"You can't do this!" I shouted, standing before the furious officers with clenched fists, my voice brimming with unshakable resolve. "These yokai have never harmed humans! What we should be doing is seeking understanding and acceptance, not senseless rejection!"
The officers' gazes turned even colder. They didn't understand my anger—if anything, they scoffed at my words. A young officer sneered, "Understanding? Acceptance? What nonsense. These monsters lurk in the human world, always up to something strange. Who knows what they really are?"
I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm, but my hands trembled with emotion. These officers couldn't grasp that the yokai before them weren’t dangerous. Many of them had once been protectors of humanity in ancient times, guardians of villages and forests. But as the world changed, they were forgotten—wrapped in fear, labeled as enemies.
I turned to the yokai. Each wore a different expression—resignation, sorrow, even deep loneliness.
"We should have left long ago," the tiger yokai murmured, his voice low, as if speaking to himself. "This world... no longer belongs to us." His words carried the weight of nostalgia and helplessness. Once, he had been a mountain guardian, watching over a thriving village. But as the village faded, so did memory of him, until he was lost to human history.
Miss Lin stepped forward, her eyes tinged with melancholy. "All we want is to live peacefully in this world. But human fear denies us even that." Her voice was soft, yet full of quiet despair.
Then, one of the officers raised his hand, pointing accusingly. "You yokai seek to disrupt human order. If we don’t purge you now, who knows how many innocents you'll harm in the future?"
I stood abruptly, a surge of defiance rising in me. "You're wrong! What you fear is simply the unknown—what you don’t understand. We're not your enemies, not your threats! We're living beings with feelings, with lives!"
Just as I prepared to speak again, the officers closed in, the air thickening with tension. The situation teetered on the edge of escalation—
Then, a faint ping sounded from the phone sprite. Slowly, hesitantly, it spoke up from behind me. "If... if we could prove that yokai are innocent... maybe humans would accept us. Maybe things could change."
I turned. The phone sprite's face was etched with anxiety, yet a strange determination flickered in its eyes. "I have a way," it said suddenly.
In that moment, a thought struck me: Perhaps the suffering of yokai and the fear of humans were intertwined, a shared fate neither could escape. This tiny phone sprite—somehow, it had become our only hope.
Miss Lin, the tiger yokai, all the others—their eyes fixed on me. I knew then that I had to make a choice.
Facing the officers, I spoke firmly. "This is a misunderstanding. Let me prove to you—these yokai are not humanity's enemies. Just give us one chance."
Silence fell. The officers hesitated, the atmosphere frozen. In that breathless pause, I understood—this conflict wasn't over.
But maybe, just maybe, the ending could still be rewritten.
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