Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Katsumi is used to being popular with girls. So when he introduces himself to the bright-eyed brunette by the school gate, he’s entirely unprepared for the way her face goes cold and closed. 

It’s something like a window slamming shut bare inches away from prone fingertips, and Katsumi very barely manages not to take a step back in face of the very immediate dislike.

“I, um,” he flounders, then rallies with what he hopes is a charming smile. “I’m here to see Natsume? Uh, Natsume Takashi?”

The girl stands in front of him with narrow eyes in an otherwise friendly face, arms folded, like some kind of security guard. When she turns away, its only to ask her curly-haired companion to please go and get someone called Nishimura. 

But I asked for Natsume, Katsumi protests inwardly, without the nerve to say it out loud. This town is so backwards. 

A bright, eager voice fills the school grounds whole moments before its owner comes into view. “Taki? What’s up? Tsuji said you wanted to see – You!”

Katsumi is already wincing into the abrupt silence when Nishimura draws up short. He recognizes Nishimura from that first time he came to see Natsume here what feels like ages ago. He remembers the heated way Nishimura sprang to Natsume’s defense the second their conversation took a cold turn. The glaring girl seems to be a mutual friend. 

Great. 

But tagging along behind Nishimura is another familiar face, and it’s pleasant surprise that flits across Tanuma’s face when their eyes meet. 

“Oh, Shibata,” he says, coming a few extra steps forward. “You’re early, aren’t you?”

Relieved, Katsumi says, “Yes, I am, thank god you’re here Tanuma.”

The dark-eyed boy seems to be very barely not laughing at him. “Nishimura and Kitamoto actually told me and Taki all about you before we met,” he explains, and Katsumi watches some of the angry edges ease out of the other two students’ faces, just from the kind way Tanuma is smiling at him. “That’s why I was so eager to go along with Natsume when he went to visit you, you know, that time with the doll house.”

“Wait, you two have met?” Nishimura’s still scowling, but with a lot less volume. “You’ve all hung out together? What doll house?” 

Taki, on the other hand, has drifted to stand by Tanuma’s shoulder, and her dislike has shifted into something closer to curiosity. She really takes his opinion into account, Katsumi realizes, trying to get a feel for their dynamics. They all seem to. Is it a Natsume thing, or is Tanuma really just that reliable?

“We have met,” Katsumi answers belatedly, when he realizes Tanuma isn’t rude enough to speak for him from two feet away. Prudently ignoring the doll house question, he goes on, “I’m actually supposed to meet him this afternoon, for um – a project? But my extracurriculars were canceled, so I was free much sooner than I thought.”

Nishimura’s frown doesn’t budge an inch. Taki seems swayed by Tanuma’s good opinion of him – and Katsumi is going to ask him all about that over dinner tonight, he really truly is – but Nishimura bites out, “The look on Natsume’s face when you showed up that day made me want to hit you. And I don’t usually want to hit people. But you were a real jerk, you know that?”

Katsumi does know that, actually. Thinking back on the way he acted fills his stomach with a heavy, sinking mixture of guilt and shame, so he does his best not to. 

“We’re friends now,” is what he says aloud, maybe a little too sharply. “I hurt him before, I know I did. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to make up for it.”

And with that, Taki relents completely, and even smiles at him – a small gesture, but he’ll take it. Nishimura looks unconvinced, but a little less like he’s about to start a fight, and it’s about that time that Natsume finds them – with that cat trotting at his heels, and really, he brings it to school?

“You’re early, Shibata,” Natsume says by way of greeting, and his voice is sharp with annoyance but playfully so, completely without any unhappy edges. Katsumi grins like a knee-jerk reaction and plants his hands on his hips.

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t miss me, Natsume. Not after I came all this way for you.”

“You came all this way for Touko-san’s cooking,” comes the dry reply. “Don’t pretend otherwise, it’s demeaning to us both.” His expression gentles when he looks at Nishimura and Taki, and his sarcastic mouth forms a sweet smile when he bids them both goodbye. “And don’t worry, I’m taking this one with me,” he adds, jerking lightly on the strap of Katsumi’s bookbag as he passes him by. 

Tanuma falls into step with them, looking equal parts patient with and amused by the animated bickering that picks up between Katsumi and Natsume within moments of their prolonged proximity. 

Their friendship is a lot different, Katsumi thinks, than the friendships he saw back there. He thinks maybe it would be nice to be on the receiving end of more of those gentle smiles Natsume is capable of. His heart is set on the sun-bright prospect of earning them fairly. 

He takes a moment to take it all in – walking with Natsume down an old country road, surrounded on all sides by blooming lavender, the other boy’s cat a heavy weight in his arms. Tanuma’s hand and Natsume’s brush with every other step, and Natsume’s eyes are bright when he teases Katsumi about his crooked tie, and Katsumi thinks those friends of his – Taki and Nishimura and whoever else – are right to defend him so fiercely. 

He has seen the kind of trouble that follows his friend, the kind of trouble no one believed he was in when they were children, the kind of trouble he was never, ever rescued from – and resolve settles somewhere in the back of his heart. 

So many people have been cruel to Natsume, and Katsumi is one of them. But they aren’t here anymore, and Katsumi meant what he said – he wouldn’t be here, either, if he didn’t really, really want to make up for it.

Chapter Text

“Na–tsu–me,” Nishimura says too brightly. “I have a question for you!”

Sensing danger, Natsume lifts his aching head slowly and eyes his classmate with all the wariness he deserves. “What is it?”

“Well, I was just wondering why you told Touko-san you didn’t have a fever,” he says, still oozing with that false sense of cheer, “when it’s pretty obvious that you do?”

“Nishimura,” he starts, realizing too late where this is going. Nishimura doesn’t give ground.

“I get the feeling that whatever you’re about to say isn’t some variation of ‘you’re so right, Nishimura, and I was so wrong!’ so I don’t really wanna hear it.”

“Since when are you Class Two’s mother hen?” another student asks with a grin. Her glance at Natsume is worried, though, because yeah, he looks that bad. Honestly, who was he trying to kid?

“Since sensei had Tsuji go run an errand,” he replies airily, waving a hand. “Natsume, seriously. Let me take you to the nurse’s station.”

“I’m fine,” he says – unconvincingly, since it comes out more of a wheeze. “The school day is half over, anyway, so – “

“So it doesn’t matter as much if you just take it easy.” Nishimura softens despite himself, leaning over to feel Natsume’s forehead with the back of his hand. “I mean – you’re kinda scaring me, you know? What if your fever fries your brain, or you dehydrate and pass out, or – “

“Nishimura,” Natsume says again, wearily, “none of that’s going to happen.”

“You’re so sick you can’t sit up straight,” he shoots back. “And you’ll faint on a good day! Sorry if I’m a little worried about you!”

His tone has Natsume lifting hooded eyes to meet his, and they’re hazy so it takes him a minute to parse the words – but then his brow wrinkles, and his mouth tugs into a frown, and he pushes himself up on his elbows from where he’d been draped bonelessly on top of his desk. 

“No, it’s not – “ he starts, and then loses the words. Frustrated with himself, he tries again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I just – I didn’t want you to worry in the first place. I take up so much of Touko-san and Shigeru-san’s time already, and you guys – “

Nishimura wants to shake him. As it is, he leans over and grabs Natsume by the shoulders, as hard as he dares.

“Don’t you think we worry more when you push yourself too far without telling anyone and make yourself even sicker?”

“I know,” he mutters, “I know, Nishimura, you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” he replies smartly. “Are you ready to go to the nurse’s station?”

Because Natsume is probably the most stubborn person alive, his answer is a glance to the side, toward the window, and no verbal response. Nishimura shakes his head. 

“I thought so. That’s why I called in reinforcements.” 

“Nishimura, you didn’t – “

“If you won’t listen to me, I have no choice,” Nishimura says, spreading his hands apologetically. But he isn’t very apologetic at all, and it probably shows on his face if Natsume’s scowl is anything to go by. “Hey, you played yourself. You should’ve just come along nice and easy.”

The classroom door rattles open, and Tanuma’s framed in the doorway for all of a second. His eyes find Natsume across the room almost instantly, and his expression morphs into one it’s almost hard to look at. 

Resigned, Natsume stands and starts packing his bookbag. Tanuma lifts it out of his hands before he can string it over his shoulder, dark eyes equal parts gentle and steely, and looks ready to frogmarch Natsume down the hall if it comes to that, which is precisely what Nishimura was counting on. 

“This is bullying,” Natsume remarks dryly. His voice is hoarse and his eyes are overbright, but he still manages to sound cheeky. He’d manage to sound cheeky on his deathbed. Nishimura leans back in the chair he’d parked up by Natsume’s desk and beams at him, unrepentant.

“I’m comfortable with that. Maybe eventually you’ll learn to stay home and let your mom take care of you when you’re sick, and it won’t come to this anymore.”

Something self-conscious flits across Natsume’s expression, and if he wasn’t already flushed with fever, Nishimura would blame some of that high color in his cheeks on shame. 

It’s that, more than anything, that makes Nishimura lean over and catch him by the sleeve, tugging lightly. 

“We’re gonna take care of you whether you like it or not,” he says, not unkindly. “Just try to make it a little easier on everybody and let us. At least once in awhile. Okay?”

And Natsume softens. Smiles faintly when Tanuma puts a hand on his shoulder. Says, “Okay.”

He’s absent from school for the next two days. Kitamoto calls the house and Touko-san assures him Natsume’s doing much better after a visit to the doctor. Nishimura misses him, but he still considers it a win. 

Chapter Text

It’s a sunny spring afternoon, and Shuuichi is alive and in one piece after another misadventure concerning a handful of aggressive yokai and a certain extremely taboo book in his young friend’s possession – and more importantly, Natsume, sitting beside him and bickering with the fat cat in his lap, is alive and in one piece, too.

They’re dirty and disheveled and Natsume seems to have a personal vendetta against allowing Shuuichi to buy him food, but they have certainly had worse days than this.

While Shuuichi is all but forcing an overpriced drink into Natsume’s hands, a little girl at the park no older than seven wanders away from her parents and over to the bench he and Natsume are resting on.

She considers them for a moment, then points without flinching at Hiiragi. 

“There’s a monster beside you,” she says plainly, and Natsume promptly chokes on his grudgingly accepted tea.

She’s a terribly cute thing, long brown hair hanging over her shoulders in twin braids, wide gray eyes reproachful. Her knees are dirty from the playground, her tiny white sandals scuffed at the toes, but the rest of her pale pink and yellow romper is spotless. 

“I saw you talking to her from over by the sandbox,” the little girl goes on guilelessly. “You should know better, you’re grown up. Even mama knows better, and she can’t even see them.” 

“Teruko!” a harried-sounding young woman calls, and the little girl looks over her shoulder. “It’s time to go home!”

“I have to go now,” Teruko says primly. “But you shouldn’t be friends with the monsters. Mama says just because you can talk to them doesn’t mean they’ll be nice. Sometimes they’re mean, and papa has to chant a whole bunch to make them go away. It’s scary, so be careful.” 

She waits, studying the two of them very intently, until Shuuichi manages a nod. Then she leaves them with a sunny smile and runs back to join her parents and a slightly older brother who takes her hand when she reaches for him. 

It’s an interaction Shuuichi can’t be sure his exhausted mind didn’t just conjure up out of thin air. He sits silently for a moment or two to catalog his thoughts, and then decides it probably did happen.

“Aforementioned monster,” he says vaguely, with a curl of amusement at Hiiragi’s immediate, intense disdain, “do be so kind as to follow them – discreetly. I want to know that little girl’s family name, but I don’t cause them any trouble.” 

With the shiki gone, Shuuichi risks a glance at his young companion. Natsume is silent, arms tight around his cat, fingers clutching the cup hard enough the plastic starts to cave in. 

“They love her,” Natsume says into the quiet. “She can see things they can’t, and they love her.” 

There’s a pain in the pit of Shuuichi’s chest like a knife driven straight through and turned. 

He knows only a little bit more than what Natsume has told him. With his resources, it wasn’t hard to work up a little history on the kid, and just by scratching the surface Shuuichi learned enough to make his stomach turn over. 

It’s hard to watch the kind, reckless, burdened boy stare after a happy family as though it’s something amazing – as though it should be impossible that someone like him could be so loved from the very beginning, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile what he’s just seen with what he already knows. 

“Do you think they could have loved me?” he asks slowly. “Or do you think – it was something I did wrong – “ 

Nyanko-sensei’s ears go flat against his head, eyes narrowed in disapproval. Shuuichi has to stomp down a similar reaction, and reach past it for softer compassion. 

“I think it’s irresponsible to hold a child up to an adult’s standards,” he says in a firm tone, so the words might make an impression. “You wouldn’t expect little Teruko to know as much as you do, would you?”

Natsume blinks, some of that edged dismay fading from his eyes, and Shuuichi nods.

“Of course you wouldn’t. She’s a child. And you were a child once, too.” You still are, he knows better than to add aloud. “No matter what you did, whether it was right or wrong, when you were small and helpless it was your guardians’ duty to make you feel loved, and wanted, and safe. And if there was ever a time you didn’t feel that, it was never your fault. It was theirs.” 

It’s as kind as he can bring himself to be in regards to the families that made most of Natsume’s childhood a living nightmare, and even those words were ash in his mouth. 

But Shuuichi thinks he might be willing to swallow literal ash, if this is his reward. Natsume is slightly pink, eyes focused intently on the crushed cup in his hand, and that faint air of tragedy he unwittingly carries about him is all but gone.

“And while I’m sure the Fujiwaras don’t chant sutras for you like Teruko’s father allegedly does,” Shuuichi adds with a little humor, putting an arm around Natsume’s shoulders, “I think they would if they had any idea it might help you. Instead, they make you lunches and take you on trips. People who care show that they care in their own ways. It’s different for everyone, don’t you think?”

Natsume looks years younger when he smiles. For some reason, his eyes move to the cup in his hands, and his voice is strangely grateful when he says, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am. Now, come on. I’m in the mood for some takoyaki, my treat.” 

And where he expected another twenty minutes of rigorous debate – because Natsume so hates when people spend money on him, even just a lunch here or a cold drink there – Natsume only sighs with good humor and helps Shuuichi to his feet. 

Hiiragi is annoyed she had to track them down to a restaurant several blocks away from where she left them, but Natsume is happy in his present company and no worse for wear after their encounter in the park, and Shuuichi has certainly had worse days than this.

Chapter Text

When his cousin asks, “So how have things been with that boy around?” something bitter fills the back of Shigeru’s throat. 

It must show on his face, at least in part, because Katsuya’s wife lays a hand on his arm and scolds him, “That was rude. We talked about this on the way over.”

Of course they did, an uncharitable part of Shigeru’s heart remarks. Among his relatives, Takashi is a popular conversation topic, and very rarely in a kindly way.

The silence is something uncomfortable for a moment. Touko, pausing in refilling teacups, laughs airily – sitting back and pressing a delicate hand to the side of her face, as though simply caught off-guard by the question instead of perturbed by it. 

“Oh my. It’s been such a welcome change, hasn’t it, Shigeru? This house was built for a bigger family than two.” Her voice is remarkably warm when she adds, “Such a welcome change. I can’t even begin to tell you!”

And she really can’t begin – in much the same way Shigeru doesn’t have longer than a few seconds to enjoy the twin looks of stupefaction on Katsuya and Hiromi’s faces – because at that point the front door rattles open, and Takashi’s voice is calling “I’m home!”

Like a flower unfolding to spring, Touko rises to meet him without missing a beat. Takashi comes around the corner with a crooked smile on his face, an autumn-colored boy kissed by the summer heat and summer sun, and he carries some of that brightness with him into the room.

His cat is perched on his shoulder, his hands folded behind his back. For a brief moment, he’s the perfect picture of teenage mischief. Then his eyes stray farther into the room, and a door slams shut in his face. 

“Oh, I – I didn’t know we had company.” It’s amazing, in an awful way, how quickly he loses his footing. “I’m sorry – I brought – “

And a familiar face slams into Takashi’s shoulder, rocking him sideways. 

“We beat the rain!” Satoru crows enthusiastically. “We ran all the way here!”

Nyangoro huffs and leaps to the floor, trotting across the room to settle on the cushion by Shigeru’s knee with a put-upon sigh. Behind Takashi, Tooru, Kaname and Atsushi are milling comfortably in the doorway. They offer polite hellos, and Atsushi says “Sorry for intruding,” even as he expertly peels Satoru off of Takashi’s person. 

“Well, we had to,” Tooru says practically, in response to Satoru’s remark. “Natsume had precious cargo, after all.”

Takashi’s face turns pink, and he shuffles in place. His shoulders curl a little tighter, as he hides whatever he’s holding more securely behind his back. 

Impossible fondness folds like fingers around Shigeru’s heart, expands beneath his breastbone like something physical. He can’t help smiling, the force of it crinkling his eyes, and teases, “It isn’t another cat, is it?”

Nyangoro huffs again. Takashi shakes his head quickly.

“No, it’s not – I mean, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s – “

“Dude, this is painful to listen to,” Satoru says, not unkindly. “Just give them to her.”

Touko tilts her head curiously, just a little bit like that crow of hers that hangs around the yard. Takashi glances towards Katsuya and Hiromi a little uncertainly, but then his eyes dart to Shigeru, sitting across the table from them. And there aren’t words for what it makes Shigeru feel, when his encouraging smile fills Takashi’s face with confidence. 

Takashi draws a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back. 

“I thought you’d like them,” he says bravely. 

Shigeru can’t see his wife’s face, but he doesn’t need to. She makes a soft sound and hurries forward, and all the delight Shigeru can imagine in her expression is clear in her voice when she says, “Oh, they’re beautiful! Where did you get them?”

“Some friends showed me where they grow, up on the mountain,” Takashi says, smiling widely. “You like them?”

Touko cradles his face in much the same way she cradles the flowers, a press of her fingers to the curve of his cheek, and says, “I love them. Thank you so much.”

Tooru follows Touko into the kitchen eagerly to find a suitable vase, and Kaname touches Takashi’s shoulder, grinning and saying, “You look like you just faced down a monster,” to which Takashi replies, “Oh, that would have been much easier.” Atsushi catches Shigeru’s eye, and rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt your visit. Nishimura insisted we all come as a group.”

Satoru squawks in outrage, presumably at being made the scapegoat, and Shigeru chuckles. “That’s quite all right. Do you have plans for the rest of the afternoon?”

They do, as it turns out – Satoru says “Natsume’s never gone beetle hunting!” in a way that indicates it’s a wrong he has set out to right at the first opportunity. Takashi rolls his eyes, but he looks at Satoru so fondly that Shigeru is nearly staggered by the difference in this boy and the one who first came to them nearly two years ago.

Touko insists on sending them off with iced tea and sandwiches and all three of the umbrellas from the rack by the door for the five of them to cluster under; and Takashi leaves with his cat in his arms and his friends by his side, and a soft smile for his foster parents that lingers in the room long after he’s gone. 

“Well,” Hiromi says, “I think someone gave me the wrong idea about Takashi. He seems like a lovely boy. You know how long it’s been since anyone brought me home flowers?” Katsuya has the good grace to look ashamed, rubbing a hand through his hair. Gentling with a smile, Hiromi adds, “His friends look like a good bunch, too. You must be so proud.”

When she takes her place beside him, Touko beams so brightly at Shigeru that he would be hard-pressed not to grin right back.

“Of course we are,” he says. He can’t think of anything in their life together more worthy of pride.

Chapter Text

“Didn’t your class get a new student the other day?” Satoru asks when Kitamoto joins him during lunch. “I’ve seen him around, I think. What’s he like?”

Kitamoto’s eyes darken and his expression turns into something close to a glower in face of Satoru’s arguably innocent question – what was that about?

“Adachi. I don’t like him,” Satoru’s amiable best friend declares, so forcefully that Tsuji turns around in his chair to stare in their direction.

“Jeez, tell us how you really feel,” Satoru says dumbly. Kitamoto huffs an unconvincing laugh, and Satoru narrows his eyes at him. “Hey, what happened? Did he say something to you?”

“No, nothing like that. But he knows Natsume from another school.”

Oh, Satoru thinks. And his hands curl into fists in his lap, because he gets it. Every time someone Natsume used to know comes into the picture, Natsume winds up miserable.

Tsuji leans over, frowning. “Has he done something to Natsume?”

“No, but he’s been talking about him,” Kitamoto says darkly. “He likes to tell stories of when they were in middle school together, and odd things Natsume said or did back then. He’s really annoying. I think he’s trying to stir up trouble.”

“Well,” Satoru says, leaning back. “That’s not gonna happen.”

It’s almost a full week later that Natsume realizes there’s a new student in their school. It’s not really his fault, Satoru decides, since he was out sick for a few days. He’s still a little pale when he returns to class, and it’s hard to tell who makes a bigger fuss over him, Tsuji or Taki.

“Adachi?” he says in some surprise, pausing with a bite of fish left halfway suspended above his lunchbox. “I think I know him. I went to school with a boy by that name once.”

Tanuma pointedly takes a long drink, and Kitamoto starts stabbing viciously at his rice like it did something to offend him, so it’s left to Satoru to steer the conversation. He gestures lamely across the room and says, “Yeah he’s over there.”

Natsume follows his hand to where Adachi is sitting by himself, stirring his food around disinterestedly. It didn’t take long for him to talk himself into a corner, Satoru thinks. Just like he thought would happen, no one wants anything to do with the new guy who was trying to drag kind, self-conscious Natsume’s name through the dirt.

Natsume stands up, and smiles when Tanuma asks where he’s going.

“I’ll see if he wants to eat with us,” Natsume says, already making his way over. Adachi watches him approach with wide eyes. “He might not remember me, but it’s no fun eating alone.”

Chapter Text

The kids behind the kiosk are up to something. Satoru can smell it.

“Didn’t you used to live around here, Natsume?” Adachi pipes up, shading his eyes to look around their table at the pretty city scenery. They’re at an outdoor cafe, and Natsume’s cat looks pleased to be allowed to sit at the table while they wait on their food. Natsume, for his part, smiles vaguely.

“A few years ago,” he replies, “but I didn’t stay for very long.”

At this point, the ache in his eyes when he talks about those temporary homes is all but gone; the Fujiwaras love him so much it’s almost enough to eclipse the love he lived most of his life without, and Satoru is certain his friends help in that regard, too. There’s no loneliness as he follows Adachi’s eyes and looks out over the place that could have been his home, and Satoru is relieved.

