Archive of Our Own

When Momo wakes up that morning, she smacks the snooze button, yawns, and reaches out an arm to snuggle closer to Okarun–only to find nobody there.

Momo opens her eyes and frowns at the empty space in bed beside her. She remembers falling asleep next to him, having successfully convinced him not only to stay the night but to sleep in her bed. She’d been quite proud of that. Even though they’ve been dating for a couple weeks now, Okarun is still shy about physical contact, and Momo still finds herself making most of the first moves. She figures that’s a fair trade-off, though, considering he confessed to her first. He can talk, she can touch–it’s one of the many ways they work well together.

Except he apparently ditched her in the middle of the night! Did he change his mind and try to go home by himself after all, even though he was still banged up from that clusterfuck of a yokai fight yesterday? Did he chicken out at the thought of Seiko finding them together? Or…did he just not want to be in the same bed as her?

Momo groans. They’re supposed to be done with all this awkwardness now that they’re officially together!

“What the hell, Okaruuuun,” she whines.

“What?” Okarun mumbles in reply.

Momo looks around. It sounds like Okarun is right next to her, but there’s still nobody else in bed.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“What do you mean? I’m right next to you.”

“Uh, no, you’re not.”

“Uh, yeah, I am. You’re the one who asked me to stay even though we could get in trouble.”

Momo realizes that Okarun’s voice sounds a bit muffled and looks down at the blankets. There’s no bump or shape that would indicate a person is under them. Is he really hiding under there…?

Momo rips off the blanket, half-expecting to see Okarun flattened into some kind of pancake, but instead she finds–

A pink earthworm in her bed.

Momo shrieks and leaps back. Then she blanches as she hears an echoing shriek in Okarun’s voice–but coming from the worm’s body.

“Okarun, this isn't’ funny!” she says, pressing herself against the wall. “Where are you?”

“Right here!” says the worm.

Fuck. She’d really been hoping that wasn’t the case.

“Okarun,” she begs, still holding out hope for some other explanation. “Please tell me you’re not the worm.”

“Worm…?”

There’s a pause as the worm turns its head to—look down at itself? Do worms even have eyes? Either way, the worm scrunches its body, wiggling hesitantly at first, and then wildly in what Momo assumes is panic. She doesn’t know how worm body language works, but if this really is Okarun, it’s safe to assume it’s panic.

“Momo!” Okarun cries. “I somehow turned into a worm!”

“Ewwwww.”

“Don’t ‘ew’ me!” Okarun says, wiggling—sadly? Momo doesn’t fucking know. “How do you think I feel?”

“Ewwww,” Momo moans again, as Okarun’s entire body moves toward her with a weird oozing motion of him contracting and elongating his segments. “Stop wiggling, it’s so gross!”

“What—I’ll show you gross!”

And then, to Momo’s horror, the worm—Okarun—starts wiggling toward her even faster.

“EW!” she cries, leaping over Okarun to throw herself off the bed. She lands on the ground with a hard thud. Momo groans, and then a small worm peeks its head over the side of the bed to look at her in concern.

“Wait,” Momo says, putting the grossness of the situation aside for the moment as she realizes something. “Where did you get those tiny glasses?”

Once they get over the shock of the whole worm thing, Momo actually does feel bad for calling Okarun gross. Even though he is currently slimy, crawly, fleshy, and many other adjectives that are pretty damn adjacent to gross. But even so, she can’t just call her boyfriend gross–not this early in the relationship, anyway.

“Can I pick you up?” Momo asks, remembering all the times that Okarun had done so for her when she was tiny. “Might be easier than having to walk–or, uh, crawl all the way downstairs.”

“Sure,” Okarun sighs, his little worm head hanging in defeat. Aw. He’s kind of cute like this–even though he’s a worm.

Momo gingerly picks Okarun up, trying not to recoil as his cool, slightly moist skin touches hers. She’s not sure whether hiding her reaction actually matters, considering that Okarun doesn’t seem to have eyes right now. But he does have glasses, so…who knows.

Anyway. Momo feels bad about the whole thing, so she cradles her boyfriend carefully in her hands, even though he’s a bit slimy and maybe even a little gross.

“How do you feel?” Momo says. She raises her hands so that he’s eye-level with her, on the off chance that he can see.

“Fine,” Okarun says miserably. “Other than the fact that I’m a worm. This is even worse than losing my dick. Do you think this is because of that yokai’s curse yesterday?”

Momo thinks. To be honest, there were a lot of curses thrown around during yesterday’s fight, and it can be hard to keep them straight in the heat of the moment.

“Maybe,” she says with a shrug. “But hey, if it’s a yokai curse, then that means that Granny will know what to do.”

When they go downstairs, though, they’re first met with Turbo Granny, not Seiko. Not that Momo thinks that either granny would be particularly charitable about Okarun’s current state, but Seiko probably wouldn’t have outright laughed at him like Turbo Granny does.

“And people complain about my curses,” Turbo Granny says gleefully, trying to give Okarun a poke before Momo yanks him out of the way. “At least I left him mostly human.”

“You took my dick and balls!” Okarun says, managing to sound surprisingly indignant even as a worm.

“And? Where’s your dick and balls now, worm boy?” Turbo Granny asks.

Okarun pauses for a moment and then hurriedly says, “We’re not talking about that! No one think any more about my anatomy right now!”

Well. It’s kind of like telling someone to stop thinking of elephants. Now Momo is thinking about it.

Stop thinking about your boyfriend’s worm balls! she orders herself, because otherwise she might actually drop Okarun in embarrassment. Momo has never once cared before whether worms have balls, and she isn’t about to start now. She’s already thought about Okarun’s balls–or lack thereof–enough for a lifetime. Thankfully, Seiko enters the room before Momo’s brain can go too far down that particular rabbit hole.

“Kid’s a worm, huh?” Seiko says, peering at Okarun. “That’s what happens when you disturb yokai. How many times do I have to tell you to just leave the dead alone?”

“They were the ones who wouldn’t leave us alone!” Momo protests.

“Mmmhm,” Seiko says doubtfully. She pokes Okarun, ignoring his mumbled hey. “From what you told me about it, I think I know what this is. But before I can say for sure, I need to know one thing.”

Momo nods. “What is it?”

“…Were you two sleeping in the same bed last night?”

“W-what does that matter?” Momo sputters. She hides Okarun behind her back, as if that will somehow reduce the scrutiny on them. “How would that help you learn more about the curse?”

“It doesn’t,” Seiko says with a shrug. “But it does affect how willing I am to help.”

“N-nothing happened, Seiko-san!” Okarun protests, his voice sounding small when it’s muffled behind Momo’s body. “I was probably a worm for half the night anyway!”

“‘Probably’ doesn’t do much for me,” Seiko says, taking a drag from her cigarette. “Let this be a lesson to you both about disrespecting the rules of my house.”

Seiko exhales the smoke carelessly, though she at least waves it away when Okarun starts coughing. Do worms even have lungs…? Momo shakes her head. Focus.

“Oh, come on–it’s not like that’s what caused the curse,” Momo says. “Anyway, how was I supposed to make him sleep on the futon after how banged up he got in that fight?”

Seiko shrugs again.

Momo sighs. There’s no winning this fight. Normally that knowledge would do nothing to stop her, but…Okarun is counting on her right now.

“Okay,” she groans. “Fine. We won’t do it again. Now will you please help us?”

Seiko takes the cigarette out of her mouth with a smile. “I’ll take a look.”

She holds out a hand, but Momo feels reluctant to hand over Okarun. He’s just so…small and squishy like this. Fragile. Is this how he’d felt when she was little?

But no. At least when Momo was little, she’d still had her powers. Okarun is defenseless like this, not even having his usual athleticism to protect himself. He doesn’t even have limbs. He needs Momo to protect him right now…

Also, Momo’s still not completely sure that Seiko won’t just squish Okaun for sleeping in her bed last night.

“C’mon,” Seiko says impatiently. “I’m not gonna hurt him.”

“It’s okay, Momo,” Okarun says, prodding her hand with his head. Ugh, why does he have to be so brave?

Momo reluctantly nods and hands him over.

Granny immediately gets to business, setting Okarun on the ground and instructing him not to move. She hovers around him, looking at him from every angle and occasionally poking at him, muttering to herself all the while. Turbo Granny mostly just lays down and snickers, clearly enjoying being larger than Okarun for once. At one point, Vamola also emerges from her room and joins the group in staring at Okarun.

“Takakura is a worm,” she observes.

“Yeah,” Okarun says weakly.

“There are many strong aliens who are also worms,” Vamola says reassuringly.

“Momo,” Seiko interrupts. “Come over here and look at his aura. Tell me what you see.”

“Uh, okay.” Momo sits on the floor next to Seiko. She holds her hands over Okarun, closes her eyes, and concentrates. She breathes a sigh of relief as she sees the usual flash of Okarun’s teal aura. Thank goodness. Regardless of his current form, he is still Okarun.

Not that that really clears up anything about this curse.

“What am I looking for?” Momo asks. “His aura doesn’t look that different.”

Seiko nods. “Yup. That confirms it. Just a minor curse, then.”

“What does that mean?” Momo asks impatiently. “How do we get him back to normal?”

Turbo Granny leans back. “One question at a time, jeez. As for your first question: if his aura hasn’t changed, then the yokai that cursed him was too weak to cause a full transformation. Figures. There are yokai who are powerful enough to do that, but they’re pretty rare. So the good news is that the transformation isn’t permanent.”

“And the bad news?” Okarun asks.

Turbo Granny chuckles. “They couldn’t permanently transform you, but they did manage to trick your aura into thinking you're a worm. Dumbass.”

“And that's enough to turn someone into a worm?” Momo asks, baffled. “I thought aura was just…spiritual energy.”

“Spiritual energy is the thing that allowed the brat to transform back when he had my power, remember?” Turbo Granny says. “Even if you can’t always see it, it’s a powerful force that can affect and even transform the body. Plus, aura is malleable. It’s not that hard to trick it into doing something else, if you have a knack for the spiritual.”

“But, the good thing is, aura tends to want to go back to its original shape,” Seiko adds. “It's like a sponge. Four Eyes should be back to normal in no time. Or should I say No Eyes?”

