The underlying base of the story was somewhat common. Shy girl likes boy, who likes her back, but never gets his change to say so. What was not quite as common was the boy was secretly the leader of an online gang called Dollars. That wasn't too strange. The girl however was in possession of a demon blade called Saika. Stranger was that this was not truly related to what happened next, except that it was something of an assistant to motivate the events.

The shy girl, Anri Sonohara, had no ability to love thanks to childhood trauma, fortunate as her blade expressed love through cutting, and this had meant she had control of it. The boy meanwhile, Mikado Ryugamine, had a fear of a normal life.

Anri however feared that her relationship with her friends, Mikado and Kida, was parasitic, merely for her own benefit. She feared she was deceiving them, and this perceived guilt weighed upon her, and she dearly wished she had the ability to truly love and make the friendship more than just self-centred companionship. Mikado himself meanwhile had a simpler wish. He simply did not want a normal kind of life, and wanted some way to confess to Anri.

That wasn't when things got strange though.

***

'Another day... Another day where I leech off them for myself.' Anri thought, and sighed. She looked up at the night sky out of her window.

It held no obvious answers to her dilemma.

"I just... I wish I was able to feel normal love. Break this lie, make it real instead... But that'll never happen."

She leaned back on her bed, and decided to simply get some sleep.

***

"Just anything but normal...That's all I wish for." Mikado said to himself, lying on his bed looking at the stars.

Recently, he had made that request for the next day often, as his life was becoming ordinary.

"And some way to get the courage to just let her know..." He added.

***

Of course, both just had to speak aloud to the sky their wish at the same time. This would, for various reasons, result in some confusion, to say the least.

The first steps of that confusion would come in the morning.

***

Anri yawned. She hadn't slept well at all, tossing and turning after her reflection on her life last night... Like she'd done every night. But now it was every morning. Wake up, shower, dress, breakfast, school, leech, come home, mope...

Across town, Mikado's own waking moments held some dread. Wake up. He did that yesterday, but it was a somewhat required normal thin. Shower and get dressed. Also needed. Breakfast, school... Only avoidable in his wishes. Fail to confess again, have a boring day.

Anri heard something fall behind her as she entered the shower, seeing that she had managed to knock over the shampoo bottle on the rack while she was turning the water on to check it wasn't too hot. Turning to see, she felt the surprise of hot water on something attached to her.

Too hot.

She yelped.

At Mikado's, pulling off his night clothes led to his hand striking something odd. At first, he thought somehow rolled up socks had got there when two things became known.

The object was fluffy, and attached just atop his tailbone.

Both of them looked in confusion.

Both were very alarmed by what they saw.


***

'Oh god oh god... How do I even hide it in school?!' Anri fretted. It was stuffed up the back of her shirt, but it was uncomfortable and seemed to have a mind of its own.

'Well, I guess this isn't normal... But it can't be real...' Mikado thought.

The two, lost in their thoughts, didn't see each other.

But oddly, they did sense something.

'...What's that smell?'

'...I feel like something is... Something bad nearby...'

They looked around. They rounded a corner. They walked into each other. One had the smell intensify, the other had the feeling of discomfort grow.

Both fell flat on their tails.

Literally.

Anri yelped and in her surprise, it shot out, wagging off the pain it had just gone through. Mikado landed on his, and virtually crushed it. His hands flew to cradle it reflexively. Going down the back of his trousers to do so.

Both looked up.

Anri saw Mikado with his had down the back of his trousers.

Mikado saw that Anri had a large, bushy, fox tail.

"W....What the..." Both said, staring in surprise. Then it occurred to them what they were doing.

Both bolted up. Mikado's hands yanked free. Anri swiftly stuffed the tail back up her shirt.

"A-Anri, did I just..."

"You didn't see anything and neither did I!" She squeaked.

Mikado froze. What had he really done?

"Wait. Did I... Did you see the..."

"I saw enough!" Anri stammered.

"...But how do we both have tails?"

"I don't know! It sort of grew overnight!"

In her confusion, it popped back out, waving.