Just for a moment, and then he’s back to being suspicious again, eyeing the unfamiliar faces at the counter warily.

So they probably recognize Natsume from when he lived here before. Generally, Satoru was quick to learn, that doesn’t bode well.

A girl in a smart seafoam green uniform comes out to their round table with a tray and a wide smile. Satoru doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her, and he watches Kitamoto’s eyebrows lift up to meet his hairline – probably because there’s a cute girl within ten feet of Satoru and Satoru isn’t trying to flirt with her.

Well, joke’s on him, because there's an even cuter boy sitting on Satoru’s other side, currently struggling to keep his fat cat out of the fries, and if Satoru was going to flirt harmlessly with anyone it would be him.

“Enjoy your meal,” the girl says sweetly, and hurries off again to join her tittering friends.

Satoru swiftly trades his food for Natsume’s, and offers an impish grin at the dry look Natsume gives him. “Nishimura,” he says, “we ordered the same thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Satoru replies gamely, unwrapping the innocuous-looking burger, “but I want thisone.”

As soon as the paper comes off, he’s hit by the heat. The sandwich in his hands smells spicy. What the heck did those kids do to it?

“Are your eyes watering?” Kitamoto says incredulously. Natsume blinks and reaches over, putting a hand on Satoru’s wrist to guide the burger closer for an inspection.

“Oh,” he says, sounding confused, “this is the chili burger. They make it with peppers and chili paste. It’s supposed to be pretty aggressive, actually – when I went to school here, kids would buy them as a prank for each other.”

“Have you ever tried it?” Satoru asks casually, shooting a murderous look up to the store counter. All the giggling up there has stopped, at least. Seriously, a prank burger? What are they, twelve? It says a lot if Satoru thinks it’s immature. Or maybe it’d be funny if it was anybody else, but it wasn’t anybody else, it was Natsume, and Satoru is officially annoyed.

“I don’t really like spicy foods,” Natsume says, which isn’t really an answer. “They must have given us this by mistake,” he adds, “should we go tell them?”

“Nope,” Satoru says plainly, taking the burger back, “I’m gonna eat it.”

“Satchan,” Kitamoto says at length, long-suffering, “you hate spicy food, too.”

“Well, I’m gonna eat it anyway. Because I’m more of a man than you.”

More like he doesn’t want to give those strangers the satisfaction, but two bites in and his eyes are streaming and his mouth may as well be on fire and he can’t help but wheeze, “Oh my god I’m dying.”

Taki and Adachi are both laughing as Tanuma reaches across the table to extract the burger from his hand, and Kitamoto pushes his drink over with a “Really, Nishimura? Really?” Natsume’s eyes are bright with humor, at the very least, as he scoots his drink over to Satoru, too – and really, Satoru would eat a dozen of those burgers to put that look on his face, even if it killed him. Which it actually might.

“Mind if I try it?” Tanuma asks, and Nishimura reaches out as if to save him.

“Don’t do it. You might have an asthma attack.”

“I don’t have asthma?”

Within a few minutes, everyone has tried a bite of the prank burger – even Nyanko-sensei, who doesn’t look impressed by it one way or another – and Natsume is muffling laughter behind his hands at the sorry state they’re all in, flushed with the heat in his mouth and the humor in his eyes, and Satoru thinks, Hah.

He looks over his shoulder at the quiet girls at the counter and says, “Y’know what? Maybe we should order a few more of those.”

“Once you get past the burning, they’re not bad,” Taki giggles, fanning her mouth.

“I’ll buy,” Adachi says cheerfully, and Natsume goes with him.

Satoru wipes his still-tearing eyes with his sleeve, patting himself on the back, when Kitamoto leans forward on his elbows and says, “You’re a good guy, you know that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Satoru replies without missing a beat, ignoring the way Taki and Tanuma stop talking to look at him, “all I did was steal Natsume’s food. You guys yell at me for that any other day.”

“Any other day,” Kitamoto agrees, always knowing way more than he lets on.

Chapter Text

Nishimura comes barreling around the corner with panic in his eyes, and for a single, senseless moment Takashi goes cold with fear – something followed him to school, something dark and dangerous, something is after his friend – 

And then Tsuji comes around the corner after Nishimura, looking absolutely livid, and Takashi lets go of a breath he was holding. 

The relief is short-lived, because Nishimura spots him and says something that sounds like “ohthankgodit’syou” and then promptly ducks behind him.

“Wait no,” Takashi says helplessly, but by then it’s much too late, and their class rep is bearing down upon them a moment later. 

“Hand him over,” Tsuji demands, even sticking out an imperious hand; as though Nishimura is a rowdy kitten Takashi is harboring and not a full-sized second year high school student. “He deserves what’s coming to him.”

“It was an accident,” Nishimura says from behind Takashi’s shoulder, uncharacteristically meek. 

“’Accident’ doesn’t begin to cover it! I could kill you right now!”

They’re getting more than a few stares from passersby, and a few of the fellow kids from class two are snickering as they slink by the scene. No one is eager to get involved, and Takashi doesn’t blame them. Tsuji is generally a mild-mannered class president and one of the first people Takashi befriended in this town, but he has a temper that can put Nyanko-sensei’s to shame when he’s poked in the right places.

And Nishimura is good at poking in the right places.

Thoroughly involved whether he likes it or not, Takashi resigns himself to playing peacekeeper with good grace and a short sigh. 

“What did he do?” he asks dryly. He doesn’t believe for a moment that Tsuji’s wrath is misplaced, even as he stands in its way. Nishimura makes a wounded noise, and Tsuji shoves an agitated hand through his tousled curls. 

“I was helping Nomiya-sensei with his grading,” he says tersely. “He’s been helping with the volleyball club while Takeda-sensei is gone, so he asked me to go through some homework and workbooks for him – and I was almost done, but Nishimura screwed it all up!”

“I said I was sorry!”

“He came sauntering in, looking for something to do, and knocked everything off the desk. It took me an hour to get it all organized, and he just – “

This close, Takashi can’t help noticing that Tsuji doesn’t look okay. Anger aside, he’s nearly gray with exhaustion, and there are shadows under his eyes that Takashi recognizes, shadows he’s seen in the mirror after another in a row of sleepless nights. 

Tsuji is always the first one to class, and the last one to leave. He takes responsibility for his friends in more the manner of a fussy older sibling than an accountable class president, and he always seems to be busy. Since Sasada moved away, Takashi has to wonder how much help he gets anymore. 

“Nishimura,” Takashi says without looking back at him, “you really did apologize?”

“I did, I didn’t mean to mess anything up. I was gonna offer to help him pick up, but he was too busy flying off the handle to hear me!”

“Okay, okay. You go find Tanuma and Kitamoto and stay out of trouble. Please. Just until school is over.” 

For all that he was happy to hide behind Takashi, he’s reluctant to leave him alone with their prickly class rep. It takes a pointed glare before Nishimura parts ways with a grumble, giving Tsuji a wary look as he goes. 

And Takashi isn’t good at this, at diffusing fights or fielding confrontation between friends, but he’s nothing if not willing to try. 

Because this frustration has roots that are much older and deeper than Nishimura knocking some papers off a desk. Nishimura is just the unfortunate catalyst, and Tsuji is going to feel terrible about it later. 

Takashi doesn’t want him to feel terrible about it later. 

“If it took you an hour before, it should only take the two of us half that time,” he says, a hand soft on Tsuji’s arm. Tsuji looks taken aback by the touch and his tone, looks like he doesn’t know what to do now that the object of his temper has gone – but Takashi is patient, and after a moment Tsuji nods. 

Tsuji likes to be helpful, and is more than likely the type of person to cheerfully give more than he gets. Takashi wonders if this is burnout, wonders if he’s stressed at home on top of everything he does at school, wonders at how little he actually knows about one of his first friends. 

His fingers dig into Tsuji’s sleeve. 

“It’s going to sound weird coming from me,” Takashi blurts, “but it’s okay to say what’s on your mind. If something’s bothering you, will you tell me? You’re important to me, and I want to help you if I can.”  

Tsuji stares at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. A few girls from their class giggle at the passionate soliloquy as they pass by, accustomed to a certain brand of shenanigans from their classmates at this point. They’re hiding big smiles behind their hands and Takashi feels himself flush red to the roots of his hair, because this must look like – 

“S- Sorry,” he stammers, letting him go. “I just – I meant – “

“I know what you meant,” Tsuji says, before Takashi can embarrass himself any more. He’s smiling helplessly, and that wounded frustration is discarded somewhere just out of reach for the time being. “Everything sounds weird coming from you, but I appreciate it.”

He tugs Takashi forward into a playful one-armed hug, and laughs when Takashi goes with a startled squawk. 

“Really,” Tsuji adds, just a little softer now that Takashi can’t quite look at him; a far cry from that furious force of nature from minutes ago, and more the friendly boy everyone in class two relies on so much. “I appreciate it.”

Chapter Text

Katsumi can count on both hands the number of actual, physical fights he’s been in, and still have several fingers left over. He was a bully growing up, and maybe he still is one a little bit, but he would sooner use words to hurt than fists. He’s always held himself just above sinking to that low, that ‘stupid, belligerent guy’ low. Smart people aren’t into stupid guys, after all, and Katsumi likes dating smart people. 

But today, as the shadows stretch across the ground and the skyline burns dark orange in the dusk, the knuckles on his right hand are bruised. There’s blood in his mouth, dripping from a split lip. 

Today, he threw the first punch. And the second, and the third. Outnumbered, and angry enough not to care, seething with it to the point that no words were heavy enough to hurt the way he wanted those strangers to hurt. 

His fingers are folded tight around Natsume’s and he refuses to let go, even when Natsume’s friends catch up, and the odds go from three on two to three on six. Even when Tanuma and Kitamoto and fearless Taki move into the middle of the conflict and refuse to give ground, diffusing the tension with steely eyes and steadfast voices until those unfamiliar high schoolers turn around and leave. 

Nishimura is tipping Natsume’s face to one side, looking over the impressive bruise forming along his cheekbone. His eyes are wide and worried but the words that spill out of his mouth are, “It’s not that bad, Natsume. It’s barely even noticeable. We’ll get you some ice and you’ll be good as new.”

His gaze darts to Katsumi, down to the broken skin on his hand. Katsumi’s fist aches when he clenches it. “I’m fine,” he bites out. Tension is strumming hotly through his whole body. “Who the hell were those guys? Do you know them?”

He’s not sure who the question is for. Natsume tugs him silently toward a bench by their joined hands, and he sits down mechanically next to the shorter boy. 

“I know one of them,” Natsume replies. His voice is quiet, almost swallowed up by the chatter of insects and the wind brushing through the leaves. “He’s a – cousin, I think. I lived with him and his mother once. The other two must have been friends of his.” 

Kitamoto, Taki and Tanuma join them when they’re sure the strangers are gone. Kitamoto taps Nishimura on the arm and gestures over his shoulder, in the direction of the convenience store they passed earlier. Nishimura surrenders his seat to Taki, and she takes Natsume’s free hand in both of hers and scoots over until there isn’t an inch of empty space between them, and puts her head on his shoulder. 

“Let me see your hand,” Tanuma says, and it takes Katsumi a minute to work out that he means him. He offers it without thinking, too busy trying to wrap his mind around what Natsume considered an explanation to argue the point. 

“Wait, so – he’s related to you? He’s a member of your family. And he – and you – and that’s, what, that’s normal?” 

Natsume doesn’t answer but Taki says “Shibata” in a low voice, warning Katsumi away from this off-limits door he’s trying to pry open. Tanuma sits back when he’s certain nothing is broken in Katsumi’s hand, and meets his incredulous gaze unflinchingly. 

His eyes are dark and cool and his voice is mild when he says, “You’re smarter than this. You can put one and two together.”

Natsume’s breath hitches, and Tanuma touches his knee in something like apology. Taki’s expression burns with empathy and love and a wounded sense of fairness, and a pit forms in the bottom of Katsumi’s stomach when he finally gets it. 

Little Natsume, who came to school in the morning with the same ugly marks he left the playground with. Who never lifted his head when his caretaker came to get him, quiet and unobtrusive and always a conscious arm’s length away. Who moved to Katsumi’s neighborhood in the middle of the school year, and moved away again before the term had finished.

He swallows hard. The rage from earlier has cooled rapidly into something else, something that makes him want to be sick. 

Katsumi is no better than Natsume’s cousin, at the end of the day. He’s no better than anybody. Because Katsumi, brazen idiot that he is, has been holding himself above a low he’s reached already. A low he sank beneath as a child, that very first time his voice reached across the schoolyard to Natsume with the sole intent to hurt him. 

He tips his head forward into his bruised hand, hiding burning eyes behind a sweaty palm and biting his broken lip so he won’t do something awful, like cry. The hand still holding Natsume’s tightens, curling so hard around his slender fingers that it probably hurts.

“I’m an idiot,” he manages, voice wobbling dangerously. “I’m such an idiot, Natsume, I’m sorry.”

He has no idea why he’s allowed to be here. No idea why Natsume let Katsumi anywhere near him, that day Katsumi hunted him down to this small town. 

“You’re an idiot, all right,” Natsume says without missing a beat. His voice is hoarse, but it isn’t harsh. He nudges Katsumi’s shoulder amiably, as easily as if he’s never been hurt by him. “Taking on three guys, all way bigger than you, is the stupidest thing I’ve seen you do yet.”

“Yet,” Taki agrees with a smile Katsumi can hear. 

“Looks like I attract your type. I have no idea what that says about me.”

“You don’t want to know,” Tanuma assures him kindly, and Natsume huffs out a quiet laugh. “Shibata fits in with the rest of us just fine, doesn’t he?”

“I’d say he does,” Kitamoto says at that point, and when Katsumi lifts his head, it’s to find the missing two of their party grinning at him from where they’re sitting in the grass beside the bench. “Shibata’s the first one of us who’s actually picked a fight, but – “

“Only cause you wouldn’t let me that one time!” Nishimura says hotly, rooting through one of the plastic bags they brought back from the convenience store. “I could totally have taken that guy. And I totally will if I ever see him again. Waltzing into our town, talking trash about our friend…”

There’s a shifting of bodies, and Shibata is tugged off the bench onto the ground with the rest of them, and finally lets go of Natsume’s hand to catch the cold compress Kitamoto tosses at him. It’s followed by a can of tea and then a package of ice cream, both brands he doesn’t recognize. 

He blinks down at them, and then up at his friends. Taki rolls her eyes and reaches over Natsume to direct the compress up to his sore mouth. “You’re smarter than that,” she says, taking the sting out of Tanuma’s earlier words. She follows it up with a sincere smile, and only moves her hand away when Katsumi lifts his own to hold the compress in place. 

Nishimura is passing Natsume a candy bar, and Katsumi catches the middle of something like “–was awesome by the way. I mean, not awesome that it happened, and your cousin is a huge jerk, but Shibata really knows how to throw a punch and that was cool – “

“You’re one of us,” Kitamoto says, toasting Katsumi with his own canned drink. 

“Is this some sort of weird club I’m not aware of?” Natsume says dryly. 

“Yes,” everyone else says in perfect unison, followed by Tanuma’s helpful, “Just drink your tea.”

Katsumi’s first thought is, I don’t deserve this. 

His next one is, But I could. 

He can count on both hands the number of fights he’s been in, and still have a few fingers left over. He’s always held himself to a certain standard, has always held himself above a certain low, but after tonight he doesn’t really care what people think of him.

Maybe he doesn’t have to earn Natsume’s forgiveness, because he has it already, but he wants to. 

He wants to be good enough, he wants to be better. He wants to deserve it.

Chapter Text

A bewildered Toyomatsu takes the pencil from Yuriko’s imperiously outstretched hand, and leans over the table to scribble directions on an empty page in her notebook. His round-framed glasses slip an inch down his nose as he does, bangs falling forward and flicking neat parentheses into his eyes. Junko giggles good-naturedly at the sight.

“That’s the route the cycling club took,” Toyomatsu says, adjusting his glasses. Yuriko turns the notebook towards herself, scanning the page eagerly. “It’s a rural town, and really small. Easy to miss, but it looked nice.”  

“Like a well-kept secret,” Junko says, leaning forward on her elbows. Her smile is crooked and cute and makes Yuriko smile in turn, every time, without fail. “You’ll tell Natsume I said hi, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” Yuriko says fondly, and folds the notebook closed with unending care. “We have the day off tomorrow, so I’ll go then. Thank you, Toyomatsu, this means a lot to me.”

Natsume lingers, like the perfume of a person who left the room minutes before Yuriko arrived. He occupies her mind in small ways—she thinks of him when she climbs the steps to her favorite shrine, when she opens an umbrella against heavy rainfall, when an impatient parent raises their voice at a somber child in a convenience store—and he’s dear to her, for all that she didn’t know him for very long, and didn’t know him very well.

Now it feels as though someone’s pried open her ribcage and stuffed it full of sunlight. She’s going to see him again.

“I really didn’t need an escort, Toyomatsu,” Yuriko says dryly, standing when the bus bounces to a stop outside a weathered depot, and picking up her own bag before he has the chance to be an awkward gentleman. “If I did, I would have brought Junko along.”

“You don’t know your way around this town,” he argues staunchly, for the fifth time in as many minutes. “I mean, I don’t either, but—what if something happened to you because I gave you these directions and you went off on your own? You know?”

And really, he cancelled plans with friends to come with her, so she relents with a smile and gives his sleeve a tug, leading the way down the narrow aisle.

“Looks like it’s a bit of a walk,” Yuriko says, shading her eyes. “But the air is so nice here!”

“No city smog,” Toyomatsu points out as he joins her. “Comparatively, mountain air smells downright sweet.”

The bus pulls away with the throaty grumble of an ancient engine, and Yuriko adjusts her bag, does her best to quell the excited surge of sunlight in her heart, and starts walking.

From the looks of things, students have the day off in this town, as well. Yuriko approaches a group of girls about her age and asks if they know anyone by the name of Natsume. She isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but she still feels a thrill of surprise when the girls’ faces light up, and they clamor around her with a much friendlier air.

“We go to the same school, but he’s in a different class, so I don’t have his number or anything,” says one of the girls with a rueful smile. She brightens after a moment and adds, “Oh, but he’s really good friends with Taki Tooru—I could tell you where her house is, if you’d like.”

He’s well-liked here, Yuriko realizes. He’s popular here.

Beaming, she thanks the girls gratefully for their help, and all but drags Toyomatsu down the street.

“This is beginning to feel like a wild goose chase,” Toyomatsu says dryly, half an hour later. Yuriko shushes him, still every bit as determined as when she started.

“The woman at the Taki residence told us she went down to the river with her friends,” she says stoutly. “That’s straight down this road, right? So we’re nearly there.”

There are fields of lavender blooming in what feels like every direction. The scent of purple is rich and thick in the breeze. The afternoon sun hangs high in the sky, and Yuriko has to shade her eyes against the brightness of it.

Cheerful voices catch her attention almost immediately, and she quickens her pace with her heart in her throat, stepping off the dirt road and into the springy summer grass at the top of a sloping incline at the riverside.

There are a handful of teenagers running amok down below, pant legs rolled up to their knees, T-shirts sopping wet and hanging baglike off their shoulders. The girl among them has her skirt knotted to one side and her hair pulled up in a messy bun and a fat cat in her arms. She laughs brightly when two of the boys knock each other sideways into the deeper waters.

“You’ve probably scared all the fish away for miles,” she scolds them, in a tone too amused to be truly scolding. “What’s poor Touko-san going to say when we go back empty handed?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Touko-san knew exactly what to expect when Nishimura and Kitamoto promised to catch our lunch.”

The humorous voice draws Yuriko’s eyes to the pale boy lounging quietly in the shade with a taller, black-haired companion. His dusty blond hair is damp, but even then, it doesn’t quite hang into his eyes anymore. He’s looking away from her, but Yuriko would know him anywhere.

“Natsume!” she calls out, her smile blinding.

He turns, and lifts honeyed amber eyes to meet her, and it feels as though the day they said goodbye was simply yesterday.

She’s met with thinly veiled hostility at first, but only right at first. When Natsume softens and smiles sweetly and introduces her as, “A good friend of mine, from a place I used to live,” his friends thaw like spring, and meet her and Toyomatsu both warmly.

“Another long-lost friend?” a boy introduced as Shibata says, pressing a hand to his chest in mock-hurt. The ruined shirt he’s wearing looks expensive. “Natsume, I thought what we had was special. How many more of us do you have tucked away somewhere?”

“Not many,” Natsume says dryly, nudging his shoulder. “Don’t you worry.”

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Taki says, tucking her arm into Yuriko’s and beaming at her, every bit as though she wasn’t ready to fight her a moment ago. Her sleeve soaks Yuriko’s within seconds. “You can tell us all about when Natsume was a cute middle school student.”

“Okay, but first, let’s relocate,” Nishimura decides for everyone, sloshing out of the river and hunting for his shoes. “Natsume, we’re gonna all need to borrow some clothes, okay?”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, come on, you have plenty. The Fujiwaras take you shopping every other weekend.”

Kitamoto ropes Adachi into helping untangle the fishing lines, and Taki stares Shibata down with a chilling smile the second he opens his mouth around a flirt in Yuriko’s direction. Nishimura and Tanuma are both chatting with Toyomatsu, including him warmly and without much effort, as though they’re practiced at being kind.

Yuriko likes this wild group Natsume’s fallen in with. She’s happy he came to this place.

He catches her eye on the walk home. There are four people sandwiched between them, and everyone is talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, but Natsume’s smile is soft and all for her, and Yuriko meets it right away with one of her own.

The already big party is two bigger when they arrive at a large family house, and Yuriko smiles bashfully as she steps inside with everyone else. She knows what her mother would say, exasperated at the sight of two more mouths to feed, and braces herself when a woman in a worn smock comes into the entrance hall.

Her expression shifts into one of surprise at the sight that greets her in the genkan. Natsume steps forward to meet her. Yuriko can’t see his face.

She knows this must be the kind woman Toyomatsu told her about, but all Yuriko can think of is the person Natsume lived with back when she knew him—the person who came to their school midday smelling like alcohol, who Natsume couldn’t even ask for money for a haircut, who got rid of him the second he was too much trouble.