Momo sighs in relief again. Thank goodness. Okarun sighs too, in what Momo assumes is relief but could also be exasperation. He’s a lot harder to read like this, with no facial expressions or fidgeting hands to betray his emotions.

Ugh. Okarun is usually such an open book–Momo feels uneasy having that book suddenly closed to her, especially when she’s supposed to know him better than anyone.

“So how long will it take for him to get back to normal?” Momo asks.

Seiko shrugs. “Whenever his aura decides to remember what it’s supposed to look like. Could be an hour, could be a month.”

“Hmm,” Vamola says, putting a finger to her chin. “If Takakura’s aura is trying to be a worm, why is he talking? And wearing glasses? Unless worms on Earth are different?”

Seiko shrugs. “He’s not literally a worm right now. He’s just what his spirit imagines being a worm is like. And, for better or worse, he can’t imagine not yapping so much that he can still do it. Same with the glasses.” She hums thoughtfully. “You’re lucky that Sakata kid didn’t get hit by this curse. He probably could’ve imagined himself as an actual worm, and then who knows where we’d be.”

“Woah,” Momo says. She studies Okarun critically, trying to recall other worms that she’s seen before. Now that she’s looking more closely, she realizes that Okarun looks more like the platonic ideal of a worm than an actual one. An actual worm would have more color variation along its skin, would have parts of its body that were fatter or thinner than others, would have picked up dirt and dust from crawling on the ground. Instead, Okarun is perfectly, consistently pink and plump, not too long and not too short, clean and almost demure where he lies on the ground. And, well, obviously there’s the glasses. Momo has the thought again that he makes for a kinda cute worm.

“Weird,” she says out loud.

“I’m not a worm expert!” Okarun complains.

Momo grins. “C’mon, Okarun, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re a very handsome looking worm. Let’s just hope no one looks at you too closely at school, or your popularity might go off the charts.”

“Momo,” Okarun groans. “You’re really going to tease me at a time like this?”

Seiko interrupts them. “Four Eyes ain’t going to school. He’s staying here.”

“What?” Momo whines. “But when I was little, I had to go to school!”

“Yeah, but he can help me fertilize the garden,” Seiko says, like it’s as simple as that. Then she adds, “Besides, the first day of a transformation like this is the most volatile. It’s unlikely, but if he does end up changing back today, I’d rather he not do it at school. You kids cause enough trouble there as is.”

Okarun turns his head toward Momo, which is still a bit odd to see a worm do.

“She might be right,” Okarun says sheepishly. “And people probably would think it’s pretty weird if you’re carrying a worm around, Momo.”

“So?” Momo says sullenly. “I don’t care what they think. We just…We just got to be together again.” She’s suddenly aware of the fact that they’re being watched by the grannies and Vamola, and she feels her face burn. But it’s not fair. She’d only just grown back to her original size and reunited with Okarun a few weeks ago—and now this happens. She just wants to hold hands with her boyfriend at school, and now he doesn’t even have hands.

Momo shakes her head and tries to find a more practical reason to object. “If something happens, shouldn’t I be around to protect him?”

Okarun curls in on himself, turning away from her. If he were human, that would mean he’s blushing like crazy and trying to hide it from her. At least she can still recognize that body language.

“I’ll be okay,” Okarun mumbles.

“Go to school, Momo,” Seiko says gently. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Fine,” Momo says, deflated.

She finishes getting ready for school, and even Vamola at her side can’t quite cheer her up. Momo has to look all around the living room just to find Okarun—ugh, had it been this inconvenient when she was tiny?—and say goodbye to him.

As she does so, she hesitates. When they’d started dating, Momo had demanded that they add something to their daily see you tomorrow goodbye routine to signify the new, romantic element of their relationship. At the time, Okarun had paused, blushed like crazy, but finally settled on kissing Momo’s cheek before saying goodbye. Ever since then, they traded off giving goodbye kisses, usually on the cheek but sometimes on the lips if no one else was around. Today is supposed to be Okarun’s turn to give her a kiss, but…

Okarun hesitates, clearly thinking the same thing, and then touches the tip of her finger with his head. She can barely even feel it, he’s so small.

“See you after school,” Okarun sighs.

“See you soon,” Momo says, giving his head a last, small pat with her fingertip before heading out.

To be honest, Ken had kind of been enjoying the experience of being a normal teenager. Well, maybe it’s not fair to say normal. Even though Ken no longer has powers, he can still see spirits and routinely fights aliens. He’s not the best benchmark in the world for “normal.”

But, for a brief period of time, he hadn’t been cursed! He’d been in possession of both his balls and his dick! He’d even had a girlfriend!

And…now he’s a worm. With no balls or penis that he’s been able to find so far. And now his girlfriend thinks he’s gross.

It’s not even like Ken can argue with Momo over that point either. All morning, he’s been rapidly learning new things about worm biology–or, at least, his body’s approximation of worm biology–and it is gross.

Take walking, for example. Ken had always assumed that worms kind of just…wiggle their way around. But the motion turns out to be far more complex than that. It takes some work to figure out, but Ken discovers that contracting and relaxing his muscles–almost like a sit up, or a yoga pose–shrinks and expands his segments in a wave that propels him forward. As he crawls, tiny, bristle-like hairs all over his body help him grip onto the ground where normally his feet would be balancing him. And, as if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Ken can feel and even taste every inch of the journey through his skin. He’s never felt so passionate about asking the Ayases to vacuum more frequently than he does after tasting all the tiny bits of hair and dirt that clung to the tatami, too small to be noticed as a human but completely unavoidable at his current size.

The journey to the front door is gross, but even more than that, it’s exhausting. By the time he makes it outside, he’s out of breath. Or, he thinks he’s out of breath. Ken still hasn’t figured out the mechanics of how he’s breathing right now.

“Couldn’t you have just carried me?” Ken asks Seiko.

He thinks that he sees Seiko shrug in response. Ken can somehow see in this form–apparently his aura had clung onto that part of him strong enough for it to carry over–but without actual eyes to help, he can mostly only make out blurry shapes. Being a worm really sucks.

“I could have,” Seiko acknowledges. “But it’s better to give you a chance to get used to that body. When Momo turned tiny, she could still do everything pretty much the same, just sized down. But you have to relearn how to walk, how to eat, how to perceive the world–it’s a lot harder.” She sighs. “Honestly, that’s the main reason I made you stay at home. It’ll be easier for you to adjust in a more familiar environment, rather than at school surrounded by hooligans.”

“Oh,” Ken says, shuddering when he thinks about taste-touch-crawling on the dirty school floors. Seiko is probably right. “Thanks. But, um, then why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because Momo would have insisted on staying,” Seiko says simply. Ken hears the click of a lighter and then smells cigarette smoke. “Now are you helping with the garden, or what?”

Ken stretches his body experimentally. The soil feels much better against his skin than the tatami, its looseness conforming to his body and making it easier to move, the earth a cool and moist reprieve from the summer sun that itches at his more sensitive skin. But even so…

“Uh, what am I supposed to do?” Ken asks.

“Worms aerate the soil by digging tunnels,” Seiko explains. “Try that. Worm poop is beneficial for the soil too, so don’t forget to eat while you’re down there.”

“Great,” Ken sighs. He wonders if, one day, he and Seiko will ever get to stop having invasive conversations about his bodily functions. He dearly hopes so.

Though, Ken does feel hungry after watching the Ayases eat breakfast without him. And he likes the idea of doing something productive right now–of getting to be useful, even like this. At this point, Ken knows how to give into the instincts of a curse, so he decides to just do so: letting go and diving into the earth.

He finds that tunneling is oddly soothing–it’s what this body was made for, after all. Soil surrounds Ken with a gentle pressure that might have felt claustrophobic as a human, but now feels more like a comforting embrace. It’s even cooler beneath the earth, where the sun can’t reach, and the relief of it is like going into an air conditioned shop on a sweltering day.

As he digs, Ken finds that he starts sweating–except it’s not sweat, exactly, but some kind of fluid that helps him move through the earth. Ugh. He isn’t beating the gross allegations. But as long as he’s here…

Ken screws his eyes shut—or, whatever the equivalent is for him with his weird half-sight—and opens his mouth. Much to his surprise, his palette discovers a strange diversity of flavor in the dirt he eats: tiny, almost microscopic creatures that crunch with foreign sweetness; bits of damp, almost-rotted plant matter that somehow bring to mind vegetable soup; and other small detritus he doesn’t have a name for but that snaps and bursts in his mouth with tangy saltiness.

Ken knows that he’s just eating dirt. But unfortunately…it’s really good dirt.

God, he can’t ever tell Momo about this. It’s way too embarrassing, and there’s no way she wouldn’t lord it over him forever. Jiji might understand though. He could probably tell Jiji.

Ken doesn’t know how much time passes while he’s tunneling, but a tapping vibration in the earth startles him out of his reprieve. He returns to the surface to check it out and ends up coming up close to Seiko. It’s hard to see exactly what she’s doing, but Ken thinks she’s planting some seeds, her trowel disturbing the earth much more efficiently than his digging had.

“Still alive?” Seiko says to him. “That’s promising. How’s it going?”

“Good, I think,” Ken says. He contracts his muscles, trying to shake off the dirt still clinging to him, but he eventually gives it up as a bad job. Hopefully no one will judge a worm too harshly for being a bit dirty. “It’s…weirdly relaxing.”

“Gardening is good for the mind and body,” Seiko agrees. “Especially you anxious types who need something to do with your hands—well, so to speak.” She glances down at his very much handless body. “If you want, you can keep helping me garden once you’re human again.”

“…Is this actually about me taking up a hobby, or is this just a ploy to get me to help you with gardening?”

Seiko sets down her tools and carefully picks him up. She picks an especially large chunk of dirt off of him and flicks it away. From this angle and from Ken’s limited vision, Seiko’s eyes are completely obscured by the sun reflecting off her glasses.

“Sometimes,” she says wisely, “a task can accomplish two things at once.”

So, she just wants his help with the garden.

“This sucks,” Ken moans.

“Does it?”

“Is that not obvious?” Ken wiggles his weird, dirty, gross new body. “I’m a worm.”

