She ate her breakfast and went to school, hoping to God or whatever other deity was out there that they didn't make too much of a fuss over her new appearance.
She has to be thankful that the metamorphosis didn't change her physical appearance too drastically, outside of the hair which was now hidden rather elaborately thanks to some engineering on Nobunaga's part. She wasn't so sure about the details, but from what she understood it basically had something to do with Nobunaga's Demon King skill which let her essentially remove an entire portion of her hair like it wasn't there at all. When asked how the hell that works, even knowing that Nobumaga and every single heroic spirit out there based their powers on their feats and the things they were called in life, Nobunaga told her not to overthink it too much. Essentially, if someone was known in history to be very reprehensible and evil, earning a reputation that they could be called a 'monster', they would gain a skill called 'Innocent Monster', twisting their appearance into what they were remembered as.
Nobunaga's Demon King skill was special because they called her that in life and death, allowing her to modify her appearance as she pleased. She didn't know the full extent of the powers, but if Nobunaga's word was to be taken at face value, it could change her hair color at the very least, citing that her hair brightened to a very rich red whenever she got particularly passionate. Nobunaga did say along the lines that the red hair was a bit closer to what would happen whenever she got fired up or something, but her theory was correct and she could probably get just the right color to what she needed.
A few tweaks with the assistance of Nobunaga, and her hair shifted from the Yamato Nadeshiko style long black hair to something that just hung off her shoulders, a small tinge of brown more obviously seen when exposed to sunlight. She didn't need to change her facial features, not that she could seeing how her appearance was bits and pieces of Nobunaga all over and cloned wherever possible, especially how relatively no name and unpopular she was before to begin with. If she was anymore identifiable than she was before, and wasn't as much of a recluse outside of her very small circle of friends now rendered a 1 dimensional dot thanks to to Irina's departure a very short while back, then this would have been infinitely more difficult than it could have been.
Arriving at the school gate, she prayed silently and hoped that whatever the hell happened inside there won't affect her negatively in any way. If they connected the dots... if they figured out that something was wrong about her, then she could say her life as a sovereign human being was over for good. Forever. Cynical thoughts were not the ideal method of preparing for the worst, she was well aware of that, but the tension was still heavy on her shoulders and she simply didn't have much choice.
But then again, there didn't seem to be much of a response. Certainly, seeing a school boy with shoulder length hair wasn't that weird nowadays with loosening fashion restrictions, but come on. She actually thought she was cute, for goodness sake, if no cute boys or girls took notice of her walking past them then there wouldn't be much of a point hiding it in the first place!
She did bring up the possibility of people not really caring if a new guy went past them, that they had better things to do than worry about some new student they didn't know about. Sighing in defeat, she opened the door to her classroom and walked to her designated chair. She waited in anxious anticipation as her classmates slowly filled the room, some talking to each other and others walking in with half-lidded eyes, obviously very sleepy and experiencing 'I hate Mondays syndrome'.
She resisted the urge to breathe deeply as the teacher walked in holding a clipboard with everyone's names. They all did the formal greeting as the classes began, as she slowly waited for the teacher to recite her name. She curled up against herself and withheld the urge to barf, nausea setting and so many other things that could make things even worse. So caught up within her thought that she didn't notice the teacher calling her name, walking towards her, and flicking their finger on her forehead.
"Wha-!?" Was the only unintelligible response she could manage. The teacher waited patiently, before waving her hand in a circular fashion.
"Hyoudou Issei." Blinking as she processed the usage of her name, she smiled nervously as she looked up. Opening her mouth to reply, she said.
"P-Present ma'am." The teacher smiled, and twisted around as she slowly walked back to her table. Noting that her teacher didn't notice anything out of the blue, acting as if nothing at all had changed, she didn't sit down just yet as Issei called for her teacher's attention. The teacher sat down on her table, and as she processed the state of the classroom, she looked at Issei standing up still. A reply was interrupted by Issei's faster response, saying.