Her heart is in her throat. Natsume says, “Sorry, Touko-san. We picked up two more.”

The woman presses a hand to her mouth and laughs warmly. Natsume’s friends are beaming at her. Yuriko lets go of a breath she was holding, and watches Touko reach out to cup one side of Natsume’s face in the gentle cradle of her fingers.

“My, my,” she says, impossibly fond, “you’re so popular, Takashi-kun. Introduce me to whoever I haven’t met, please! And you’re all more than welcome to stay for lunch.”

She smiles kindly, as though her face was made for it. Natsume, when Yuriko gets a good look at him, smiles almost exactly the same way.

Natsume’s foster father laughs when they all pile into the sitting room, folding his newspaper and greeting Natsume’s friends by name as they regale him with their afternoon adventures. They’re all comfortable here, in this big house, with Natsume’s small family. The fat cat Taki was holding is snoring comfortably in Nishimura’s lap, and Tanuma gets up when Natsume does to help Touko with a tray of iced tea.

She doesn’t get a chance to talk to Natsume alone until almost everyone else has gone, and even then she can’t stay much longer herself or she’ll miss her bus.

“I’ll walk you,” Natsume says, and stands up, calling for his cat. Touko tells him to take an umbrella. Tanuma and Taki smile peacefully at Yuriko from where they’re sitting together on the porch.

“I’m happy you came to see him,” Taki says. “It was so nice of you.”

“We don’t expect nice from the people he used to know,” Tanuma adds plainly. “It’s good to know he had friends before. Thank you for taking care of him.”

Before, Yuriko thinks. As though they’ve split his life into two halves, and the half they’re in now—the After—is the better one. She hopes she might find a place in this half of his life, too. She wants to be a part of the better one.

Natsume lingers. He occupies the mind in small, unobtrusive ways. There is a tiny corner of Yuriko’s heart that belongs to him, in much the same way a much larger corner belongs to Junko, but he has never been hers. He has never belonged to any of the places those distant, unkind relatives tried to pin him down, like an unwilling butterfly wing to corkboard.

But he found home here, in this lazily sprawling country town. He smiles at his neighbors, and waves when shopkeepers greet him by name. He’s so comfortable, so far removed from that detached boy Yuriko remembers, who could hardly raise his head to say hello to a classmate.

This is familiar, still. Walking with him under an umbrella. Even if it’s a tighter squeeze than it once was, with Toyomatsu hunkered in on Natsume’s other side, it’s still nice. She’s smiling as she walks, heart full to bursting.

The bus is already coming into view down the road when they reach the small bus stop. Yuriko’s bag is heavy with leftovers Touko sent with her. Toyomatsu is flipping through a book Adachi lent him. Yuriko reaches out to catch Natsume’s sleeve, smiling widely at him.

She says, “I’ll come see you again.”

“You’re welcome anytime,” he replies. His eyes are soft for her the way they were for Nishimura and Taki and Touko. She’ll hold that in her heart forever. “Call to let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll make sure it’s not as crazy around here.”

“The crazy was definitely a part of the charm,” Yuriko says, warm with the knowledge of his phone number secured next to his address in her favorite notebook. “But I want to go fishing with you guys next time. Deal?”

“Deal.” He laughs, and even Toyomatsu looks up at the sound of it, looking as stunned as Yuriko feels.

Natsume stands at the depot, waving as the bus pulls away. Yuriko shoves her bag onto Toyomatsu’s lap and shoves her window down, hoping to catch a parting glance of her friend.

Someone is standing with him, nearly two heads taller and oddly thin. They’re waving, too.

Yuriko hadn’t noticed any other people waiting at the tiny bus stop. She’s pretty sure no one else had been on the lonely street with them, and in the flat country it’s easy to see for miles.

Natsume and the tall, tapered figure are still waving as the bus picks up speed and pulls farther away. Natsume’s umbrella is closed, but his dusty blond hair is dry as the wind combs through it. She wonders if the awning of the depot extends farther than she thought. It’s hard to make out through the rain.

Either way, she waves back, until long after she can’t see them anymore.

Chapter Text

Natsume is still relatively new when it happens, new enough that a few people from other classes refer to him largely as “the transfer student.” 

He’s settling in well, and Jun is sure no one has teased or taunted him since he’s been here – Jun made sure of that, with Tsuji’s enthusiastic help – but there’s still something about him. Something that makes it seem as though he’s never all here, that he’s always holding back. Those pale smiles and glass-like eyes get under Jun’s skin a little bit.

The purple and pale yellow of healing bruises she catches a glimpse of under the sleeves or collar of his shirt get under her skin a lot. So does the way Natsume is so often by himself, eating lunch and walking home alone.

But he’s friendly, if very quiet, and Nishimura and Kitamoto have all but adopted him, so maybe it’s something Jun has looked too much into. 

Until the lunch bell rings on a day as unremarkable as any other, and Nishimura rushes up to Natsume’s desk and starts to throw an arm him, and Natsume flinches away. 

Jun’s breath catches. 

He immediately looks sorry he did it, mortified as he opens his mouth around an apology, but Nishimura beats him to the punch.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly. If he’s hurt by Natsume’s reaction he hides it well, and smiles easily as he goes on, “I just wanted to see if you were ready for lunch! Kitamoto’s waiting for us on the roof.”

Laughing and cajoling as he herds Natsume out of the room, but he makes sure to keep his hands to himself after that.

In a town as small as theirs, everyone grows up knowing everybody – and suffice to say, the majority of their classmates are used to Nishimura and his tactile displays of affection.

Tsuji, for example – somehow having been in the same class as Nishimura since elementary school –  has had most of his life to desensitize himself to the harmless, overly familiar way Nishimura will drape himself across his friends for attention or a favor or whatever flight of fancy he’s following that day. 

Jun doesn’t spend very much time with him outside of school, but she knows that everyone Nishimura is close to gets more or less the same treatment.

All but Natsume, that is.

Even now, more than a week later, he’s careful not to surprise Natsume with the sudden hugs he likes to spring on Kitamoto  – and though he’s always grabbing Natsume’s arm or messing with his hair or feeling his forehead on days Natsume looks particularly pale, Nishimura telegraphs every move before he makes it, watching Natsume closely to make sure the touch is a welcome one.

It’s a feat for someone like Nishimura. Jun is honestly impressed.

Natsume, on the other hand, is miserable.

During lunch, when their classroom is half-empty and a few students from other classes are milling about, Nishimura bursts back into the room with a handful of snacks. He waves cheerfully to Natsume without pausing on his way past him, instead dumping his haul on a desk at random and then throwing himself happily against Kitamoto’s back to see what the latter is scowling at on his phone.

Natsume looks so forlorn that Jun finally has to say something.

“He’s not excluding you,” she points out. Natsume starts, the way he always does when he isn’t prepared to be addressed, and looks around at her with wide eyes. “Nishimura, I mean. He’s just careful with you, that’s all.”

“I know,” Natsume says quickly, and then looks down at his hands. Quietly, he adds, “I think it’s because I hurt his feelings.”

The words sound strange coming out of his mouth. Jun can’t imagine Natsume hurting anything, even accidentally, and certainly not on purpose. He’s like a gentle ghost, unobtrusively haunting a desk near the back of their class, doing his best to exist beside everyone else without leaving an impression they wouldn’t like. 

Feelings are something else, though, Jun thinks fairly. Even a kind word can hurt, sometimes. For someone as effervescent as Nishimura, it might have been especially painful to watch Natsume wince out of his reach as though he expected a blow. 

But he isn’t holding himself away out of hurt feelings. It isn’t anger or slight. How could Natsume even think so?

“Well,” Jun says reasonably, “have you talked to him about it?”

Natsume’s eyes get somehow rounder. Jun spares herself just a moment of incredulity. Oh, honestly. 

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” she remarks without cruelty, propping her chin up in her hand. “If you think you’ve done wrong, you apologize. If there’s a problem, you talk it out. You have to communicate to keep your friends, Natsume.” 

She says it largely out of good humor. They’ve been classmates for almost two months now and this is the longest conversation she’s had with him, after all.

She doesn’t mean for him to look so vulnerable at the playful quip. For a split second, it’s as if his soul is bared to her, and she can see every inch of how much he doesn’t say, how much he can’t tell, how much he wants to. And then the moment passes, and he gives her one of those smiles like fog.

“You’re right,” he says, looking down at his desk again. “I’m not very good at this.” And then, before Jun has a chance to say anything or do anything with the aching sympathy come to life in her heart, Natsume looks back up at her bravely and says, “What should I do?”

Jun blinks at him for a moment, and then feels herself smile. “Ask for help,” she says warmly, pushing to her feet. “Which you just did. And since I like you, I’ll give you this one free of charge.” 

Really, she thinks, it’s such a simple fix. It only takes a few words to Nishimura, out of earshot of everyone else, and self-recrimination chases understanding across the transparent boy’s stunned expression.

Then he mutters something under his breath and runs a terse hand through his hair, and all but stomps back to where Jun left Natsume at his desk. He puts out an imperious hand, and Natsume doesn’t flinch this time. He doesn’t hesitate, either, reaching out to take it with those wide, lamplike eyes.

And then he’s hauled off his chair for his troubles, stumbling to his feet as Nishimura yanks him into an embrace with weeks worth of shelved enthusiasm behind it. 

She can’t hear what they’re saying, as far away as she is, but she can see Natsume’s startled expression from over Nishimura’s shoulder. The way the surprise softens into fondness, and the edge of a shy smile that he tucks out of sight against Nishimura’s shirt. 

Everyone else has had a lifetime to get used to Nishimura and the affectionate way he reaches out to everyone he likes. Natsume seems to have had a lifetime of something entirely different, doesn’t seem to recognize the gestures for what they are, once flinched away from an unexpected touch with shadows in his eyes. 

But he’s still new here, Jun thinks. Given enough time, he’ll get used to it, too.

And whatever put those shadows in his eyes will be long forgotten in favor of something much, much better. 

Chapter Text

For most of the students, small-towners as they all are, it’s their first time in Fukuoka, so the itinerary the teachers and chaperones have planned is more of a guideline to fall back on than anything else. With three days ahead of them for this trip, there’s plenty of time for them to see a good chunk of what the capital city has to offer without keeping to too strict a timetable. 

“Nomiya-sensei, did you want me to put everyone in groups?” The class representative, Tsuji Masayuki, materializes at Futoshi’s elbow. He’s watching his classmates with a harried sort of mother hen look, and adds, “Before they go too far?”

Futoshi bites back most of a grin and says, “Sure, Tsuji. I appreciate it.” And then, for what feels like the fifth time, “This is a vacation for you too, you know.”

“I know,” Tsuji says quickly, smiling even as he moves away. “Natsume is helping me, so it won’t take long. We’ll make a list of the groups and be right back!”

Sure enough, Natsume Takashi is waiting for him with a handful of other students, and smiles when Tsuji presents his self-given task. His kids are a good bunch, Futoshi decides, and he’s content to hang back and watch over them for awhile.

The other classes move ahead while Tsuji’s classmates roll their eyes good-naturedly and allow themselves to be lumped into groups of threes and fours. Tanuma, Kitamoto and Taki, two boys from class one and a girl from class five who nonetheless are familiar faces in Futoshi’s classroom, grin from where they wait to one side as Nishimura Satoru is paired, perhaps predictably, with Natsume and Tsuji himself.

“Well, you’re no fun,” Nishimura says blandly, “but I guess you can be in me and Natsume’s group, Masa-chan.”

“Would you rather be stuck with Adachi?” Tsuji says with an icy smile, pencil hovering above his roster. Nishimura shuts up promptly, his friends howl with laughter, and Futoshi makes a mental note to remember that threat himself. 

“Nomiya-kun!” a voice calls out suddenly, and Futoshi turns in some surprise to be greeted by a familiar face. “It’s Akihiko,” his old friend says unnecessarily, a pleased smile on his face. “We went to college together.”

“I remember you,” Futoshi says, moving forward to clasp his hand. His already pleasant morning gets that much better, and he grins. “Still teaching?”

“Am I ever,” Akihiko says with the faint air of exhaustion that speaks of the long nights and early mornings Futoshi himself is familiar with. “And I can see you’ve got your hands full. Class trip?”

“Yeah, it’s all they’ve been able to talk about for weeks. It’s not so bad though,” he adds, “my class this year is my best one yet.”

“You probably say that every year,” Akihiko says dryly, and there’s no prudent way to deny that, so Futoshi ignores him. Laughingly, Akihiko says, “Well, most kids are alright. You get one or two stand-out cases, but mostly they’re all more or less the same. If you can teach one class, you can teach them all.”

Futoshi blinks, surprised to be faced with a philosophy he doesn’t agree with in the least. “Is that so,” he finally says.

“Granted, everyone I’ve talked to has had that one nightmare child,” Akihiko goes on. “At least, that’s what I was always told. And I never really bought it until a few years ago, when a boy transferred into my class in the middle of term. Strangest kid I’ve ever met, and nothing but trouble!”

Tsuji is coming back with his roster, and Futoshi is grateful to turn his attention to someone else. He’s already wearing a smile for his student, putting a hand out for the clipboard. 

But Tsuji doesn’t seem to notice, bright eyes darting from his face to Akihiko’s as sharply as if he’d just been shocked. With a pang, Futoshi realizes Akihiko is still talking, and in the middle of saying something along the lines of “– and honestly it was no wonder why. That Natsume alienated himself with his weird behavior and no one wanted to be around him.” 

Tsuji stands there with the clipboard hanging in one half-outstretched hand, frozen to the spot by something riding the line between horror and hostility. And Tsuji has never once given into his temper despite all the responsibility he shoulders and the raucous classmates he has to keep in line, but he looks up at Akihiko and opens his mouth around something Futoshi knows will get him in trouble. 

“Thank you for your hard work,” he says, before his student can get a word in edgewise. He takes a step closer, and takes the roster out of his hand. 

Tsuji reluctantly drags heated eyes off Akihiko in favor of giving his teacher a long, measuring look. Futoshi holds Tsuji’s eye firmly.

“I’ll take care of everything else, okay?” he says. “You go catch up with your friends and have a good time.”

Futoshi may not be perfect, but he’s always done right by his kids, and the pay-off is right here, in the way Tsuji relaxes inch by inch, trusting in his teacher to make this right. Somewhere behind him, Nishimura is yelling for Tsuji to ‘come on, everyone else has left us behind already, hurry up!’ 

“Then just leave without me!” Tsuji retorts as he hurries back to join them, and Futoshi smiles at the indignation on Nishimura’s face.

“But then I’d have to leave without Natsume!”

Tsuji doesn’t look back once, but he hooks a proprietary hand around Natsume’s arm and all but drags him out of the room – away from Akihiko’s disdainful soliloquy and back to the relative safety of the rest of their class. 

Only then does Futoshi turn to face Akihiko, and his smile fades at the stunned look on the other man’s face. “After that, it goes without saying,” Futoshi says slowly, “that Natsume is in my class this year.”

“I guess it does.” Akihiko seems bewildered. “I thought you said – “

“That my class this year is my best yet? I did say that. You’re right, I probably say it every year, but I mean it every year, too.” 

There’s a knot in the pit of his chest, because Futoshi remembers the solemn ghost Natsume Takashi was at the beginning of the year, the way he would find the transfer student eating lunch by himself, or napping alone in unused classrooms. 

And only moments ago he was smiling brightly as he helped overworked Tsuji, with probably the most extroverted child Futoshi has ever taught hanging off him the way Nishimura is always hanging off him anymore, while a handful of their friends from other classes waited nearby.

It’s a turnaround Futoshi doesn’t get to see often – a comeback from whatever else Natsume has lived through that makes Futoshi proud of him as a student and as a person, too – and he hates that there are teachers, educators, that could see what he sees and not appreciate it for the wonder it is.

“He was a child who I can only assume was treated unkindly by many people,” Futoshi says, “and despite those people, he has grown into a compassionate and caring individual, well-liked by his peers and surrounded by friends. As his teacher, I’ll thank you to leave him alone from now on.”

Futoshi bows shortly, only to be met by silence. It’s a silence that doesn’t bother him, and one he doesn’t think too deeply on. Moving away from the man he once knew to catch up to the students he came here with, his thoughts are already shifting to the restaurants nearby, and where he might be able to afford to treat them all to lunch. 

Chapter Text

The first thing that comes out of Natsume’s bookbag is school work, and Madara scoffs. Humans concern themselves with so much nonsense. 

But then Natsume withdraws a small cake box, and that is much more interesting. The boy smiles when Madara leans in to sniff greedily. 

“It’s yours, sensei. As long as you promise to let me study in peace.”

Madara snatches the box up, without making any such agreement, and opens it to find a slice of the cheesecake he’s been eyeing for days, from the only cafe in town that won’t let Madara inside. 

Natsume is kind almost to a fault, and usually that only means Madara has his hands full getting the brat out of all the trouble his soft heart finds him in. 

Sometimes, though, that kindness means cake. 

“You are the single best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Madara says, and he isn’t sure if he means Natsume or the dessert. 

Natsume chuckles. “Let’s see if you still mean that when the Book of Friends is empty.” 

Madara would dignify that with a response if the cake in his paws didn’t require so much attention. 

When the day finally comes that the Book sits nameless, many years later, Natsume has grown into a man his grandmother would be proud of. Stronger and cleverer than he was as a child, but still with a softness that survived every painful encounter to this point, a kindness that brought him farther than self-serving cruelty ever would have.  

And he looks down at Madara’s lucky cat form and says, “That’s the end of our deal, isn’t it, sensei?”

But it’s not as though Madara hasn’t had plenty of time to think about it. He sighs, put-upon, and looks at his human charge with one narrow eye. 

“As long as your name is Natsume, trouble will follow you no matter where you go. Might as well stick around and keep an eye on things, so long as I get free food out of it.” 

Natsume blinks, stunned by such a casual rejoinder, and then – slowly – he smiles. Madara is treated to cake again that night, and although he didn’t say what he did for a sugary reward, it’s not as though he’s going to turn it down. 

Yokai do still come calling, but the days are much quieter than they used to be, and Natsume graduates high school, and goes to college, and builds a family. His life is full where it once was empty, and try as he might, Madara can’t convince himself that the sunburst of emotion in his soul is anything but pride. 

His stubborn charge has a husband and a child, now – both adopted into his clan – and on lazy Sunday afternoons, Natsume and Madara join them at the park. 

Natsume sits on a bench and Madara settles on his lap, going unnoticed while the remaining two of their family play in the sandbox. Natsume’s expression is fond as he watches them, and there’s no trace of the shadows that lurked in his eyes when he was a boy. 

And somehow, Madara’s mind drifts back to that spring afternoon at the Fujiwara’s house, and the words he once said on a lark. Too old at this point to dither, Madara says plainly, “I still mean it, you know.” 

Natsume looks down at him. “You still mean what?”

But now Susumu is running towards them with open arms, dark hair flying behind him, and his high-pitched and delighted “Papa! Nyanko-sensei!” demands Madara’s full attention.

He can’t expect a human to remember one fleeting comment, from more than ten years ago. Their days are so full of conversation and encounters that some memories are bound to slip through the cracks, to make room for more important things. 

But Madara wakes the next morning to find a cake box beside him, and inside it a piece of a cheesecake he hasn’t tasted in years. Natsume must have had to go a long way to find it, and somehow it tastes as good as Madara remembers.

Chapter Text

Natsume’s head is bowed, face hidden in his hands, and although he’s utterly silent Kaname knows he’s crying. 

Kaname has never been around to see this part. Natsume has friends among the ayakashi, and Ponta, for all his bark and bluster, is a good and loyal companion to Natsume when it matters most – 

but somehow, Kaname has never thought about this. That for all the meetings, there are just as many partings. That even for someone like Natsume, who has already said goodbye to so much, the goodbyes never get easier with time. 

Aching for him, Kaname says, “Natsume? Do you want me to leave?”

Natsume’s breath hitches, and he shakes his head furiously. Kaname takes it as permission to sit down beside him. He doesn’t have time to come up with anything comforting before Natsume is leaning into his side, hiding his tear-stained face against Kaname’s shoulder, and then all Kaname has to do is put an around him. 

“Was she happy?” he asks, of the spirit he only barely got a glimpse of before she parted the world. Natsume nods a moment later. Carefully, Kaname adds, “Would you mind – telling me about her?”

He hopes this is the right thing to ask. Natsume is so often the only one left to mourn these invisible figures, and there’s nothing Kaname can do with his burden but help him carry it.

There’s a long moment where Kaname isn’t sure what Natsume’s answer will be. Then, without lifting his head or moving out of Kaname’s arm, he says, “Her name was Airi. She was a white jasmine tree.” 

He talks about her for the better part of an hour, sitting with Kaname under a starry canopy. More than he’s ever had to say about himself, he talks about a little mountain spirit that no one else will miss, and how much she loved the peaches Taki brought her, and what hopes she held for the future. 

She was kind, and she was a bright place in Natsume’s life for the short time he knew her, and despite that her memory will be a painful one. A lot of good things are like that, ending in sorrow because they end at all. 

Kaname wonders if there’s such a thing as a painless encounter. He hopes, for Natsume’s sake, that it’s possible to find goodness in someone and keep it, no matter what comes after. 

Chapter Text

The thing is, Natsume’s not as good at keeping secrets as he seems to think he is. 

Atsushi might not know the matter of them, but he knows they’re there. 

Natsume very carefully doesn’t react to the name of the place they’re going, when Nishimura first brings up the idea. He doesn’t flinch or freeze or frown, but the pause he takes is loud and clear – Atsushi probably would have seen it from the other side of the room. He’s pretty sure the others see it, too. 

And because they’re all reasonably intelligent people, they don’t wonder why a neighboring town might have bad connotations for him. Natsume has never told them any specifics about the conditions he grew up in, the people he grew up around, but they can guess. 

“I really, really want this to happen,” Nishimura says abruptly, with that bright-eyed look of absolute conviction that usually precedes his getting his way. “We haven’t taken a trip together in ages! We have to go!”

Atsushi has known Nishimura long enough to recognize an ulterior motive when he sees it. Natsume has only known Nishimura for two years, give or take, and still softens at the enthusiasm on the other boy’s face. 

“I’ll definitely go,” Natsume says, putting his own feelings on the back burner. “It sounds like fun,” he adds convincingly.