“You’re doing fine,” Seiko says dismissively. “And stop listening to what Momo tells you–she’s too damn squeamish. Worms are useful creatures; there ain’t nothing wrong with them.”

Ken sighs. He supposes that, as gross as his bodily functions have been so far, they have also been fascinating. Maybe this is what being an alien feels like…

“You know,” Seiko says thoughtfully. “It’s actually a stroke of luck that you got cursed and not one of your other friends. They wouldn’t have been well suited to handle this kind of curse.”

“I don’t feel well suited…” Ken mutters. He mostly feels like he’s been whining and feeling sorry for himself.

“You’re not freaking out, are you? That’s a good start.” Seiko nods. “Your body and mind are already acclimated to curses–means you’ll probably snap out of this one quickly. And then there’s your personality.”

“My personality is well-suited to being a worm?” Ken asks dryly.

“It’s well suited to sudden change,” Seiko corrects him. “You go with the flow, even when you’re being whiny about it. You take what life gives you, even when that thing is a curse. That’s more useful than you’d think it’d be. And,” she adds. “It’s something that’s not your friends’ strong suits. Especially Momo…”

Seiko inhales like she’s about to say more, but then just lets the breath out in a sigh.

“Eh, anyway,” she says. “You make for a good gardener, No Eyes. You want to keep going, or be done for the day?”

“I’ll…keep going,” Ken decides. The situation is still weird as hell, but it’s hot today, and he finds he’d rather be back exploring in the cool soil rather than bake in the sun doing nothing. Besides, he’s still kind of hungry. Apparently worms have fairly monstrous appetites.

Ken is still tunneling–and only just feeling full–when he feels vibrations in the earth again, these ones in a steady, heavy rhythm that move in a straight line: footsteps coming up to the Ayases’ house. The vibrations are too frequent and widespread for it to just be Momo’s footsteps either. Ken sighs. Well, it’s not like his friends haven’t seen him in more embarrassing positions before.

Ken surfaces and tries to wiggle the dirt off himself, but the fluid he secretes to dig has made some of it stick to his skin. He groans. Whatever. He’s literally a worm right now—there’s no use dressing it up.

“Okaruuuun,” he hears Momo call.

“I’m over here!” Okarun replies.

Momo approaches with Shiratori, Jiji, and Vamola. Well, at least Yukishiro didn’t come. Ken doesn’t relish the idea of being around someone with the ability to control tiny creatures while he’s in this state.

“Woah,” Jiji says. “You were right, Momo–he does have the little glasses!”

“Takakura,” Shiratori tuts. “How many times do you have to take a curse in battle before you get better at dodging?”

“I’m still getting used to doing it without Turbo Granny’s powers!” Ken protests.

“Lay off,” Momo says to Shiratori, kneeling down. “He’s literally a worm–I think he learned his lesson. How’s it going, Okarun?”

Momo’s words are caring and breezy as always, but she still hesitates before putting a hand near the dirt for him to climb. Ken hates the fact that he grosses her out and that he’s about to make her hand dirty, but–he can’t refuse the help, nor the affection, not right now. He crawls onto her hand, wondering if it’s the heat of the sun or shame that makes him feel hot when he realizes how slimy he is right now.

“I’m okay,” Ken says, feeling a bit more subdued than when he was under the earth. “So you told everyone about it…?”

And she was right too!” Shiratori says. She brandishes a few plastic bags. “Momo has none of the skills or equipment needed to take care of you right now, Takakura!” She sighs. “I’m afraid that, as usual, it came down to your fearless leader to respond appropriately to the crisis.”

“Honestly, I just came because I wanted to see what you looked like as a worm,” Jiji says, his grin evident in his voice. But his tone is good-natured rather than teasing, so it’s easy to accept the enthusiasm on its face. Ken can’t deny that the whole situation is fascinating, especially for someone as taken by bugs and critters as Jiji is.

“Don’t listen, Takakura!” Vamola says. “You’re a strong worm!”

“I at least managed to convince the rest of them not to come over,” Momo says to Ken.

“Thank you,” he sighs.

Shiratori tuts. “You know, even Seiko’s behavior is careless. She just let you out here? What if you’d gotten eaten by a bird?”

If Ken had eyes, they would widen. He doesn’t think he can sweat like this, but he does begin secreting fluid again.

“I didn’t even think about that!” Ken squeaks.

“Don’t worry,” Seiko calls over from where she’s still planting. “I’ve been keeping an eye out.”

“You’re getting slimier!” Momo cries, and before Ken can even attempt to do anything about that, she flinches and drops Ken to the ground from several feet up.

Thankfully, Ken’s worm body is surprisingly resilient, and Momo is very apologetic about dropping him. Nonetheless, Ken is relieved when Jiji takes a turn at holding him instead. As lackadaisical as Jiji normally is, his hands are steady and his movement is certain when he holds Ken.

“Wow, it’s like you made a whole new species of earthworm, Okarun!” Jiji says, examining him. “That’s pretty cool! You know what, it kind of suits you!”

Momo shoves Jiji, and Ken is briefly worried he’s about to get dropped again, but Jiji just cups his other hand over Ken in a protective shell.

“How can you say that to him when he’s already down?” Momo says, aghast.

“I mean it as a compliment!” Jiji says, thankfully remembering to uncover Ken now that he’s gained his balance. “Like, who else do you know who could make being a worm work? But he totally does! It’s like he has some kind of worm swag now.”

“Have you gone completely insane?!” Momo says, grabbing Jiji by the shirt collar and shaking him back and forth. “What are you talking about?”

“Miss Ayase!” Okarun cries. “You’re going to make him drop me!”

Shiratori manages to scoop him out of the melee zone and carries him over to the chabudai.

“Idiots,” she mutters. “Here, I finished setting up your terrarium. There’s soil and dead leaves, so you should have enough there to eat and keep you moist. And, since you’re not actually a worm, I made a little ramp for the inside so you can get in and out by yourself.”

Shiratori says this all matter-of-factly, which eases something in Ken. He hates feeling like a spectacle, but Shiratori is acting as if this is all normal–if inconvenient–procedure. Well. Maybe she does think of it that way, given the amount of times they’ve all been cursed by now.

When Shiratori sets him down in the terrarium, Ken does a lap of the place to get his bearings. It’s much easier to traverse than the tatami, with sticks and twigs that he can climb if he wants a different view. He doesn’t have to worry about being stepped on or drying out here either, or birds, or any of the other dangers to worms that Ken hadn’t even thought to worry about yet. A latent agoraphobia–one he hadn’t even known was beginning to bubble up–settles back down into its usual resting place.

“This is really nice,” Ken says. “Thank you, Miss Shiratori. So you aren’t grossed out by worms?”

“If there’s a ton of them like when Kouki does it,” Shiratori admits. “But nah, not usually. My dad used to take me fishing a lot, so I got used to them.”

“I’m not grossed out either,” Momo mutters. “And he’s my boyfriend, so I should have been the one to set up his terrarium.”

“But I wanted to help too!” Jiji whines.

Somehow, in the chaos of everyone “helping” adjust Ken’s terrarium, Seiko manages to serve dinner. Momo makes sure to place Ken’s terrarium near her, as if to make up for the fact that she hadn’t set it up, and presents him with some dead leaves she found on the sidewalk near school.

“Jiji said that you would be able to eat these,” Momo says. “I know that Aira already got you some, but…You probably want a variety, right? I bet they all taste different.” She begins fidgeting against the table, causing small vibrations to go through the terrarium. “But I bet Gran could also make a bowl of ramen small enough if you want that instead.”

“The leaves are great, Momo,” Ken reassures her. And they are. Just the thought of Momo picking through the grass and looking for leaves during her lunch break strikes him as sweet. Even if they can’t hold hands right now, at least they can do things that are vaguely romantic. Now, if only Ken knew how to reciprocate in this form…

He tries to think of some ideas while he eats his leaves, but–even if it’s too blurry to see–he can feel Momo’s stare on his skin.

“What?” he asks.

“So…did you really eat dirt today?” she asks. “Jiji said that that’s what worms eat.”

Never mind. Romance is dead. Ken wants to curl in on himself and then remembers that he’s a worm with a body that is made to curl, so he curls in on himself.

“Momo,” he whines. “I’m an awkward fellow; you can’t do this to me.”

It’s a bit cruel, using Ken Takakura’s line like that against her, but he does not want to get into his feelings about the flavors of dirt and leaves right now. Well, he kind of wants to. It’s kind of fascinating stuff. But it feels too vulnerable to do that right now!

Besides, what is he supposed to say? Human food apparently does nothing for him right now. He can somewhat smell and taste the ramen just through the vapor in the air, and–while it would normally make his mouth water–it now strikes him as too hot and too salty. But he can’t just say that to Momo. While it’s no hardship to him, he thinks his food-motivated girlfriend might actually cry at the thought of not being able to properly smell Seiko’s food.

Seiko snorts.

“Don’t know why you’re being so judgy, Momo,” Seiko says. “Don’t I remember you eating dirt when you were a kid?”

“That’s different!” Momo says defensively. “I was a kid.”

“I never ate dirt as a kid,” Ken says smugly–from his terrarium, yes, but it’s not like he’s human right now.

“Me neither,” Shiratori says. She sighs. “Though it totally tracks that you did, Momo…”

“It’s okay, Momo, I ate dirt when I was a kid too!” Jiji whoops, holding out his hand for a high five. “Twinsies! And now that Okarun’s eaten dirt too, we’re all together.” He turns to Shiratori. “Don’t you want to join the squaaaad? Otherwise you’ll feel left out!”

“I’ll eat dirt,” Vamola volunteers.

“I’ll gladly be left out of eating dirt!” Shiratori yells, and then coughs. “No offense, Takakura. Your situation is much different.”

“Thanks,” Ken says, feeling a bit cheered by the conversation. He doesn’t know how to convey gratitude right now as a worm, but he resolves to do the dishes for Seiko once he’s human again. And maybe he should get some sort of gift for Jiji and Shiratori too.

Feeling like there’s a bit less scrutiny on him, he gets back to nibbling on the leaves that his friends brought him. Momo is right–they do taste different from the ones in Seiko’s garden. These ones are a bit less earthy and filling, but definitely more crunchy and a bit sharper tasting. He doesn’t think he prefers them, but they top off his stomach nicely after all the rich dirt he ate today.

