Torgen

Chapter 4  Morisawa-sensei led us to the running track, where we gathered around him in a semicircle for instructions. “We’ll start with some stretching,” he said, pausing in distraction for a moment when he noticed me wearing my gym clothes, “then warm up our muscles by jogging a lap of the track, then we’ll alternate heats of boys and girls for the rest of the period."  Morisawa-sensei took his suit jacket off, placed it on the bleachers next to the track with his clipboard and a stopwatch, and demonstrated some stretches, though he was still wearing the suit pants and a dress shirt so he couldn’t go as deep as he would if he really needed to stretch. Hanako moved in front of me, lowered herself so the bottoms of her feet were level with the ground (though the ground wouldn’t have offered any resistance if she had tried to go lower) and moved the image of her body as though she was actually stretching. I didn’t need to see her face to know she was smiling. I put my bag of clothes on the ground and stretched as well, with one move or another occasionally reminding me that I was wearing a slightly wet paper diaper. I wondered how much I would notice it when I was running.  Once we had stretched for a while, he said, “alright, everyone take a warm-up lap around the track,” then before I could get going, came over to me. “Suzuhara-kun, I thought I said you should sit out Phys Ed class today,” he said quietly, trying not to make a scene.  “I’m sorry, Sensei, I must have misunderstood. I thought you meant that if I needed to change in Hanako’s washroom, I should sit out because I would be late for stretching and it would be disruptive. Since I decided I could change in the regular change room, I arrived on time for stretching. Was that not what you meant? Because I did bring my clothes with me if you want me to leave early to use her washroom to change back.”  “He brought Hanako in with him!” one of the boys nearby said before starting his warmup lap.  “I kept my eyes closed! I didn’t see anything!” Hanako yelled back in a way where if she was human you would think that the second was the result of the first, but in her case they were separate claims. “Sensei, I didn’t see anything,” she reiterated directly to Morisawa-sensei.  “As important as Hanako Duty is, we don’t mean for you to humiliate yourself,” he replied to me.  I took a deep breath and adopted the cadence of reading a report in front of the class. “In social studies we learned that Japan has a rapidly aging population, and many elderly or disabled people use mobility aids like wheelchairs or canes. I don’t think someone who uses a mobility aid should be embarrassed about it. Do you, Sensei?” I asked.  “No, of course not,” Morisawa-sensei replied, not sure where I was going with this.  “Hanako is deceased, which is a disability, and my diaper is her mobility aid,” I continued. Hanako blushed. “Do you think either of us should be embarrassed that she needs one?”  He considered this briefly. “Well, you’re wearing the right clothes for it, Suzuhara-kun. You may as well catch up to your classmates.”  “Yes, sensei,” I said. I was glad he wasn’t upset, because I had pulled that whole thing out of thin air. I hadn’t misunderstood anything! I knew he had told me to sit out of gym class, and I had brazenly defied him and then politely talked my way out of trouble. And whether I thought I should have been embarrassed about wearing Hanako’s mobility aid, I had been; you can’t just talk yourself out of being embarrassed.  I picked up the bag with my street clothes, ran over to the bleachers where Morisawa-sensei had left his jacket and put the bag near it, then started jogging around the track in the same direction as my classmates had run. Hanako was trying to mime jogging too, but since I was bouncing higher than I had when I walked and her position was always relative to me, she was shaking up and down trying to imitate the height that she should have when she jumped off.  “Do you think you’re in trouble?” she asked.  “You think I’m doing a good job, right?” I asked back.  “Of course!” she said.  “Well then if I get in trouble for it, get mad at the school to defend me. And do some spooky ghost things, like make your hair float around and flicker the lights.”  “I can’t do things like that!” she gasped. I looked at her and she seemed to be serious. She definitely didn’t remember what happened when I asked her question back to her.  “I’m more worried the rest of the class won’t like that I’m raising the bar for what you have to do when you have Hanako Duty.”  “Do you think they don’t like me?” she asked sadly.  Shoot, that was a bad thing to have said, even if I thought it was true. “I think they focus on the diapers and not on being helpful.” I had no idea if they all thought that, but that’s what I had thought before I saw how happy class made her, so it was a fair guess. “Plus, Hikari-chan and them seem to like you, right? If you have a few close friends, that’s the most important thing.”  “I didn’t pick the rules,” she complained, blushing.  By the time we caught up to the rest of the class around the 200 meter mark she had given up on jogging at her own rhythm and had matched mine, but the result was pretty convincing—sometimes you’d notice that her foot was passing through the ground, or didn’t really have traction against it, but you had to look closely.  When we finished the warm-up lap, Morasawa-sensei gathered us around again. “Now that you have an idea what the distance is like, I’ll tell you that for adults and middle- and high-schoolers, 400 meters is a difficult distance. It’s between a sprint and a long distance run. For your age, treat it as a distance run. You’ll have to pace yourselves. The first heat will be Inoue-chan, Kanemoto-chan, Shirakawa-chan, Suzuki-chan, Takata-chan, and Masuda-chan. You’ll start in two minutes. The rest of you, get ready to cheer on your classmates from the bleachers, and I’ll let you know when to get ready.”  The six named girls walked around a bit to stay stretched out while the rest of us went to the bleachers on the outside of the track. I sat at the end next to my bag of street clothes, and Hanako sat to the inside of me. My diaper was only wet, and I wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to tell, but if they assumed worse then they might not want to sit directly next to me, whereas there was no reason someone shouldn’t want to sit next to Hanako. I thought Hikari might take those spots with the member of her clique who wasn’t in the first heat, but they sat together on the other side, one row up. My own male friends from class noticed the vacant spots near us and filled them in, but left a half seat space between them and Hanako.  The girls lined up at the start line, and Morisawa-sensei readied the stopwatch, then yelled, “Go!” and started it. The girls started running, and Hanako cheered enthusiastically for each of them in turn as they started toward the first corner, and continued even when they were on the other side and probably couldn’t hear us anymore. As the girls reached the halfway point, Morisawa-sensei said, “Iida-kun, Suzuhara-kun, Kawakami-kun, Toyotomi-kun, Narui-kun, Yasuda-kun, and of course Hanako-chan, you’ll be up next. You’ll have time after the girls finish, so you don’t have to get ready yet.”  About 30 seconds later the girls came back around to the finish line, and Hanako cheerfully congratulated them all for their hard work. Myself, Hanako, and the other five boys did a little jogging in place and some minor stretching to get warmed up again. I felt like I had to pee a little, so I let it out to stop it from being a distraction. I had no idea what the capacity of the diaper was, but it didn’t feel particularly heavy, even though I could tell it was thicker now than when I had put it on.  The other five boys and I lined up on the start line in an athletic crouch, since this was an endurance race. Hanako bent way down to the ground like this was a sprint and she was in the starting blocks. I wondered if she had seen a classmate do that when she was watching Phys Ed class from the sidelines, or if she learned it when she was alive but didn’t remember when she learned it. Morisawa-sensei yelled, “Go!” and she sprang forward into the lead, as the rest of us started running normally.  I didn’t think of myself as being a particularly fast runner, but my plan for this race was whenever I saw someone out of the corner of my eye, I ran a little faster. To someone watching it probably looked like I was trying to keep up with Hanako, but of course that was impossible. She was haunting me, so if I ran faster or slower she would match my speed. In fact it was the opposite. I knew she had never got to do gym class before, and depending on whether my classmates decided to participate, she might not get to again until my next time having Hanako Duty. (I was already taking it for granted that I wouldn’t sit out next time as long as we weren’t swimming.) For her first time, I wanted her to cross the finish line first.  After about a hundred meters I never saw someone out of the corner of my eye. I let off my pace a little to make sure I’d finish and still seemed to be ahead of the pack. I could feel the thickness of the diaper as I was running, but it was soft enough that it didn’t impede me, although I wondered if I was tearing up the padding. The other one was still in the bag hanging from the side of my desk. I wasn’t sure yet whether Sensei would let me use Hanako’s washroom to change back to my street clothes and I’d have a chance to grab it on the way, or if he’d expect us to use the change room. I didn’t think he’d make me take Hanako in the room where the boys were undressing again since he’d assumed I wouldn’t do it the first time, but I couldn’t be sure.  I put that out of my mind and focused on Hanako. For someone who hadn’t actually run in probably at least twenty years and didn’t have the feeling of the ground for feedback, she had decent technique. I wondered if she had always remembered how to do it and hadn’t bothered because she could hover, or if she had regained the memory just in time, or if she was a quick study and had learned to do it just now by watching everyone else. It was another thing I’d have to remember to ask her when I had a chance.  As we came around the final turn I regretted my pace a little. There was no way I was going to look backwards to see where the rest of the heat was. Maybe Hanako could see them without turning her head since her eyes weren’t real, but I couldn’t spare the breath to ask her. The best I could do on the home stretch was listen for the footsteps of the pack catching up with me and adjust my pace if they got close.  But they never got close. I heard the cheering of my classmates, some of it for me, some of it for Hanako. Two girls were huddled on either side of Morisawa-sensei, watching the number on the stopwatch, as Hanako threw up her arms and crossed the finish line, with me following a moment later. They oohed in amazement, as I put my hands on my knees and crouched down, gasping for breath. I had done it: I had won the race for Hanako.  Then a moment later I realized it might look to my classmates like I was using my diaper.  Then another moment later I realized none of the rest of the pack had crossed the line yet.  Then they all caught up to me, with a few of them laughing and patting me on the back on their way to take a cool-down walk.  “Sensei,” one of my classmates on the bleachers asked, “can Suzuhara-san have Hanako Duty during the Athletics Festival?”  “Yeah, our team would definitely win!” someone else added.  “We don’t assign Hanako Duty to particular students in advance because of some things that happened,” Sensei replied, “but if a student volunteered to take Hanako Duty on a particular day, I’m sure you would all be happy to allow that instead of leaving it up to random chance.”  I looked up a bit, and Hanako looked back plaintively. “Please, Takeshi-kun?” she asked.  “We’ll see,” I gasped, stumbling back to my spot on the bleachers to make way for the next heat of girls. Hanako walked beside me and took the inside seat again, then gave me a quick hug.  “Thank you, Takeshi-kun,” she said, and there must have been a gust of wind at that exact moment, because I felt a little chill and some pressure from the same direction.  As Morisawa-sensei sent the heat of girls (including Hikari) on their way and Hanako cheered for Hikari in particular instead of the group in general, I realized I may have sounded like I was rejecting her. I didn’t mean to dismiss the idea out of hand, but it was months until the Athletics Festival so it was a bit early to commit to it. Also, many of the events were divided by sex, and everyone’s parents would be watching, so it might be better if Hanako haunted a girl that day, as long as one was willing to participate while wearing a diaper. Hikari seemed like a good candidate, since she and Hanako were getting along well; I’d have to suggest that to them when the festival was a little closer.  The races continued, and by the time the third heat of boys set off I had mostly caught my breath again, just in time for Morisawa-sensei to say, “Suzuhara-kun, Hanako-chan, if you’d like to use the third floor washroom to get dressed, you can leave now to get a head start.”  “Thank you, Sensei,” I said. I grabbed my bag of clothes and walked back toward the school building, with Hanako walking beside me.

