to make appearance between the two. "I remember you," said the kid voice cheerfully, "I'm Dwa, hello again, Kier~" It seemed happy to see the ghost cat again, it nudged against her body to ask for a pet gently.

AJ chuckled casually, "Oh Kier, that's you. Fascinating, huh?" He took a glance at a passer-by, he was lowering his head and pressing button of his phone. The serpent dragon dodged him as he would bump into an invisible wall if he didn't. "We're not supposed to take a nap, Kier. I guess we'll have to write a report or something when we return. So.....how about we stay outside and awake to observe some humans?"

Meanwhile, the tail head saw a human passed by eating their hotdog. It lowered and approached the man but shortly stopped by AJ. "Bro, if you eat that, you'll get a mouth of sands and a tummy-ache." He smiled, still looking at Kieran and waited for her decision.

The head squinted his eyes comfortably at the petting before it was distracted by the hotdog. "Relax Kier, I'm not saying that to you particular. Look, how lovely the warm lights inside, I guess I might fall asleep there." The boil returned the unhappy ghoul with a soothing grin, jabbing his thumb at one with yellow lights coming out through the windows. It was evening and the lights look cozy to beckon any passer-by to stop and peeked from the windows.

The boil shifted his eyes back to the ghoul and gave her a shrug. "No idea, it's my first time to be in human world." His red eyes roamed over the streets full of kids with baskets and might be trolley, all dressed up and ready to take candies from their neighbours. An idea came into AJ's mind, "How about we follow that group of creeple? I feel like they're gonna do something fun." The boil pointed at a cluster of people ahead of them, some were wearing pumpkin made lanterns to lit the road and they were all dressed up.

He was waiting for her input while leaning against the low wooden fence painted in white. To make sure none of the humans would bump into them, he picked the position to the side which most people won't choose to walk on. The two humans coming to their way quickly drew their attention as the taller one was walking backwards. A closer glance, he could see the inner seams and stitches on his clothes.

"So weird," said the bemused tail head. "Does he wake up late and still feeling sleepy?" Even he stumbled over the small peddle and indentations on his way, he insisted on his backward walking. He nudged Kier, "Surely some sort of weird superstitions," and that was what they were looking for. While they were talking, AJ noticed a small human scareling dressing up like a cute little witch stared at them. Since they should be invisible, she should be staring the area where they were at instead. The boil turned around and spotted nothing that worth paying her attention to.

He snapped his head back to look at the little thing and he saw her frozen for several seconds as if she was a snowman. Then she took a deep breathe and walked around them, one round after another in haste. "One - two - three," the head counted and she did nine times before she sprinted off with her pumpkin basket. Seeing her effort, AJ decided not to move but watched with a mischievous smile.

Only after the small girl disappeared at another end of the street, he turned to Kieran. "It seems that Professor Winter's magic glitched, we'd better be careful." He casually mentioned. "Anyway, the human scareling did something rather fun after she seemed to see us. I think we've found point number two." He smiled, got up from the fence and began to walk beside the capering group with the ghost cat.

"Hmm, new species....I don't think so. They look humans to me and they couldn't see us." He pondered and replied Kieran. AJ's eyes stopped on the ghoul's tail, it didn't cease waggling since they entered human world. She was adorable, the boil thought.

He nodded at her comment for the little witch, "You made a good point, I've heard the rumors that human scarelings have a better sensation of us." He shifted his eyes from the ghost cat to the man she was talking, he was moving away from them so he couldn't see clearly. "A bread? -THEN IT'S POSSIBLY FOOD!" He tried to answer, but the tail head was quicker. "Not likely, Bro. Maybe a luck charm, Kier. Can't say I'm good at human superstitions, just a guess."

After the man vanished from their sight, they had to find targets to observe once again. Followed behind the group that dressed like Halloween denizens, they came across a mid-age woman tying knots into her handkerchief. He pulled Kieran's sleeve to draw her attention to her. "Hey, do you think it's a protection spell?" She seemed to be mumbling low and quick, which probably something they would take note for the class.

AJ didn't mind weird idea as his own mindset worked very differently from normal creeple, "Or they could be doppelgangers? It's possible they're pretending to be humans and ignoring us." A small smile formed on his face pondering all the interesting possibilities. He didn't enjoy asserting things stubbornly even he had his own rules he followed vehemently.

"Maybe he was a dragon in his previous life, dragons like us love to hoard EVERYTHING!" Not quite useful information it provided, but the boil chuckled lightly. "You know how some traditions are passed down through generations. Maybe it was a habit developed in the old days when bread was the main food, and through decades, they grant new definition to this practice." AJ shared his guess, taking note in his mind.

He beamed, "Don't you think humans are so weird but interesting?" The idea of repeating a uncertain spell amused AJ. Then they followed the crowd to a stream, "Hmm, I don't see anything besides their reflections." The boil frowned at the mirror-like surface, lit by the lights from the lamps humans holding high up. "I read from a book that humans believe they could possibly see the world after death through reflective surfaces like mirror. It's possible that they're imitating that?" He squinted his red eyes at the stream, but he could only see the humans' reflections from it, not even theirs.

After a while, they left the stream and back to another part of the town. At there, he saw one man made a startled face at something and took a deep breathe before he hurried across some lands. He rushed to his side and put his hand below his nose while he was doing so, AJ realized the human had stopped to breathe and when he walked past that path, he gasped for a big breathe of air to his lungs, how strange. "Did you see that, Kier? What's that land for?" He asked, bringing the ghoul to have a closer look at the cemetery. An open space with a lot of gravestones, quiet and well-aligned. "Do you feel it's familiar?" When the two were in the cemetery, AJ asked.

“Oh maybe I never thought about that either…” That there was maybe halloweeners living among the humans, it was a strange thought and not something she had ever thought about doing herself. She would rather stick what home; she was fond of it of course.

“Oh, do you really hoard everything or is there something you really like that you keep? Like do you like to keep your hoarding to something likkeee….. shirts?” Shirts was lame but she couldn’t think of anything else off the top of her head.

“I don’t have any traditions that were passed on, I was adopted and I don’t think my parents have any or at least not any I can remember.” Her voice trailed off as she tried to think of something, everything they had done seemed normal, or maybe it was just they did it so often that it had blended in to everyday living.

“Really really weird but very interesting cool, and maybe seeking another world in the water could be it, or maybe they lost something…” Kieran grinned at him agreeing with what he had asked. She gave up trying to figure out what the other humans were doing thought chalking it to something she wouldn’t understand.

Following AJ back to another part of town she watched everyone else still making their way around. She hadn’t even noticed the other human or even where they were until AJ had pointed it out to her. There was a frown on her face, as he pointed to the open space with the row of stones. There was only a photo in her parent’s home, tucked in a book. “It’s called a cemetery. My mom said it was where ghost sometime came from, or at least sometimes they end up waking up there and not remembering how or why they got there. She said that humans leave the dead buried there, but I don’t know. This is my first time seeing one.”

Kerian didn’t stay too long, the look made her uneasy, instead she headed towards another woman who lingered near by, different from the one before but also tying knots into a handkerchief as she mumbled.