It’s weird–there’s no question about that–but he eats; his friends bicker in the background; and, all in all, it’s not that different from a normal Ayase family dinner.

Momo is in a foul mood by the end of the day. She missed Okarun all day at school, and then when she finally gets home, she barely gets to talk to him because Aira and Jiji end up hogging him as they set up his terrarium and coo over him and…

Are just generally way better friends to him than Momo is right now. Momo groans. She is trying, she really is! She tries not to be freaked out by Okarun’s worm slime or judge him for eating dirt or stare at him during dinner, but she keeps messing up and hurting him, right when he needs her most. She wishes that she could just shove her shoulder against his or hold his hand, like she would normally do to cheer him up, but–

Now she doesn’t know how.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” Aira had said to her earlier, when Momo pulled her aside. “He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but he’s a worm,” Momo groaned, not sure why everyone was being so blasé about that point.

“So?” Aira shrugged. “If anything, that makes it less complicated. He barely has any body parts left to do PDA with. If you think about it, he’s streamlined the whole operation for you.”

“‘Operation…’” Momo muttered. “How did you ever think you were attracted to men?”

“An oversight,” Aira said simply. “But listen, Momo—Takakura is a good guy. Just kiss a damn worm for him already.”

Easy for her to say. Momo doesn’t even know where she would kiss a worm, or if Okarun even wants kisses like this. For all she knows, he just wants to be left alone until he goes back to normal, just like she did when she was tiny.

Ugh, this sucks. Things were supposed to be easier now that they’re a couple. Being emotionally vulnerable enough to tell Okarun that she reciprocated his feelings had been so hard for Momo. But at the end of it, she’d at least had the relief of knowing, well, at least that part is done. Now, she could take the lead in their relationship rather than having to keep Okarun waiting, initiating all the things–holding hands, hugging, kissing–where she had more experience.

But instead, here she is again, hesitant and unsure as she places a terrarium with her worm boyfriend onto her bedroom desk.

“So…” Momo says awkwardly. “Where do you want to sleep? I guess the bright side is that Granny probably couldn’t catch you in my bed because you’re so tiny. But you could still sleep in the terrarium! Or, if you want a bed but don’t want to sleep in mine, I could pull out your futon…”

Okarun hesitates, clearly unsure. The bedroom’s overhead light reflects off his worm glasses, making him even harder to read than usual. Momo barrels ahead, because she’s suffered from foot-in-mouth disease her entire life, and she doesn’t see herself getting cured any time soon.

“Hah, if I’m being honest, I’m a bit worried about rolling over and squishing you in my bed,” Momo says, sheepishly adjusting her hair. “But we could make a barrier with, like, pillows or something to keep you safe?”

Okarun nods his little worm head. “Yeah…You do kind of move around a lot in your sleep. Maybe it’s safer just to stay in the terrarium?”

Momo feels hope chip and flake in her chest, like bits of cheap paint coming off the walls. She doesn’t know why she hoped for a different answer. She’s the one who argued against sharing a bed in the first place. She’s the one who doesn’t know how to act around Okarun right now.

“Okay,” Momo says softly. She carries the terrarium over to her bedside table and places it there. “Is it okay if I put you next to me, though?”

“Of course, Momo,” Okarun says gently. “That’s always where I want to be.”

Ugh, he’s so smooth even as a worm. Momo hates herself–she has to do better than this.

“Okarun,” she says, determined. “Just like you were good to me when I was tiny, I’m going to be good to you while you’re a worm. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. So let me know if you need something. Even if you have to wake me up.” A thought occurs to Momo. “Do worms even sleep?”

“They have to…right?” Okarun asks, as if either of them know anything about worms. They probably should have quizzed Jiji more before he left. Okarun lifts part of his body in what could be a shrug. “But I guess we’ll find out. I’ll let you know in the morning.”

“Or before then if you need me,” Momo insists.

“Or before then if I need you,” Okarun agrees.

“Okay,” Moko says. She pauses, weirdly reluctant to say goodnight, as if they were parting ways for the evening instead of going to sleep right next to each other. “Well. Good night, Okarun.”

“Night, Momo.”

Momo spends a long time staring at the terrarium, wondering how she’ll even be able to tell whether he’s sleeping or awake, before she finally falls asleep herself.

The next morning, Ken wakes up more rested than he’s been in some time. His skin feels warm and sunkissed, like he’s been sitting in the sun on a balmy June day. It’s the sort of weather that indicates it must be a weekend, that he should only stay awake for a few more minutes before drifting back to sleep. Ken gives into a luxurious stretch, yawning as his body coils out onto the soft, cool dirt of his bed—

Oh right. Dirt.

Ken opens his eyes—or, whatever it is he does to see in this form—and finds that he’s still in his terrarium. Ah, he supposes that why he feels so warm; it must be the greenhouse effect. Reality comes crashing in ashe realizes that that means he’s still a worm, it’s not the weekend, and he did not get to spend the night with Momo. He sighs, wondering if the sound from his tiny lungs is even loud enough to breach the walls of his terrarium.

He looks out of the terrarium and sees the blurry form of Momo in her bed, still asleep. Honestly, it’s probably because Ken slept without her that he feels so rested. The few times they’ve shared a bed in the past, Ken was inevitably woken up multiple times as she kicked him in her sleep, snuggled up close and made him sweat with her body heat, or nudged him aside so that she could go to the bathroom.

But still. Ken would rather be exhausted and with Momo than well rested without her. Maybe he should have offered to sleep in her bed after all? She had just sounded so concerned about squishing him, and he’s so tired of making her worry about him.

And, to be honest, he had actually been a bit concerned himself about the squishing part.

His thoughts are interrupted by Momo’s alarm. She smacks the snooze button and throws out her arm beside her, like she’s searching for something.

“Okarun?” Momo calls blearily.

“I’m here, Momo,” Ken calls. “Still, um, a worm.”

Momo stills, then reaches out again so she can pat the top of the terrarium. The motion makes the whole terrarium shake a bit, and Ken feels an instinctive quickening of his hearts–of which Jiji says there’s five–but it’s all worth it to hear Momo’s answering, “Mornin’. You didn’t wake me up last night.”

“I guess I slept through the night,” Ken says, suddenly wishing he hadn’t. “Maybe worms can sleep after all? How about you; did you sleep well?”

“No,” Momo groans. “I kept dreaming about…” She stops herself.

“About what?”

“It’s weird.”

“I’m in a pretty weird situation right now.”

Momo sighs and turns on her side to face him. Ken can’t see her facial expression, only the soft outline of her body and the tuft of her sleep-mused bangs. He misses seeing her eyes—without them, it’s so much harder to tell what she’s thinking.

“I had a nightmare where Aira was fishing with you,” Momo says miserably. “And you were fine with it! And there was a fish that was also you, and he tried to eat you! I was so mad about it. But then Worm You and Fish You both said that I should just forget about it and hurry up, because I was late for school.”

“O-oh,” Ken says, because yeah, that is weird. Just the thought of it activates a weird prey instinct in him that makes want to burrow into the soil. “Uh, for the record, if I am ever in a situation where I’m eating myself, I would very much like for you to skip school to save me.”

Momo laughs, and the sound makes the room brighter and warmer as if it really were a warm June day without school. At that moment, determination flares in Ken, and he imagines all five of his hearts calling out to Momo. Seiko might be right that his ability to take what comes to him will help dispel this curse–but it’s not helping him reach beyond these terrarium walls to comfort his girlfriend. Momo might not always say the right thing, but she brought him leaves even though it disgusted her–she offered him her bed even as a worm! Ken has to be able to do something in return, even if he has to do it without all of his limbs and sensory organs.

“Momo, I’ll go to school with you today,” Ken decides.

“You sure?” Momo says, surprised but also clearly pleased. “You have the perfect excuse to skip school. I wouldn’t blame you for taking it.”

“Yeah, but…I missed you yesterday.”

Momo’s quiet for a moment, and then the terrarium lurches as she lifts it into an embrace.

“Ugggh, you can’t say stuff like that when I can’t even hug you without squishing you!” Momo cries.

Ken wishes she would hug him anyway and feels himself blush. Even though he shouldn’t be able to blush, because he’s a worm. But his aura is apparently still dumb and human enough to embarrass him.

Thankfully, Momo doesn’t seem to know enough about worm coloration to notice, instead taking his terrarium to the bathroom and chatting with him as she washes her face and begins to put on make-up. Thank god. Ken’s pretty sure that they haven’t been dating long enough for him to admit that he feels weirdly fine about the idea of her hug squishing him like a bug.

God. It’s depressing how much being a worm actually seems to suit him.

“I can’t believe we got to use these twice!” Shiratori says gleefully, brandishing her doll clothes in front of Ken’s terrarium before school. “Don’t worry, Takakura—I altered them so that you not having arms is a non-issue.”

Ken feels like the fact that he secretes mucus when he’s dry or stressed out might be a bigger issue than the lack of arms. But he’s also been trying to play the mucus thing as close to the chest as possible when everyone has already held him.

“Miss Shiratori, are you sure?” Ken asks. “I don’t technically need them. And I wouldn’t want to ruin your clothes.”

“Who cares?” Momo grumbles. “You’re more important than her toys.”

“And you’ll look so cuuute in them,” adds Jiji, doing a little dance. “We’ve got a shirt, a sweater, a cool jacket…”

“Does it even matter if I wear clothes?” Ken asks, wiggling his body. “I mean…I’m a worm.”

He hadn’t felt self-conscious about it before, but he’s slowly beginning to realize that he’s been naked for an entire day. And around his girlfriend! Ken blushes and curls in on himself. He supposes he should have noticed earlier, but he’s weirdly desensitized to his own nudity given their misadventures.

“Being a worm is no reason not to feel confident and express yourself!” Shiratori says with a huff. “And besides, if we ever lose track of you, we need to easily be able to tell that you’re not a normal worm.”

Ah, that makes more sense. Ken feels oddly warmed by the fact that his friends tried to dress up their concern with something more fun for him. Though, he also thinks that some of them are a bit too happy about playing dress up with him.