The specific story I meant this for was https://www.dailydiapers.com/board/index.php?/topic/94360-first-day-at-rabbit-school/, where every character except the narrator is an anthropomorphic rabbit, and because they poop so frequently none of them would ever think toilet training made sense. My original thought is because they're often changing diapers away from home, they would use disposables; my later thought was that because everyone of all ages wears diapers, a cloth diaper service would be a local government function--you wouldn't have to worry about getting your used cloth diapers home because the service would have pails at schools and businesses, and could even leave fresh diapers in every student's (and teacher's) desk every night.

I suspect everything being bold is a side effect of copy/pasting out of Google Docs. Especially annoying is that you have to go to source to fix it because the rich text editor uses <strong> for bold so it doesn't unbold the <b> tags that you get from Docs if you select the text and unclick bold. If you hold shift while pasting it will paste without formatting, but your newlines will be <br> tags so you won't get space between your paragraphs.

Some Quick Notes About Japan While I'm not from Japan, I've studied Japanese language and culture for a while, and since the story is set there I'm trying to be as true to the location as I can. Since many of you aren't from there you might be missing a few of the references or confused by a few details, so I'll give a few quick notes. Floor toilets, aka squat toilets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet). Less common now, but sometimes you'll see one in a public washroom in a clearly signed stall where the rest are seat toilets. Hotels and homes usually have seat toilets nowadays, especially because toilets with built-in bidets got popular. Japanese public schools tend to have pools, and swimming lessons are part of the regular phys-ed curriculum. Japanese schools don't have janitors. The students are responsible for cleaning the school, which both teaches them responsibility and encourages them not to mess it up in the first place. Students have rotating chore assignments, which can also include serving the centrally-prepared lunch to their classmates, although it is cooked by professionals. The school year starts in April, immediately after the end of the previous school year. There's a summer break where students are given a big packet of homework so they don't forget everything, and also a winter break. The school Athletics festival is in October. Classes are assigned either to the White or Red team and compete against each other in a bunch of events in front of the students' parents. The cultural festival is in November, which is kind of an open house where the students show off what they've been learning. In high school each class will decide for itself what its open house will be, and does all the work to assemble and run it. Things like Cafe and Haunted House are the trope choices. Rather than "signing" your name, you'll use a stamp with the Kanji of your family name in situations where you would sign. Often you'll have a cheap mass-produced stamp for things like deliveries that you keep by the door, and a more expensive unique hand-carved stamp for important things like getting married. The Japanese term for disposable diapers is "paper diapers" (紙おむつ); cloth diapers are still called cloth diapers (布おむつ). Pretty much every juvenile diaper brand that sells in Japan has a size that goes up to 35kg, which should be big enough to fit a 5th grader. Different brands have different names for the size. Some call it XXXL, and some have a 25kg size called (the English word) Big, and their 35kg size is called either Super Big, or Bigger-than-Big. "Hanako-san" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanako-san) is a common urban legend about a ghost haunting the third floor girl's bathroom of whatever school they're in, which means it's probably meant as a hoax of exposure. The "red or blue paper" question comes from a different toilet-themed ghost, Aka Manto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aka_Manto). Chapter 3  Our next period was Physical Education. Students with Hanako Duty weren’t allowed to participate on days when our class was scheduled for swimming, since that would require wearing a diaper in the pool, but today our class was scheduled for distance running, so the rules said I had my choice of whether to participate or not. It wasn’t clear that anybody had thought through how it would work. Would I change in Hanako’s washroom and catch up with everyone? Would I have to bring Hanako into the boys’ change room with the male students from every other fifth grade class? All of my classmates had resolved the question when it was their turn by opting out of Phys Ed class that day. So as my classmates took their gym clothes from their backpacks, it was clear that I would be sitting on the bleachers with Hanako watching them.  And yet.  “Do you want to do Phys Ed with me?” I asked Hanako softly.  “I don’t have a body. I can’t exercise,” she answered. “All I can do is float next to you while you do.”  “Do you want to float next to me while I exercise?” I asked.  “Nobody else asked me that,” she said.  “I’m asking you now,” I reiterated.  “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked.  “If I had blackboard duty, I’d do a good job cleaning the blackboards. If I had sweeping duty, I’d do a good job sweeping the floors,” I replied. Morisawa-sensei arrived to take us to the change rooms, and my classmates started to file out the door after him. “You’d have to stay near me and the other boys instead of the girls, and I won’t make you if you don’t want to, but you’d better decide soon—”  “I want to! Please, Takeshi-kun, I want to do gym class!” she pleaded. I grabbed the bag with my gym clothes from inside my backpack and joined the end of the line of students with Hanako hovering close behind me.  “Sensei!” I called out. I wanted to get his attention since it would be better if I changed into my gym clothes in Hanako’s washroom on the third floor instead of the changing room on the first floor for multiple reasons, but the lines of students from the other fifth grade classes meant our teachers couldn’t tell which one of them was being called for, and even though being at the front didn’t get you anything sooner than being at the back, I couldn't just cut in line! So I followed my classmates to the stairs.  “Which color of paper would you like—red or blue?” Hanako asked.  With so many people around, this probably wasn’t the best time to repeat her answer back to her, at least if I was going to match her volume and tone, but I didn’t have a plan for what else I would answer. “Whichever you think is best,” was the best I could come up with.  She paused for a few seconds, then said, “I’m not the one using them.”  It was all I could do not to stop in my tracks. I looked at her and she didn’t have the empty stare this time. “Do you remember asking?”  “I came in at the end. It’s weird, I know your answer was wrong, but it’s the right kind of wrong. Like if I ask, ‘what’s two plus two,’ five is the right kind of wrong. Everyone else’s answers were like they said ‘Sekigahara’. I don’t know how I know that.”  That was a lot to think about, including how she remembered what Sekigahara is but not anything about her own life, but we had reached the dry change rooms where Morisawa-sensei and the other fifth grade homeroom teachers whose classes weren’t scheduled to use the pool were waiting, each holding a clipboard to record their students’ eventual performance. “Sensei,” I repeated when I finally reached him, “Hanako and I have to go back upstairs to her washroom on the third floor.”  He cupped his hand to his mouth. “Did you use your diaper?” he asked quietly. Hanako blushed.  “No!” I replied. “Well, a little. I mean to change into my gym clothes.”  “You don’t have to change into your gym clothes,” he said, “You have Hanako Duty.”  “I don’t have to, but I can, right?” I asked. “The form my parents stamped said it was my choice.”  “Let’s see, up two flights of stairs, then over there, then back… you’d miss the first half of stretching, and it would be too disruptive. I admire your commitment, Suzuhara-kun, but you should sit out today. Maybe if you’d let me know sooner.” He walked a few meters down the hall toward the door to the athletics field so the students coming out of the change rooms would know where to line up. I imagine he thought he was being fair to me, but without meaning to, he had been unfair to Hanako.  “Thanks for trying, Takeshi-kun. That’s more than anybody else did,” Hanako said.  “Can you close your eyes?” I asked.  She squinted her eyes closed. “I can look like it. It doesn’t stop me from seeing.”  “Who knows that besides me?”  “Nobody else cared enough to ask,” she replied. She’d already said that clothes didn’t block her vision, so she wouldn’t see anything in the change room that she couldn’t see the rest of the time. All that mattered was that nobody knew she could. “Takeshi-kun, are you planning to… everyone will see your… that you used… that!” I couldn’t tell if she was blushing anew or if it was the same blush as earlier.  “Cover your eyes with both hands,” I commanded. “Pretend you can’t see. Follow my voice.” I pushed open the door to the boys’ change room, and I thought I heard the slap of her hands covering her eye sockets, but I must have imagined it. “This way, this way, this way,” I guided until I reached the left turn into the main area of the change room and went around the corner. “Forward, forward, stop. Turn left. Forward.” She hovered into the room, matching my instructions perfectly.  “What do you think you’re doing?” One of the other boys asked.  “Where am I supposed to change?” I asked back.  “Am I still going forward?” Hanako asked as she floated straight ahead at a uniform rate.  “Three more meters… and stop.” She came to a halt a few centimeters from the wall in a space a boy had been in, but he had moved aside when he saw her coming. I went to the other side, sat on the bench that ran around the room, and kicked off my shoes. I had started a little behind everyone else, so if I didn’t want to hold up the group I’d have to make up time. I pulled down my trousers and realized the diaper I was wearing had a wetness indicator. I hadn’t noticed it when I put it on because the pale yellow blended in with the white of the cover, but now part of it had turned a distinct blue. I thought I heard a few snickers that nobody would dare make in front of Morisawa-sensei, but I ignored them and unthreaded my legs from the sleeves of my trousers and reached into my bag for the school-issued gym shorts. When I pulled them up, the top of the diaper peeked over the waistband. Hurriedly, I took off my own shirt, then took the gym shirt from the bag, pulled it onto my torso, and tucked it into my shorts, making sure not to tuck it into the diaper. I put the clothes I had taken off into the bag, and noticed that the last other boy was leaving. I had made up a bit of time, but I was still last. “You can stop pretending,” I said to Hanako as I sat down on the bench and pulled my shoes back on.  “I wasn’t pretending,” Hanako said, removing her hands from her eyes and turning toward me. “I decided not to see, and then I didn’t see. I had to focus on it, but it worked. I didn’t know I could do that. I never had a reason to before.”  “Wow, that’s interesting that you can turn your senses on and off.” I finished putting my shoes on, grabbed my bag of street clothes and ran toward the door. Hanako followed me.  “Also, right now I can’t see through your clothes. Since you said people wouldn’t like that, I tried to not see through things and it worked. But I don’t have to focus on that.”  When we exited the change room, the lines of boys and girls from my class were following Morisawa-sensei out the door. I didn’t want to get scolded for running in the hall, so I did my best speed-walk to catch up to them.  “I won’t tell anybody about before, but you should always not see through clothes unless you have a good reason,” I said quietly, assuming the distance and my footsteps would stop the classmates in front of me from hearing.  “I mean, I’ve already seen everything, but okay,” she said. Weirdly, this didn’t make her blush.

Got an 8-pack off Amazon to try. I'm 200-ish lbs and 34" waist, so above the rated size, but these fit without feeling tight at all or the elastic tearing at the side seam or where it joins the center part. The absorbent area is narrow, and it doesn't hourglass at all at the from or back, so no waddling, but also less absorbent than an adult diaper. They feel really thin, which they are, so in that sense they're not much like a diaper, especially if you're expecting padding to cover the cheeks. The first one I put on and played a round of Cobalt Core while tricking into it, then at one point I let out a bit longer stream and it definitely felt wet. I was planning to wear that one to the store, but I changed into a fresh one to make sure of no leaks. I have no idea what the absorbency is, but I suspect where the elastic joins the absorbent part is where leaks would happen, just because that's a natural place for a gap to form.

