Luka
Summer had come around again.
The sun warmed my shoulders through the thin fabric of my shirt. The city had turned green. Fresh leaves covered the trees, bright and full of life. Birds sang somewhere above the streets.
It should have made me feel better. It should have felt hopeful.
But not today.
I stood in front of the city administration building and stared up at the gray stone walls, hoping that maybe today we would finally get approval for the bar.
Beside me, Kazuo nervously scratched at the fur on his arm.
Of course he was nervous.
We had been through this so many times that I had lost count halfway through spring. Every document was almost impossible to get. Every signature took weeks. Every tiny mistake sent us all the way back to the beginning.
And every single time, the people inside this building looked down on us.
Sometimes I wondered if the guards at the entrance would eventually stop letting us in altogether. But no. They still waved us through every visit, only for us to walk right back into another round of humiliation.
They pointed out every little error with that same cold look on their faces. Sometimes I could swear they were inventing new rules right in front of us to watch us struggle.
After everything we had gone through, dealing with the city administration barely even got a reaction out of me anymore. I knew exactly what they were doing. It was too obvious.
They simply didn't want to help us.
They didn't want to help hybrids… to help me.
The fact that every news outlet imaginable, along with half the posters and loud public campaigns across the city, had turned me into some symbol of protest definitely did not help.
However, I was done hiding.
I'd had enough.
I no longer hid my fox ears or my tail. I stopped pulling my hood over my head, and my hands no longer reached nervously for the mask.
Yeah, I still wanted to hide sometimes.
Yeah, I was still fucking terrified by their stares, their reactions. All of it.
But now I had the strength to stand against that fear.
So let them look.
Let them know exactly who they were dealing with.
I had no intention of hiding myself ever again.
After the insane year we had survived, this was nothing. If we had to, we would come back here again and again and again until they gave in.
At least, that was what I thought right up until they humiliated us one more time, pointing at mistake after mistake before throwing us out with another massive list of documents we somehow had to gather.
Kazuo cursed so loudly on the way out that several people turned to stare at him.
"Come on, Kaz, we'll figure something out. Don't stress about it," I said.
The problem was that I did not sound convincing even to myself.
Where was that confidence supposed to come from?
Today they brought up relocation again. Moving our bar somewhere farther away. Somewhere they would not have to see us.
They had been trying to come up with any possible way to push us out of the city. At this point, the only thing they seemed to have left was refusing to let us open.
Not long ago, some rich asshole even showed up at our construction site offering us a suspiciously cheap piece of land somewhere insanely far outside the city. Basically, the middle of nowhere.
He kept calling it a fresh start. A new opportunity. Tons of free space and all that bullshit.
He wouldn't shut up about the community part.
"You could build anything you want there."
"We could gather all the hybrids together."
"It would be comfortable."
"Safe."
"A place where everybody could live together peacefully."
Yeah. Sure.
Did they seriously think we were that stupid?
Did they honestly believe we would build their fucking zoo for them with our own hands?
Absolutely not.
The place didn't even have electricity.
They wanted us digging holes in the ground for toilets?
Fuck.
Today, when they started talking about relocation again, Kazuo completely lost it. That was why he was cursing so loudly now.
It took some time to calm him down.