“All right,” Ken says, uncurling. “But, um, I don’t think I can put them on by myself…”

“You perv!” Shiratori yells, shaking the terrarium.”

“Not like that!” Ken cries. “I just don’t have arms! Miss Ayase!”

Momo yanks the terrarium away from Shiratori and hands it to Jiji. Jiji ends up being the one to help him dress, turning his back away from the girls so that they can’t see him. Ken wants to mention that he’s been naked this entire time, but it does feel oddly private. Thinking about Momo seeing him dress…

It’s far too early in their relationship for something so inappropriate, even if he is a worm. And besides, Ken doesn’t want to tempt fate and risk Momo realizing that he can still blush as a worm.

They have him try on a few outfits. Ken doesn’t really see the point–and he can’t exactly see himself right now anyway–but Momo seems cheered by the subject of fashion, even if it is worm fashion, so he goes along with it. Jiji tries to put him in a cool, faux leather jacket–with its sleeves cut off, so it’s more of a cool, faux leather tube, which…Ken thinks means it might not be cool anymore–but the fabric is far too scratchy against Ken’s sensitive skin. Vamola favors a dress that Shiratori had brought along for some reason, but Ken is simply not in a place to experiment with gender norms right now, not as a worm. Shiratori tries to put him in a little tuxedo, but it’s clearly from a very old doll set and tastes like rancid dust. Ken wishes that she just had a simple garukan for him to wear, but apparently Shiratori had not prioritized the fashion of her male dolls when she was little, so there were few outfits to choose from.

In the end, Ken goes with Momo’s choice: a simple, teal sweater that’s soft enough not to chafe against his skin and in good enough condition that it doesn’t taste like mothballs. Though, it probably won’t be in good condition for long after Ken starts secreting mucus and crawling in dirt.

“We should get you something like this when you’re human again!” Momo says brightly, clearly happy and smug that her choice was the victor. “It’s definitely your color, Okarun.”

“His color right now is pink,” Vamola points out, pointing at Okarun’s skin.

“It’s a fashion thing,” Momo explains. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Mall trip!” Jiji whoops. “Okarun, can you change your glasses to sunglasses to complete the look?”

“Um, Seiko says I only have them because I can’t imagine myself without them,” Ken says thoughtfully. “To have something else, I think I’d have to…change my sense of self at a fundamental level.”

Which isn’t really his forte.

“I like the regular glasses with the sweater,” Shiratori says with a decisive nod. “It gives you a scholarly look.”

Ken wants to ask how a worm can look scholarly, but then the bell rings and he’s busy clinging onto the dirt of his terrarium as his friends run to class. Though, Momo still makes them all late by demanding a goodbye from Okarun.

Since it’s her turn, Ken just waits expectantly, shivering when he feels her fingertip run along his sweater. Her touch is gentle, but she’s in a rush and Ken can still feel the pad of her fingertip press against the soft insides of his body.

Ken blushes, and there’s no way that nobody has noticed it at this point. Momo and he have saved each other’s lives, confessed their love, and even kissed–but, even as a worm, Momo’s affection still knocks him off his feet.

You know, figuratively speaking.

Jiji is the one who actually carries Ken’s terrarium, because—while Ken isn’t in the same class as him—the group still theorizes that Jiji has the best chance of being able to play off bringing a worm to school.

What they don’t count on is that, even though Jiji is the most likely to be able to play it off, he is not the most likely to do so discreetly. Eyes follow the terrarium as Jiji walks across the room, and soon students crowd Jiji’s desk, tapping against the glass as they chatter about the dressed up worm.

“It’s so cute!”

“Eww, Jiji, why’d you bring a worm in here?”

“It’s wearing a sweater!”

“Woah, cool!”

“Even popular as a worm, huh?” Momo mutters from the desk next to them.

“Yay?” Ken says weakly.

“When I’m right, I’m right,” Jiji says wisely. “He has worm swag.”

“It is kind of a cute looking worm,” Miko says.

Ken doesn’t have ears at the moment, but even he can practically hear Momo grinding her teeth. Ken winces. Momo’s jealousy has gotten a lot better since they officially started dating, but it hasn’t completely gone away.

“Hands off!” Momo says, trying to wave everyone away. “That’s my boyfri—my worm! My worm friend! My friend’s worm!”

As Momo continues to sputter through excuses, Ken finds himself smiling. God, but he loves Momo.

However, even Momo’s defensiveness doesn’t stop the class from crowding, and Ken begins to feel a bit of that latent agoraphobia rise up again. They’re just all so much bigger than him right now, with their peering eyes obscuring the horizon and their tapping fingers shaking the ground beneath him. Ken retreats to the corner of his terrarium, behind a nice leaf, but even hidden he feels too awkward to eat anything. He might not be human right now, but, like. He’s not about to poop in front of his classmates!

“Enjoji,” the teacher says, when the commotion over Ken finally becomes too much. “Please put that thing back outside.”

“B-but it’s for a science project!” Momo protests. The teacher is having none of it though, so Ken’s terrarium lurches as Jiji carries him into the hallway.

“Sorry about that, Okarun,” Jiji says. “You okay? You look a bit shaken up.”

“P-prey instincts,” Ken says, taking a deep breath through his mouth. It doesn’t actually do anything like taking in oxygen through his skin does, but the familiar action still reassures him. “I am just a worm, after all.”

“Sorry,” Jiji says sheepishly. “I can’t help that you’re so popular! But here, I’ll walk slowly. Let’s go to Kinta’s class and pass you off to him.”

“Maybe I should have just been with Kinta in the first place,” Ken muses. “He would’ve drawn less attention than you.”

“Aww, I’m wounded! I can’t help it if we’re both so charming together!” Jiji lifts the terrarium so that he’s “eye-level” with Ken. “But, for real, dude, what’s up? Other than the prey thing. You and Momo have both seemed kind of off ever since, you know. You got wormed.”

Ken doesn’t know why he’s surprised at Jiji’s question. Jiji has always been astute when it comes to other people, and he’s forward enough to just say the problem aloud rather than giving it opportunity to fester like Momo does.

Momo…

“The timing was really bad for this,” Ken says, deflating. “Me and Momo just became official, and now look at me. Of course she’s upset. Who’d want to date a worm? We can’t hold hands or…or anything. She’s doing her best, and I know she’s trying, but it’s like she doesn’t know how to act around me anymore. And I don’t know how to act either! I barely even did when I was human. I want to–to treat her like a boyfriend would, but I’ve never done that before…And now she thinks I’m gross…”

“You’re not gross, Okarun,” Jiji reassures him.

“I am, a little.”

“Well…” Jiji shrugs. “No one actually cares about that. Momo is just being awkward. When we were kids, she hated worms. I always used to dangle them in front of her, and then she would yell and run away.”

Momo hates worms? Ken wants to curl in on himself again. But…

“Did she hate worms, or did she hate you dangling worms in front of her?” Ken says suspiciously.

“Eh. Hard to tell.”

Ken presses himself against the wall of the terrarium. “So it’s your fault she’s so disgusted by me right now!”

“That’s not true!” Jiji protests. “That was like, ten years ago. Besides, Okarun, you heard what she said in there. You might be a worm, but you’re still her boyfriend. That’s special, okay?”

It is special, and Ken knows that Jiji–more than maybe anyone else–knows how special it is.

“You’re right,” Ken sighs. “I just wish I knew how to make her feel special right now.”

“If you can’t hold hands, maybe there’s something else you can do?”

“Maybe…” Ken says. “I guess I don’t know a lot about what worms can do. And what I have found out, uhh, isn’t really that romantic.”

“I think you fertilizing Seiko’s garden was very romantic,” Jiji says, giving a thumbs up. “But yeah, maybe not Momo’s style. I’ve kind of got nothing either. But maybe you could look something up in the computer lab during lunch?” Placing his hand close to the terrarium so that Ken can see, Jiji mimes typing. “Look up ‘worm dating ideas.’ Invite Momo to help!”

Ken feels a flutter of excitement in his chest, his five hearts amplifying the feeling across his entire body. He’s always wanted to have a research date with Momo. Sure, he always imagined that it would be about the paranormal and not worms, but–he still likes the idea of being with her in the computer lab. It almost sounds like a normal thing that a couple would do.

“You’re a genius, Jiji,” Ken says.

“I know,” Jiji says, giving another thumbs up. Though, Sakata does not agree that Jiji is a genius, because when they give him the signal to come out into the hallway, he does so with an exasperated sigh.

“A failed stealth mission,” Sakata notes. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I should have known. Hand over the private, Jiji. He’ll be in competent hands until lunch.”

Jiji salutes, though–in his moment of performative buffoonery–he accidentally does so with the hand holding Ken. As Ken swings through the air and nearly slams into the wall of his terrarium, he wonders whether he really should have just gone with Sakata in the first place. But, truthfully, no one gives advice quite like Jiji.

Momo is happy when Okarun suggests spending their lunch time together in the computer lab. She’d barely been able to pay attention in class after he’d left, too busy wondering whether her Okarun was okay, or whether he had enough to eat, or whether he regretted his decision to come to school just because she’d wanted him to. In a moment of illogical despair, Momo even wondered whether Okarun’s newfound worm popularity would lead him away from her, at which point she threw her head onto the desk and mumbled into the wood until her brain came back online.

Thankfully, her friends and classmates were fairly used to this behavior by now, so no one said anything about it. Except for Jiji, who gave her a complicated and concerned wiggle of his eyebrows that seemed to speak hundreds of words–but in a language that Momo did not speak.

At Okarun’s insistence, Momo takes him out of the terrarium so that he can attempt to type on the keyboard, with the plan being for Momo to read out the searches. But Okarun isn’t even heavy enough to press down on the keys, so he has to crawl off the keyboard in defeat.

“Do you want to stay here or go back to your terrarium?” Momo asks.

“Stay here,” Okarun says, sulking on the wrist pad near the keyboard. He gestures his head toward the computer. “Can you just type what I tell you?”

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done too. Okarun wants her to type a lot of specific search terms and is very particular with the information she reads back. Momo’s instinct is to just start clicking on links until they find something juicy, but Okarun keeps asking her to research every website that pops up until they find one that’s “reputable!” It’s so boring! As if a BooTube video couldn’t just tell them what they need to know.