Chapter 2  Of course as I walked back toward class, it became clear that she wasn’t actually holding on to my arm, she was just hovering in position near me. I tried to keep the arm still so she wouldn’t phase through my body too much, although I wasn’t sure whether it would have any effect on me or her. As we got to the stairwell, she got that blank look in her eyes again, her age started to fluctuate, and she asked, “Which color of paper would you like—red or blue?”  I stopped at the top of the stairs. “Do you mean toilet paper? I don’t care what color it is. I’m just going to flush it anyway,” I replied.  She scrunched up her face like my answer didn’t make sense, and then shook her head and returned to her original age. “Why did you stop?” she asked.  “Because you asked me that question again about what kind of paper I wanted, and it seems like you’re a little out of it afterwards.”  “I did? Again? You mean I did it more than once? Sorry, people have told me I do that, but I never remember.”  I realized stopping meant I was at risk of being late back to class, so I started down the stairs and she continued hovering with me. “I wonder if it has something to do with how you died.”  “Why would choosing between colors of paper have anything to do with dying?”  “I don’t know, maybe there’s a killer who asks his victims that question, and if you say red he cuts your throat, and if you say blue he strangles you until your face turns blue.”  “It seems like if there was a killer like that, someone would have heard of him, and they’d know how I ended up haunting the third floor toilet of a school I must not have gone to because nobody recognizes or remembers me.”  “You seem pretty smart for a fifth grader,” I observed.  “I must have been in third grade when I died, but I’ve haunted that washroom for a long time,” she replied. “At least twenty years? It blends together. I was lonely for a lot of it. I had a lot of time to think, but I didn’t remember anything.”  We got to the second floor and turned toward our classroom. “I suppose it’s hard to get new information when you’re trapped in a washroom,” I said. As we got close to our classroom door, I added, “But there is a piece of information we don’t have: Which color of paper would you like—red or blue?”  In a snap she shrank to the size of an eight-year-old, but her eyes were glowing red, her hair floated in every direction, and the hallway lights started flickering. “You’re awful! I hate you!” she screamed. For all the trouble I’d had a few minutes ago producing a teaspoon of liquid, I definitely peed my diaper more than that.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Calm down, please calm down, everything’s fine,” I soothed, and after a few moments her hair settled, the lights stabilized, and she grew back to her former size, her clothes remaining the same size leaving her skirt too short again. A few heads peeked out of other classrooms to see what was going on, but they ducked back in when they realized the show was over.  “What just happened?” she asked.  The bell rang for the start of homeroom. “I’ll explain later,” I said, and entered the classroom.  Our room had an extra chair, and my classmates had set it up next to my desk so Hanako would have somewhere to float in a seated position during the day’s lessons, so I walked quickly toward it with Hanako hovering behind me. I was more aware of the thickness of the diaper as I passed my classmates than I had been when hurrying in the hallway, but I remembered that it was probably not as noticeable to them from outside my clothes since I hadn’t noticed theirs on their days, and anyways almost all of them had taken their turn over the first seven weeks of the school year. There was a chance of whoever had Hanako Duty getting a snide comment from someone in another class who hadn’t noticed the literal ghost hovering nearby waiting to come to your defense, but within my own class the risk was near zero, especially because Morisawa-sensei had made clear that there would be zero tolerance for such bullying, and all of our parents had stamped the permission form for us to be in the class with Hanako this year.  We had barely reached my desk and hung the bag with my underwear and the extra paper diaper from the hook for my backpack when the class president instructed us all to stand and bow to Morisawa-sensei to mark the start of homeroom, even though he had entered the room ten minutes earlier. Sensei took attendance in surname order, with each student responding when their name was called. When he got to the end, since she didn’t have a surname that we knew of and wasn’t actually on the attendance list, he added, “Hanako-san.”  “Here!” she cheerfully replied.  Although Hanako couldn’t hand in homework or write tests, she paid close attention to Morisawa-sensei during the first period Japanese lesson, and she never interrupted the class to ask confusing questions about paper colors. A few times she even raised her hand to answer a question, or volunteered to read a passage from the textbook, which meant she hovered around standing height and I held the book up for her to read from. I wondered if that was necessary—she said she could see things while also seeing through them, but was that precise enough to read the middle pages of a closed book? I didn’t notice any books in her washroom, but maybe nobody had thought of leaving her one. I decided I’d ask later if she wanted me to check a book out from the school library for her.  At the end of first period, Morisawa-sensei left and we had a few minutes until Kawaguchi-sensei arrived for math class.  “Hanako-san,” I started, planning to offer what I’d thought of earlier.  “Excuse me for a moment, Takeshi-kun,” she interrupted, and floated around me to have a quick chat with Hikari, my desk neighbor in class and my next-door neighbor at home. Hikari had been my lifelong friend, and we had walked to school together that morning, but in class she had a clique of female friends, and I’d seen Hanako have lunch with them (to the extent she did) on previous days. I wasn’t too bothered. Regardless of who had Hanako Duty on any given day, it made sense for her to have a consistent group of friends, and Hikari would be a fine one; also my question didn’t need to be answered now, and I was sure I’d have another chance to ask. On top of that, I had to pee a little. It was nothing too urgent, and if I didn’t have Hanako Duty I wouldn’t have bothered trying to make it to the washroom during the interval between periods, but since I had already wet my diaper a little bit, I figured there was no reason not to wet it a little more and eliminate the distraction. Even though I was sitting in my school desk chair, I found it much easier to relieve myself now than I had when I needed to prove I would so that Hanako could haunt me.  Kawaguchi-sensei entered the class and asked us to pass our math homework forward, which those of us with bodies did. She collected the papers as Hanako returned to the seat beside me.  Math class proceeded very similarly to Japanese class, with Hanako eagerly raising her hand whenever she could, but Kawaguchi-sensei never called on her. I began to suspect that was intentional, so one time when Hanako raised her hand, I raised mine, and Kawaguchi-sensei called on me immediately. Hanako followed me to the blackboard, and I whispered to her, “What do you want to write?”  “Takeshi-kun, don’t you know the answer?” she asked.  “I do, but you wanted a chance too, didn’t you?” I said. She smiled and quietly told me how she would have answered the question, which was the same way I would have, and when Kawaguchi-sensei praised me for being correct, Hanako smiled even more since she knew the praise was really for her.  As the end of the period neared, Kawaguchi-sensei gave a stack of papers to the student at the front of each file to pass back. When I got what was left of the stack, I counted them and the number of students behind me, then put up my hand. “Sensei, there’s not enough here for Hanako-san!”  “Suzuhara-kun, obviously Hanako-chan can’t do the homework,” Kawaguchi-sensei replied.  “She can’t turn it in, but she could do the questions in her head. Or maybe Hanako Duty should include helping her write her answers.”  There was some rabble from the living students because I was volunteering to add responsibilities to a chore they already didn’t want, but Hanako silenced them by saying, “Please, sensei! School is all I have.”  Kawaguchi-sensei reached into her briefcase for one more copy of the assignment. “I’ll have to make another copy before my next class,” she said as left it at the front of the file of desks, as though that would make me change my mind. Everyone in front passed it to me, and I took it and a copy for myself and handed the rest back.  “I’ll hold onto it for you,” I told Hanako as I opened my backpack and put the two sheets inside.  “Thank you, Takeshi-kun,” Hanako said with that smile I was starting to enjoy seeing.