If it had been anyone else manipulating Natsume like that, Atsushi would have taken them aside for a few strong words and maybe a threat for good measure, if the situation called for one. But it’s Nishimura, of all people, who can and will get into physical altercations if he feels his friends aren’t being treated respectfully – who is especially protective of Natsume, always reacting immediately to Natsume’s moods and behavior like a wise dog – and Atsushi knows better than to think Nishimura has anything but Natsume’s best interest in mind. 

When they arrive, stepping out of the station and onto a bright city street, Nishimura proves it by throwing an arm around Natsume’s shoulders and proclaiming, “This is gonna be great! I’ve never been here before!” 

“Really? I have,” Natsume says. “I used to live here, actually. Before the Fujiwaras took me in.” 

Tanuma goes stiff, and whatever fleeting thought moves through his eyes is at once too fast for Atsushi to follow, and too shaken for him to want to bring it up. Taki puts a discreet hand on Tanuma’s arm. Nishimura bulldozes ahead with hard-headed determination to make the impossible happen. 

“No way! Then you know all the cool places to go,” Nishimura drops his arm in favor of snatching up Natsume’s hand, a sunny smile on his face. “Show us your favorite place to eat!” 

Natsume sets his cat down, rather than let go of Nishimura’s hand to wrap his second arm around it again, and the disgruntled creature goes to Tanuma instead. Atsushi doesn’t miss the slight way Tanuma relaxes when the cat begins purring in his ear, but he’s also a decent enough person not to mention it.

“Oh, um,” Natsume is saying eloquently, “I didn’t go out much here, but – there’s a restaurant my foster parents really liked?”

“Ugh, bluh,” Nishimura says with disdain, “those people have bad taste. Any other ideas?”

Natsume looks wondering at the easy dismissal of the family he wasn’t good enough for. “There’s a place some of my classmates would go to after school. It has burgers and shakes and stuff.” 

“Ooh, that sounds good!” Taki says brightly. “And I’m starving.” 

So off they go – Nishimura doesn’t let go of Natsume for longer than a moment at a time, dragging him up and down the sidewalk, and if there are unhappy, restless thoughts in Natsume’s mind, they don’t have time to settle. 

By the end of the first hour, Natsume is grinning as widely as Taki is, and when he says “Let’s go to the mall next! There’s a store I think you guys would love,” Nishimura’s shoulders slump just a little bit, like a weight has been lifted and whatever task he assigned himself is finally done. 

Atsushi bumps his arm as the others move ahead, and says, “You’re a good friend to him.”

“Of course I am,” Nishimura scoffs. 

There’s an edge to it, almost. Nishimura meets the eyes of every stranger he passes, as though he can tell just by looking who might have hurt his friend here in the past. His kindness is never anything but kindness, but the ulterior motive Atsushi knows to look for is obvious in the almost hateful line of his mouth when Nishimura speaks up again.

“He’ll forget about this place,” Nishimura says with certainty. He may be a lot of things, not all of them good, but he’s not a liar. And in all the years Atsushi has known him, Nishimura has never looked as fierce as he does now. “He’ll forget all of it. If I have to take him on a cross-country roadtrip to make it happen – to every single place he was ever unhappy – then I will. I’ll give him good memories to make up for all the bad ones, just you watch me.”

“I believe you,” Atsushi says, and he does. “But if you think the two of you are going on that roadtrip alone, you’ve got another think coming.” 

Natsume can keep his secrets. The rest of them will just do their best to make sure a day will come when those secrets don’t hurt him anymore.

Chapter Text

Natsume’s hand is cool against his forehead. The rest of Satoru is burning up, but that one spot feels good.

“Nishimura, are you awake?” Natsume whispers in the dark. “I brought you medicine.”

And it’s kind of impossible for him to be here, but Satoru isn’t complaining. He hasn’t been at school in awhile and he’s missed everyone so much it sits like a physical weight on his chest. It feels like he hasn’t seen them in weeks.

“I took medicine already,” Satoru says, or tries to. It’s mostly word salad, lost against the side of his pillow, but he’s rewarded anyway. Natsume’s fingers card carefully through the sweat-soaked fringe hanging into his eyes. “How’d you get in here, Natsume?”

It’s late, and the moon is bright outside the window. Natsume is washed in silver and soft around the edges as he sits on the side of the bed with a cup in hand. The whole encounter feels like a dream.

“I flew,” dream Natsume says, smiling too gently to be truly teasing. He eases Satoru upright with a strength that defies his birdlike frame. “This medicine is special. I got it from a friend. It’ll make you better.”

The cup feels like earthenware, coarse against his fingers when Satoru lifts it to his mouth. He drinks something that tastes like old well water, and Natsume murmurs, “Is that all he needs, sensei?”

“We’ll stick around,” a gruff voice replies, sotto voce. “Still don’t know what cursed him in the first place. It might come back.”

It’s familiar, Satoru thinks. When Natsume was new to this town, and Satoru was cruel to him, it was just like this. Satoru remembers being lost in the woods and then being found, and hearing Natsume say “He’s special to me,” to that ugly cat he’s hardly without anymore. 

“Are you talking to your cat again?” Satoru mutters, squinting to see the fat thing at the foot of his bed. It blinks at him, unhurried. “That’s weird, Natsume. Talk to me instead.”

“You’re falling asleep sitting up,” Natsume replies patiently. “We’ll talk later. Just rest for now. I’m going to take care of you, okay?”

Grudgingly, Satoru slides back down, and says, “Just make sure you don’t get caught. Aniki’s been in here a couple times already tonight. I woke up and saw him watching me from the door.”

Natsume goes absolutely still, fingers clutching the hem of the blanket he was straightening. For all the sudden tension, his voice is smooth and unbothered when he says, “I thought you told me Kiyoshi was away for a few days. Didn’t he go on a trip with his friends?”

Did he say that? Satoru frowns, digging through his sluggish brain, and recalls Kiyoshi standing over his bed, ruffling his hair and telling him to ‘get better by the time I come back,’ lingering in the doorway like he was reluctant to leave.

But someone was here. Or was that part of a dream, too?

When he looks up, Natsume’s attention is on some far shadowed corner, and there’s an anger in his expression Satoru has never seen before.

“Get out of this house and stay away from this family,” Natsume commands, and he looks all but unsubstantial in the moonlight, but his voice is iron. “Or I’ll call every name in the book. There isn’t a place in this world you’ll be safe from me if you don’t let him go.”

A wind blows through the open window, and Satoru squints as the curtains and bedclothes flutter wildly. A few loose papers get knocked around, and the shutter slides closed in the gust with a bang.

The room is darker than before, lit very barely by the dull orange glow of the overhead light and the space heater in the corner. Satoru can only just make out his friend by the bed, and levers himself up on an elbow.

“Who were you talking to?” he manages hoarsely. “What was that?”

“A bad dream,” says Natsume. “That’s all it was.”

He slips away like a ghost after that, between one moment and the next. Satoru is still blinking at the empty spot beside his bed as the window slides softly shut and the shutter rattles shut after it. 

But the ache in his head is receding, and it’s already easier to breathe. 

Maybe the strangest dream he’s ever had, but not the worst. 

(Satoru wakes up with the sun in the morning, feeling better than he has in days. His mother comes in to check on him and looks ready to cry when the thermometer reads 36.5 °C. 

“Let’s see how you feel after some breakfast,” she says, standing and folding away some of the damp towels and prescription bags littering Satoru’s bedside table. 

She pauses, and lifts a weathered clay cup off the nightstand. It’s the size of a large tea bowl, too big to fit comfortably in one hand, and she frowns at it. 

“Where did this come from?” 

Satoru can’t find his voice for a moment. He reaches for it, and his mother sets it in his outstretched hand. It feels exactly the way it did in his dream, down to the grainy, unfinished texture and the weight of it in his palm. 

He thinks of Natsume, soft and silver in the moonlight; standing over Satoru with kindness in his eyes, like there was nowhere else for him to be.

Satoru holds the cup closer and says, “It’s important. It belongs to someone important to me.”)

Chapter Text

Natsume falls abruptly, like his legs were swept out from under him, there one moment and gone the next. It’s a little funny, the way he’s always tripping over thin air, except that this time he lands with a sickening crunch. 

And doesn’t get up right away. 

And when Tanuma peels him off the ground, there’s a rock the size of Nishimura’s fist where Natsume’s face met the grass, wet and sticky with a smear of obscene red. 

Taki looks like she’s about to cry. Nishimura isn’t too far behind her. 

“Oh my god, does it hurt?” he asks, hovering uselessly while Tanuma mops blood off of Natsume’s chin with a handkerchief he dug out of his pocket. “It looks like it hurts. Oh my god, Natsume.“ 

Natsume muffles something around Tanuma’s grip on his face and a mouthful of blood that sounds a little bit like “I’m okay.” Nishimura feels personally attacked by it. 

“So, from now on, you’re not allowed to say that while you’re bleeding. I’m putting it to a vote.” 

Looking dazed, Natsume nods in the manner of someone who has no idea what they’re nodding to. His cat returns at that point from whatever place it took off to so suddenly, ruffled and disgruntled. It makes a beeline straight for its wayward charge, crawling over Tanuma’s lap to perch on Natsume’s knee with a proprietary air. 

Nishimura half-expects Tanuma to tell the cat it’s in the way, but all he does is quietly adjust his hold on Natsume and work around it. He even says, “Ponta’s back, everything’s okay now,” like that’s supposed to be comforting. 

It is comforting, though, somehow. Natsume curls his hands around the fat cat looking visibly reassured, and tension Nishimura didn’t even notice drains out of his shoulders, and he even manages a crooked smile when Taki reaches over to card long bangs out of his eyes. 

“Oh – your tooth!” she says, stricken. “You must have knocked it out.”

Natsume looks like a missing tooth is the least of his concerns, and Nishimura is with him there, in all honesty. But Taki starts searching through the soft grass, insisting Nyanko-sensei come help her look, and some of the hard lines in Tanuma’s face start to ease away into warm relief when Natsume’s face is finally clean and the cut in his lip is no longer bleeding. 

He holds Natsume for a few seconds longer, anyway. Like there’s a tiny possibility that Natsume will fall again the moment he lets go. Nishimura pretends not to notice, carding absently around in the dirt for his friend’s missing tooth, and only glances up when a shadow falls over him. 

“I was gone for five minutes,” Kitamoto says, looking some complicated combination of exasperated and incredulous. “What could have happened in five minutes?”

“I tripped,” Natsume says thickly. He looks embarrassed, but nowhere near as mortified as he might have back when they were newly navigating friendship. He rubs a hand through his hair sheepishly, eyes light in the afternoon sun. “It’s always something, huh? I’m sorry.”

Taki smacks his knee with all the force of a falling autumn leaf. “Don’t you start, it’s not your fault you fell down. And look, I found your tooth!” She holds it up with a beaming grin, and Nishimura’s stomach twists as he takes in the tiny bloody thing between her fingers. 

“Ugh,” he says eloquently, and then, “That’s – that’s gross. You’re gross.”

Which isn’t something he would usually say to the girl of his dreams, and he winces the second it leaves his mouth. She gapes at him, and says, “I am not! The dentist will be able to put it back in if Touko-san takes him right away. Honestly, Nishimura, this is no time to be queasy.”

“I’m not being queasy, I’m just – okay no, no, get it away from me! Taki!”

When Natsume stumbles again, it’s because he’s laughing too hard to walk properly. But this time, with Tanuma on one side of him and Kitamoto on the other, he’s in no danger of falling. 

Chapter Text

Masayuki comes back from running a few quick errands for Nomiya-sensei just in time to witness Nishimura storm into the hall, fists balled at his sides and a thunderous expression on his face.

All of their classmates step prudently out of the way to let him go, and Masayuki can’t really blame them. Nishimura is a menace on a good day, let alone the nightmare he can be on a bad one. 

And if Masayuki were any wiser, he would leave well enough alone. 

Instead, he joins a cluster of students hanging by the door and asks, “What was that all about?”

“Oh, Tsuji-kun,” Suzuki says with an air of relief. “Well, um – I think he and Natsume-kun had an argument? Or something? It’s kind of hard to tell,” she flounders apologetically, but Masayuki nods in solemn understanding. It is hard to tell with them. Heartened, she goes on, “Natsume left as soon as it was time for lunch. Adachi-kun just mentioned a moment ago that he never saw Natsume come back, and then Nishimura-kun left, too.”

Okay, so it’s personal, which means it really isn’t Masayuki’s business. But after so many years of being responsible for his classmates, Masayuki feels like it kind of is his business when they’re unhappy or at odds with each other. 

He glances at the door. Suzuki sees right through him. “They usually hang out on the roof,” she says helpfully.

Masayuki thanks her, and heads for the roof.

He can’t help thinking it’s odd, that a fight with Natsume, of all people, could have led to this. Masayuki has never known Natsume to fight with anyone, for any reason, even in his own defense. And the guy plainly adores Nishimura, a sentiment that is more than fully returned, so it’s a frustrated Masayuki that climbs the stairs to the roof access door, wondering what on earth he’s missing. 

Pushing the door open results in a squeal of tired hinges, and he gets a face full of the light rain that’s persisted all afternoon as he steps out into the damp gray air. 

Nishimura is popping open a retractable umbrella that looks suspiciously like Kitamoto’s, a look of fury on his face as he thrusts the clear plastic canopy over Natsume’s damp head. 

“You always forget an umbrella, you idiot. If you’re gonna sulk up here by yourself, you could at least do it without giving yourself pneumonia.” 

Natsume looks as wrong-footed as Masayuki feels. When Nishimura shoves the umbrella at him again, more forcefully this time, Natsume takes it slowly. 

“We’re all still going to Kitamoto’s after school,” Nishimura says shortly. There’s a really weird juxtaposition between his general tone and the words coming out of his mouth, between the scowl on his face and the umbrella he came all this way to give to the object of his temper. “It’s his dad’s birthday, so don’t even think about trying to skip out just ‘cause you’re pissed at me. I’ll leave you alone all night or whatever, okay? Just be there.”

Natsume has a fistful of Nishimura’s sleeve before he can take so much as a step away. His wide eyes are somehow wider now, his expression as transparent as Masayuki has ever seen it. Natsume and Nishimura both pause, and look down at Natsume’s hand as if they’re equally puzzled as to what it’s doing on Nishimura’s arm, and Natsume very bravely doesn’t let go. 

“I’m not angry at you,” he says, his voice only just carrying over the rain. “I’m angry at me. I was trying to think of what to say to you when I went back inside, and I – I still don’t know where to start.”

There’s a long moment where Nishimura struggles with a complicated response, mouth pressed into a firm line, eyes narrow and uncertain. 

And Masayuki realizes that he hadn’t been acting on anger at all, not even for a moment – that it was something more like a confused cocktail of concern and hurt feelings and chagrin. 

Of course it would look angry on Nishimura, Masayuki thinks, who cares so much and so fiercely that his compassion resembles a creature with teeth. 

Sure enough, all the fight rushes out of Nishimura on the back of a sigh, and he runs the hand Natsume isn’t holding captive through his own hair. There’s a hint of a familiar smile on his face, sunny and stubborn and just a little soft, the way he’s always just a little soft for Natsume.

“Start with something like ‘Nishimura, I’d feel so much better if I shared my bento with you today,’ and we’ll just wing it from there.” 

Masayuki eases the noisy door shut again on the pleasant sound of Natsume’s surprised laughter and starts back downstairs, shaking his head at himself for being such a busybody. Those two may be hopeless in their own way, but there are some things they can figure out without the class president’s help. 

Chapter Text

Jun sees the man before Natsume does. He’s in a nondescript jacket and sunglasses, with a hat pulled low over his hair. Jun thinks it’s the smallest bit suspicious of him to be dressed like that and lingering outside the school gate, and keeps a shrewd eye on him as they come closer. 

Natsume catches sight of the stranger a moment later and gapes. 

“What are you doing here?” he demands, and Jun looks at her classmate sidelong in surprise. She’s never heard him talk to anyone but Nishimura like that before. 

So that means Natsume must either like this man a lot or hate him. Jun appraises him with narrow eyes, lingering protectively at Natsume’s side until she’s sure which it is.

The man’s smile is full and fond, for all that he raises his hands in a mocking shrug and says, “What, I can’t walk my favorite cousin home from school?”

Oh, Jun thinks, relieved. They’re family. In that light, their interaction makes much more sense, and she relaxes as Natsume scowls.

“Not when you live an hour away, you can’t. I told you, I can take care of myself. You don’t have to – to put yourself out like this.”

There’s a moment that passes wordlessly, and the man’s face is enigmatic with those dark glasses hiding whatever his eyes look like. He lifts a hand and settles it on Natsume’s hair, with such familiarity that Jun would have been able to guess they were family from that alone.

“Don’t yell at me,” Natsume’s cousin says lightly. His voice is oddly familiar, though Jun is sure she’s never met him before. “I’m only here to establish an alibi.”

Natsume’s shoulders slump with sudden understanding. “Touko-san told you to check on me, didn’t she?”

Natsume’s foster dad went out of town for a work conference, and his mom went, too – and Jun thinks it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to pull Natsume out of school for a full week when he misses so much class already with how often he gets sick. And it makes sense that his parents would want a relative to at least look in on him in that time.

But from the way Natsume is staring up at his cousin, flushed and embarrassed, it might as well be an alien concept.

Jun aches for him, but his relative takes it all in stride. He sighs, and folds his arms performatively.

“I’ll admit, I’m here mostly for my sake,” he says, with an air of great misfortune. “It’s been so long since my last holiday that the production manager keeps threatening to have me banned from the set indefinitely. Me! Can you believe that? And he said holidays at home don’t count, for whatever ridiculous reason. So when Touko-san called, I just figured I might kill two birds with one stone. My motives are selfish, I’m afraid.“

Natsume blinks, all the fight going out of him. "You want to holiday here? With me?”

“You wouldn’t mind terribly, would you? It would really help me out.” 

Jun thinks it’s much more likely that this man, a young professional from the sound of things, juggled his busy schedule around until everything shook out in a way that would provide him with a week free to spend with his younger cousin.

And she thinks it’s so kind, and beams warmly when Natsume finally gives in with good grace.

“I guess,” he says wryly. “But Nishimura is already planning on spending most of the week at my house, so you’ll need to be prepared for that.” 

“I like Nishimura,” his cousin says decisively. “He has good taste in movies. I don’t believe I’ve met the charming vision beside you, though.”

Natsume remembers himself with a start, and apologizes effusively to Jun for leaving her out of the conversation. He introduces her to his cousin as “my friend Sasada, we’re in the same class,” and she’s touched that he considers her a friend. 

“It’s a pleasure,” the man says easily. He seems the type of person to get along with anyone who’s kind to the ones he loves. Natsume seems to be surrounded by that type of person. Taking off his sunglasses, and smiling at her with warm brown eyes, he goes on, “Thank you for taking care of Natsume.” 

His face is familiar. His eyes are familiar. And his voice – 

Natsume is red-faced by the time he finally drags his cousin away, and Jun can only stand there, gaping, as Natori Shuuichi laughs and lets himself be pulled along, with one last cheerful wave to her as he goes.

Chapter Text

People come and go. From an early age, this is a lesson Takashi learns well. 

He comes to Hitoyoshi when he’s fourteen, with a bag over his shoulder and a kind woman’s hand on his arm. They make sure he’s settled, make sure he likes his new room. They’re good people, and he won’t hold it against them when the day comes that they send him away.

(But the days stretch and accumulate. Each time he tears a shirt or breaks a dish, chased home by a shadowy figure or startled by a sneering face in the window, Touko shakes her head with an indulgent smile and gets out her thread and needle, Shigeru lifts the dangerous shards away before he can try to pick them up in his hands. They let him say he’s sorry, and then tell him there’s nothing to be sorry for. He’s never met anyone like them before.)

“It’s your first day tomorrow,” Touko-san says over dinner one night, halfway through his first week in their house. “Are you nervous, Takashi?”

He isn’t. He’s changed schools the way some people trade jackets for each turn of the weather. It isn’t hard to stand in front of a room full of strangers and introduce himself. People come and go, and Takashi is no different. He’s only going to be allowed to stay in this quiet town for as long as it takes to make a bad impression, and then he’ll be gone again.

So he keeps his eyes down, and smiles when someone says his name, and snatches sleep in unused classrooms instead of trying to make friends.

Somehow, friends find him anyway.

(Nishimura was heavy against his back, and it was a long walk back to town. Nyanko-sensei’s true form was a warm support for Takashi to lean against when it felt like his legs were about to give out. 

“Let me carry the brat,” the beastly yokai said, pinning him with a large gold eye. Takashi shook his head, hands tightening around Nishimura’s torn knees. 

“I can carry him,” he said. “I want to.”)

“You need to ask Touko-san for a bike,” Nishimura says one day, looking perilously close to a pout. He likes Takashi’s foster mother. He once spent hours and whole afternoons helping Takashi fold a thousand crooked, lopsided origami cranes for Touko’s sick friend. He seems to think Touko would pull a bike out of her pocket for Takashi if he said he wanted one. “That way we can hang out together after school.” 

Takashi smiles at him, meaning it. Nishimura is guileless and undaunted and kind, and Takashi is hard-pressed not to smile at him most days. “That’s okay, just go without me. I can’t ride a bike anyway.” 

Nishimura seems to need a moment to digest that. Beside him, Kitamoto is giving Takashi an unreadable look. “Why not?” 

“I never learned,” Takashi says easily enough. “It’s not something you can learn by yourself.”

And the very next day, his friends corner him after school again, and he finds himself walking between Nishimura and the bike Kitamoto is pushing along at his side, towards the riverside on the far edge of town. 

“No one will bother us here,” Kitamoto says cheerfully, and pats the seat. “Hop on, Natsume.”

They’re eager and earnest as they teach him what they both must have learned as little children, no trace of condescension in their faces when he gets a shaky start. Nishimura whoops and runs alongside the bike, beaming at him, and Kitamoto makes a sudden strangled noise and a grab for the handlebars, but it’s too late and Takashi is careening down the sloping riverbank. 

They scramble down after him, and the overturned bicycle’s tires make a gentle ticking noise as they spin through empty air. Takashi is knocked dizzy and breathless and bruised. He tips his head back and laughs. 

The day is golden and the grass is soft, and his friends settle on either side of him. When he looks over it’s to find Nishimura with a look of delighted wonder on his face, chin propped up in his hands, fingers cradling a bright smile.