“Anyone can upload a BooTube video, Momo,” Okarun says. Probably even thinks they’re words of wisdom, instead of just something their teachers say a million times a week.

Though, unfortunately Okarun is proven right when the recommended feeds start showing a video about worm reproduction and Momo has to throw herself onto the floor to avoid seeing it.

“Momo, what is it?” Okarun cries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Momo mumbles, still trying to get the thumbnail out of her brain. Reading about the current state of Okarun’s genitals is one thing—she’s had an intimate knowledge of Okarun’s genital situation for more or less the entire time they’ve known each other—but she doesn’t need to see it. It just feels…way too intimate to see a random worm having sex and know that it could be Okarun. They’ve only been dating for a few weeks; Momo isn’t ready for that!

“What was the video?” Okarun asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Momo says, crawling back into her chair and ignoring everyone in the room who’s looking askance at her. They were already looking at her weird for talking to a worm anyway. “Just…You’re right. No more BooTube.”

Even outside of BooTube, though, Okarun is particular about his sources. Which is a crock of shit, because she knows for a fact that he’s gone on those sketchy paranormal forums for info before.

“Okarun,” she groans. “This is already taking forever. Stop being so picky.”

“It’s my body we’re learning about,” he says. “I think I deserve to be picky!”

“Rich to be picky about accuracy when you’re a worm with glasses,” Momo grumbles. “You look like that Busytown worm.”

Okarun is quiet for a long moment, and Momo begins to worry that she’s really offended him. Fuck, she’s stuck her foot in her mouth again. Okarun reached out an olive branch for them to spend time together during lunch today, for them to be a normal couple despite the whole worm fiasco, and she just compared his ass to some nerdy cartoon worm.

Finally, Okarun mutters, “The Busytown worm doesn’t even wear glasses…”

Momo sighs. With just her fingertip, she gives Okarun a gentle pat on his…back, she guesses. It’s a bit easier to touch him when he has the sweater on to cover his slime, but it’s still not the same.

If Okarun were human right now, Momo knows exactly what she would do. She would reach across the desk and play her fingertips against his in a silent apology. Or, maybe she would shove his shoulder to make him stop being so moody and demanding. Either way, afterward, she would hold his hand or bump her shoulder against his to show him that she still loves him. In comparison, this simple touch feels woefully insignificant. She doesn’t even know what this feels like to him, whether having a human touch your fragile worm skin would be comforting or terrifying.

“I’m sorry, Okarun,” Momo says. “I don’t think you look like the Busytown worm.”

“Thanks, Momo,” Okarun says. “I’m sorry I’m lecturing you. I’ve just…I’ve been wanting to ask you to research with me in the computer lab for a while now. I was hoping it would be romantic.

Momo wants to burst into tears. It’s such a stupid idea for a date–such a fucking otaku move–and yet she absolutely loves it. She wishes she could do this over again, spend the lunch break laughing at paranormal forum replies with Okarun and oohing over worm facts together.

Momo looks at the clock. They have fifteen minutes left. That’ll have to be enough.

“It is romantic, Okarun,” Momo reassures him. “C’mon, let’s keep looking.”

“You don’t have to lie, Momo–I know it’s not very romantic.”

“You don’t think lecturing me about primary sources is romantic?” Momo says with a wink. She doesn’t think that he can actually see the wink, but hey, just in case. “I’m having fun, Okarun. Let me type in a few search terms this time.”

Momo lightly taps Ken’s back again and throws herself more seriously into researching worm biology. She may not be able to muster this kind of vigor for a term paper, but she can do it for Okarun. She can make researching worms romantic.

By the time ten minutes have passed, they’ve amassed quite a collection of interesting worm tidbits. They find out that, yes, Okarun should be basically eating leaves and dirt, they got that part right; that those weird hairs on his body that help him move apparently have a name, and they’re called setae, a word that Momo likes because it rolls around in her mouth like a marble; and that worms don’t have proper eyesight or hearing, so Okarun being able to do both is probably a weird aura thing.

“And you can regrow your body if it’s cut off, but only if it’s below the clitellum. That’s this,” Momo says, pointing to the thick segment of Okarun’s body near his head. “That’s kind of cool.”

“L-Let’s not test that!” Okarun says, though he flinches toward rather than away from Momo’s touch. It makes Momo smile. Well, at least her touch doesn’t seem to frighten him in this form. She keeps that hand where it is, using her other one to click onto another random page before Okarun can dictate another search term.

“Huh,” she says as she reads.

“What is it?”

“It’s a poem in English…You could probably translate it better than I could.”

“Would you read it to me?” Okarun asks.

Momo knows that Okarun enjoys English class and literature class in general. She also thinks—with more than a touch of guilt—that after a day of hearing how gross and strange his new body is, maybe he might want to hear something poetic about it.

“Hold on,” she says. Momo takes a minute to find a translated version, even though it’ll probably make them late for class. But she wants to know what it means too. Then, Momo clears her throat and recites it, even though she no doubt looks crazy saying a poem aloud to herself. She reads,

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

“I like that one,” Okarun murmurs. “Even if it’s kind of morbid.”

“Me too,” Momo says. She thinks back to when she first met Okarun—back when she’d found him menial and hidden to her—and is glad that she knows better now. “Probably making you hungry though, eh?”

“It’s probably making you hungry.”

It is, a bit. Momo resolves to pick them both up some melon on the way home.

She looks down at him, wondering how he sees the world. She hopes there’s some part of it that’s sublime and decadent. He doesn’t look it, with his peachy pink skin and tiny glasses and little sweater. But Okarun’s always been more than his looks.

“Can you really taste with your skin?” Momo asks.

Okarun nods. “Yeah. It’s really weird. But kind of cool too.”

“What’s it like?”

“Uh…It’s not exactly like human taste,” Okarun says, his voice slipping into its quickfire pace as he begins talking about something that fascinates him. “It’s not really a one to one! I can kind of describe a leaf as salty, but it’s not actually that. I guess it’s kind of like how my aura could only approximate a worm; human speech can only approximate how worms sense the world! But some leaves have different tastes, like you theorized. And then I can taste the ground; I know this table hasn’t been wiped down in quite some time. And Miss Shiratori wears vanilla hand lotion, but it’s way too strong and makes my skin itchy.” Okaun sighs. “I wish I had my notebook right now.”

“Maybe I can write some notes for you after school!” Momo says, finding herself as enthralled by his descriptions of worm taste as she is by his theories about aliens. Yeah, it’s technically gross but–it just doesn’t feel like it in the same way, when Okarun starts getting excited about something.

Momo taps Okarun’s back again, feeling the fuzzy sweater material, and realizes something.

“If you can taste all over…” Momo wonders, “then this probably feels pretty uncomfortable, huh?”

Okarun makes a short wiggling motion that starts just above the clitellum. Momo thinks she remembers the other instances when he’s done that and decides to identify the gesture as a shrug.

“It’s a little uncomfortable,” Okarun admits. “It’s better than the other ones, but it’s still a bit scratchy–it is just plastic, after all. And it kind of tastes like an old house. But it’s still soft, and I liked the color a lot. And, well…” His next words come out as a murmur. “You said it looked nice on me.”

Momo smiles. She really loves him, doesn’t she? No matter what his form, no matter what he’s saying–even if he’s describing the taste of a doll’s sweater–his words tickle something warm and soft inside of her.

“Should I take it off?” Momo asks.

“M-miss Ayase!”

“Oh my god—what, like I’m gonna see your worm junk?” Momo laughs, but she still tries to make her next words sound sincere. “Come on, Okarun. You don’t need to wear a sweater just because I like it, you know. I’ll like you just as much without it too. Even if you are naked at school again…”

“Stop,” Okarun laughs. “Don’t remind me…Okay, fine. C-could you take it off? It was a nice gesture from Miss Shiratori, but I think it’s drying out my skin…”

Momo picks Okarun up and gently pries the sweater off him. It’s slower going than it was dressing him, and they’re definitely going to be late for class now. But Okarun was right about his skin drying out beneath the fabric, and Momo doesn’t want to make it worse by rushing. Momo works carefully as the computer lab empties out, knowing now that every movement of the sweater and her fingers doesn’t just touch his fragile skin, but his taste buds too.

Momo blushes. What does she taste like to a worm…?

No, no, too weird to think about while a bunch of her classmates stare at her on their way out the door while Momo ditches class to undress a worm.

“Done,” she says when Okarun is finally free. Momo tucks the sweater away in the terrarium, figuring it can’t get any dirtier at this point. “Do you want to go back inside the terrarium and get your skin back in shape? You need it to breathe, after all.”

“Yeah,” Okarun says. “Hey, thanks for helping me, Momo.”

He wraps his body around Momo’s finger, almost looking like a little ring. He does so without hesitation, and Momo breathes a sigh of relief that she hasn’t completely fucked this up. It’s a cute gesture from Okarun. It reminds her of Okarun shyly hooked their pinkies together during their first week dating, back when he was too hesitant or afraid of PDA–or, as he confessed later, too sweaty–to try actually holding her hand.

“Any time, Okarun,” Momo murmurs. She helps him into the terrarium and flicks a bit of water into it to moisten the soil. She should probably add some fresh dirt in it too, maybe from the school garden so he can taste something new. She should try to pick up some melons on the way home as well.

It turns out that melons aren’t quite in season, but Momo does buy some grapes to share. Maybe those will be better anyway, since they’ll take up less space in the terrarium.

Momo’s just peeling some grapes—ignoring Okarun’s protests as she eats a few herself; he’s like, less than a foot long, it’s not like he can eat them all anyway—when Granny walks into the kitchen.

“Ah, you’re home,” Seiko says. “Good. Bring No Eyes to the garden again. I need another set of hands.”

“We’re trying to spend time together!” Momo says, hovering her hand protectively around Okarun’s terrarium. “Stop making him do chores!”

“I dunno,” Seiko says, crossing her arms. “Still feels like he owes me a couple more chores after sleeping in your bed…”

“I don’t mind, Momo, really,” Okarun says quickly. “It’s not like I really need the grapes to be fresh anyway.”