"Ma'am... Don't you think there's anything different about me? Anything at all?" Her teacher looked puzzled at the question, as if the answer was both redundant and obvious. The teacher's head tilted, her mouth open slightly. She put her hand on her chin, staring deadpan at Issei's serious expression. She sighed, and began.
"... I'm not sure what you mean by that, Issei. As far as I could tell nothing had changed at all. Although," her hand began tapping on the side of her head. "You look more haggard than I remember... Have you been getting enough sleep lately? Been thinking about your friend Shidou lately?" She sighed, thinking about the two's friendship over the years in the school. They were practically attached to the waists with how close they were, but the moment she left for London the kid started getting all sorts of depressed that it was almost impossible to not feel bad for him.
"If you've been worried sick about your friend for the past few days, then please, consider your health first. Shidou is fine, but at the rate you're going, they'll need to worry about you instead." Looking at her watch, she noted how close it was to the class's first period. "Was there anything else you needed?"
Issei was stunned. She knew that there was something off about her, should be something off about her. She had changed in every aspect, including gender and physical sex, two things that cannot be determined without opening her pants, yet it should have been obvious that something was wrong about her appearance anyway. She should've been seen, there was no way that her appearance could get away with so much leeway.
She sat down on her chair, deep in thought. Thinking about it clearly, there was not much for her to think about in the first place. She shouldn't be worried or concerned that there didn't seem to be a problem in her classes at all, but something inside of her—that wasn't Nobu, she stayed silent the entire time for whatever reason—told her to be more wary. Things like this didn't happen out of the blue, she should've been called out on multiple times already, but she simply wasn't.
She looked back up to the teacher's table, her teacher picking her books and purse from the side of the table while looking at her existential crisis with worry on her face. The woman visibly gulped, and gathered some courage to say one last thing before she left. "If you need help with whatever troubles you have, Issei... just tell me. Bottling it up isn't healthy in any shape or form."
With that said, the teacher walked out of the room with a blank, professional look. Issei watched the entire thing, considering the possibility that her teacher misinterpreted what she told her. What her request meant at first, as they were probably aware of her grief when they saw him stomping out of the school all the way home. It was a habit for her at the time, every day he would run to the school waiting for someone who wouldn't come to him anymore, wasn't around to help him up when he needed help.
She appreciated that thought, knowing that some people were concerned for her well-being outside of her family. She came close to ending her grief for good, a few days back, but uh, you know what happened. The class waited patiently for their first period class teacher to arrive. Issei had her hands curled up together, joints leaning on the table and upper arms pointing upwards.The gesture obscured her facial features, and anyone of her classmates who bothered looking at her reeled in fear at the fierce and predatory look on her face. She took note of this and sneered, scaring off many more people who tried looking at her face.
It wasn't her fault that Nobunaga's facial features were perfect for murdering people, but she didn't intend for any of that to happen. She wanted to look thoughtful and insightful, to look smarter than her age would normally suggest, but instead the combination of her sour mood and Nobunaga's experience with scaring people after so many years of tormenting Buddhists and Shintoists gave her an expression that seemed to imply a person that wanted to cut you up and eat you for dinner. Literally.
As time went on and teachers went back and forth from the classroom, she seemingly went back to her old habits and acted as if nothing had changed at all. It was only fitting, anyway; it seemed she didn't have much to worry about in the first place and she didn't want to draw too much attention to herself. Classes went on as usual up to when the midday bell rung throughout the school, bringing all students to the cafeteria or their respective tables to eat their lunchtime meal.
It was after eating her lunch and entering the (male) restroom that she noticed something really off. Washing her face and hands on the sink, she looked at the mirror before her and saw something behind her, looked briefly at the figure, blinked, then it seemed who or whatever was there was gone. Taking a moment to look at herself, she realized that the minute transformations she made in order to fit in better reverted themselves as if she never made them at all. Actually, looking back on it, they never really stuck on her person the entire time, noting that for most of her morning periods that whenever she looked at the windows it was as if her hair reverted to their original length as decided by Nobunaga's physical characteristics.