“Hey,” he says, “I like your laugh.”

Takashi’s face is warmed by the sun, and by an unfamiliar feeling that twists his stomach into pleasant knots. Kitamoto laughs when he gets a look at his expression and won’t say why.

“Oh my,” Touko-san says when they pile inside the Fujiwara’s house. Their clothes are dirty, and the bike is banged up, and Takashi can barely lift his head as he steps out of his shoes – he should have called ahead, right? It’s rude to bring guests over without warning, isn’t it? – but then his foster mother is laughing. “What on earth have you three been up to? Come inside, tell me all about it.”

Shigeru-san folds his paper closed and smiles when they pile into the sitting room, greets Nishimura by name and introduces himself warmly to Kitamoto. Touko-san has snacks prepared already, as if she’s been waiting for him to come home. Nyanko-sensei is a heavy weight in his lap, purring idly in his sleep. 

“We can practice some more tomorrow,” Nishimura says, slanting a grin Takashi’s way. And tomorrow is Sunday, their day off, and surely Nishimura and Kitamoto have better things to do – but Kitamoto grins back and says he knows a great spot they could ride up to near the old Futaba Village, and Touko-san says it’s a wonderful idea, and she’ll pack them a picnic.

Takashi looks down at Nyanko-sensei, hiding hot eyes behind his hair. 

People come and go. But Takashi is an exception to every other rule – the ones that make fathers and mothers stay with their children, that make relatives smile and show him the way home and remember to make dinner – so maybe he can be the exception to this rule, too. For the first time, he wants to be. 

He wants to stay. 

(”Of course you do,” Nyanko-sensei scoffs, when Takashi dares say the words aloud into the dark of his bedroom. “I’ve never known a better cook than Touko-san. If you ever left this place, I’d have to leave with you, and we’d both miss out on her food. You’d better not let it happen, Natsume.” 

‘You won’t ever go alone’ remains unsaid, but Takashi hears it anyway. 

And he hears it from Touko-san when she hands him his bento in the morning, packed with all the things he doesn’t remember telling her he liked, and from Shigeru when he makes time to walk home with Takashi after work, and from Nishimura, when he reaches over to brush fringe out of Takashi’s eyes with a petulant, “I want to see you when you talk. What if I miss another laugh?”

Takashi can’t help thinking that maybe it would be safe, this time, to believe it.)

Chapter Text

It’s late – well past the time they usually have dinner – and Touko is alone. Shigeru is accounted for; he called around lunchtime to let her know he’d be working late. Takashi, however, should rightly be at the kitchen table by now. 

Touko wrings her smock in her hands, glancing at the clock again in mounting concern, and decides then and there to buy that boy of hers a phone.

When a familiar voice calls out at the front door, it’s not the one she’s expecting. Touko rushes to invite them in, and gasps audibly when the door rattles open.

“Oh, my,” she whispers, pressing her hands to her mouth. 

Takashi is on his feet, but only barely. He’s supported by Kaname and Tooru on either side, his arms around their shoulders likely the only thing keeping him upright. He’s flushed as if with high fever, eyes glassy behind an untidy fringe. 

“Touko-san,” he says when he sees her, his smile a rush of relief. 

“Sorry about this,” Kaname says around a torn lip, bruising impressively around his left eye. Touko’s heart is in her throat, but the boy dithers on her doorstep as though unsure of his welcome at this hour. “I – we should have called.” 

“What on earth happened?” Touko demands, all but pulling them inside. Takashi’s silly cat comes in at their heels, eyes bright and fur bristling. “How did the two of you get hurt like this?”

“We fell,” Tooru says promptly, as if there isn’t an angry red welt along the side of her face. She only has eyes for Takashi, stooping to pull his sneakers off and line them carefully along the side of the entrance hall. “As for Natsume-kun, he took a bad turn. He started to feel ill and wanted to come home.”

He’s still prone to these episodes, but it sounds too much like a convenient excuse in this light. Kaname, a young man growing into his height and wide shoulders, carries Takashi up the stairs, and Tooru sets out his futon with unending care. They’re both comfortable in his bedroom, and look as though they’d linger much longer if not for all of Touko’s questions. 

“I promise, we’re okay,” Tooru says brightly, waving her hands. “Just a little accident.”

Halfway out the door already, Kaname adds, “We’ll come by tomorrow to check on him, if it’s not an inconvenience.” 

They say goodnight to Touko and Takashi’s cat and leave, not fifteen minutes after they arrived in the first place, and too quickly for Touko to put her foot down and demand they submit to the contents of her first aid kit. 

“What would Shigeru say,” she despairs, sponging Takashi’s forehead with a cool compress. Takashi blinks at her, halfway lucid. “I half-wish you had stayed at Kaname’s house and called for me there. It didn’t do you any favors, being out in the cold night air like this.”

“I had to come home,” Takashi says. “To make sure you’re safe.” 

“Oh, Takashi, of course I am – “ she begins to say, but he shakes his head, side to side on his pillow. 

“I made them angry.” 

“Who, sweetheart?”

“The monsters,” he tells her, his voice slurring. “The ones only I can see.”

Touko sits very still, her head busy with uncertainty. 

Monsters, he says, and the first thing Touko’s mind goes to is the unkind relative who tried to pawn Takashi off to another family at a funeral. The medical charts the family doctor showed her, pages of broken bones and suspicious bruises. The unkind people who got their hands on him before Shigeru brought him home to stay.

Then she thinks of the white crow, from that sunny afternoon so long ago. Try as she might, straining her eyes after the familiar crow with its crooked wing feathers, she couldn’t find its partner anywhere in that wide blue sky. 

She glances down at him, unsure.  

Takashi has grown in the three years he’s lived with her, but he’ll always be the wide-eyed boy standing in her doorway with a stray cat in his arms. He looks at her with those moonlike eyes now the same way he did then. 

“I’ll keep the bad ones away,” he promises. “Me and Nyanko-sensei, we’ll keep you safe.” 

Touko brushes the hair back from Takashi’s pale face, and the misgivings in her heart soften into a much more familiar fondness at the way the boy leans into her hand. 

“Of course you will.”

He slips into sleep before she can think of anything else to say, and then it’s only Touko and Nyankichi left in the dim bedroom. 

Dinner is going cold in the kitchen. Touko can’t bring herself to get up.

“I see the two of you have some explaining to do in the morning,” Touko says. She feels faint and overwhelmed, but her voice remains gentle, her fingers in Takashi’s hair steady. “Watch over him tonight, kitty. Our boy deserves a nice, long sleep.”

Nyankichi blinks slowly, as if considering her. Then he dips his head in what could have been, to the overly imaginative, a nod. She watches as the cat moves from her side to Takashi’s, curling into a comfortable loaf at his elbow, like the world’s smallest, softest sentry.

And she smiles. 

Chapter Text

“I don’t think I want to do this,” Natsume says for the third time in as many minutes. He’s clutching Satoru’s arm hard enough to bruise. Satoru doesn’t mind.

“You promised,” Satoru points out mildly. He won’t joke, not when Natsume is this anxious, but he can’t help but add, “And it’ll make me feel better about you falling off bridges.”

“I don’t fall off bridges that much,” comes the immediate, heated reply.

“Okay, but the fact that you do at all is enough to make me worry.”

And there’s nothing Natsume can say to that, really, but he doesn’t budge from the edge of the pool. His fingers, wrapped around Satoru’s arm, are trembling. 

“I don’t,” Natsume says quietly, and stops. Visibly steeling himself, more courageous than anyone Satoru has ever met, he goes on, “I don’t like pools.”

“How come?” Satoru asks carefully.

“There was. When I was in grade school, there was a school trip. One of the older kids pushed me into the deep end of the wave pool, and I – “

He doesn’t finish. Obviously he was okay, because he’s here and holding Satoru’s arm with a hand that shakes, but something like that makes a mark on a kid, especially a kid like the kid Natsume was.

Satoru looks out over the water, the little kids playing with their parents, their own friends waiting patiently for them in the shallow end, and he says, “I’d never push you in, Natsume. I’d never make you do something you didn’t want to do.”

Natsume is quick to nod. “I know.”

Satoru can’t imagine it – looking at Natsume with the ugly intent to hurt him. Natsume, of all people, gentle and reckless and giving and kind. Making a promise that terrified him, coming all the way to the pool before he finally balked at the edge, looking sorry and small and sad.

“Let’s go down to the river instead,” Satoru says abruptly, turning to face him. He shifts, pulling his arm until Natsume’s hand slips down his wrist, and then Satoru wraps it up tightly in his own. Squeezing their fingers together, willing that dread out of his friend’s face, he adds, “You’re way more comfortable in weird places like that, anyway. Probably from falling off so many bridges.”

Natsume colors and shoves at him, but he’s relieved when Satoru raises his arm to call their friends over to the side of the pool and explains the change of plans. Natsume is a creature of the country air and sun-saturated afternoon, and smiles when they step back outside into warm July.

“Thank you,” he says. Satoru winks at him. 

“Still gonna teach you how to swim, though. A promise is a promise.”

Natsume rolls his eyes, as human as he is quiet mountain spirit, and Satoru is abruptly, impossibly grateful that Natsume didn’t drown in the pool that day when he was little. 

He’s so glad nothing managed to break Natsume before he came to this place, ruin him before he came home here, before Satoru had a chance to know him, and hold his hand, and show him a softer, kinder side of every bad thing he’s ever seen. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t Natsume’s fault. That much is obvious.

They were in the kitchen when that fat cat went crazy, jumping over the table and knocking everything to the floor. Then a wild gust of wind filled the room and slammed the kitchen window closed on its way out again, nearly breaking the glass and all but knocking Satoru over. 

By the time Satoru’s mother runs in to see what all the noise was about, the room is a mess – and it had nothing to do with Natsume, but he’s still as mortified as if he’d wrecked the place himself. 

“I’m so sorry,” Natsume says quickly, all but wringing his hands. His cat is its usual self again, sitting lazy and well-behaved at his feet. “I’ll – I’ll pay for everything, I swear it won’t happen again. Please don’t call my- my parents.”

He looks hunted, but more than that he looks certain. As though he’s been right here in this exact spot a hundred times before and it always plays out the same way. 

Satoru stands up sharply. 

“You’re not paying for anything,” he retorts. “He didn’t do anything, mom. We left the window open to let in the breeze and this ridiculous wind came through. It scared his cat and messed the room up.”

“It tore down the laundry I had hung out to dry, too,” she replies, giving Natsume an odd look. “Kiyoshi is out there now, gathering everything for another wash. Are you boys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Satoru says over Natsume in a loud voice, when it looks like Natsume is going to say something stupid. “We’ll get the kitchen cleaned up, don’t worry about it.” 

His mother affords him a quick smile, another thoughtful glance at his pale-faced friend, and then hurries back down the hall. Satoru rounds on Natsume the second she’s gone. 

“Stop taking the blame for stuff that has nothing to do with you,” he says fiercely. “My mom may be a piece of work sometimes, but she’d never throw you out or call Touko-san to get you in trouble over a few broken plates.”

The wincing look on Natsume’s face tells Satoru quite clearly that he doesn’t believe that. His eyes are that deep, dark color that makes it impossible to tell what he’s feeling, but Satoru hasn’t been his friend for the better part of two years for nothing. 

He knows that Natsume couldn’t ride a bike when he moved here. He knows Natsume had never been fishing or beetle hunting until Kitamoto and Satoru took him on a whim. He still unpacks his bento carefully at lunch time, like there’s treasure beneath the furoshiki, packed in with the fish and rice and umeboshi. 

Natsume has never told Satoru anything about the places he came here from, but he’s sixteen now and still sometimes watches people the way the stray cats around Satoru’s neighborhood do, when they’re not sure if an outstretched hand means food or a swift strike; wary, endlessly cautious, and so hungry they inch forward despite themselves. 

And it says something, he thinks, that it’s been two years and Natsume is still inching forward. 

“You’re waiting for the catch, but there isn’t one,” Satoru finally says, as close as he’s ever come to talking about the things Natsume doesn’t talk about. “It’s not like that here.”

Chapter Text

The next time Touko sees Sana-chan, she’s armed to the teeth with photos.

Shigeru got that old camera of his working after all, and the album Touko passes across the table to Sana-chan is full of candids - Takashi on the porch playing with Nyankichi, Takashi’s friends sprawled across his bedroom floor the morning after a big sleepover, Takashi laughing with Shigeru over a sink of sudsy dinner dishes.

Sana-chan flips through the pictures with all the enthusiasm Touko could have hoped for, a smile filling her round face as she gushes “what a handsome boy!” and “your house must be so lively these days!” and “I can’t wait to meet him!”

And Touko is warmed all the way home, resolving to ask Shigeru and Takashi what they would think of having Sana-chan and her family over for dinner in the near future.

As if summoned by the thought, Takashi’s voice drifts through the autumn air towards her from the riverbank. Curiously, Touko steps off the road into the grass to follow it to the source - Takashi did say a friend was visiting from the mountain, but surely he knows his friend would be welcome at the house - and steps to the edge of the sloping embankment, peering down.

She spots him right away, smiling a little at the way he sticks out against the dull color of the river, with his fair hair and pastel pink jacket. Takashi is sitting with two of his friends, the three of them grouped around the edge of a strange circle drawn in the damp clay, and they’re pink with laughter and bright-eyed in the warm afternoon, and talking to -

a little green person. With a beak, and tortoise-like carapace, and webbed hands, and a wet plate atop its head amidst a mop of tangled, seaweed-green curls. It hands Takashi a flapping fish and says, “I caught this for you, boss!”

“Thank you,” Takashi says dryly, and tosses the fish back into the water without ado.

Oh, Touko thinks, hands flying to her mouth in surprise. And the first thing she thinks of, impossibly, is the crow.

“I’ve never seen a white one before,” Takashi said that day, guileless and unguarded as he smiled into the sky at a creature Touko couldn’t seem to find. “It’s beautiful.”

“I can’t believe it!” Tooru says brightly, jolting Touko out of her shock. The girl is clapping her hands together in delight, moving to her knees and bowing politely in greeting. “I’ve always wanted to meet a kappa!”

The creature hurries to follow suit, bowing low to Tooru in return. Touko watches, eyes wide, as Takashi says, “No don’t - ” and the water spills from the plate on the kappa’s head into the earthy clay underfoot.

The creature flails, making a piteous noise, and then it seems to be trapped in place, small torso curved over the ground, quivering. Takashi gets up with a long-suffering sigh.

“Some of the myth is true, but not all of it,” he explains, as though he’s explaining particularly complicated schoolwork. He cups his hands in the river, and carries cool water back with him. His friends watch avidly as Takashi wets the kappa’s headplate again, and delight when the little thing springs back up to its feet.

“He won’t attack you,” Takashi goes on calmly, “he’s a little sillier than his cousins. His arms aren’t particularly weak, either, but he’s not very good at wrestling, and as far as I can tell he doesn’t care much for cucumbers. And he tends to stray too far from his river. If you ever see me dumping water out on the ground for no apparent reason - ”

“We have,” Kaname says with a smile he doesn’t bother trying to hide. “We just didn’t ask.”

Takashi blinks, and something soft and uncertain graces the delicate features of his face. He rubs a hand through his hair and says, “You can ask. From now on, I mean.”

The spirit between them steps out of the circle toward the water’s edge and disappears from view with a mighty splash - Touko’s hands are still hovering over her mouth, and she manages to muffle the startled noise that threatens to give her away.

Takashi flicks water out of his eyes with a scowl, and his friends laugh - and oh, but they’re not surprised in the least by all this, and Tooru even has something of a little picnic set up at her side. Touko can hear her murmuring “I feel so silly for bringing all this squash, now. I read so much about kappa last night, I was sure he’d like it.”

And Touko can’t help but think of Takashi as the boy she first met, not so long ago - all alone in the middle of a cold night. How thin and pale and colorless he was then, lifting glass eyes to meet hers and looking straight through her at something else.

He is always looking straight through at something else. Whether it’s crows, or kappa, or something less lovely, something less harmless, Takashi has probably been able to see them since he was very, very young. And while it doesn’t excuse the people who mistreated him, doesn’t forgive them in the slightest, Touko can suddenly understand, just a little bit, why her sweet, gentle, giving boy had such a hard time growing up - was never quite wanted, never quite normal.

And her heart aches, watching how easily Takashi can talk about the river spirit (one that is clambering back into the muddy circle with an armful of fish) and how hard it is for Takashi to switch gears and talk to his friends about trusting them.

It is always so hard for him. Touko is making her way down the grassy slope even before the kappa points towards her and says, “Boss? Who’s that?”

And while Tooru and Kaname spring to their feet as if electrified - both of them moving, to hide the kappa from view and scuff out the strange circle respectively - Takashi looks frozen in place. His hands are limp where they were resting on his folded knees, face so pale he might have been sculpted out of snow.

He looks like someone watching their world end.

Well. Touko may be very new at this - may not have the experience Atsushi’s mother has at righting wrongs and mending impossible hurts - and she’s certain they don’t make parenting books for a child’s dealings with yokai - but now isn’t the time to worry.

Now is the time to kneel next to her son, tucking her skirt in neatly, neverminding all the mud - to ignore the way his frightened expression digs sharp fingers into her heart, and reach out to him with a gentle hand.

Takashi flinches, and it hurts her, but it’s a selfish hurt and one she buries quickly. The short time he’s been with her won’t be enough to unlearn the lessons he’s been taught up until now, and she can’t afford to forget that. She doesn’t let herself falter, and only continues until her fingers are cradling the soft curve of his cheek, and Touko waits patiently for Takashi to find the courage to look at her.

Kaname and Tooru are holding their breath. After one long minute passes into two, Takashi lifts his eyes.

He’s transparent to her now, the way he didn’t used to be. Guileless and unguarded, the way he was when he saw something beautiful in their backyard. And if this secret world of his can give him beautiful things as much as it takes away from him, then Touko can find it in herself to make peace with it.

Touko looks over, and finds the kappa peering over Kaname’s shoulder - its webbed hands pressed into the back of his shoulder, leaning up on the tips of its feet to peer at Touko. The creature’s eyes are wide and curious, very much like the eyes of the children kappa are said to eat. Touko can’t find it in herself to fear the little thing, and looks back at Takashi with that knowledge clear in her smile.

“And I thought you told me you’ve introduced me to all of your friends,” she scolds lightly, teasing him. “After Kei and Katsumi, I was sure I had met everyone. You really are such a popular boy.”

Kaname and Tooru let out shaky breaths, and beam at one another, and then at Touko. Takashi looks as though he’s forgotten how to speak, and so Touko leans back and takes her hand away.

“Actually, I have a question!” When she tilts her head towards the kappa, it points at itself, as if to make sure it’s the one she’s addressing. It makes Touko smile. “Yes, you. You know, I used to hate ginger when I was a child, but my father could always convince me to eat it by telling me it would ward kappa away. Is that true?”

The kappa considers that seriously for a moment, then says, “It’s true. I hate ginger.”

“I wonder if you’re the best kappa to ask,” Kaname puts in dryly, “since we found out you’re not good at wrestling, don’t so much as pretend to keep to your river, and have never tried to drown a single human.”

The kappa squawks, as if in offense. With its handfuls of wriggling fish, the sight is both cute and comical. Touko feels herself warming to the odd creature, with its human mannerisms and the way it seems more comfortable with this group of mortal youngsters than its own kind.

Tooru draws its attention to her picnic basket, and Kaname follows them to it - both children well-versed in the art of subtlety, giving Touko room to sit quietly with Takashi in an unobtrusive, and undemanding silence.

“There are more like it, aren’t there?” Touko says after a moment. “More spirits like this one?”

Takashi’s head jerks in a nod. Touko hums.

“And they’re not all kind to you, are they?”

“Not - ” He swallows, and tries again. “Not all of them. They’re the same way people are. Different personalities and experiences. It’s not - I can’t lump them together. They’re not kind or unkind, they’re just alive, in a different way than we are.” His eyes dart to Touko, but only for a second, and then he’s back to staring at his hands. “I know it’s - I know it’s strange. I know it’s a lot. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Takashi,” Touko says, aching for him. “All those times you came home with dirty clothes, how easily you seem to get hurt. This is your home now, and I want it to be safe for you. Is there anything I can do? Should we get talismans for the house? Oh, but then your friendly spirits couldn’t see you, could they?” She presses a hand to the side of her face, truly feeling out of her depth. “Oh, I should ask Shigeru-san. He’ll know what to do about all of this, he’s much more level-headed than I am. Don’t worry though, Takashi,” Touko adds, trying to sound sure of herself. “Whatever you need, you’ll have it.”

Takashi finally gives up the careful study of his hands, and stares at her fully. His eyes are moonlike beneath his long, untidy fringe as he whispers, “Are you even real?”

And Touko wraps up the pain in her chest and ties a fierce knot around it, to unpack and shed tears over later, when she can afford to grieve for all the things Takashi can’t seem to bring himself to trust.

For now, she gives her son a smile.

“You believe in such impossible things,” she tells him, full of fondness and faint anger and sorrow and love. “Surely you can believe in this, too.”

Takashi ducks his head, and when he moves he’s moving closer instead of farther away; leaning into her side with all the weight of a warm, shuddering shadow. If he’s crying, he’s utterly silent about it. Touko rests her cheek in the softness of his hair and watches the odd and peaceful picture Tooru and Kaname and the yokai make, digging through a picnic basket and sharing treats with one another from within the far side of the circle.

“You know, the timing of this is uncanny,” Touko says playfully, aiming to lighten the mood just a little. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to meet a friend of mine from middle school. I showed her my photo album today during our lunch date, and she wants to get to know you! Her name is Sana-chan, and she has a boy about your age. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be quite as exciting as meeting a kappa, but I think it will be still be plenty of fun.”

“Of course, if it’s no trouble, I’d like to meet her, too,” Takashi says immediately, as eager to please as always. And then, after a moment’s pause, he goes on, “Wait. You showed her the photo album? Touko-san, most of those pictures are of me. You didn’t let her see the one of Nishimura kissing me, did you? Touko-san?”

Touko presses a hand to her mouth to hide her smile and admits, “That one was Sana-chan’s favorite.”