Two of their classmates walked past, and Anri froze in fear.

Both kept walking.

"...What? Didn't they see it?"

"I guess they didn't. But... What did you see?" Mikado said, unconsciously backing away.

"Just you had you hands down the back of... You said you had a tail too?" Anri realised, unconsciously moving nearer.

The nice smell was stronger.

The bad feeling was overpowering.

"...Yeah. But it's not a fox tail. It's..."

"Rabbit." She finished.

"...How did you know?"

She had no answer. She seemed intoxicated by something. He was transfixed in place by that odd feeling of dread.

The school bell rang. Both snapped out of it, and went inside. Anri was bewildered to realise her tail was ignored... Even when it hit someone, she was merely admonished to be careful with it.

No one even noticed Mikado's rabbit tail, fortunately. It was easier to hide.

***

That day had ended, both of them confused and thinking it was all some strange dream and that sleep would bring some sort of sane world back. One where a fox tail wasn't normal, where there wasn't a little fluffy pompom sticking out of his backside, where there wasn't a nice smell and where there was no feeling of being hunted.

The thoughts were wrong.  Anri stared at her red fur-covered hands. In her half awake state, she had one thought.

"This is going to take ages to dry off from a shower..."

Mikado awoke to find himself shorter, and covered in soft white fur. He did not have similar thoughts. He simply blinked, groaned, and got on with it.

"Great. Hope for something abnormal, get turned into a rabbit...  This is crazy."

***

Mikado had arrived at school, expecting no response from others. He was half correct, in that people largely ignored him, even in loose clothing (thanks to his slight shrinking) and half wrong in that suddenly, people kept feeling ears he didn't know he had.

"Agh! Quit it!" He yelped as someone roughly grabbed his ear, and then he felt the feeling again.

Anri was the one who had grabbed him. Her mouth and nose were elongating slightly, and she looked... hungry.

"Anri... What are you doing?"

She leaned in.

"Anri?!"

She paused. Her ears, fox ears atop her head, twitched.

"Mikado... I don't know why but... I just wanted to taste you."

Mikado wanted to run, but he was strangely paralysed.

"Can you let me go, Anri? I think we need to go somewhere and..."

At that point, she did let him go, but he found himself bolting. She followed, chasing. The pair rushed, on two legs, then dropping to four. Ignored by all, a rabbit and a fox shed clothing and ran out into the school playing field. The rabbit leapt into a storage shed for gym equipment, and the fox followed. It was dark for human eyes, but the fox and rabbit had better night vision.

The rabbit halted, trapped, and then it seemed to remember something.

"Anri! Wait!"

The fox halted. Anri shook her head.

"Wh...What is this? Why is this happening?"

"I've no idea but... I don't think we're going to win this, are we? We're becoming more and more animal. So I have to say this...  Anri, I love you, I really wish I could have told you that before, but please don't eat me."

Anri stared.

As confessions of love went, it was pretty abnormal. As responses to the confession, what happened next was, however, sadly rather normal.

Mikado however was not aware of this until it was too late to care. He squeaked in fear as the larger fox pounced, pinning the rabbit to the ground...

...And began licking his face. He strangely found himself licking back, putting his own tongue out. Slowly, but surely, the licks became kisses, as they started to revert to human, first growing to normal size, then back to just furry humans, and losing their tails and ears.

The pair continued kissing, long after returning to human, and Anri pulled back first, realising something.

"Um, Mikado... this might be a bad time to realise this but... Aren't we naked? And isn't this shed locked?"

Mikado felt a sudden discomfort. Not dread like before, but a feeling like a vessel in his nose was about to burst.

"...I think I'm glad it's dark in here. Don't they store spare gym kits in here as well?"

There then followed some careful, embarrassed, searching in the dark to find the spare kits, and then maybe figure out how to unlock that door...

As Mikado pulled on his own found and borrowed clothing, he spoke.

"Okay... Now we get that door open and try figure out what happened to turn us into..."

He was cut off by a kiss.

"Nope. Now we have clothes on it's less weird. Let's pick up where we left off... Then we can get out." Anri grinned.