So basically, for whatever reason everyone was acting as if she always looked like this and didn't call into attention her changed appearance, her long hair or the more effeminate facial features in general. They treated her in much the same way she used to do—that is, leaving her be unless they needed her for something like a project or whatever—, which meant that she shouldn't need to show her exasperation that nobody really noticed anything off. But she should, because something inside of her was telling her that something was really off.
She could 'feel' it in the air somehow, a sense of wrongness permeating the atmosphere. It could tell her many things about her school now, from the amount of people stationed nearby, how much mana could be coalesced by all of the children and teachers running about, and all the way to the sensation that something or someone was watching her from every part of the school. If she didn't feel as if something very horrible was going to happen soon, then she would've thanked whoever the hell made the spell since it would have made her life a whole lotta easier. Instead, she's reminded by that one time Gintoki got replaced by a copycat of his in the Gintama manga, when one moment Gin-san was living his life as normal until some jerk with a similar name and set of abilities swooped in and stole everything from him.
She was sure that she wouldn't have to worry about being removed from everyone's minds, at least. Whoever the hell blinded the minds of the masses had full intentions of supporting her efforts, at least for now. It didn't occur to her at first that maybe either the jerk wanted to throw her off guard at first and lead her astray, allowing for an easier ambush, or, if her suspicions were correct, the enemy she had was a demon either trying to kill her, as the first option suggests, or was trying to strike a deal with her. The local supernatural forces of the earth she lived in was very different from the one that Nobunaga remembered and made comparisons to every now and then, so it wouldn't have been too surprising if a daemon attempted to bribe her into joining them, she knew how powerful Nobunaga could be in a good day after all.
Thinking on it, despite most of her personality remaining the same for her last few days as life as Nobunaga's clone—though Nobunaga indignantly preferred the term "successor" whenever she referred to it as such, so maybe she'd use that term more—, she noticed that alongside the ruthlessness and skill she had inherited from her tenant, she had also gained much of her tactical knowledge and expertise of military tactics, adding onto her comparatively shorter life span as a large portion of her accommodated the life's worth of knowledge and wisdom. It became her habit now to calculate risks, consider possibilities, and wager hypotheses in the field of battle as if it were nothing, and honestly? It kind of scared her.
She had to repeat the mantra that it wasn't Nobu's fault for all of these things to keep tacking onto herself as she slowly began accustomed to life as a woman, because really, the personality changes were only inevitable with a fully grown woman actively taking a role in a child's life, her personality bleeding over where it wouldn't be appropriate and giving her a sensation of adulthood that added onto her preexisting maturity. The memories appearing in her dreams and her being able to almost seamlessly act the part of a youthful Oda Nobunaga pretty much cemented that. To be honest, the past 3 days didn't give her much opportunity to do all of that in the first place, but now it was as if she already knew what life was and should be like. If there's anything that was certain to her, it was that children were very impressionable and she was no exception.
Not that children would be carbon copies of the adults surrounding them, of course, but she was a special case among special cases considering that absolutely no one expected her to possibly be an avatar of one of Japan's greatest warlords, and part of that contributed to her maturity. She had Nobunaga, a person she had learned to be very boisterous, be inside of her buddy all the time, so how could she not pick up a few traits? Regardless, that was a discussion for another day, looking at the clock reflected on the mirror before her, and if her understanding was correct, it was roughly 5 minutes before 1 O'Clock, and her classroom was on the other side of the school, so she had to hurry.
She washed her face on the sink once more and wiped her face with a paper towel, then walked out of the room with both hands in her pockets. Her thoughts were of the inner monologue she just had inside the restroom, thinking thoughtfully of the implications that may as well occur. She still couldn't shake away the feeling that something or someone was watching her, probably something to do with the demonic figure she saw in the restroom.