Takashi lifts his head to gape at her, every inch an aggrieved, embarrassed teenager where a wounded, world-weary creature was hunkered moments ago. “Touko-san! It’s bad enough that Kitamoto sent it to everyone we know - ”

“What’s a photo album?” the kappa asks, its hands full of crumbling croquettes it seems to have traded its fish for. Tooru looks up with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and Kaname seems to be the only one willing to commiserate with poor Takashi, shooting him a sympathetic look as Takashi watches in horror Touko haul the album out of her bag cheerfully.

“You’re carrying it around with you?”

“Come over here and see, Kappa-san,” Touko says, and even moves forward to the edge of the circle so the little green creature can sit beside her and lean in to stare at the glossy pages that lay open in her lap. “Isn’t my Takashi handsome? Look at how photogenic he is.”

“Ooh,” Tooru says eagerly, peering from Touko’s other side, “are some of these new?”

“What’s photogenic?” the kappa asks, and Takashi buries his face in Kaname’s shoulder.

But he seems to give into laughter after a moment, his shoulders shaking. It’s a soft sound that grows louder, until Takashi is tipping his head back and falling into it, and Touko wishes she had the camera with her.

Chapter Text

“It’ll be easier now,” the lucky cat said. 

“I’m sorry?” Natsume replied, without looking up. 

Madara watched his human charge with narrow eyes. The green in them was closer to black in the falling dusk, and his smiling face was more serious than the situation seemed to call for. 

“When you’ve been possessed once, it opens the door for possessions down the road,” he said. “Since yokai follow you wherever you go, and you spend most of your time with that brat, any harmful spirit would have plenty of opportunities to get their hands on him again.” 

Natsume nodded but he didn’t once lift his hand off Nishimura’s hair, his fingers carding carefully through the fringe on the other boy’s forehead. Nishimura shifted closer to the touch now and then, without waking, and something in Natsume’s face softened each time he did.

“I can’t leave him alone, sensei,” Reiko’s grandson said quietly. “I should, I know I should – it would be better for him, safer – but I like him too much. I can – I’ll protect him. Can’t I?”

Madara considered him for a long moment, and then snorted indelicately. He climbed to his feet with a mighty stretch and said, “Don’t be more of a fool than you can help, Natsume! We can’t leave the brat alone now, that would be asking for trouble. The yokai can smell you on him, they’d seek him out with or without you around.”

When he circled Nishimura to sit at Natsume’s side, Natsume’s free hand fell to petting him immediately, the way a well-trained student should. 

“No, the only thing to do now is keep him closer, keep an eye on things,” Madara went on, and pretended not to notice the expression on Natsume’s face. “Otherwise anything might happen. Looks like you’re stuck with him, brat.” 

“Thank you, sensei,” Natsume said with feeling, every bit as if Madara had done him some favor. The lucky cat huffed and washed his ear. Ridiculous humans, and their ridiculous sentiment. 

But when the evening shadows stretched longer, and it became clear Nishimura wouldn’t wake on his own – when Natsume gathered the other boy against his back, to carry him the handful of miles into town – Madara took his true form and moved to Natsume’s side.

“Lean on me,” he said, and looked out over the trees so he wouldn’t have to look at Natsume’s fond smile. 

Chapter Text

Tanuma is exuding calm in waves where he crouches an arm’s length away from their shaken friend, and Satoru is doing his best to mimic him. 

Even if calm is the last thing he’s feeling right now.

“What the hell?” he whispers under his breath, and Kitamoto shakes his head slowly, dark eyes wide and worried where they’re trained on Natsume. But Satoru feels panicky and prickly, and that non-answer isn’t good enough. “I don’t know what’s going on, Atsushi, he’s – he looks really scared, I don’t – “

Nothing happened. One minute they were walking home, making plans for the weekend, and the next a violent wind went screaming through the street for what felt like an hour – and when it cleared and Satoru could stand up straight without being blown sideways, Natsume was on his knees with his arms wrapped around his head, flinching violently away when Kitamoto reached out to help him up. 

“Are you okay for me to touch you?” Tanuma’s voice is gentle, almost mild, as he waits with endless patience for Natsume to hear him. “You can nod or shake your head. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

Another gust of wind has Satoru tensing automatically, but this one is there and gone again quickly, and as if on cue, Natsume’s fat cat comes waddling across the road from the bushes a second later. It pushes its head under Natsume’s arm with a grunt, and Natsume pulls it into his lap with a strangled-sounding sob. 

Satoru’s eyes burn with sympathetic tears, and he scoots closer despite Kitamoto grabbing at him to keep him back, because he can’t help it. 

Natsume is so cheerful these days that it’s almost easy to forget how quiet and thoughtful he used to be. Napping in unused classrooms as though he couldn’t sleep at home, avoiding big groups even if it meant eating lunch by himself behind the school building, showing up to class with cuts and bruises. The Fujiwaras love him, Satoru can see that for himself every day in the lovingly packed bento boxes Natsume unwraps at lunchtime, in the way Natsume lights up when he talks about them – but not everyone is the Fujiwaras, and there’s a reason Natsume moved around so much before they took him in, isn’t there?

That wind was so loud, and so rough. It almost knocked Satoru over. Maybe it reminded Natsume of something else, something bad he lived through that left a mark on him. 

“You’re okay,” Tanuma is telling him quietly. “It’s not here anymore.”

Natsume nods against his cat’s calico fur, and he keeps his face buried there as Tanuma wraps solid arms around him. Satoru is still crawling over, and Natsume lifts his head off of Tanuma’s shoulder to glance his way. 

“That wind was insane,” Satoru informs him. “I’m pretty sure the only way I’m going to come back from that is with Touko-san’s cooking. So unless you want me to pass out right here and probably die, you’re taking me home with you and feeding me.” 

It makes Natsume laugh, the sound soft and hoarse and surprised right out of him, and Satoru has never been prouder of producing a laugh than he is right now. Tanuma sits back, smiling with shadows in his eyes, and Natsume takes the hand Satoru offers him without flinching, letting himself be pulled back onto his feet. 

“Well, if you put it that way,” he says with a crooked smile, “what kind of friend would I be if I said no?”

“A good one,” Satoru assures him, holding onto his hand a tiny bit tighter, for a moment longer than makes sense. “No matter what, you’re a good one.”

Chapter Text

"You look terrible. I mean, you look beautiful as ever, but also super sick."

Touko presses a hand to the side of her face and laughs. It’s hard to feel self-conscious when Takashi is pink-faced and stammering an apology that’s hard to make out, that sounds something like “can’t believe I said ‘terrible’”. 

“I am feeling a bit under the weather today,” she admits. “I would lay down, but I need to start preparing dinner if I want it to be ready for Shigeru when he gets home.”

Takashi blinks at her, and then his eyes stray past her face to a point behind her shoulder – the kitchen counter, where the groceries are laid out. Hardly a moment goes by before his amber eyes gleam and his shoulders square, and he says, “I’ll make dinner. Really,” he adds, before Touko can so much as open her mouth, “I used to make dinner at one of the other places I lived. I can do it. I want to.”

Her heart is simply too big to fit comfortably in her chest, Touko decides, folding her hands together firmly against the ache that sits behind her breastbone. Takashi is so stubborn and so willing, and so eager to be helpful. She smiles at him, ignoring the silly prickling at the corners of her eyes.

“Thank you, Takashi. That would be wonderful,” she manages, and watches something radiant bloom in her child’s face. 

(And an hour or so later, she’ll wake from a light nap and follow the sounds of cooking and conversation down the hall into the doorway of the kitchen. Shigeru’s briefcase and overcoat are draped over one of the kitchen chairs and her husband is standing next to Takashi at the counter, sleeves rolled up and tie thrown over his shoulder.

“This is her favorite recipe,” Shigeru is saying. “I’m not sure our attempt will taste anything close, but it’s worth a try, right?”

“Right,” Takashi says brightly. He’s flecked with egg batter and tiny pieces of diced scallions, and pushes bangs out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I think she’ll like it no matter what.”

Oh, I will, she thinks, unable to bring herself to interrupt the two of them, a hand pressed against the happy ache in her heart. I absolutely will.)

Chapter Text

Takashi doesn’t know Shigeru is home early when he comes in – which is probably the only reason he slams the door closed behind him hard enough that the panes rattle, and kicks off his shoes with more force than necessary.

Shigeru blinks, and sets his book aside as the boy storms around the corner like a small hurricane.

“ – can’t believe him, how many times do I have to say it?” he’s muttering fiercely to the fat cat trotting by his ankles. “Sometimes he makes me want to just – oh.”

Shigeru very barely manages to bite back a smile at the way Takashi stops dead in the doorway of the kitchen. Nyangoro crosses the room at a saunter, hopping up to settle on the seat of Touko’s empty chair and tucking his paws in comfortably.

“Nyangoro has the right idea,” Shigeru says, nodding towards Takashi’s chair. “Come and sit. I’ll lend a better ear than your cat probably will.”

There’s an obvious war going on in Takashi’s golden eyes, but teenage temper wins in the end. He shrugs off his school bag and sits with a thump, simmering with a very rarely shown irritation.

Intrigued despite himself, Shigeru watches as the usually mild-mannered Takashi struggles visibly with what he wants to say and what he thinks he shouldn’t. He’s frowning deeply, the closest he’s over come to scowling at his foster father and Shigeru shouldn’t be delighted by it, he knows he shouldn’t. Most parents probably don’t yearn to see their children throw fits and act out, but he has long since accepted that he and Touko aren’t most parents.

“Friend troubles?” Shigeru offers after a moment. Takashi flicks a quick look at him through his fringe.

“Tanuma.”

“Ah,” Shigeru says mildly. Boy troubles, then.

“He’s – I’m – ” Takashi does scowl now, down at his hands. “I know he’s my friend, and that he means well, but he can be so infuriating.”

“That sounds about right.” Shigeru laughs at the look Takashi gives him. “You’re both so stubborn, I’m amazed you haven’t butted heads until now.”

“We have,” Takashi admits, “but – it usually doesn’t bother me like this. I don’t know what’s different this time.”

And Shigeru doesn’t know how to explain to him what it is that’s changed. There aren’t words, or at least none that he can find, to shape the difference in the Takashi they brought home for the first time – that soft-spoken and respectful boy who was hardly more than a polite ghost gracing the quiet corners of their house, always doing his best to stay out of their way and keep his problems to himself – and the one stewing across the table from him now, sure of his welcome even when he’s not at his best.  

The change is night and day. Shigeru hides a smile behind the rim of his teacup, listening as his son vents his frustration on the room.

“ – just wish he would listen when I tell him I don’t need help. I can take care of myself. And I know I shouldn’t be this way. He’s my friend, and I’m lucky to have him. But still – “

“Surely you know better than to think friendship is without its faults,” Shigeru says, raising an eyebrow. “Atsushi and Satoru argue as much as any two people I’ve ever met, and I don’t doubt they’ve been good friends for most of their lives.”

Takashi blinks. “Well,” he says, at length. Then, “That’s different.”

“It isn’t. Not in the least.” 

It will bother him, if he lets it, that at sixteen years old, Takashi is still so new to maintaining these relationships with the people in his life who care about him that a fight with a friend could leave him so off-kilter.

Shigeru puts the thought on the shelf for the time being, to take down and reexamine later. For now, the ire is leaking slowly out of Takashi’s face, leaving only dawning surprise behind, and Shigeru can’t help being warmly amused.

“I know that neither of you are the type to squabble over something trivial,” he says. “You don’t have to agree on everything all the time. As a matter of fact, that’s probably impossible, no matter how close you are. All you can do is respect his opinion, and try to find a middle ground.”

Takashi is quiet for a long time, studying the table beneath his hands. It’s only when Nyangoro starts to purr that the tension bleeds out of his shoulders, and Takashi sighs.

“You’re right,” he finally says, looking worn out by the whole thing. “He’s still annoying,” Takashi adds quickly, making Shigeru need to hide another smile. “But he means well. He always means well.” The admission gentles him, warming the color in his face and adding softness to his eyes. “I should apologize to him.”

It’s as important to be apologized to, Shigeru thinks, perhaps unfairly. Takashi is sorry for so many things, and forgives endlessly – even when he has nothing to be sorry for, even when there’s too much to forgive. Takashi’s friends are good and kind, but they’re still just kids, and kids can be hurtful and take advantage –

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice calls at the door, “is anyone home?”

Takashi blinks wide eyes at Shigeru from his side of the table. Shigeru returns the wide-eyed look with one of his own, and they both smile.

Kaname is a tall, imposing figure as he steps into the room, but his dark eyes are kind, and his smile for Takashi is impossibly gentle. There’s a stubborn spark in his expression that matches the one Shigeru’s son wears almost perfectly, softened by regret and fondness, and Shigeru picks up his book again peacefully as the boys talk quietly down the hall.

“If anyone in the world is going to take advantage of Takashi,” he says to Nyangoro, comforted by the thought, “they’ll have to go through Kaname to do it.”

The cat snorts, and doesn’t bother opening its eyes. Some things are so obvious they go without saying, Shigeru decides, and smiles at the sound of warm laughter from the next room. 

Chapter Text

Nishimura can’t remember ever being angrier.

“You can’t talk to him like that,” he bites out, surging an irate step forward. Kitomoto puts a hand on his arm, and he only just barely manages not to yank away. “Who do you think you are?”

The handful of kids standing opposite them – unfamiliar school uniforms, but definitely close to Nishimura’s group in age – look wrong-footed by the explosive reaction. The jeering and tittering have stopped cold, and both parties eye the other in wary tension.

“Nishimura,” Natsume starts, but Tanuma and Kitamoto both shoot him significant, pointed glances, and his quiet protest doesn’t go any further. He clutches his fat cat a little closer to his chest, and looks like he wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“We knew Natsume in elementary school,” one of the strangers volunteers abruptly. “We were just teasing him.”

“Sounded a lot more like bullying to me,” Kitamoto says, with an edge to his tone. “Did you bully him back then, too?”

“Please,” Natsume tries again, and he’s mortified. Nishimura doesn’t think he’s going to be able or willing to initiate eye contact for the rest of the day. And maybe it’s their fault, a little bit, but mostly it’s probably their fault – those jerks in the fancy uniforms, who think its okay to come to Natsume’s hometown and make him feel even for a second like he doesn’t belong. “It was a long time ago. They were kids, they didn’t know any better. It’s fine now. Please drop it.”

Tanuma is impossibly perceptive to all the nuances of Natsume’s moods, and when he relents, Nishimura and Kitamoto take it as their cue to let it go, too. Tanuma throws one last, dark-burning glance at the other group before he puts a hand on the small of Natsume’s back to guide him away. Natsume goes willingly, his face flushed with shame, and Kitamoto is quick to fall into step on his other side.

Nishimura lingers behind. He can’t help it.

“Leave him alone,” he says, feeling childish as he says it. His fists are clenched. He’s never been so mad. “You don’t get to ruin this for him. He’s ours now.”

And with that, he storms off to catch up with his friends. And maybe he’s imagining it, but Natsume’s fat cat is purring a little louder than usual; looking at Nishimura like it heard what he said, dark eyes glinting in the afternoon sun with a light that looks almost like approval. 

Chapter Text

Touko holds out his umbrella before he can leave, because the sky is dark and heavy with rain, and she’s always aware of things like this somehow. Takashi pauses at the door with Tanuma, and reaches back for the umbrella with a smile. 

“Thanks, mom.”

Takashi is halfway across the yard before his brain catches up to his mouth and he realizes what he said. Tanuma is right next to him, dark eyes trained on his face – and there’s a hint of something that might be amusement in the corners of his mouth, but he’s very carefully not smiling.

Takashi stops walking. Swallows hard. 

“Did I really just – “ 

“You did.” Tanuma’s voice is gentle. “It’s okay, though. You should turn around.”

Even with Tanuma beside him, and sensei’s warm weight against his ankles, Takashi isn’t sure he’s brave enough to do that. But he’s stood here long enough that it wouldn’t make sense to just keep going without doing anything. 

So he’ll apologize, he’ll tell Touko he didn’t mean it. She’s wonderful and kind and everything like the mother he never let himself dream about for too long at a time, but she never signed up for that. 

Takashi spins on his heel, mouth open around a limping ‘sorry’, and – 

Oh. She looks happy. 

There’s a brightness in her eyes that spills over, and Takashi knows he put it there. He doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

“Make sure you call if you’re going to be late,” Touko calls, her voice wavering. “You know how much I worry.” 

She wipes her eyes and just beams at him, and somehow it’s the same look she gives him when he helps her with dinner, or brings the clothes in off the line, or gives her fresh wildflowers the chuukyuu helped him find. It’s been the same all along.

“Yeah,” Takashi says, surprised at himself. “I do.”

Chapter Text

Satoru isn’t sure what’s going on, but he has the idea Natsume knows something the rest of them don’t. Even before the power went out, Natsume was tense and still; and now that it’s dark, his hands are folded into fists and his eyes are narrowed, he’s angry and not the least bit scared, and Satoru trades a glance with Kitamoto.

They aren’t stupid. Strangeness follows Natsume like a stray dog he fed from the back door once, it has from the moment he came to this boring country town. It’s strange, the way Natsume murmurs something unintelligible to his cat and sets it down, letting it waddle off down the dark hall, toward the source of a cold draft.

But you hear rumors, and Natsume tries so desperately to fit in. And Satoru may not be a very kind person, not in general, not to people he doesn’t really know, but he knows Natsume. Knows him as well as anyone could through all his secrecy and dishonest smiles, and at the end of the day Satoru has nothing to give him but kindness.

And it’s a first, but Satoru has come to understand that kindness comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Sometimes the nicest thing to do is follow an obvious lead, turn a blind eye, and smile.

“The storm must have kicked the power off,” he says blandly. “I’m sure it’ll come back on soon.”

Natsume smiles back at him, snatching up the threads of that story and sticking fast to it. Relieved, probably, not to have to come up with an excuse of his own. And then, because he wouldn’t be Natsume if he didn’t apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, he says, “I’m sorry it happened on your birthday, though.”

He’s sitting in the dark with two of his closest friends, the only thing between them and whatever malevolent force killed the lights and lured his cat down the hall, and he says ‘sorry for the inconvenience.’

One of these days, he’s going to tell them the truth, and on that day Satoru is going to shake him until all the sorrys fall out of his mouth and onto the ground where they belong. And then Satoru is going to tell him exactly what he thinks of Natsume doing everything alone, keeping them safe without ever thinking of himself. 

And then he’s going to say thanks.

Chapter Text

“What are you doing?” 

Tooru doesn’t yelp as she spins around, but it’s a close call. There’s a boy standing behind her, where there absolutely wasn’t a boy a moment ago, and she has no idea how he managed to sneak up on her so swiftly.

She’s surprised enough to forget her self-imposed silence for a moment. “Where on earth did you come from?”

He doesn’t smile, the wind blowing cloudy silver hair into his dark eyes. “I’ve always been here. What are you doing?” he asks again, and his gaze strays past her, to the diagram she’s just finished drawing in the dirt. “You’ve put these circles all over.”

Tooru feels familiar dread settle on her shoulders like a heavy coat, and the face of that horrific monster she stumbled across looms in the front of her mind like the lingering footprint of a nightmare. She doesn’t have much time left.

“It’s nothing,” she says shortly. “Just a game I’m playing.”

The boy looks disapproving. “Dangerous game. What will you do if you lose?”

Something about the way he says it has Tooru’s head up fast, her eyes flying to meet his. It should be impossible, but… “You— you know what this drawing is for?”

“I figured it out,” he says simply, looking at the lines under his feet. “I wondered if you were an exorcist or a priest, but you’re someone just looking for trouble.” 

The unfairness of it brings heat to Tooru’s eyes. “I am not!”

“If it’s a game to you—“

“Of course it isn’t! I don’t want to be out here by myself, drawing these windows to see more monsters, but if I don’t—“ 

And the words catch in her throat, a painful lump she can hardly breathe past, to think of the last thirteen people she called by name being killed, eaten by that scary creature that has haunted her for the past year. 

She lifts a shaking hand to her eyes, pressing back the tears that try to sneak out. There’s no time for this. 

“You’re running from something?” the boy asks. His expression is the same, but there’s renewed interest behind that placid mask. 

“I’m not running,” she says, and her voice doesn’t break. “I only have one day left before that thing finds me and the people I’ve cursed with me, and I can’t afford to waste my time.”

To her surprise, the boy smiles. 

”I like people like you,” he says with real fondness. His eyes had seemed so dark at first, but Tooru can see the green in them now. “Explain to me what happened, please?”

It’s peculiar to have this conversation so casually, like something out of a dream — but he’s safe from her as long as he’s nameless, and Tooru hasn’t had someone to talk to in what feels like a long time. 

So she talks to him. Each word feels like a weight off her heart, and when she’s finished, the boy nods. 

“I see,” he says. Then, absurdly, “Call my name.”

“What?” Tooru feels a little slighted. “Weren’t you listening? If I do that, you’ll be cursed, too!”

“Yes,” the boy says calmly. “And I’d like for your friend to come for me first. So don’t say any names after mine, okay?”

Tooru’s grip tightens on the large stick she was using to draw. She says, “I can’t do that to you. What if you get hurt?”

But even as she says it, it seems unlikely. 

He’s unruffled in face of her horror story and her yokai circles, believing and thoughtful in place of the skepticism that would have made for a much more human reaction. He didn’t see that creature that cursed her, he wasn’t there when that nightmare played out, but Tooru wonders if maybe this boy would have been a match for that monster somehow. 

Even if he can’t save her, it makes all the difference in the world to have someone on her side. For what feels like the very first time, Tooru hopes against her despair. 

Slowly she asks him, “What’s your name?”

“I don’t give it away lightly, you know,” he says. “Will you take care of it?”

“Your name?” Tooru asks, taken aback. She doesn’t know how she might misuse it even if she wanted to. “I— I’ll try. I’ll protect it, and you, and everyone else involved because of me.”

For some reason, he smiles. How she ever could have thought his eyes were dark is a mystery, the way they’re shining under the orange evening sky. 

“Natsume,” he says, like a magic spell. 

”Natsume,” she calls him, and the moment feels more daring than it should. She feels a little silly for the way she’s holding her breath. “Oh! And I’m Taki Tooru,” she says, and offers a tentative smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

When the boy laughs, it softens him by a lot, until he looks like a classmate Tooru could have bumped shoulders with at school. “Go home,” he says kindly. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Tooru feels like she might actually sleep well tonight, despite everything riding on tomorrow. She’s only taken a few steps when she takes a look back over her shoulder, but somehow the boy is already gone, and nothing but the yokai circle is left behind.