Chapter 1  “Okay everyone, it’s time to draw for today’s Hanako Duty,” Morisawa-sensei said as he entered class 5-A ten minutes before the official start of homeroom carrying a small fish bowl with three scraps of paper in it, and a mostly opaque plastic convenience store shopping bag tied shut by the handles. Unlike every other class in school, this was our class’s unofficial start time, because whoever had Hanako Duty needed the time to get there and back. “Remember,” he added, “there are only three names left, so tomorrow we’ll refill the bowl, and some of you will have two chances to have your names drawn.”  I hadn’t been in the fourth-grade class that had Hanako Duty last year, but I had heard that they had tried scheduling everyone’s day in advance, and a lot of students had called in sick on their scheduled days, which is why this year they were drawing names randomly and refilling the bowl before it was totally empty. I was surprised that anyone would go so far as to miss school to get out of Hanako Duty, although I was hoping for the two out of three chance of my name not being drawn, even if it meant I didn’t have to do any other classroom chores that day.  “Ready?” Morisawa-sensei asked nobody in particular. A few students hadn’t arrived yet, but everyone knew their names weren’t in the bowl, so there was no sense waiting for them. He reached into the bowl and tossed the few crumpled up scraps a few times to make things as random as he could before pulling one out and unfolding it. “Suzuhara Takeshi-kun,” he read.  I slumped involuntarily for a moment at my bad luck, then stood up and made my way to the door, taking the bag from Morisawa-sensei on my way past.  I went straight to the east-side third-floor girls’ washroom and knocked three times on the door. “Hanako-san, are you in there?”  “I am. Come on in,” came a muffled reply.  “I’m a boy,” I added nervously.  A girl’s translucent face phased through the door. “Don’t worry, nobody else ever uses this washroom.” She retreated as I pushed the door open, and the image of a girl about my age wearing a yellow sweater with a flower appliqué and a slightly too short red skirt hovered in front of me. She would have been a little shorter than me if she had been standing on the ground, but hovering like this our eyes were level. I recognized her as Hanako from my classmates’ days having Hanako Duty, right down to the outfit. “You’re Takeshi-kun, right?” she asked. “I’ll be counting on you today.”  “Yeah,” I replied. She had been in class for attendance every day, but we had never interacted, so I was impressed that she remembered my name.  It was my first time in a girls’ washroom and I felt disoriented by the absence of urinals, but I wasn’t here to use the toilets for obvious reasons. so I stepped out of my shoes and into a set of bathroom slippers, hurried to the third stall, and locked the door. This washroom still had floor toilets; they hadn’t replaced them with western-style seat toilets when they renovated the rest of the school’s washrooms because of the haunting situation, and they hadn’t gone back and finished the job after Hanako Duty started.  I put the plastic bag on the floor, straddled the fixture, removed my trousers and underwear, and hung them on the hook on the door. As I reached down to the plastic bag again, Hanako’s face phased through the door. “Which color of paper would you like—red or blue?” she asked.  I covered my crotch with my hands as fast as I could. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, but she just stared into the middle distance. For a moment it seemed like she was getting smaller and younger, until she shook her head and returned to the size she had been when I first entered the washroom.  “Sorry, what’s the problem?” she asked.  “A little privacy, please!” I demanded.  “Oh, well the thing is, you know how I can move through these walls?” She waved her hand through the stall’s side wall to demonstrate, even as most of her was still on the other side of the door. “It works that way with seeing too. I know things are there, like walls, clothes, or your hands, but they don’t stop me from seeing what’s on the other side.”  I felt myself blush. ”For living people it matters that someone isn’t looking at us while we’re naked,” I retorted. “Don’t you remember that from being alive?”  “I don’t remember anything from being alive,” she replied. “I don’t even know if Hanako was my name. I think they just called me that because there’s a flower on my shirt.”  “Then I’m telling you now, we don’t like it,” I said. “Maybe knowing that will help you remember other things.”  “Whatever,” she said, and returned outside.  I untied the knot in the plastic bag and took out one of the two “Bigger-than-Big” size underwear-style paper diapers from inside. Thankfully it had a plain design, other than saying which side was the front and back and having a vertical tape at the rear to hold it closed for disposal. I stepped into the leg holes and pulled it up over my crotch, then opened the stall door where Hanako was hovering with her back to me.  “There,” I said, ignoring that she had just told me that the door didn’t stop her from seeing, and she turned toward me again. “All I have to do is wear this, right?”  “Yeah,” she said, sounding a little unsure.  I took my underwear from the hook on the door and put it in the bag, then unhooked my trousers and pulled them up over the diaper. “Okay, let’s go,” I said, picked up the bag, and marched toward the door, pausing only to switch back from slippers to my own shoes.  She hovered a step behind me as I opened the door and exited into the hallway, but ten meters down the hall I heard her say, “Takeshi-kun,” from the washroom door. I looked back, and she was beckoning me toward her with her face and hand halfway through the door and the rest of her still behind it.  I walked back to her. “What’s the problem?” I asked.  “The thing is, nobody ever told me what the rules are for being a ghost. I had to figure them out myself. I don’t know why I’m stuck in this washroom, and I don’t know why I can leave when I’m with someone who’s wearing… one of those…” She blushed.  “Diapers?” I whispered.  “Yeah. I think it’s because it’s like a portable toilet, and maybe I can haunt any toilet, but when you asked if all you had to do was wear it, it made me think you just going to wear it and not use it, and if you don’t use it, it isn’t a toilet, it’s just underwear, and I can’t haunt underwear.”  “I’ll use it later then,” I lied.  “If I could make myself believe something I thought wasn’t true, I could probably leave this washroom whenever I wanted.”  “Then what do I have to do to convince you?”  “If you wet it a little right now, it will definitely be a toilet, and then I’ll be able to haunt you.”  She was right that I hadn’t been planning to use it at all. I assumed the rest of my classmates hadn’t used their diapers when it was their turn; after all, what ten year old would want to use a diaper? But if I didn’t come back to class with Hanako then I wouldn’t get credit for Hanako Duty, and if she didn’t come to class she’d get lonely, and bored, and frustrated, and that would lead to all the spooky haunting behavior that was why nobody still wanted to use the third floor girls’ washroom. So I had to try. Even though I didn’t feel like I had to pee at all, and my years of toilet training fought against me, I pushed as hard as I could, trying to get something to come out, thinking about faucets and waterfalls and bridges over rapids. After about thirty seconds I managed to produce a little spurt, probably no more than a teaspoon.  I gasped for breath. “Sorry, that’s all I could do,” I said, but as I said it she floated out of the door and wrapped her arms around my right bicep.  “Thank you, Takeshi-kun,” she whispered. I looked at her face hovering over my shoulder, and she was smiling broadly, and actually pretty cute. I couldn’t even feel anything different about the diaper, but if peeing in it that little could make a cute girl smile at me like that, maybe having Hanako Duty for a day wouldn’t be that bad.

Since they're Pokemon characters, could it be an abandoned Pokemon Center? Or maybe it's a bunch of Dittos impersonatime Nurse Joy and cargo-culting a Pokemon Center but they don't know how it's actually supposed to work and they don't think there's anything wrong with humans going there? Or the humans get confused for Dittos that are impersonating humans?

The next story would definitely not have cloth because it wouldn't make sense for that story. My thought is that the "Send stories to Mikey" thread is still pinned; even if I've posted a story in the forums, if I submit it for consideration to be published on the top page, I want it to be the best version of the story possible, which means it doesn't have to be the same as what's posted in the forums if changing it would make it better. Getting feedback on which of the two versions is better would help me make that decision, and I think it would be easier to get that feedback if one of the versions isn't hypothetical.

I wrote a story in which the diapers used were disposables because I thought those made the most sense for the situations in the story. After I started posting it, I realized that cloth diapers could also work in the story for reasons I hadn't considered at first, but I kept posting what I had written. Now that I've posted the whole story, I think the cloth version might make more sense, or at least some readers might prefer it. Should I post the cloth version as its own thread? Should I post the cloth version at the end of the current thread with a comment at the start that says it's the same plot as the disposables version, then add a comment to the first post that links to the post with the cloth version? Is there another option?