“If you want to spend time with him so badly, come garden with us,” Seiko says, before walking away.

Huh? Momo hasn’t gardened with her granny since she was little. She remembers not being particularly talented by it, too easily distracted by other things in the yard and too eager to go into the shade before the work was done. But Okaun had seemed really relaxed after he gardened yesterday, and Momo does want to keep hanging out with him. Maybe it’s worth a try.

“Okay,” Momo groans, popping one last grape in her mouth before taking them outside.

It’s…still not exactly Momo’s cup of tea. She gets sunburned, which Okarun gets to avoid because he’s in the ground the whole time, lucky bastard. But when Okarun emerges from the earth and shakes off the clumps of dirt, eagerly reporting to Momo what he’d found in the yard, she can’t help but feel a certain fondness for the activity.

Momo discovers that there are other parts of gardening that she likes too, for all that this stupid hobby seems determined to burn her skin and break her back. She likes digging up stubborn weeds, and she likes going through the seed packets with Okarun to find the perfect ones to plant, and she likes drinking cold lemonade when it’s all said and done.

“I gardened a lot when I was little,” Okarun says, while Momo sips her lemonade on the porch. “I used to live with my grandfather, and he had a big greenhouse. He helped me make a notebook full of all the different plant names. I—I don’t have a lot of room for plants in my apartment now, so this is nice.”

Momo wonders at the rare mention of Okarun’s family, but she decides not to push. Momo still believes that her brashness is justified about 90% of the time–but she’s been learning lately that there is still a 10% when she should let things happen in their own time, in their own manner.

“You are a worm, after all,” Momo teases instead. “Of course you like gardening. It’d be like having Turbo Granny powers and not enjoying running.”

“I do miss running,” Okarun groans. “It’s really inconvenient not having feet.”

“I wonder what would happen if you could still go turbo right now,” Momo muses. “Would you be just a really fast worm…?”

“You don’t have to make it sound so lame…”

“It would be kind of lame,” Momo points out. Like, what, a turbo worm with red stripes on it that’s all bummed out because it doesn’t have feet? Then Momo remembers their research. “But hey, now you have setae! That’s almost like hundreds of little icky feet.”

Okarun thrashes in place before diving partway into the earth. His voice is muffled through dirt, but Momo hears, “Don’t talk about them like that.”

“It’s fine, Okarun,” Momo says, and she means it. In all their adventures together, Momo hasn’t found her dealbreaker with Okarun yet, and, at this point, she highly doubts that it’s going to be setae “Your yokai form had nasty feet too, remember? I like you no matter what curse you have going on, Okarun.”

This only causes Okarun to burrow further into the earth, which is stupid because she’s trying to be sincere, damn it! Momo scrambles to grab his tail, but because she’s hesitant to use much force on his small body, he still manages to wiggle away.

Only to pop up beside her a moment later and curl around her hand.

“Thank you, Momo,” he says, sincerely enough that Momo aches for not having been smart enough to say it sooner.

Okarun is oddly quiet as they’re getting ready for bed that night. Momo wonders if his worm body is just tuckered out from all the stimulation of school and the work of gardening, but she’s also never known exhaustion to keep Okarun from quiet. She hums in thought while she sprinkles some fresh leaves and spritzes the dirt in the terrarium. Before she forgets, she also spreads some aloe on her sunburn, sighing in relief. She can’t imagine what Okarun’s sensitive skin is going through right now.

“Come to the bathroom with me?” she asks, setting her hand down to Okarun’s level.

“You’re not…peeing, right? I can still see a little bit, Momo…”

“No,” Momo groans, forgoing asking and just picking him up. Dumbass. Really, the reason she asks is because her bathroom is the furthest away from the grannies’ room and she wants some privacy for the two of them. Once she sets him down on the edge of the sink, she asks, “Are you okay, Okarun? You’ve been acting kind of weird since dinner. Do you need more leaves?”

“No,” Okarun sighs. “I’m okay. Well, actually…”

“Yeah?”

Okarun takes a deep breath and then–

“I wanted to say I’m sorry, Momo!”

“What?” Momo asks, surprised. "Why? I’m the one who should be saying sorry!”

“What? You’ve been doing your best!” Okarun insists. “You said that you like me no matter what, but still…I know that I’m not very appealing right now.” If he were human, there’s no doubt he’d be adjusting his glasses in a nervous tic; as it is, Momo thinks she recognizes his agitated wiggling as a desire to burrow into the dirt and hide. “I tried to come to school so we could spend more time together, but then I got Jiji and myself kicked out. The computer lab date wasn’t fun like it was supposed to be, and you said that you got sunburnt from gardening. I can’t hold your hand, so I’ve been trying other things, but–I know how slimy and gross I am, even if you’re being nice about it! This just isn’t what I promised you, when I became your boyfriend, Momo, and I wanted to say I’m sorry about that.”

“Okarun, don’t say that,” Momo says gently. She scoops him into her hands and runs a gentle finger along his back. Yes, it’s a little slimy, but her human Okarun is a teenage boy with sweaty hands. Slime is what Momo signed up for, whether Okarun realizes that or not.

She just needs to…find a way to say that.

Momo takes a deep breath. She’s not the same person she was at the start of the year. She’s not even the same person that she was when Okarun first confessed to her. She can be straightforward with him.

“I’m sorry, Okarun,” Momo says. “Sure, I’ve been trying, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been a good girlfriend the past couple days. I’ve been freaking out about how to act around you, because I’m worried I’ll hurt you or do something weird. But I should have just told you that instead of keeping it to myself. And I also shouldn’t have dropped you. Or made fun of you for eating dirt. Or called you gross.”

“Gross and slimy,” Okarun reminds her. “That’s what you said.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Momo says. “I don’t care if you’re gross. I don’t even care if you’re a worm. You’re my boyfriend, and I love you, and I want to show that to you no matter what form you’re in.”

“But how?” Okarun mumbles. “We can’t even hold hands.”

“Sure we can,” Momo says. She cups her hands around Okarun, trying to create a shallow valley where only they both exist. “I’m holding you in my hands right now.”

“Oh,” Okarun says. He lifts his head. “C-can I try?”

“Of course,” Momo says, and he does.

Over the past day, Okarun has generally tried to stay still whenever she holds him, probably in an effort not to get jostled. But now, with that unspoken barrier broken, he explores the terrain of her hand with curious abandon. His first stop is the top of her sunburnt wrists, where his moist, cool skin feels like a gentle kiss to ease the pain. Then, he studies the scars and nicks on her hands from childhood play and random kitchen accidents, ones that Momo herself had forgotten about but that must seem like a neon sign at Okarun’s size. He touches her soft palms and the wrinkles of her thumb, tickling the more sensitive skin there. Maybe it should have been gross, but Momo only feels awe at the trust Okarun is placing in her, as he risks being gross in order to reach out to her and return her love.

Eventually, Okarun curls his body around one of her fingers, forming a little ring again. Momo realizes that the pink of Okarun’s skin seems brighter, making his ring stand out even more on her skin.

“Was—was that romantic?” Okarun asks.

“Very romantic,” Momo answers. But now she wants more than hand holding. Before she can think about it too much, Momo lifts the finger that Okarun is wrapped around to her lips and gives him a quick kiss.

Okarun unravels from her finger and lands in a dazed heap onto her palm. He’s definitely blushing, with most of it congregated in his cheeks like he’s human. Ugh, he’s really the worst at being a worm. Momo has no idea why she even tried to treat him like he’s as delicate as one.

“Was that romantic too?” she asks, pleased at his reaction.

“That was great,” Okarun wheezes, his body curling up into a rough approximation of a heart. Ugh, he’s so cute! “Very romantic.”

“Well, then see!” Momo says, puffing out her chest. “The worm thing is no problem for us. We’ll be fine.”

“Not a problem,” Okarun repeats, clearly still a bit dazed by the kiss.

“How does it feel, being kissed as a worm?” Momo asks, curious. Her face burns when she remembers that Okarun can taste through his skin right now–and she’d just kissed like half his body! “C-could you taste me? Not, uh, in a weird way.”

“Y-yeah,” Okarun says, elongating from the crooked heart to his more natural posture. “I mean, yeah, I could taste it, not that it was weird. I don’t think it was weird at all! Um, if you don’t.”

“Of course not,” Momo says, clearing her throat. “So, uh, what did I taste like?”

Okarun’s blush deepens.

“I tasted your toothpaste from when you brushed your teeth earlier tonight,” he says thoughtfully, like he’s trying to think of a good answer to an essay question. “It’s really strong when I can taste it everywhere; it feels like when you get shocked by static electricity. B-but not in a bad way. And I could taste the grapes you had after dinner. And your strawberry chapstick. That tastes better when I’m a human and, um, kissing you on the lips though. As a worm it’s a bit more–cloying, I guess. Overall, you…You taste like you, but more.”

He’s babbling and curling up into a tiny ball, and Momo wipes off her chapstick before leaning in to give him another kiss. She doesn’t taste or feel anything special about it, other than a warm pride in knowing that it makes Okarun happy.

“How come I don’t get to taste you like that?” Momo complains. “I want to say romantic things about what you taste like! But you just taste like…dirt. That’s no fair.”

“The trade off for tasting everything is being a worm, Momo.”

“Hmph,” Momo says, still feeling a bit like she’s getting outplayed in the worm romance department. Then she remembers one last thing she’d read in her research. “Um, Okarun.”

“Yeah?”

“Worms have lips, don’t they?”

“Y-yeah?”

Momo raises him to her eye level and purses her lips.

“M-momo!” Okarun says, though he crawls closer to her face. “You really don’t have to…Woah, your lips kind of look weird this big…Like a Dark Souls monster…”

“I’m being vulnerable!” Momo complains. “Stop saying my lips look like a monster! Do you want a kiss or not?”

“Of course I do!” Okarun says quickly. “It’s just…Are you sure? I never washed off after being in the dirt. Can’t you at least wash me off first? I-I don’t want to make a bad impression on you!”

“As if you could,” Momo huffs, annoyed at losing momentum when she’s clearly trying to make a grand romantic overture. Sure, Okarun can confess his love while he’s getting dramatically sucked out of a danmanra, but when she wants to show that she’s willing to kiss her worm boyfriend, suddenly logistics come into play.