Chapter Text

Satoru can still feel his mother’s stinging slap burning like a hand-shaped imprint on his face. He can’t even remember what he said to make her so mad. 

Kitamoto has this awful look in his eyes, all dark anger and hurt, and it prompts Satoru to say, “She can’t hit that hard.”

“That’s not the point,” his friend snaps. 

They’re sitting on the curb outside the convenience store, and Satoru is obediently holding a cold drink to his face while Kitamoto peels an antiseptic wipe out of its wax sleeve. 

“It’s hardly even bleeding,” Satoru tries again, poking the broken skin on his lip with the tip of his tongue. He cut it on his teeth when she hit him, but it’s barely a nick. Not worth all this trouble.

Not worth that look on Kitamoto’s face, or the careful way he’s touching him now. Satoru’s not something fragile, not something to be looked at softly or handled with care. He can’t sit still long enough for that.

“Nishimura?” a familiar voice says suddenly. “Kitamoto? What are you doing?”

Satoru yanks out of Kitamoto’s grip in his haste to turn around, and it hurts to grin with his lip and cheek so sore but he does it anyway, because it’s Natsume. Natsume always gets his best and brightest smiles.   

“Hey! Pull up a chair,” Satoru says, patting the spot on the curb next to him invitingly. 

Bemused, Natsume does as he’s bid, settling there like an uncertain bird. And then his brows are furrowing in concern and his soft mouth is tugging down and he’s leaning a little closer to get a better look. 

“What happened to your face?”

“Two guesses,” Kitamoto mutters, “and if they’re aren’t his mom they don’t count.”

Satoru kind of hates what happens to Natsume’s expression at that, the way it close to crumples in dismay, and if he wasn’t angry at his mother already he’d be furious now. 

“It’s not like that,” he says. “She hardly ever does this.” 

It’s not the right thing to say, but he doesn’t know what the right thing is. It feels more than a little strange to have this conversation with Natsume, who has never once talked about the places he came here from, but has enough shadows in his eyes and flinching tells for his friends to put the pieces together. 

Natsume has probably dealt with a lot worse than a slap in the face. Satoru hates himself a little bit when Kitamoto picks up his clumsy doctoring again, because Natsume didn’t have a Kitamoto back then, and he needed one more than Satoru ever has. 

“It’s not a contest,” Natsume says abruptly.  “Don’t – compare your hurt to mine. That’s not fair.”

He hasn’t moved but he feels somehow closer, as if the distance that’s always sat between them despite all of Satoru’s best efforts is lesser now.

“You’re important,” he says, so sincerely, this boy who keeps the strangest things guarded and is open and honest about everything else. Like no one ever told him what to keep close to his heart and what to hand out freely to the people he likes. “And you deserve so much better.”

But that’s the disconnect. That’s where Satoru misses some crucial piece of a greater understanding and flounders. 

Because he has Kitamoto, right beside him where he’s always been, still fussing over the torn corner of Satoru’s mouth with the antiseptic wipe. And he has Natsume, with those dreamlike eyes and that stubborn mouth, calmly being the kindest person in the whole world as he reaches over to pick up Satoru’s hand and hold it. 

And if he deserves them, it’s a miracle. 

He can’t imagine deserving any better. 

Chapter Text

“Hey,” Nishimura says suddenly, “who’s that guy with Nyanko-sensei?”

Kaname looks up, following his friend’s stare, and feels his blood run cold. Beside him, Natsume’s breath hitches and he staggers to his feet.

A shadowy man smiles at them from the opposite side of the road, long dark hair and strange patch over one eye. In his arms, Ponta is limp and wheezing. Natsume makes an aborted movement, torn between rushing close and keeping his distance. 

Kaname hears Kitamoto and Nishimura stand up, and the tension in the atmosphere isn’t lost on either of them. They’re both very quiet, and Nishimura's eyes are narrowed. 

“It’s fine,” Natsume says suddenly, “I know him. It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

Nishimura looks like he wants to drag Natsume back by a handful of his jacket when Natsume moves away from them to approach the stranger, and Kaname understands the sentiment perfectly. 

“That guy looks like a kidnapper,” Nishimura hisses under his breath. “Why does he have Natsume’s cat?”

“Natsume said he knows him,” Kitamoto puts in, and Nishimura waves a hand sharply.

“Uh, Natsume says a lot of things? Are we gonna start believing him about everything now? He probably just said that so we wouldn’t freak out.”

Kaname tunes them out, straining to hear what Matoba and Natsume are saying. Natsume’s shoulders are stiff, and his hands are out – expectant, demanding – and Matoba is still smiling mildly when he hands Ponta over the way someone might hand a toy to a petulant child. 

Natsume hugs the lucky cat to his chest, and his indistinguishable words are sharp and angry, but it’s easy to see which way the wind is blowing. Matoba is winning the argument, whatever it’s about, and Kaname can’t see what Natsume’s face looks like, but he sees it when Natsume gives up. 

No, he thinks, hands curled into fists at his sides. No.

Natsume turns back to his friends with a smile, and calls over, “Nyanko-sensei isn’t feeling well. Matoba-san is friends with someone who might help, so I’m going to go with him, okay?”

“Don’t,” Kaname says, too loud, almost cutting him off. Matoba’s dark eyes cut into him, even from so far away, and Kaname abruptly feels cold. “I mean – Natsume, why don’t we just take Ponta home? You don’t have to go with him. We’re friends with people who can help, too.” 

For a moment, Natsume looks as though he might listen. His fingers are buried in Ponta’s fur and his eyes are round with want or maybe hope, but Matoba clears his throat and that fleeting moment is gone.

“It’s okay,” Natsume says again. “Nyanko-sensei will be fine. I’ll see you all after the weekend.”

Matoba puts a hand on his shoulder and leads him away, with a pleasant farewell to the rest of them, and Kaname’s heart hammers in his chest faster and faster for every step Natsume takes further away from him. 

He calls out, “Natsume!” and immediately, his friend stops and turns. As always, there’s too much distance between them for Kaname to be of any help. But he forces himself to smile, hopes he looks strong and unafraid, and says, “I’ll be waiting. Call me when you get home.”

Natsume says, “I will,” and he lingers for a second longer, like there’s something else he wants to say – but he settles for a brittle smile, and a quick nod in lieu of a wave. Then he climbs into the sleek black car waiting for him at the end of the road, and he’s gone. 

“Why do I get the feeling we’re never going to see him again?” Kitamoto asks of the silent spring air. 

“That’s not funny,” Nishimura says sharply. “Tanuma – did he really know that guy? Should we call Touko-san?”

Yes, he wants to say. Call the Fujiwaras and the police and child protective services and anyone else it would take to get Natsume away from that frightening man. 

But he knows Natsume would never forgive himself if his foster parents got involved with the Matoba clan – remembers Natsume telling him in a soft, scared voice exactly what Matoba had threatened to do once before. 

“I have to protect them from that,” he’d said, soft but not fragile, slender hands firm around Kaname’s own. “I have to.” 

So Kaname says, “No. Natsume knew him. He said it himself, it’s okay,” and tries not to feel like he’s betraying his friend by making sure no one will go after him. Makes up an excuse to leave and hurries home to find the address book with Natori’s number in it, places a frantic call on the house phone and leaves message after message on Natori’s answering machine until finally the man calls back. 

“I’ll take care of it,” Natori says tersely. “Thank you for letting me know.” 

And then all Kaname can do is sit in his empty house, while yokai fish swim in shadows on the ceiling and his heart aches with fear and frustration, and wait beside a phone that never rings. 

Sunday night, well after he should have been in bed, Kaname looks up at the sound of a quiet knock on the front door. His father is away for work, but might have come home early. Kaname pushes himself to his feet, crams his phone into his pocket, and makes for the entry way. 

"One moment," he says hoarsely, unable to work up any polite enthusiasm, and pulls the door open. 

On the step outside, Natsume smiles at him wanly, covered in what appears to be soot. Natori is behind him, equally as disheveled, and they both look like they're ready to just fall over and sleep wherever they land. Ponta is a comfortable bundle in Natsume's arms, purring noisily, his eyes narrow the way cats eyes are when they're content. 

Kaname stands in the doorway and stares at the odd group they make with what he can guess is a stupid expression. Somehow, though, it makes Natsume's smile grow a touch warmer. 

"Sorry I didn't call," he says ruefully. "We only just got back."

Chapter Text

“Ugh,” Nishimura says with feeling, looking too disgusted with the world at large to articulate himself properly. “Ugh.”

Atsushi is doing his best to take him seriously, he really is. Nishimura looks so bedraggled, like a cat that got left out in the rain, hair sticking to his face and clothes dripping where he’s wrestling his sneakers off in the genkan.

Mana rushed out of the room a minute ago under the guise of getting towels, but Atsushi’s pretty sure she only went because she couldn’t keep a straight face, either.

Tanuma is a better person than all of them. There’s a hint of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth, but his voice doesn’t give it away when he says, with probably honest concern, “I hope you don’t catch cold. You should take a bath before we eat.” 

Nishimura opens his mouth to reply, and Atsushi can’t wait to hear whatever he’s about to say, but then he snaps it closed to whirl on Natsume instead. 

“That’s enough out of you! This is all your fault!”

“S- Sorry –”

“No you’re not! Look at you!” Nishimura scowls at the rest of them, waving a hand in Natsume’s general direction. “Look at him!”

Atsushi’s been trying not to, because he knows he’ll lose composure the second he does, but if Nishimura insists – 

And he tries to smother it behind his hand when he starts chuckling, sees Tanuma glance away as his shoulders start shaking, and Nishimura throws up his arms in defeat. 

Because Natsume can barely stand upright at this point, leaning on Tanuma for support. He’s been laughing since he and Nishimura got here, soft and unobtrusive but full, full in a way Atsushi has never seen him laugh before – right down to wheezing and hugging his stomach - and honestly it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened.

Looking at him laughing makes Atsushi want to laugh, and he’s not even sure what the joke is in the first place. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Nishimura grumbles, every bit as though he’s not enjoying every second of this, too. He’s supposed to be annoyed, but he isn’t very good at acting like it – helping Natsume out of his coat once he’s managed to get his own coat off, dumping the first dry towel over Natsume’s head before taking one for himself. “I’m just a big joke around here.”

Muffled from under the towel, Natsume says, “But you’re a really good one.”

Nishimura squawks, all ruffled feathers and offense, and it’s Atsushi’s turn to lean on something for support as he all but cries with laughter. 

Chapter Text

It’s been a year since Natsume came to this town. Satoru knows for sure, ‘cause he asked Tsuji, and Tsuji pulled the student records to check, and his first day at their school will have been a year ago tomorrow. 

So maybe not a year since he’s moved here, but a year since the day Satoru met him. And really, that’s the important thing. 

It’s already been a year, and it’s only been a year, and Satoru can’t believe how important Natsume is to him now. How much space in Satoru’s heart that he takes up. How much time in Satoru’s day that belongs to him, and his self-conscious smiles, and thousand yard stares, and the way his whole face lights up when someone surprises him into laughter. 

He’s already been here for a year, and he’s only been here for a year, and Satoru is torn between wondering how time could have gone by so quickly, and wondering how it feels like he’s known him his whole life at the same time. 

He asks Kitamoto, the way he asks Kitamoto all the hard questions, and Kitamoto shoves his shoulder amiably. “You love him, obviously,” his best friend says without even taking a minute to think about it. “You’re not an idiot, Satchan. You knew that already. Think it over.” 

Satoru rubs his shoulder with a wounded expression and thinks it over. 

His heart doesn’t start swooping around dizzily, and the world doesn’t fall out from under his feet, like it should at some grand revelation – he just feels warm, and full, like someone poured a can of hot coffee into his soul. It’s a feeling that should burn or scald him, but it doesn’t. It just sits there, and it’s heavy, and it’s familiar, and it’s warm.

“I guess I do,” Satoru says, surprised. “I love him like I love you. But I mean – how?” 

Kitamoto shrugs, and doesn’t get a chance to answer before his mom is opening the apartment door and welcoming the two of them inside. Mana has more of those donuts she loves from that store nearby, and she picked one out for Satoru, too, and while Kitamoto’s mother despairs of the rest of them spoiling their dinner, and Kitamoto’s father laughs even as he reaches over to ruffle Satoru’s hair in welcome, Satoru feels that – that hot coffee feeling again. 

Kitamoto catches Satoru’s eye and nods back towards his bedroom. They end up on Kitamoto’s bed, cross-legged and getting crumbs everywhere. They have homework to do, but Satoru slumps over on his friend’s shoulder when his donut is gone and doesn’t make a single move toward his bookbag. 

“I love them, too,” Satoru says, since it seems like something he should say. “Your parents and your sister.”

“Obviously,” Kitamoto says again, not unkindly. “Why are you thinking about this, anyway?”

“‘Cause it’s been a year,” Satoru tells him emphatically, but he still doesn’t know what he means by that. 

Natsume just got here, and he’s already – really special. He moved around so much before, Satoru knows that from all the rumors that followed him here, but the thought of him leaving Hitoyoshi and moving somewhere else fills Satoru with ice. So quickly after the warm feeling, it’s more than a little uncomfortable. 

“I guess,” Satoru hazards, “I just really wanna keep him.” 

“So tell him that,” Kitamoto says simply, the voice of someone who knows Satoru better than he knows himself most days. “Don’t just think about it over and over until you get sick. He’s probably at Tanuma’s, right? Call him.” 

“Do I have time before dinner?” Satoru asks, even as he’s pulling his phone out of his hoodie pocket. 

Kitamoto rolls his eyes. “Mom would let the rest of us starve before she started the meal without you.” 

Heartened by that, Satoru dials Tanuma’s cell. Natsume still doesn’t have one, even though the Fujiwaras keep trying to insist he should carry one, and Satoru’s pretty sure it’s because of how often he seems to fall into rivers and out of trees. A cellphone probably wouldn’t last long with him. 

He’s so weird, Satoru thinks fondly. 

“Hey, Nishimura,” Tanuma picks up after a few rings. “What’s up?”

“Would you be mad if I said I just wanted to talk to Natsume?” Satoru asks gibly, still half-sprawled on Kitamoto. Satoru’s mom has said it’s rude to take phone calls with someone else in the room, but Kitamoto doesn’t care. He’s never sent Satoru away for anything he could do next to him. 

“Of course not,” Tanuma says dryly. “Then I’d just have to be mad at Natsume for not having a phone, and we both know that’s next to impossible.”

Satoru laughs. Tanuma’s even newer than Natsume is, but he’s important, too. As important as Taki and Tsuji and Sasada and Adachi and Shibata are. How in the hell did all these people creep up on Satoru and take up so much of his life?

Tanuma must pass the phone over at that point, because Natsume’s soft voice fills Satoru’s ear in the next moment. “Nishimura?” he asks, always concerned first and amused second. “Is everything okay?”

“’Course it is,” Satoru says, “I just realized something and I had to tell you right away.” 

“Oh,” Natsume says, “well, okay. Tell me.”

“Did you know it’s been a year since you’ve moved here?” Satoru blurts. “A whole year. I made Tsuji check. It’s been – that long! Already!” 

There’s a brief pause, and Satoru worries for a moment that the point he’s trying to make has been lost on his friend, but then Natsume is breathing out slowly and saying, “Wow. I can’t believe it. It – doesn’t feel like it’s been that long? But – at the same time – “ 

“I know right?” Satoru grins. “It feels like you’ve been here forever.”

“Yeah,” Natsume says, by way of agreement. His voice is quiet and careful. Kitamoto is silent, and Satoru holds his breath, because sometimes when Natsume talks it feels like the rest of the world is impolite just for making any noise that could drown him out. “It’s – the first time I’ve really felt at home anywhere. I hope I can stay here forever.” 

That’s not something Natsume should have to worry about. Satoru knows the Fujiwaras well enough at this point to know – they would fight hard to keep Natsume, harder than Satoru thinks his mom would fight to keep him. He may not have had home to start with, but he has one now. 

It’s been a year, Satoru thinks, and there’s still a measure of wonder, of hope, of doubt in Natsume’s voice. It shouldn’t be there. This should be something Natsume doesn’t have to wonder about.

“You’ll stay here for as long as you want to,” Satoru says decisively, “‘cause this is your home now. So you better want to stay for a long time, ‘cause I don’t want you going anywhere. You’re one of the most important things in my life, and it’s only been a year. Just think how much I’ll love you when it’s been two.”

Natsume catches his breath. Beside him, Kitamoto sighs, but when Satoru sneaks a glance at him, he doesn’t look annoyed. He just looks sort of amused, and shakes his head at the question in Satoru’s eyes. 

“That’s one more good reason to stick around, then,” Natsume says, his voice oddly thick. “Not that I need another one, when I already have all of you.”

“Nishimura,” Tanuma says when he takes back the phone, “thank you.” 

“Huh? What for?” 

But Tanuma just says goodbye after that, and the line goes dead, and Kitamoto is grinning at his laptop when Satoru lowers the phone. “You’re so dumb,” Kitamoto says, nothing but fondness in his face. “I love you so much.”

“There’s a lot of that going around tonight,” Satoru says, and can’t help grinning right back. 

Chapter Text

By the time he’s eighteen, Kaname knows a lot, but it took him a long time to get there.

He can’t even count how many late nights he and Taki spent camped in her grandfather’s study, all those long hours of reading handwritten journals, combing through a good man’s life work. Taking an impossible language apart letter by letter and rebuilding it into something they understood, until the symbols making up the yokai circles were as familiar to them as the kanji they learned in elementary school.

“There’s so much here,” Taki said once, hair piled up on top of her head, sleepless shadows under her eyes. But she was so bright, that day, her face a study in remarkable determination as she touched one of her grandfather’s books with reverent fingers. “Help me, Tanuma. I want to make him proud.”

“Of course,” Kaname said, covering her hand with his own. One of his very first friends and one of his very best. She looked up at him, and her expression melted into something warm. Her fingers wrapped around his and squeezed.

“You help everybody,” she said, not quite teasing. “Will he ever know how much you’re doing for him?”

There was no prudent way to answer her, and maybe Taki knew that, so they just sat in silence together, hands clasped comfortably between them.

Kaname shadowed his father more than a few times, learning from him how to purify, how to make talismans, how to speak words of power. Once upon a time priesthood was passed down from father to son, a hereditary profession, but there were no private practices anymore. Kaname didn’t think he would ever take the exam, make it official, but his father didn’t seem to mind. He wanted Kaname to be safe out there in the world, where dangers lurked that very few people knew to be wary of, and taught him what he could.

“I know you’ll follow him anywhere,” his father said, torn somewhere between fondness and worry. “And I know it will bring you as much hardship as it will joy. Take what you can from me, son, and use it how you will.”

Blinking through a sudden burn in his eyes, Kaname dipped his head in a nod. He was supposed to meet up with the others at Kitamoto’s house that night, but suddenly he wanted to stay home. These nights with his father were beginning to feel like a precious currency. This little mountain town wouldn’t be home forever.

He learned the most from Natori. Natori taught him the things their friend refused to learn, taught him how to exorcise, how to bind. He didn’t have a gift for the paper magic, but he kept at it doggedly, kept at it for years, like it was a talent he could better himself at if he tried, like learning piano or painting. The first time one of his charms worked, he smiled so widely it hurt, his heart lurching painfully in the pit of his chest, aching with something tiptoeing the line between pride and relief.

It was no secret why he was doing this. Who he was doing it for. It was probably the only reason Natori opened his door to him in the first place. Kaname was never going to leave his best friend’s side, not ever, and that meant maybe he was always going to live a little more dangerously, a little more recklessly, than he would have without him.

“You’ll do fine out there,” Natori told him, something like satisfaction in his eyes. “Hopefully, as long as you stick together, you both will.”

“Don’t worry,” Kaname said, brushing sweaty fringe out of his eyes. “He’s not going anywhere without me.”

Natsume isn’t a fool. He looks at Kaname, at his long hair pulled back into a functional tail and the clear-framed glasses on his face, and something happens to his expression that’s hard to look at. He stands there, hugging Ponta in his arms, stark worry and hurt and guilt and gratitude making a play for dominance in his wide window eyes.

“Tanuma,” he says, so softly, “you can’t keep doing this.”

Kaname smiles at him. Their suitcases are packed, and their new apartment is a few hours away by train, and university starts in two weeks. He’s got a bag hanging at his side, the strap secure across his chest, and in it is everything he needs to never be taken off guard again. 

He touches Natsume’s face, a careful press of his fingers to the curve of Natsume’s cheek. There in the unflinching afternoon sunlight, on the platform of the train station, in front of neighbors and former classmates and a gathering of ayakashi waving tearful farewells, the moment is bold and bright.

“I’ll be fine,” Kaname says, and looks at Natsume with all the love he feels. So much it should be impossible for one person to carry and hold. “And so will you.”

Natsume’s eyes get wet, his mouth trembles, even as he leans into Kaname’s hand. No one has ever done this for him before, Kaname knows. That only makes it all the more important. 

Ponta’s eyes are jewel-bright in the sun and narrow, the way a cat looks when it’s pleased. “Maybe some of your friends aren’t worthless after all, Natsume,” the lucky cat says. 

Natsume closes his eyes, still at war with some part of himself that doesn’t know how to take what Kaname is offering, but that’s okay. He’ll get there. He hasn’t pushed Kaname’s hand away yet. 

By the time he’s eighteen, Kaname has made his choice, and he’s comfortable with it.

Chapter Text

They’re sitting on the shallow side of the river, at the spot where they usually fish, all of them soaking wet and with a new lease on life, when Natsume blurts, “I slipped.”

His eyes are wide. He looks hunted, standing there in the warm summer sunshine like he’s ready to bolt, and Nishimura shakes his head slowly. Looks at Atsushi as if to say ‘is this guy for real?’

There’s no way Natsume slipped six feet to one side and over a thicket into the water. Maybe Atsushi didn’t see what pulled him off the path, out from where he was standing between his two best friends, but he knows that something must have. 

It’s another one of those – weird instances. Maybe one or two they could look past or reason away, but at the rate odd things seem to happen around Natsume, in their otherwise peaceful (boring) country town, Atsushi would have to be an idiot to think it was just a series of coincidences. 

Strangeness has followed Natsume since the day he moved here – probably before then, too, if the rumors are to be believed – and Atsushi’s not an idiot. 