 When I got into the building I seethed a bit at the sting from bending my knee so much and started limping toward the office while my heart raced in embarrassment. I tried to calm down by thinking that nobody cared that I was wearing a diaper, or that it was wet, because they were all wearing diapers, and they didn’t care if anyone saw them, or saw inside them. Frankly it would have been more embarrassing if I’d been wearing underwear, because they wouldn’t have known what it was and probably would have asked about it.  I was almost calm by the time I reached the office and asked to see the nurse. He (I think—no dewlap) was as concerned about the skinned knee as the students had been. He composed himself to spray the wound with antiseptic from a can big enough to require both his paws; he then put some ointment on a loose piece of gauze and fastened it to my knee with two loops of elastic self-stick vet wrap, before asking if I needed to go to the hospital. I assured him I was fine and made my way back to class as the white noise bell rang. Miss Breckenridge had already started speaking when I entered, and paused briefly as I passed her on the way to my desk. I smiled directly at Fern to reassure him, and then slipped into the hard, uncomfortable seat. Except it wasn’t hard or uncomfortable anymore. No wonder nobody else seemed bothered by it—they were all used to having a quarter inch of wood pulp padding on top of it!  This first period after lunch was independent presentations. Marigold was first, and she spoke from cue cards about the treehouse her parents had built for her and her siblings. First she went into the process of planning how much wood and other materials would be necessary, then in the safety precautions they took in building up in the air. For months after it was built (which, I had to remind myself, was longer in relative terms to a rabbit) she was too afraid of heights to climb the ladder into the tree, and of being closer to birds of prey, but eventually she overcame her fear and was able to enjoy the treehouse with her siblings. Unfortunately during a thunderstorm the tree was struck by lightning and split in half, and the treehouse collapsed.  I noticed Miss Breckenridge was taking notes, so I did as well; maybe it was just for marking, but there was a chance there would be a test on this, and I wanted to be prepared. All in all Marigold spoke for ten minutes, then there was a five minute period for questions. I asked how high in the air the treehouse was, and the answer was only about ten feet, which I again had to remind myself would have seemed taller to a rabbit of her age at the time.  The next presenter was Fern, who told a fictional story about a crow who could speak to rabbits, and was unfortunately ostracized by the other crows because of it, but eventually when another crow was injured by a bird of prey, the talking crow was able to bring some rabbits to help, and the crows and rabbits became closer friends with the talking crow in an important position to be the go-between. It was a good enough story for a fourth-grader, but I was surprised that a work of fiction and a personal memoir could both satisfy the requirements of the presentation. I reasoned that the point was probably developing in everyone the courage to stand in front of the class and speak on a topic for several minutes.  It was around that time that I felt the beginning of the urge to poop, although it wasn’t strong enough that I would have been able to go at the moment. I figured I would be able to hold it until I got home, so I was able to keep my focus through three more presentations, but during Wisteria’s monologue (a book report on a human novel he misunderstood the subtext to) the urgency suddenly felt much stronger. I started being distracted by every tail twitch by the classmates in front of me; at one point I noticed that every student’s twitches were five to ten minutes apart, which meant that was probably the sign that they were pooping, and that didn’t help keep my mind off my own struggles at all. I decided I wouldn’t embarrass Wisteria with a question and would explain some things to him privately instead, partially because I was worried that standing would hurt my ability to keep myself from pooping.  When the white noise bell rang, Miss Breckenridge said, “The next presentations are in two weeks. Stacy, we already spoke about your topic. Do you think you can be ready to present by then?”  “I think so,” I replied. If I had to fill ten minutes with the history and workings of the toilet, I might need to do a little extra research, and I wasn’t sure if the island had a library at all or if it would have any relevant materials, but at least with two weeks I could take the ferry back to the mainland to access a human library.  Basil, Patience, and Willow also volunteered to present and had apparently already had their topics approved. Since there weren’t more volunteers, Miss Breckenridge picked Lavender and Rosemary to present, and told them they’d have to get topic proposals approved by her soon. With that we went to the last class of the day, English.  As Miss Breckenridge started reading from a book which was quite large in her paws, it seemed that the level of the reading was closer to grade 3 than grade 4, and I wondered why just this one class would be so far behind. Everyone spoke English so fluently that I would have been shocked to learn that it was a second language for anyone; I didn’t even know whether there was a Rabbitish language that they could have learned first, but if there was they didn’t seem inclined to use it with each other, unless it wasn’t allowed. Maybe the curriculum was set when English was a second language and hadn’t been updated? Maybe they had found that accelerating the lesson schedule to account for rabbits’ faster maturation and shorter lifespan didn’t work as well for English? Or maybe lessons were taught in a different order here and there’d be a burst of new material at any moment, in which case I couldn’t afford to be distracted by such thoughts. It didn’t help that I was also distracted by the urge to poop continuing to build in my abdomen.  While my toilet training once again tried to assert itself, I reasoned that I was applying a human standard to a rabbit situation. I wouldn’t want to poop my pants in front of human classmates, but if I had human classmates I could avoid the situation by asking to use the restroom. (Probably I would have had a break between periods to use it without having to ask.) But right now it was impossible to poop my pants, because Miss Breckenridge still had them in her pocket, because she had put a diaper on me specifically for this situation. And if I did manage to hold it through the remaining hour-plus of class, I’d then have to hold it while walking home, which was going to be an even bigger challenge, and if I failed at that then I’d have to explain to mom why I had come home in a dirty diaper. Obviously I had to get them to buy clean diapers so I could replace the one Miss Breckenridge loaned me, but it would be nice to control the timing of that conversation. Intellectually, the best time to poop my diaper was in this classroom where everyone else was already wearing a diaper and where I could get a change after class without a second thought. But emotionally, I really didn’t want to.  And then without meaning to, Miss Breckenridge made the decision for me. “The author used ‘rode’ which is the past test of ‘ride’.” She wrote them in two columns on the blackboard. “Since ‘rode’ doesn’t add an ‘-ed’ sound to the present form, we call it an irregular verb. Can anyone think of another verb like that? Stacy, how about you?”  I stood upright, doing my best not to fidget, cross my legs, or give any sign of my struggle. “Um, ‘go’ and ‘went’?” I replied, and then I went—with barely any effort, I pushed a load of stool into my diaper with a flump that would have been audible even to ears less sensitive than a rabbit’s.  “An excellent example,” she said, writing the words in columns under the previous ones. “But you didn’t take my hint—I asked if you could ‘think’,” she wrote that on the board, “of another example, and you ‘thought’,” she wrote that next to it, ”of a different one than I intended. Oh, you can sit down.” And I slid my thighs between the seat and desktop and sat down directly onto my freshly-expelled mess.  Given how much I complained about how uncomfortable the seat was, one might think having even more material between myself and it would make it more comfortable, but not when that material is slimy. Even so, to my own surprise, I was able to ignore it for a time and focus on Miss Breckenridge’s lesson, until I started to smell what I had done, which I was sure meant my nearby classmates could smell it too. I heard a few sniffs and saw some glances in my direction, but nobody interrupted class to say anything. I now felt embarrassed about distracting them instead of only myself. Ironically, in a human classroom everyone would have known what I had done, giving me good reason to be embarrassed, but in this class the smell must have been a mystery to them since it seemed like their feces didn’t stink; if they knew I had soiled myself they probably would have been more forgiving since nobody but Miss Breckenridge had any idea there was an alternative to using diapers.  After another hour of English lecture, including being called on a second time and sitting in my mess again afterwards, the white noise bell sounded to end the school day. “That’s all for today,” Miss Breckenridge said. “If anyone already needs another diaper change, wait behind to pick a buddy; otherwise be safe, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.” My classmates bundled their books and pencils into their bags, as did I. Many of them gave me at least a nod; Fern in particular gave me a little wave, which I returned, before he left. Lavender and Rosemary stopped by Miss Breckenridge’s desk, probably to get approval for their presentation topics, as they took turns speaking and she seemed to approve of what they had said. And once they left, it was just Miss Breckenridge and I, and she walked to my desk and gave a little sniff. “Yes, that does seem to confirm my theory. I thought you said you could hold it for quite a while.”  “Without dying,” I replied. “I didn’t die.” She seemed unimpressed. “Holding it is distracting, and your class moves very fast. I can’t afford to be distracted. Although I suppose not holding it is a different kind of distraction.”  “Not just for yourself, but I suppose it can’t be helped. You stayed behind because you want to be changed, yes? Let’s get you taken care of.” I unhooked my bookbag from my desk and followed her to the front of the room, waddling a bit because of the mess stuck to my bottom. I put the bag on the floor at my feet, lifted my skirt completely out of the way, and sat on the narrow end of her desk. She took her package of wipes from the drawer where she stashed her diapers and put it next to me on the desktop, then undid the two tapes on my diaper and pulled it open. She took a step back in revulsion. “I predicted the amount; I could tell there would be odor; but the moisture! Stacy, are you okay?”  “Now you know why we stop wearing diapers,” I said. She didn’t seem to find it funny.  “Stacy… I don’t know what your instincts are like. It didn’t used to be possible for rabbits to survive gastrointestinal stasis, so our instinct when it happened was to sneak away so our corpse didn’t sicken our family or attract predators. Now we have treatments so it’s usually survivable, largely thanks to humans, but our instincts haven’t had time to catch up. The entire point of having a diaper change buddy is so that someone else can make the decision to get us treatment if we need it, because we know we can’t trust ourselves. I don’t know what your instincts are like, and I don’t know what your bowel movements are like. If you tell me this is normal for you, I have no choice but to believe you. But if this came out of a rabbit, they would already be on their way to the hospital, and I wouldn’t expect them to leave it. As your teacher and as your diaper change buddy, it’s my responsibility to get you help if you need it. If you have instincts like ours that are telling you to sneak away, I need you to fight them and be honest with me: is this normal for you?”  “If my instincts wanted me to sneak away, I could have left when everyone else did.”  “Please answer my question.” She was quite worried.  “I can’t directly compare because I don’t usually have it stuck to me, but we have a range of normal and this is in the range.” It had been an abrupt urge, but if there had been a toilet there had definitely been a period when I could have asked to use it and made it in time, so I felt like this was an honest answer and I was able to give it calmly.  She watched me for a moment to see if my resolve changed, then said, “I just hope I have enough wipes for all of this.” She pulled one of the wipes from the package, pushed my legs back, and ran the abrasive wipe slowly and firmly down my left buttock. “Oh, this isn’t as bad as I thought,” she said. “I was imagining having to get this out of your fur, but you don’t have fur.” After a second wipe down my right buttock and a third down the middle to take care of the remainder, I felt surprisingly clean, and glad that a fourth wipe wasn’t necessary. She pushed my legs further back to slide the diaper out from under me, rolled it up, taped it closed to itself, and set it to the side. “Now, you said you have one of those toilet chairs at your house.”  “Yes,” I replied.  “Are you going directly there? And do you think you can ‘hold’ any further waste until you get there?”  “Yes, and I shouldn’t need to go again for a while.”  “Then I suppose I can put your useless diaper back on you instead of lending you another one of mine.” She took my panties out of her pocket and I raised my knees so she could thread the leg hole over my feet. I raised my bottom off the desk so she could get them over my groin. She helped me sit up straight, then took the diaper over to where the drawers on the desk were. “I should write ‘human’ on this so it doesn’t give someone at fertilizer collection a panic attack,” she said as she pulled a permanent marker from the top drawer.  “Do I owe you a diaper change, since we’re buddies?”  “You notice none of your classmates stayed behind? It’s a bit early for us; you’d just trick my neighbor into thinking I’m constipated.” With the diaper annotated, she put the cap back on the permanent marker and returned it to the drawer.  “I mean tomorrow or something.”  “I won’t count the ‘under-wear’, so we’re even. Plus, usually I buddy with a teacher in the lounge. Speaking of which, I mentioned your toilet chair to the principal. He’d never heard of it either; he said we can order the chair itself as easily as we can import anything else, but the plumbing and the separate room, that might take a while. But now that you know we don’t have one, perhaps you can make arrangements to use the one at your home before class?"  “Perhaps,” I said. I had heard that coffee makes some people have to poop; it would be useful to find out if I was one of them.  “Good,” she replied, then slid the diaper across the desk to me. “Everyone throws out their own,” she said.  I stood up and reached down with my left hand to grab my book bag, and the reminder tag she tied around my wrist earlier slapped against the edge of the desk. I looked at the tag, then at her. “What size diapers do you wear, by the way?”  “Size seven.”  “Do they make size eight?”  She smiled, sensing my intent. “They do, but you shouldn’t move up a size until the smaller ones barely fit you.”  I nodded and picked up my used diaper. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”  “Be safe,” she replied. I walked to the door, dropped the diaper in the garbage pail, and headed for home. THE END