But Momo obeys and fills the sink with a bit of water for Okarun to soak in. Unfortunately, they both remember too late that, as well as tasting through their skin, worms also breathe through their skin. Momo yells as Okarun begins choking, scoops him out, and begins shaking him back and forth to fling the water droplets off of him.

“Just use towels!” Okarun sputters. “Do you know how fast this feels when you’re this small? You’ll make me throw up!”

“I’ve been tiny before; it’s not that bad! And there’s no way worms can throw up!”

“We don’t know that!”

“Well maybe you should have asked me to look that up instead of bugging me about primary sources!”

They hear a rap on the bedroom door from down the hallway.

“Quiet down!” Seiko shouts. “Or I’ll toss you both back into the garden.”

The both of them freeze. Then slowly, like an unspooling thread, their bodies begin to shake with giggles, their efforts to stifle them only making the fit longer and louder until Seiko yells at them for light’s out. They retreat back into Momo’s room, finally managing to settle down.

“Well, that wasn’t as romantic as I was hoping it would be,” Momo laughs.

“I can’t believe I forgot that I can’t swim,” Okarun chuckles. “Next time some yokai curses me, I need to get turned into something that can at least tread water.”

Momo lays him on a blanket and lightly pats him dry. He’s mostly recovered by this point, but the gesture feels nice.

“Next time?” Momo asks, raising an eyebrow. “You planning on doing this again?”

“No, but that seems to just be how our lives go at this point,” Okarun says wryly.

“That’s true,” Momo says thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll just have to figure out how to hold your hand no matter what form you’re in.”

“I look forward to it,” Okarun says softly. His little worm head nuzzles her palm, as if he could dig into the very heart of her. “But, uh, let’s try not to get cursed anymore, okay?”

“Yes,” Momo agrees fervently. “And if I do get cursed, it’s gotta be something cool. Like being a cool hawk or something.”

“But not while I’m a worm, right? Birds are predators to worms…”

“Mmm, I don’t know,” Momo says with a wink. “I bet you’d be pretty tasty, Okarun!”

“M-Momo! You can’t just say that.”

By now, Okarun is clean of all dirt and clinging water droplets. Well, almost. A couple tiny water droplets cling to his glasses, and Momo fetches her glasses cloth to wipe them clean.

“Speaking of taste,” Momo says, feeling herself blush again. “Do you want to try again…?”

“Yes please,” Okarun says, his voice small.

Momo holds Okarun up to her face again and closes her eyes. She feels oddly nervous, even though it’s not like this is their first kiss or anything. She doesn’t even know if this counts as a real kiss, if one of them is a worm. But her insides still flutter with anticipation until she feels a small, moist pressure against her lips, so faint and barely-there that she wonders is this it? It feels like…

Well. Truth be told, it doesn’t feel like anything in particular, not anything specific that Momo could easily use to describe the experience. The closest approximation that Momo can think of is when she was little and tried to eat those slimy, slap stick hand toys because they looked colorful and tasty. When she tried it, she almost spat it out, the toy sticky against her lips and surprisingly durable beneath her canines. It’d tasted like licking the floor and the gumminess had lingered in her mouth afterward.

But that’s not a good comparison. Really, it’s just kissing a worm. No metaphor could possibly describe it better than the simple, incomparable reality. But it’s Okarun, so despite all the strange adjectives she could assign to the experience, it’s still nice.

She pulls away to see Okarun blushing in front of her, his pink cheeks turned bright red and his little glasses fogged up by her breath.

“How was it?” she asks, giggling as the question fogs up Okarun’s glasses even further. She holds him a little farther away so that the lenses can clear.

“It was nice, Momo,” Okarun says. “I got to kiss you–of course it’s nice. But…it was also really weird. Your lips are giant, and my, uh, worm instincts really thought I was gonna be eaten...”

“Worm instincts?” Momo says, laughing. Yeah, this is why she loves Okarun. He’s romantic, but he’s also not about to pretend that a human and a worm kissing isn’t a bit weird. “Yeah, it was weird. But I’m still glad we did it. I love you, Okarun.”

“I love you too,” Okarun says, wrapping his body around her finger again. “Thanks, Momo.”

They finish getting ready for bed, and Momo asks Okarun if he’ll sleep in her bed tonight. After all that, it’s not like she’s going to make the same mistake as last night.

Okaun agrees, and Momo places him onto the pillow next to hers. She figures that’s the best way to keep from accidentally rolling over and squishing him. She also leaves the lid of the terrarium open in case he changes his mind in the middle of the night.

“I won’t change my mind,” Okarun says, resolutely. “I’ve missed you. I want to be near you.”

“But who knows how your worm instincts will feel if I yawn in the middle of the night? It might look like I’m trying to eat you.”

“I never should have told you about the worm instincts,” Okarun complains. “And you eating me is apparently an appropriate fear; you said you’d eat me if you turned into a bird right now!”

“I never said that,” Momo says, yawning. “Besides, look on the bright side. At least now you’re too small for Granny to catch you in my bed. See? A lot of upsides to being a worm.”

“Skin that can taste and not being beaten to death by your grandma,” Okarun says dryly, but then he yawns himself. “Sounds like a good deal.”

“Don’t worry,” Momo mumbles, already feeling herself begin to drift off. “I gave you true love’s kiss, remember? Problem solved.”

“Problem solved,” Okarun agrees, and if he says anything more, Momo isn’t aware of it as she falls asleep.

When Ken wakes up, he feels exhausted. His leg twinges with a bruise—probably from Momo kicking in the night—and his arm is tingling with pins and needles from Momo pining it down with her own.

Wait. Legs? Arms?

Ken opens his eyes and rapidly pats down his body, checking to make sure that everything is still there. He’d learned that lesson well after his first yokai curse. Arms, check; legs, check; eyes and ears, check; and, being quick about it because he is still in bed with Momo and he’s not a creep—dick and balls, check.

“Momo, I’m not a worm anymore!” he whoops, throwing himself around Momo in a hug. He marvels at the small pleasure of simply being able to wrap his arms around her and resolves never to take it for granted again. He kicks his foot out, grinning when it catches against hers.

“Ow,” Momo grumbles, as she begins to wake up. Then her eyes shoot open and she gasps.

“Okarun!” she exclaims. “You’re not a worm anymore! Do you think it was true love’s kiss?”

Honestly, Ken has no idea. Seiko did say that the curse would probably pass quickly because his body is more used to processing them, but also–Momo’s kisses do feel pretty magical.

Ken kisses her forehead, trying to impart that same magic back. He’s not sure he could ever be as magical as Momo, but he can try.

Momo sighs happily in response to the kiss and puts her arms around him.

“I’m so happy you’re human agaaaain,” Momo says. “I would have kept loving you as a worm, but I really missed hugging you.”

“How do you think I feel?” Ken asks, hugging her back and then pulling away so that he can see her face. He loves Momo’s face, and yet he’s had to spend the past two days looking at it with blurry vision! Or, maybe even worse, looking at it way too close with her pink lips puckering at him like some kind of sea monster. He’s glad they kissed, but he also much prefers Momo’s lips when every instinct in his body isn’t telling him that he’s about to get eaten. Ken had always grown up wishing that he were an alien, but he’s never appreciated being human more than he does right now.

Ken leans in to kiss Momo on the lips, properly this time–no sea monster lips or tiny worm lips involved whatsoever. Just them. It’s a nice, slow kiss, like the ones that Momo has been practicing with him after school, the kind that make him feel warm and melty inside. Ken wants to burrow into the earth in happiness, but he settles for breaking the kiss to grind his head against the pillow instead.

“Uh…What are you doing?” Momo asks.

Ken freezes. What is he doing? He’s supposed to be kissing Momo, isn’t he? Why is he…?

He groans as he realizes what’s happening. Noooo, come on. The curse is supposed to be over. Whatever happened to his body processing it quickly?

Well, in fairness, it seems like his body had processed it quickly. His mind, on the other hand…

“I think I still have some of my worm instincts,” Ken moans. “I was trying to dig…”

Momo laughs at him for a full minute, which does not ease Ken’s instinct to burrow into the earth and hide, though it is eased by Momo peppering him in small kisses as she does so. At the very least, Ken doesn’t have the instinct to get away from her mouth anymore. He doesn’t know what he’d do if that had stayed.

“C’mon, Okarun,” Momo says, still giggling. “It’s not that bad. At least you’re human. I mean, it’s not like you still want to eat dirt or anything.”

Ken stays silent, even knowing that it damns him. It’s close to their usual breakfast time, and he’s starting to feel very hungry. Even if it’s for…well…

“Oh my god,” Momo cackles. “You do want to eat dirt!”

“It’s not just dirt!” Ken protests. “Don’t you remember our research? It’s microorganisms and fungus and roots too!”

“Okay. Well, your terrarium is right there if you want breakfast.”

Ken puts his face into his pillow—to look away from Momo, not because he wants to burrow.

“Momo!” Ken groans. “How long do I have to deal with this? What if it doesn’t go away? What if I just want to eat dirt forever now…?”

“Then I’ll love you anyway, you dork,” Momo says, pressing a kiss to the back of his head. “Didn’t we already figure that out? But…we’ll also probably have to find out how you can eat dirt without ruining your stomach.”

Ken sighs and rolls over so he’s facing her. Without his glasses, he can’t see well, but it’s much better than when he was a worm. Now he can make out her cheerful smile, how the light from the window turns her hair bright auburn, and the twinkle in her eyes as she looks at him with equal parts mischief and love.

“Promise?” he asks, already knowing her answer.

“Promise,” she says, pressing a firm kiss to his lips. “Now come on. Let’s see if you can eat eggs or if we need to start packing you a dirt bento for school.”

Ken gets out of bed, nearly falling out as he realizes he isn’t used to his limbs anymore. Momo laughs, but she takes his hands and leads him along, helping him get his bearings as they slowly make their way to the door. Momo’s hands are soft in his. He remembers the taste of them against his skin as she held him last night, how safe he’d felt in her hands. He feels just as safe now as her hands lead him downstairs to get breakfast together.