 By the time I got to the schoolyard I was used to the feeling of walking with the diaper on. While it still felt thick, it didn’t seem to interfere with my movement, at least while it was clean. I assumed that since all rabbits wore them at all times, they were shaped to be comfortable to move in.  The yard itself was entirely grass-covered, after one concrete step down from the door, unlike the schoolyards I was used to that had large asphalt areas. Within the tall brick wall with a suspicious number of crows perched on it, there were trees and gentle hills and small gardens here and there, and since all classes had lunch at the same time, there were hundreds of rabbits of a range of sizes engaged in typical schoolyard activities. Some groups sat on the grass with their backs together reading; others lay on the grass in circles chatting, occasionally munching a blade or dandelion, and not worrying at all if their skirt rode up to give a glimpse of their diaper. I didn’t immediately recognize anyone from my class, and getting to know some of them was the assignment Miss Breckenridge had given me, so I walked along the building wall hoping to find a group of a few of them that wouldn’t mind me joining in.  As I came around the corner of the building I saw a flat area with two groups of rabbits playing what I quickly recognized as foursquare. There were minor differences from the game I had played with the humans at my old school: the courts’ lines were chalk on grass instead of paint on tarmac, everything was a bit smaller, and the ball seemed to be softer and a bit less bouncy than we had played with, but after watching a round which only took ten seconds, it was clear that I was watching foursquare, right down to the eliminated player moving to the back of the queue of waiting players and the rabbits in the lower squares moving up to fill the vacated square. One of the two lines had all of my classmates in it, plus a few students from another class, so I made my way to that one and joined the queue at the rear. Before long I was joined in the queue by a rabbit with black fur around the eyes and a white stripe between them, whom I recognized from being in my class but whose diaper I had not seen inside during the mass changing session.  “Hello,” I said, “What’s your name?”  “Fern.”  “And are you a he or a she? Sorry, I’m not good at telling with rabbits yet.”  “I’m a buck,” he replied awkwardly, “but does that really matter?”  “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems to matter to humans. When you’re picking a diaper change buddy, do bucks prefer another buck, or do you not mind a doe?”  “We don’t think about that at all. We usually pick from the same few rabbits since they know what our regular looks like. Or everyone races to buddy with whoever gives the best changes, but we’re all pretty good at it by our age.”  “Interesting,” I said. “I’m not used to not caring, so is there a good way to tell without being buddies?”  “Ask, I guess?” he replied. “It doesn’t work at our age, but older does have a dewlap.” He pointed at the base of his neck, and I remembered seeing Miss Breckenridge had a little roll of flab there, and the principal hadn’t. “I know you’re Stacy and you’re a doe because Miss Breckenridge said so, but is there a way I’d be able to tell with humans?”  “Let’s see. Boys—that’s what young human bucks are called—normally don’t wear dresses or skirts. They wear trousers, which are like a separate skirt for each leg. But if one came to this school I guess he’d wear the uniform too. Let’s see, girls like me usually have longer hair on our heads, but that’s not guaranteed. Oh, nipples!” I gestured to my ribcage; he put his paws on his lower abdomen.  “Do human bucks not have them? Mine are smaller than a doe’s, but you wouldn’t see them under my clothes anyways.”  “We all have them, but they puff out more on older girls.” I gestured in the shape of breasts, and he nodded in interest.  The line had moved forward a bit by this point, and I realized I would either have to play foursquare with an aching bladder, or wet my diaper. I tried pushing while standing straight up, but my toilet training intervened and unpushed. After a few seconds of failed straining, the silence between Fern and I had become awkward and I realized I needed to continue our conversation somehow, while also figuring out how to pee before I got to the front of the line. If only I could squat down I could get in a more familiar peeing position, I thought. Then I realized of course I could squat down! I had been talking down to Fern this whole time; it would be much more polite for me to get my head closer to his level. Immediately I crouched down, pinning the hem of my skirt between the backs of my thighs and ankles.  “I did have another question, and I know you can’t answer for everyone, but I’d like you to do your best,” I said. “Do you think rabbits would be upset if I ate fish for lunch?” With the question posed, I pushed again, and in this position I was able to get a stream flowing into my diaper.  “A whole living fish?” He asked, shocked.  I wasn’t expecting a clarifying question so quickly and had to let off the pressure to answer, but the stream continued a little weaker without effort. “Not a living fish. It would be cooked. If it was a small one it might be whole. If it’s a big one it would just be a little part, and it might be mushed up on a sandwich so you wouldn’t recognize it as being from a fish at all.”  “Are there even fish that big? All the ones I’ve ever seen are the size of my paw.”  “There are much bigger ones if you go far out in the water.”  “Oh, we don’t like to go far out in the water. If we fell in, it would take too long to dry off.”  “I guess the reasons you’d go that far out are to get to the mainland, or to catch fish, and you don’t care about either.”  “There are more predators on the mainland,” he said fearfully. “And I know humans count as predators because of where on your face your eyes are, but you don’t seem to be predators of rabbits. If the reason you don’t care about eating us is because you’d rather eat fish, then I’d better not stop you.”  I immediately swore to myself never to eat non-talking rabbit, and also to never mention that it was a thing people sometimes eat.  “Do you feel the same way about me eating birds?” I asked.  He brightened up. “Oh, birds try to eat us all the time! If you could eat them, we would really appreciate it!”  “I don’t think the kind of bird I’d be eating is the kind that would try to eat you. I mean more like chickens. Do they try to eat you?”  “No, but we keep them around for eggs.”  “You eat eggs?”  “Multiple eggs? What an absurd amount of food! But we sometimes use some egg when we make something.”  “I’ll make sure not to eat the specific chickens you get your eggs from.”  “Then I guess that’s also fine. And try hawk some time if you get a chance. But not crow—we give them shiny things and they look out for us.” I glanced over to the wall again and a crow fluttered its wings and shuffled its feet.  “Thank you, this was a very helpful conversation,” I said. I considered asking about beef and pork, but those are mammals and I felt like that might hit a little closer to home for a rabbit; besides, between fish, poultry, eggs, and cheese, I was sure I could manage a lunch I would be satisfied by that wouldn’t appall my new classmates.  My slow stream of pee had stopped, so I pushed twice in case there were any last squirts, then stood up and shuffled backwards to fill in the gap in the queue that had formed while we’d been talking. My diaper now felt warm, but not obviously wet. Since rabbits apparently worry a lot about having moisture stay in their fur, they must have designed their diapers to be particularly quick-absorbing. I did notice that while I had been able to get my legs pretty close together when the diaper was dry, they were forced apart now that it was wet, which I hoped wouldn’t interfere with the game. Miss Breckenridge hadn’t mentioned how often rabbits urinate, so it was possible I was the only player who would be wearing a wet diaper, but some quick math told me 200 poops per day was about every 7 minutes, meaning they had all probably pooped at least once since their post-lunch diaper changes, so it wasn’t like I was the only player who was going to have to deal with a used diaper.  I spent the last minute in line watching the rounds of foursquare ahead of me, making sure I knew what the rabbits’ play style was and figuring out if they were using a rules variant different from the one I knew, but it was fairly standard: High square bounces and serves to low square diagonally across, and the low square’s return is the first ball in play; hit the ball into someone else’s square directly; you’re allowed to return the ball before it bounces; if it bounces in your square and you don’t hit it into someone else’s before the second bounce, you’re out. A typical tactic was to hit a hard steep ball at someone and force them to hit a weak return at the peak of their jump; if they jumped too early you could dump the ball softly beneath them and it would bounce twice before they landed. I was glad to know their main tactic wouldn’t work against me, because Miss Breckenridge had given me a mission, and I had a plan to accomplish it.  Finally it was my turn to join the low square. “Before you serve,” I said to the rabbit in the high square, “My name is Stacy and I’m a girl—that’s what humans call a doe. Can you each tell me your name and if you’re a buck or a doe? Miss Breckenridge wanted me to get to know all of my new classmates.”  “I’m Marigold and I’m a doe,” said the solid grey rabbit in the top square.  “I’m Basil, and I’m a buck,” said the white rabbit with black mottling in the third square.  “I’m not in your class,” said the fiery orange rabbit in the second square.  “I’m still happy to meet you,” I said.  “Oh, well then I’m Cinnamon, a buck,” he replied.  “Thank you all. We can start,” I said to Marigold, and she nodded. I took an athletic stance, and the thickness of the wet diaper between my legs seemed not to affect it, which was good because my plan would fail if I was eliminated too early. Marigold bounced the ball and batted it at me softly. Since I noticed that the ball seemed to be soft from watching previous rounds, I hit it softly back to her to get a feel for how bouncy it was. Marigold hit a gentle feed to Basil, Basil hit it to Cinnamon, Cinnamon hit it toward me, and before it could bounce I overhand smashed the ball into the inside corner of Cinammon’s square, sending it high over Marigold’s square. Cinnamon ran into Marigold’s square since it was his ball to play and not hers; he waited until it was almost at the ground before deflecting it gently with his paw, and Marigold had no chance to return it to someone else’s square, so she was out.  The players in the adjacent court all perked up their ears at the sound combination of my volley and the ball’s bounce, and their top square rabbit held the ball for a moment as Marigold moved to the back of the line and the other three of us moved one square up. I pointed at Fern as he moved to the low square. “Name and buck or doe, please.”  Fern looked confused. “We were just talking a moment ago.”  “Set an example for everyone behind you.”  “Oh! Fern, buck.”  I nodded at Basil, he served to Fern, Fern hit a soft shot to me, and I hit a low sharp angle shot at the outside corner of Basil’s square where it met mine. The ball skittered fifty feet away as Basil ran after it. “Oops,” I said, realizing I had just slowed down the game.  “Take ours,” said the rabbit in the top square of the other court, where everyone had been watching our game instead of playing their own round. The ball was passed to Cinnamon, everyone in their game and queue formed a circle around our court, we each moved to our new squares, and a doe named Violet joined the low square. Cinnamon served to Violet, then got into position for the traditional force-jump tactic, and Violet gave him the perfect return for him to hit a ball that a rabbit would have had to jump to return. But I’m a human, so I pounded it back into his square, well away from him because as soft as the ball was, I was still hitting it quite hard. I was a little worried that I was hitting it toward the audience, but at least they had time to react. Cinnamon went to the end of the line, the spectators passed me the extra ball Basil had retrieved, and I prepared to serve to a buck named Sage.  Something that might have happened at this point was that I would serve the ball to whoever was in the low square and the rabbits would play a three player game amongst themselves instead of risking anything by hitting the ball to me. I would have been fine with that as long as they played to eliminate someone since that meant someone else would take the new low square and would introduce themselves to me. That seemed to be happening for that first round, except that at one point Fern gave me an easy feed and I used it to eliminate Sage, bringing a doe named Saffron into the game. Clearly Fern had caught onto my plan and would help.  The next few rounds continued as essentially three player games, except Fern was the one left out since he had helped me. I worried a bit that the other two rabbits would try to eliminate him and get to a three-on-one, which would have been much harder to defend, but they used their rounds exploring what kinds of tactics would work. Since I was tall enough to defend the high bounces, they tried a few soft shots, which was probably a good plan in general except that I luckily defended the first few rounds and they gave up. Next was hitting the ball straight at me to try to get me to play it with a body part other than my hand, a tactic I intentionally didn’t use against them to avoid hurting them, but they were less worried about that given their shorter arms. That led to a few close calls, but in a key round I deflected a shot into Fern’s square and he took the knockout smash against one of them.  All the while I was learning the trend in rabbit names: flowers were does and trees were bucks, with herbs and other plants unisex. This led to a few surprises, like bucks named Willow or Rosemary, or a doe named Narcissus. I was a bit surprised when a doe was named Patience and expected there to be an alternative scheme of virtues as you might see in humans, but it never materialized. I later learned that Patience is another name for Impatiens, which would be a terrible name for a doe!  Eventually there was a round where a buck named Wisteria was in the low square (there had previously been a doe by the same name, but thankfully she was in another class), and a doe named Lavender was in the second square. I served to Wisteria. He passed to Lavender and retreated to the far corner of his square, which didn’t seem too odd since playing deep gave him a better chance of returning one of my hard shots. Lavender passed to Fern (which surprised me), Fern passed softly back to Lavender, and at that moment Wisteria took a step and jumped as high as he could, even though the ball was nowhere near him. I couldn’t pay any attention to that since I had to focus on the ball which was in Lavender’s court, but she passed it to the inside corner of Wisteria’s square, where it arrived just as he was landing from his jump. His overhand smash combined with the extra speed from his fall drove the ball into my court with a powerful thump, and it bounced well over my head. I had no chance of jumping to meet it given my late start, so I retreated to the back corner of my square where my momentum meant I had no power or angle to take a knockout shot. I passed it routinely to Fern.  Fern, my heretofore silent conspirator.  Fern, who had set up the entire play with his return pass.  Fern, who unlike me had been keeping track, and knew that Wisteria was the last student in our class left for me to meet.  He angled his paw down and the ball bounced off it directly back into my court. I dove headlong to reach it before its second bounce and managed to tip it with my fist into Lavender’s square, but it was an easy shot to predict as that was the only direction I could hit it, so she was in position to return and lobbed it over my back, where it bounced twice. I made no effort to return it—I had landed knees-first, and before the ball was even returned I had rolled onto my back and clutched my right knee against my chest, seeing blood start to ooze from where I had skinned it.  There was a pause as everyone realized I had been defeated, before they noticed my injury and gathered around in concern, none more so than Fern. “Oh no, Stacy, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he panicked.  “I know,” I replied unconcerned.  “But I did hurt you, and that’s the worst thing a rabbit can do, and you’re bleeding, and a predator might smell your blood—”  “You didn’t hurt me, Fern. You hit the ball. I hurt me by diving for it.”  “But I hit the ball!”  “And I forgive you. There’s a school nurse, right?”  “Of course.”  “Okay,” I said, getting my feet under me. “I’ll go see the nurse and get this bandaged up, but it’s fine. I’m fine. I’ve been hurt worse.” I stood up, and my skirt slid down my thighs, which made me realize that the whole time I had been on my back, everyone had had a clear view of my wet diaper. “That was good teamwork, all three of you,” I added, trying to mask my humiliation. (Not at being defeated, of course—I had actually hoped they would succeed eventually.) I walked back toward the school as normally as I could for how much it hurt to bend and unbend my skinned knee, but having a limp would worry them even more. Behind me Fern took his rightful place in the top square, and the other game resumed from where it had left off.

I posted about 4k words because that was the cleanest break point.

 I sat at Miss Breckenridge’s desk as my new three foot tall (ears excluded) rabbit classmates filed into the classroom in front of me. They came in every combination of fur color and pattern, but all wore the same uniform as I did with a peach sailor-style top and a gray skirt, though each of theirs had a vent in the skirt for their tail, and mine was a slightly different color since there was no hand-me-down (paw-me-down?) in my size, so it had to be hastily custom tailored to fit me. Most of them gave me a confused look, but they all proceeded to their seats without comment. Miss Breckenridge herself, wearing a paisley dress with pockets over fur that was agouti other than a white patch on the underside of her tail, stood watchfully to my right. As the last student entered and the clock ticked to the start of the hour, the loudspeaker over the door played what I assumed was this school’s version of a bell: not a harsh ringing, but white noise, gradually fading in, then out. Miss Breckenridge clapped her paws gently to get the class’s attention. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Stacy,” she said, then beckoned me to stand. When I did, the top of her head was only as high as my shoulder. “Her family will be living on our island for a while, so she’ll be joining our class starting today,” she continued. “Now, I’m sure you’re all excited to introduce yourselves to her, since many of you have never met a human before, but remember that she’s never been around this many rabbits at once either, so try not to overwhelm her.”  “Hello,” I said with a brief wave. Looking out at them in their uniforms, I wondered if there was a clue I had missed that this would be an all-girls (all-does?) school. They didn’t react to my wave; maybe it wasn’t a gesture rabbits used.  Miss Breckenridge put her paw on my shoulder, stood on tiptoes, and whispered in my ear, “We put your desk in the back row because you’re taller than everyone else, but if you have trouble hearing, let me know and we can move you to the front of one of the sides.” I nodded and picked up my book bag from her desk, then walked down the aisle toward the vacant seat at the back.  The other students’ heads barely turned as I passed them in their seats, their eyes just above my knees. I quickly reached my desk and hung my bag on the hook on the side. It had started as the same type of desk everyone else was sitting in, with the surface fixed to the seat with a solid bar, but some cutting and welding had visibly taken place, extending the legs and making more room for my knees under the storage compartment. I slid into the seat, which was made of uncomfortably hard laminated wood. The desktop was remarkably large considering the size of its typical user—probably bigger than the desks at my old school—and like all the others, there was a small patch of evenly-cut grass in the corner. I’d never had a desk with a lawn before.  “Everyone who was in this class yesterday, please pass forward your math homework,” Miss Breckenridge said, opening a drawer and pulling out a stack of what I guessed were yesterday’s marked assignments. For the first time the class had noise in it as the students shifted in their seats to get their completed printouts from their book bags. At the front of each row, Miss Breckenridge collected the stack that had been passed forward, then gave an equally large stack, from which each student took their sheet and passed the rest back. “Remember to review the questions you got wrong so you know how to do it next time,” She said as she returned to the front of the room, tucked the collected pages into the drawer, then picked up a piece of chalk and started the day’s lessons. I pulled my divided notebook and a pencil kit from my bag. I wasn’t sure what lessons would be like in a class of rabbits, but math was the subject I was least worried about because it should work the same for everyone. My only concern was if rabbits had a different number of fingers per paw than humans, but they turned out to have 5 on the forepaws, so the lesson felt like a continuation of what we had covered in school before I moved.  Except it just kept going.   And going.   And going.   I felt guilty for sharpening my pencil at the 45 minute mark in case it distracted anyone else, because despite Miss Breckenridge’s concerns about me not being able to hear—and it’s true she was soft-spoken—the only noise besides her voice was the soft grinding of teeth and the occasional snap of a blade of grass from what turned out to be not desktop lawns, but private pastures.   After an hour and a half, she put the chalk down and took a fresh stack of photocopies from her desk. The white noise bell rang as she gave several to the rabbit at the front of each file to pass back. It was a standard letter-size sheet, which probably already seemed large to a rabbit, but the text was very small so it seemed like a lot of work even to me. I hastily tucked it into my bookbag and switched to a new section in my notebook. The next lesson was history, and while I wondered what the rabbit perspective on human historical events would be, it actually meant rabbit history. She launched into a recounting of a blood feud between two colonies which was surprisingly candid about the intrigue and betrayals that took place. Like the math lesson, the lesson dragged on across generations, and I had no choice but to let the details flow from her mouth to my notebook without pausing in my head, as I had no context for who these figures were. Maybe they were the ancestors of my classmates and these events were revelations to some of them, but all I noticed was the occasional twitch of a tail in my peripheral vision, and I feared paying any closer attention to them would distract me from Miss Breckenridge, at which point I’d never catch up.   At the end of the history period, the white noise bell rang again for lunch, and everyone including Miss Breckenridge and myself took a shallow lunchbox from their desk or book bag. The rabbits’ lunches appeared to be mostly leafy greens, with a few root vegetables like radishes and the occasional chunk of cheese. I had brought a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. The previous residents of the house we had moved into had left some tins of tuna and salmon in the pantry, but mom and I felt like I should hold off on eating any kind of meat in front of the rabbits until I had an idea how they would react. Since the seats were fixed to the desks, everyone sat by themselves, so there was no idle chit-chat to interrupt our eating. After a few minutes when the sound of munching died down, Miss Breckenridge once again clapped her paws gently and said, “Since we’re all done eating, everyone pick a diaper change buddy.”   That was so far from anything I was expecting to hear that I was sure I had heard it wrong, so my plan was to sit still and watch what happened until I could figure out what had actually been said, but every other student in class reached into their bag or desk and pulled out a disposable diaper and a small package of wipes—it seemed to be exactly what it sounded like. The doe in the seat in front of me looked in my direction for a moment, then turned to the student in front of her, and their nods told me they had agreed to be buddies. Similar pairings were agreed to all around me.   “Stacy, there are an odd number of students now and you’re much larger than everyone else, so we should be buddies today,” Miss Breckenridge said. I sat frozen in shock as my classmates played rock-paper-scissors in their pairs, and the winner of each faced away from the loser and lifted her skirt up, unthreading her tail from the vent in the skirt, to reveal her wet diaper. The loser undid a tape above the winner’s tail, then the winner climbed onto the nearest desk and laid on her back. Miss Breckenridge beckoned me toward her with a paw. I stood up and took a hesitant step, and she nodded, then bent down and opened the bottom drawer of her desk.   I shuffled toward the front of the class, sidling around rabbits who were opening the diapers of their buddies, all of which had a small pile of dry spherical poops in the seat. I wasn’t trying to look, since I didn’t want to bump into anyone, but being so tall gave me a clear line of sight, and out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help but notice that a significant fraction of my classmates had a penis. I considered that maybe it was such a good school that the boys put up with wearing the girls’ uniform to be able to come here, before I realized that it wasn’t an all-girls school after all, and the skirt was the unisex uniform. And then I remembered that I had been distracted from diapers also being the unisex uniform of the school, when that was really the more shocking thing.   I reached the front of the classroom as Miss Breckenridge stood up from her desk drawer also holding a disposable diaper and a box of wipes. She looked at my empty hands. “You forgot to bring your fresh diaper,” she said as she put the items on her desk. “First day jitters? Run back and get it.” She waggled her wrist toward my desk.   “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I don’t wear diapers,” I replied, unsure why she had taken one out of her drawer if she wanted me to get my own.   “Oh, don’t be silly,” she chuckled as she put the diaper on her desk, then hooked a claw under the hem of my skirt and bent down to take a peek. Before I even knew what I was doing I slapped her paw away, which was the loudest sound that had been made in the classroom all day. She stood up bolt straight, her eyes wider than usual in shock, and rubbed the back of the slapped paw with the other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw all the diaper-changees and many of the diaper-changers had turned to look. She took a deep breath, settled herself, then said, “I suppose I had better go first. We can have a chat once everyone else has left.” My classmates turned their attention back to their own diaper changes as she faced away from me, grabbed her dress with both paws, and lifted it up, unthreading her tail from the tail-vent of her dress and revealing her own diaper, in the same floral pattern as the one she had put on the desk. And now it was clear that she had meant that we would be each other’s diaper change buddy.   I froze for a moment, startled that someone whose paw I had slapped a moment ago would now trust me to clean her intimately. I had owned baby-go-potty type dolls when I was younger, so I knew mechanically how to perform a diaper change, but I had never changed one on a living thing. Maybe it wasn’t too hard, since my classmates were also children and they were all expected to do it, but they probably got regular practice. How had they started? Right, the tape above the tail. I stepped toward her and undid the tape, which was a hook and loop type fastener and not the adhesive type of tape I expected a diaper to use. As the sound of shifting desks told me the diaper changers and changees among my classmates were switching positions, Miss Breckenridge stepped away, hiked herself onto her desk, and laid on her back with her knees at the edge of the tabletop and her dress around her abdomen, and suddenly I had a worrying thought: how sure was I that Miss Breckenridge was “Miss” Breckenridge? Had any other rabbit called her Miss? Had I heard any other rabbit called “Mister”, or was “Miss” unisex for rabbits like skirts were? I thought someone had said her given name at one point. Pansy? No, Peony. Humans with flower names are usually girls, but I didn’t know about rabbits. And I realized that worrying about this wasn’t going to change what I was expected to do, so I stepped forward, undid the two hook and loop tapes on the front, and pulled the front of the diaper down to see that the white patch of fur under her tail continued to the front, but more importantly to me, she was indeed Miss Breckenridge.   On top of the deeply yellowed padding of the diaper, the elastic leg gathers held in several dozen spherical turds, so I pulled a wipe from the dispenser she had taken from the drawer. It felt rough, like a cat’s tongue. Probably also like a rabbit’s tongue. On a closer look the poops were all dry and odorless and there was no residue from them on her bottom, so I used the wipe to soak up a few droplets of moisture from her fur, then dropped it into the used diaper. I pushed back on her thighs and rolled her onto her shoulders, lifting her bottom off the diaper enough that I could slide it halfway to the edge of the desk, which gave me room to roll it up and press the tapes closed against its fake cloth cover.   I picked up the new diaper from the desk beside her and unfolded it. The inner gathers seemed to be stuck to the outer leg elastics, so I ran a finger between them to separate them, then pushed back on her thighs again and slid the diaper into place, with the slit on the diaper’s rear waistband surrounding her tail. When I was sure I had it aligned correctly, I lowered her bottom onto it. My classmates made it clear that they were better practiced at this than I was, as I started hearing the noises of the second members of each pair standing up and getting their tail tapes fastened and their tails re-threaded through the tail-vents in their skirts. Still in buddied pairs, they threw their used diapers in the garbage pail by the door on their way to recess, while I methodically pulled the front of the diaper up through Miss Breckenridge’s thighs. I taped both sides quickly, but even to my inexperienced eye I could tell they were asymmetrical. Thankfully the hook and loop fasteners let me adjust both sides repeatedly, and I noted the tape panel had a natural grid pattern to help with alignment, so eventually I had both sides secured tightly and symmetrically. By that point we were the only two left in the classroom.   “All done, I think,” I said.   “Help me up,” she replied, and held her paw out. I grabbed it with both arms and pulled her to a sitting position, at which point she slid herself off the desk and faced away from me again, still holding up her dress. I closed the rear tape and guided her tail through the vent. She inspected my tape work on the front briefly, then released the dress and smoothed it out as she turned to face me. “Take a seat, please,” she said, gesturing to her chair. I sat down, expecting to be chewed out for slapping her paw, and wondered what the fastest any rabbit student had ever been expelled was. She sat on top of the desk, not seeming very angry, though I wasn’t sure what anger would look like in a rabbit. “I’m not sure if you know, but your father is the first ambassador to our island ever to have children while serving.”   “Yes, the principal mentioned that.”   “In the meeting you had with him last week?” The principal had been wearing a muumuu in that meeting, which confirmed the unisex nature of dresses for all ages, at least.   “Yes, we had to take measurements for my uniform and desk, and figure out which grade of your school system I would be placed in.”   “He told me you’re nine years old, is that right?”   “Yes.”   “Funny, that's about the same age as me.” She folded her fingers together. “I get the sense that there were other things that needed to be discussed in that meeting, but neither side knew they needed to be discussed, so they weren’t. Would you agree with that?”   “It does seem like it.”   “How many times per day do humans defecate?”   The only way I could answer was by saying how many times per day I defecate, which would have seemed like a very personal question coming from someone whose diaper I hadn’t just changed. “Twice per day, I guess? Usually about twice.”   “They must be enormous, and the diaper you’re wearing didn’t look like it could contain that volume, or absorb any urine.”   “Diaper? You mean my underwear?” I hadn’t been sure whether I had slapped her paw away in time to keep her from seeing; this seemed to confirm that I had not.   “Interesting. I suppose ‘under’ is where one wears a diaper.”   “No, I mean humans don’t usually wear diapers.”   A new look, probably confusion. “Rabbits visiting the mainland brought diapers back with them. Why did you have them if you don’t wear them?”   “I mean, we wear them when we’re young, but we usually stop when we’re between two and three years old.”   “Well your classmates are all three years old, but they’re not going to stop soon.” She swiveled her seating position toward me, and I decided to interpret her new expression as curiosity. “What do you do instead?”   “We have something called a toilet.” She gave no sign of recognition. “It’s a chair with water in the seat, and you… go… in the water, and then pull a lever that flushes everything into the sewer and refills it with fresh water.”   “You intentionally pollute drinkable water?”   “I suppose? That’s the kind of water that’s in the pipes.”   “And would your classrooms be full of plumbing to supply a water chair to each student?”   “The toilet is in another room. You go there when you need to use it, and come back when you’re done.”   “I see. And you have one of these rooms at the ambassador’s residence?”   “Yes,” I replied, thinking of the setup in the house we had just moved into. There was a lovely bathroom with a huge tub with whirlpool jets that my parents and I could all fit into at once if we were inclined to bathe together, plus a separate shower stall, a full body hair dryer, and an enormous countertop. (A changing station?) There was also, completely detached from that, a tiny poorly lit water closet barely large enough for the toilet. I originally thought the separation was intentional so that someone could use the toilet while someone else was in the bath; I was starting to suspect that it was literally a linen closet that had been hastily repurposed after the rabbits who built the house found out it was necessary.   “Fascinating,” she said, and paused in thought for a moment. “Rabbits defecate two hundred times per day, so if we had to go to a special room to do it, we would never leave. For that matter, if we didn’t start in the room, we would be finished by the time we got there.”   “You can’t just hold it?”   “Constipate ourselves?!” This seemed to shock her more than the slap had.   “Is that bad?”   “We could die within hours.” I was starting to figure out what a serious expression was in rabbits, and I gathered this was no exaggeration.   “Oh. Well, humans can hold it for quite a while without dying. I don’t know if we’re even able to hold it long enough to die from it.”   “I had no idea. Thank you, this was very educational. I may ask you to give a presentation to the class about this at some point.”   “Yes, I think I understand some things better myself now.” I glanced furtively at the door. “So… Can I go?”   “Well, that depends. You said you defecate twice per day. Is one of those usually during school hours? Because the water chair you described doesn’t exist in this school, and students aren’t allowed to leave the campus during school hours.”   I was more worried about the urge to pee that I was starting to feel, and especially that given how dense the lessons had been in the morning, that being distracted by that urge could cause me to miss something important. Even if I had been allowed to go home, I might not complete the round trip before the afternoon lesson started, which would have the same problem. Could I find an unobserved corner of the schoolyard? Would I even be able to go in broad daylight? Since she had mentioned plumbing, I assumed the school had running water somewhere, so I considered asking if there was a sink I could pee in, but I realized I knew what her response to that would be, just as I knew what question she was really asking. I took a few seconds to steel myself for what I was about to say. “Would it be okay if I borrowed a diaper?” I asked hesitantly.   “Naturally!” she replied cheerfully, standing up and motioning toward the drawer on the other side of the desk from me. I stood up and pushed the chair back to give her room to sneak past. “It’s every student’s responsibility to supply their own diapers, but of course sometimes someone’s stash runs out and they forget to restock, so I keep a bank of all my students’ sizes.” She opened the drawer, which contained a large package of diapers and a few smaller loose ones. “Usually I’m not lending one of my own, though.” She took a diaper from the package, plus a roll of twine and a paper tag, then closed the drawer with her foot, put the diaper on the desk, and turned to me with a few inches of the twine unrolled between her fingers. “Paw,” she beckoned.   I held my left hand out and she measured a length of twine around it with some overlap, then cut it with her claw, threaded the tag onto the end, and tied it in place with a neat bow. I read the tag: “Don’t forget diapers!”   “Assume the position,” she said, and I sat on the narrow edge of the desk next to the dispenser of wipes and laid back. She seemed confused for a moment, like that wasn’t the position she meant for me to assume, before she had a visible moment of realization that I didn’t have a tail tape that needed unfastening, both because I wasn’t wearing a diaper yet and because I didn’t have a tail.   As she moved into the position at my legs with the diaper in her paws, I pulled my skirt up, giving her a clear view of the panties I had slapped her paw away from peeking at a few minutes ago, an event I just remembered had not been mentioned at all in our recent conversation despite me worrying that it would be the entire topic. She scanned the front of my underwear, perhaps confused by the lack of anything like a side closure, and I had a moment of nerves at the prospect of first being naked, and then being diapered for the first time in about seven years, and the first time that I could remember. I took a deep breath and calmed myself with the thought that when our positions had been reversed a few moments ago she had shown no shame or fear, and in what I had seen, all of my classmates had performed their buddy duties with the utmost professionalism.   Putting the diaper on the desk beside me, she pushed my thighs back with one paw, rolling me onto my shoulders, and started pulling at the waist of my panties, but stopped when she realized she was sticking her claws into my abdomen. I pulled the waistband down past my bottom with both hands, and she lowered me back onto the cool, smooth desk and pulled the panties from both sides as far as my knees, which I tucked against myself so she could pull the panties the rest of the way down my ankles, over my shoes, and off completely. She stashed them in her pocket, then picked up and unfolded the diaper, separating the gathers from the leg elastics as I had. Presented with the tail slit at the rear, she thought for a moment, taped it closed as tightly as it would go, then rocked me onto my shoulders again, slid the diaper under my bottom, and lowered me onto it. I barely had a moment to register how much thicker than my underwear the diaper was before she pulled the front between my thighs and over my abdomen. Demonstrating her experience, she only needed a single attempt to fasten the tapes perfectly to the tape panel.   She held her paw out, I took it in my hand, and she pulled me to a sitting position. “That wasn’t too much longer than everyone else. You still have plenty of recess left to get to know your classmates.”   I slid off the desk and lowered my skirt over my diaper. Looking down at myself, I couldn’t tell anything was different, but the leg elastics and especially the thickness felt strange. “I will, thank you,” I said, and took two steps toward the door.   “Stacy, wait,” she interrupted, and I turned back toward her. She looked halfway as afraid as she had when I slapped her paw—nervous, maybe? “On the first day of class I received advance consent from each student to perform diaper checks, but you weren’t here that day. You never gave me consent, and I never asked for it. You were right to react the way you did. I had no right to violate your autonomy, and I apologize wholeheartedly.”   Suddenly it made sense why she went from afraid to letting me change her diaper in a few moments: her fear wasn’t of violence, but of the consequences of her own mistake. But I had eventually let her see everything she had tried to peek at and more, and now that I understood that there was no reason she would think that a student wouldn’t be wearing a diaper, I wasn’t upset about it anymore. “I forgive you,” I said.   Her relief was visible immediately. “Thank you. I’ll see you next period.” I turned to the door again, and as I passed the garbage can full of used diapers, I realized she still had my panties in her pocket.

Had a thought about the faculty not currently being coven-sized that doesn't require you to retcon anything: The coven is short a member because one of the department heads quit abruptly just before the term started, and they haven't hired a replacement yet. They have adjuncts teaching the classes, but they can't just promote an adjunct to department head because that's not about knowing the material, it's about fitting in with the rest of the coven, and none of them do. The department head might have quit because they accepted a male student (some of the other faculty might think this is true even if it's not because of the timing, further justifying their treatment of Daniel); maybe she wanted to use the school's power selfishly and the rest of the coven didn't go along with it, so she quit but is still skulking around trying to use the power (and is therefore the professor from the conspiracy; even though she quit the co-conspirators are used to calling her professor); maybe one of the other faculty is the conspirator and she quit because she couldn't go along with it (or she was murdered and the resignation letter was forged!?); maybe whoever eventually replaces her (perhaps a prof at another school?) did some conniving to get her to quit thinking she'd be on the short list as a replacement which would get her access to the school's power, so just because she wasn't around at the time doesn't guarantee she's innocent. It could be any or none of these, but it would feel fair to introduce an off"screen" suspect like this because Daniel and Jen are frosh, so they wouldn't know about someone who left before they came to the school until something specific happens to make him aware of it, and therefore neither would we because he's the viewpoint character. If you like that, I have a fun way for him to find out there's a vacancy in the faculty coven: His mom shows up to interview for it and swings by his dorm to have a meal with him, and that's how she finds out about the diapers. (A problem with this is it seems like she didn't do a great job teaching him, but anyways...) She passes the interview, but her condition for taking the job is they stop making him wear diapers, and they refuse, so she turns them down. Daniel feels guilty because even if he didn't have to wear diapers by rule he'd still have to wear them by curse, but he doesn't want to tell her because of the anti-tampering clause, so he tries to talk her into taking the job anyways by saying he's an adult notwithstanding his underwear and he can fight his own battles, or not fight them if he thinks that's better; she says it's not about him per se, she just couldn't work with anyone who thinks this is an appropriate way to treat any student.