But he hates the look on Natsume’s face right now more than anything. 

So he rings out his shirt and says mildly, “Don’t worry about it, Natsume. It’s not the first time we’ve jumped into a river after you, and it probably won’t be the last.”

It’s an effort, on his part, to make that awful, stricken expression Natsume’s wearing go away. He can ignore the elephant in the room if Natsume can, even if it leaves Nishimura staring incredulously at them both, and they’ll shelf the inevitable discussion for another time. 

But Natsume leans forward, and something in his eyes has changed. He looks from Atsushi’s face to Nishimura’s, tentative, like the eye contact costs him something. There’s a burgeoning bravery taking root somewhere in the center of him. It’s the way he looks when he parts with another telling anecdote from the miserable places he came here from. 

The way he looks when he’s offering up a piece of himself that isn’t pretty, that he worries might make them turn away.

“If I tell you something weird,” he says, “will you promise not to call me a liar?”

“Weirder than ‘I slipped’ after something sent you flying?” Nishimura retorts, even rolling his eyes. “You’re gonna have to work to get weirder than that.”

He says it so frankly that Atsushi is a little impressed, in the small part of his brain that isn’t horrified at his best friend’s lack of tact. But Natsume just goes on looking at them, summoning his nerve, and Atsushi has to add, “We’d never call you a liar, Natsume. Nishimura has picked fights with people for you for way less than that.” 

Finally, something warm and light dawns on Natsume’s face. And maybe it’s better that it’s been most of a year now and they’re only just having this conversation. Maybe it’s better, because there’s so much proof now – proof like that, like Nishimura taking up for him when someone else is less than kind – that Natsume can bring himself to believe it’s different here, it’s different this time.

“I can explain,” he says, still careful but no longer scared, and offers them both a hand up. “But lets go to my house first. Touko-san is making curry for dinner. And maybe by then I’ll figure out where to start.” 

Nishimura reaches out before he’s even finished talking, taking his hand and holding it tight, the way he refuses to be embarrassed about even at school. Atsushi, only a beat behind him, decides Nishimura has the right idea for once. 

He’s not going to let go, either. 

Chapter Text

It happens quickly. One minute, Nishimura is standing next to them, waving his hands and talking in a bright voice, and the next he’s – gone. 

Swept off his feet with a sudden yelp, and falling, and in another second he’s sprawled in a dazed heap at the bottom of the steps. 

“I’m okay!” he calls up when his friends cry out and rush down to him. “I must’ve, uh – tripped? Or something?”

He sounds confused and looks more than a little dizzy. He leans heavily into Tanuma’s side when the latter helps him up, and hisses through a wince when he tries to put weight on his right foot. 

“Thank god it was a short flight of stairs,” Kitamoto says, breathless with relief. Nishimura rolls his eyes, and sort of smiles despite himself, and they’re all ready to chalk the accident up to one of those odd happenstances that seem to dot their lives.

Until Natsume speaks from somewhere behind them, in a voice so cold it doesn’t even sound like his. 

“You think this is funny?” 

Tanuma exhales shortly, like the air was punched out of him, and Kitamoto twists around to look back at his friend. 

Natsume is standing higher than the rest of them, four or five steps up from where Nishimura landed. His eyes are bright and furious, the wind picking fingers through his hair until it stands up like bristled fur. He’s as slight and pale as he’s always been, but somehow he’s standing differently, or the light is falling on his face differently, or Kitamoto has never seen him from this angle before. 

Somehow he looks dangerous. 

And he’s not looking at any of them when he speaks. 

“Yes, I can see you,” he says over their heads, every word measured, dripping with menace. “Imagine what else I can do?”

“Natsume?” Nishimura says in a small voice, but Tanuma presses down on his shoulder, and Nishimura shuts up. And a moment later, Natsume surges down a step, hands curled into fists, and his face is so transparent and so full of hurt that Kitamoto’s breath catches. 

“You could have hurt him!” Natsume says it loud, louder than Kitamoto has ever heard from him before, louder than when he gets scared or when he gets hurt. His cat is at his side, bristling, eyes a brighter green than they should be, and Natsume says, “Leave them alone, or I’ll let sensei do whatever he wants to you. Leave them alone.”

And then a slight shadow Kitamoto hadn’t even noticed hanging over them is gone. It feels the way it does when a cloud passes over the face of the sun, and the whole day goes just a little bit dim, just for a little while, in such a small way you might not have noticed if you blinked at the wrong time. 

Natsume looks down at them, and his eyes are wet, and his expression is pained. He’s scared. Scared like – like they came close to danger just now, for all that it was just a clumsy little spill down some steps. Scared like he almost just lost them somehow. 

“Sorry,” he says quietly. His voice is shaking. So are his hands. “That was strange, wasn’t it? Sorry.” 

Nishimura is moving suddenly, hobbling toward the steps, like he forgot about his twisted ankle. He lists to the side after two steps with a wince, and Natsume surges down the rest of the stairs at the same time Kitamoto and Tanuma lunge over to catch him.

But he stays on his feet, and his face is twisted into a stubborn scowl, and he doggedly moves forward until Natsume is in arm’s reach. 

If Natsume looked scared before, he looks terrified now. But his arms are out anyway, in case Nishimura falls. He doesn’t shrink away when Nishimura reaches for him. 

Nishimura grabs him, and hauls him into a hug that looks like it hurts. He holds him hard, arms tight around his shoulders. Natsume freezes, hands hovering above Nishimura’s back, eyes wide.

“Something pushed me, didn’t it?” Nishimura says, muffled against Natsume’s jacket. “I felt it, like a hand on my back. Something was there, wasn’t it? And you made it go away. Don’t say sorry, Natsume. Don’t ever say sorry.”

A weight against his ankle makes Kitamoto look down. Nyanko-sensei passes him on his way to Tanuma, and puts a paw on his leg in a proprietary fashion, and Tanuma bends to pick him up with a little laugh. 

Kitamoto stares at the cat. Its eyes are a darker green now. It stares back at him, like it’s daring him to say something. Kitamoto wisely chooses not to. 

In front of them, Natsume finally summons the nerve to hug Nishimura back. He winds arms around Nishimura’s waist, and his fingers dig into the fabric of Nishimura’s shirt, and he seems to fight a losing battle for a few seconds. 

Then he buries his face in Nishimura’s shoulder and starts to cry. 

“He isn’t crazy,” Tanuma says suddenly, softly, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Stung, Kitamoto snaps, “Of course not. He’s my friend, too.”

He has questions to ask – about a hundred of them – but he wouldn’t ask them if he didn’t think he could believe Natsume’s answers. 

Natsume is a little weird, and sometimes standoffish, and secretive about the strangest things, but Kitamoto wouldn’t be his friend if any of that bothered him. 

Tanuma looks apologetic, ducking his head. “You’re just – you’re looking at him funny.”

“Because I’ve never seen him do that before,” Kitamoto says, throwing up his hands. “Get mad like that! He even shouted! I’ve literally never heard him shout. That was – that was – kind of amazing? And a little scary? And I’m just really glad he’s on our side, that’s all.”

“So – a mysterious force pushes Nishimura down the stairs,” Tanuma says, very slowly, “and Natsume can see something we can’t, and sends it away before it can hurt us – and the part you’re stuck on is he shouted at it.”

Feeling distinctly like he’s being made fun of, Kitamoto deigns not to answer. 

He reaches out to sling his arms around his other two friends, drawing Natsume’s tear-stained face out of hiding. He still looks a little shaken – scared for a different reason, now, scared like there’s any chance his friends don’t still love him as much as they did ten minutes ago. 

Yeah, right. 

“Let’s go to my house,” he says warmly. “Mom will be able to look at Satchan’s foot, and Mana wants to make us a cake ‘cause she missed your birthday, Natsume.”

“Why don’t we make it a sleepover!” Nishimura pipes up, predictably. “We can watch Natori’s new drama!”

Tanuma trades a long-suffering look with the cat he’s holding. Natsume looks like they’re all speaking a foreign language and he’s struggling to keep up. 

“And… we’ll talk?” he says quietly.

“If you want,” Kitamoto replies easily, meeting his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be right now. It’s not like any of us are going anywhere, right?”

Natsume’s hand curls hard into Kitamoto’s sleeve, and his mouth trembles, and for a second Kitamoto is terrified he said the wrong thing, made his friend cry, how is he supposed to deal with having made Natsume cry – but then, miraculously, Natsume’s smiling instead. 

“Right,” he says. He says it like it’s the best thing he’s ever agreed with. It makes Kitamoto smile back. 

Chapter Text

“You need to stop wearing fancy clothes when you come visit,” Natsume says plainly as he wrings out his own shirt. “I mean, you’re just asking for it at this point.”

Shibata makes a show of sweeping his damp hair back so that it looks less like a bedraggled mop and more like he decided to wear it that way on purpose. 

“Sometimes I forget to account for near-death encounters when I dress to visit my friend in the country,” he says with false disdain. “You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever fallen off a bridge with? Isn’t that nice?”

It wins a small laugh from Natsume, a sound that escapes before he can help himself, and Shibata smiles smugly as they wade the rest of the way out of the water. 

Nyanko-sensei watches from his dryer perch with slitted eyes. Cats always smile, but this one is definitely laughing at them.

To be fair, he did scare off the yokai that pushed them from the bridge – but Shibata thinks he could have tried to catch them, at least. He can fly, can’t he? 

Natsume’s hair is a mess, dripping into his eyes and plastered to the back of his neck. His hands are out as though the air might be persuaded to catch him if he falls. He steps on a slippery rock and squawks when he almost looses his footing. His face turns slightly pink at the sound of his cat’s snickers from the riverbank, at the same time it wrinkles into a scowl. 

Shibata can’t help but feel fond of him. All his mannerisms are – a little strange, maybe, a little outside the ordinary – but out here in the dense forest at the bottom of the mountain, where Natsume seems to spend most his time, it’s as if the world reorients itself around him. The trees are talkative, and the river is lazy, and Natsume makes as much sense here as they do. 

Natsume’s friends are used to him, and the strange magic he wears like a winter coat. Shibata wants to be used to him, too. 

That night, laying in a futon next to Natsume’s in his bedroom, while moonlight pours through the window and insects gossip outside, Shibata whispers, “Are you awake?”

“Hmm,” comes the sleepy reply, which could be a yes or a no. 

“Do you remember when we were little?” Shibata asks, staring up at the ceiling. “When we went to the same school, and I was cruel to you?“

Natsume is quiet this time, but he moves; from his periphery, Shibata sees that dusty blond head tip over to face him, his eyes shining like Nyanko-sensei’s in the dark. 

“I was just thinking,” Shibata goes on, the quietest he’s ever been, “how impossible it is that we could be friends now. How lucky I am, that you – that you’re you.”

Natsume’s confusion is so heavy it might as well be sitting next to them. “What does that mean? That I’m me?”

“You’re good, that’s all,” Shibata mutters, unable to explain it any better. “How many people would have talked to me, helped me, the way you did? I threatened to spread rumors, but Nishimura and Taki would have beat me up if I tried. That can’t have been the reason you did. It’s just – you. You know?”

Shibata can feel himself flushing. The inadequacy of the words is killing him, given how long this has been on his mind, how long he’s wanted to say it. 

Doggedly, he goes on, “And because of that, we can be friends now. I can come visit like this, and – and it’s nice, that’s all. You can go back to sleep now, I just wanted to – “ 

“You’re the only person who came back for me,” Natsume interrupts him to say. “It’s because you needed help, but still. You remembered me and the – the lies I used to tell, and you thought I could help you, and you found me. No one else has ever done that.”

His voice is warm and shaped like a smile. Looking at him now is something Shibata isn’t brave enough to do, but the smile is probably a nice one. 

“You think I’m the reason we’re friends,” Natsume says, in that soft, stubborn voice that could probably convince a mountain to move for him, “but we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t showed up that day. It’s all thanks to you.” 

“Oh,” Shibata says, the only thing he can think of to say. For some reason his eyes are hot. “Um. Okay.”

“You really are lucky, brat,” Nyanko-sensei says into the silver-lined dark. “Don’t take it for granted.”

Shibata covers his eyes with his hand and waits until his voice won’t shake to say, “I know that, you stupid cat. Next time catch us when we fall or I’ll shave your tail.”

Nyanko-sensei squawks in outrage, and somewhere beneath that, Natsume muffles a laugh against his pillow, and Shibata knows he’s lucky to be here.

The last thing he’ll do is take it for granted.

Chapter Text

Plenty of people have gotten angry or annoyed with him before, when they asked a question that Takashi couldn’t answer. There have been a lot of new schools, and new faces, and potential new friends, a lot of curious sidelong looks and harmless wondering about who he was, and where he came from, and what his family was like. 

Takashi doesn’t mean to – to close doors in their faces. He never has. He would like to be open with them, to build a bridge between his classmates and the island he lives on, all alone, but…

But sometimes, he came to school with bruises. Sometimes he went hungry, or laid awake at night because he was afraid to sleep, and sometimes it wasn’t a yokai’s fault. And he can lie about the yokai, he’s lied about them since he was small, but somehow it was never as easy to lie about the people.

His classmates feel slighted those times he doesn’t answer their questions. Distance folds open in their faces, they take on a colder edge, they say something like “I was just asking. I won’t anymore.” 

But that’s not – that’s never what Takashi wanted. 

He would talk about it if he could. If he knew how. If he wasn’t still scared, in a younger corner of his heart, of those people that hurt him more than spirits ever have. He shouldn’t still be scared, it’s stupid – he’s grown up now and far from the places he came here from – but he can’t help the way he sometimes wants to curl up into something smaller when someone raises their voice in the supermarket, when kids at school crowd around his desk; the way his instinct is to flinch when Shigeru or Touko reach for him without warning, even though he manages not to most times. It’s stupid, that he could still have bruises on his soul like that. That he hasn’t gotten over it yet. 

And he loves Hitoyoshi in a way he’s never loved any place before. He loves his school and his classmates and his foster family, and the want to keep them, to keep this goodness he’s found, burns in his chest like the desperation that keeps him running even when he’s out of breath and exhausted. He wants so badly to keep living here. He doesn’t want to give anyone a reason to want him gone.

So when Suzuki, a girl in his class, turns to him with a smile and a curious look on her face that Takashi recognizes, he smiles back through the chill that settles in his lungs. 

“Of course,” he tells her when she asks the inevitable question, “ask me anything. I don’t mind.”

Nishimura sits up straight, the box lunch Kitamoto’s sister made him all but forgotten in his lap. Tanuma and Taki’s unobtrusive conversation tapers off into silence. Even tactful Kitamoto is watching him with sharp eyes. Suzuki doesn’t seem to notice, leaning in brightly. 

“Oh! Good! I was just wondering – I’ve heard you move around a lot, you know? Why is that?”

“My parents died when I was young,” he says, as lightly as he’s able, so she doesn’t feel bad for asking. “After that, I lived with relatives.”

Suzuki looks stricken. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s awful. Were you very young? It’s just, my aunt works in child services, and she says the younger children get snatched up much more quickly than the older ones do. I wonder why it took you so long.”

And Takashi is very sure his expression doesn’t change. He’s good at that. He feels cold, but he doesn’t give it away even as his mind goes spinning back to the time an attentive middle school teacher called in the bruises on his arm – the time a police man found him wandering late at night and escorted him home, kind face wrinkling when he saw none of the lights were on and no one was waiting up – the time he fainted in PE when he was eight, because they always forgot to feed him – 

He wrestles himself back. Tells himself get over it, it’s time, it’s past time to get over it. 

“Bad luck, I guess,” he says, just wryly enough that Suzuki returns his half-smile with a slightly guilty one of her own, but that’s all he has time to say. Nishimura is shoving his bento into Kitamoto’s hands and standing, hooking a proprietary arm around Takashi’s elbow and hauling him upright, too. It grinds the conversation to a halt much faster that Takashi’s bad manners ever have.

“Lemme steal this guy for a minute,” he says to Suzuki without looking at her, and it’s a blessing she’s from their homeroom, because Nishimura is often hauling Takashi off with him and it doesn’t faze her in the slightest. 

“Nishimura?” he asks, when his friend shoves him into an empty classroom. He blinks when the rest of them file in behind, when Taki slides the door shut with something weighted and awful in her eyes. The chill in his chest gets worse. “What is it?”

“Hey,” Tanuma says, stepping in. His face is so gentle, the way it always is, and he touches Takashi’s shoulder with a hand that isn’t built to touch anybody any way but kindly. “It’s just us, Natsume, don’t look so worried.” 

And that’s – that’s fair. But – 

But Nishimura still has a grip on his arm like he’s thinking thoughts of strangling something. He looks furious, and he hasn’t looked this angry since he was possessed. 

“What the hell was she thinking?” he bites out. “Wait till Tsuji’s gone to ask a bunch of personal questions, sure. Wait till I tell him – “

“Nishimura,” Kitamoto says at length.

“And you,” he goes on, rounding on Natsume, “what the hell were you thinking?”

Takashi has no idea what he’s upset about. He was talking about it, wasn’t he? 

He glances over Nishimura’s shoulder at Taki and Kitamoto, glances sidelong at Tanuma, and doesn’t find any clues there. They all just look back at him, very much like if Nishimura wasn’t yelling then one of them would be, and that’s not a comfort.

“When she asked you that stuff back there,” Nishimura says fiercely, “you didn’t want to answer. So why did you?”

Takashi blinks rapidly. “It’s not that I – I don’t want to – I just – “

“Can’t,” Tanuma finishes for him. 

“I don’t know how,” Takashi says helplessly, shrugging one shoulder. Standing here alone with his friends, the coldness is abating. It’s easy, with them. Even the half of the group that doesn’t know his most carefully guarded secret are the two other people he would trust with it. It’s easy to say, “It’s hard to talk about, but I want to. I want it to be easy, I want it to be over.”

It’s not fair that he still has bruises. 

Nishimura’s grip on his arm gentles, and slips down to his hand, where it squeezes tight again. 

“If you don’t want to talk about it then say so,” Nishimura says. He’s an inch or so shorter, but the way he looks at Takashi makes him seem tall. “Don’t lie and pretend to be fine when you clearly aren’t. Don’t – you don’t owe anybody anything, Natsume. Don’t act like you do.”

“If you do want to talk about it,” Taki puts in, earnest and sweet, “then try talking to people you trust first. Try talking to Touko-san or Shigeru-san, or one of us. It’ll be easier.”

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Takashi mutters, staring down at the floor. “It was so long ago.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kitamoto bumps his arm amiably, the second real friend Takashi ever made, as steady and reliable as he’s always been. “You got hurt, and you never really got better. It’s like getting sick and not going to the doctor. You get used to moving around with a cough or an ache and it becomes your new normal.”

“But it’s not normal,” Tanuma adds softly. “And it’s not your fault.”

“So this is just you going to the doctor,” Nishimura says. He takes Takashi’s other hand, too, and stands there holding them like it makes perfect sense. “This is you taking care of yourself for a change.”

Takashi can’t look at any of them, but not for the usual reasons. He doesn’t know what to say, but they don’t seem to mind. 

“I’ll try,” he says, and looks up when Nishimura’s hands tighten around his in time to see them all smile. 

Plenty of people have gotten angry or annoyed with him before, when they asked a question that Takashi couldn’t answer. There have been a lot of new schools, and new faces, and potential new friends, a lot of curious sidelong looks and harmless wondering about who he was, and where he came from, and what his family was like. 

This is the first time anyone has guarded his silence. The first time he tried to speak despite himself and found himself kindly shut down. It’s not something he ever expected to find, but it’s something he has. 

He smiles back, and it doesn’t hurt at all. 

Chapter Text

“Okay I can’t do this,” Nishimura blurts maybe ten minutes after Kaname turned the lantern off. “There’s no way I’m sleeping now.”

“Seconded,” Kitamoto pipes up immediately. “Thank god.”

Natsume sits up, looking concerned. “Do you want to hold Nyanko-sensei?”

“Natsume,” Nishimura says very seriously, turning to look him in the eye, “it’s really sweet of you to offer. And I’m grateful. But no, I don’t want to hold your cat.”

“Is this because of the ghost story I told earlier?” Natsume asks, his voice small. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you wanted to hear something like that.”

Immediately, guilt steals across Nishimura’s pale face, and he’s distracted from himself long enough to say, “I mean—we did ask you for a scary story, but—“

“Tanuma, how are you not freaked out?” Kitamoto demands. 

Kaname rubs a hand through his hair, more sleepy than anything. The story Natsume told was a watered-down version of a yokai encounter Kaname was present for, so it lost a lot of the effect it might have had otherwise. 

“I’ve heard that one before,” he says, and yawns.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” Nishimura yelps, fumbling to turn the small light back on. “We’re in this together!”

Ponta grumbles and crawls under Natsume’s blanket. Kaname stares after him enviously. 

Then Natsume says, “Um—I didn’t really finish the story, you know.”

“There’s more?” Kitamoto squawks, outright horrified. “I don’t wanna hear it!”

“But I never told you why the ghost was haunting that girl in the first place,” Natsume says. And his face is soft in the low light, and his voice is warm, and it’s hard to reconcile him with the boy that made Nishimura cry half an hour ago. “It’s actually a love story. I just didn’t think you’d be interested in that part.”

Nishimura blinks, strung along by Natsume the way he always is. “Does it have a happy ending?”

It doesn’t. Kaname was there. 

But Natsume smiles and says, “Would you like one?” and his friends clamor forward eagerly, earlier fear all but forgotten.

And Kaname lays awake to listen, too.

Chapter Text

Walking home from the convenience store, Atsushi catches sight of Natsume sitting on an out-of-the-way curb, that fair hair sticking out like a beacon in the fading daylight, that ugly cat unmistakable. Grinning, he calls out to him, and Natsume lifts his head.

Chapter Text

Shuuichi gazes down at the troublesome boy he’s come to care for and despairs.

“Touko-san is going to have my head when I bring you home,” he says mildly.

Natsume, looking up from his almost certainly broken ankle, raises his eyebrows.

“Touko-san?” he says in obvious disbelief.

“She’ll kill me with kindness,” Shuuichi elaborates. “It will be slow and it will be brutal. And it will be entirely your fault.”

The child rolls his eyes. “Excuse me for saving your life. If I’d known it would cause you so much trouble I would have just let the yokai kill you.”

“Let’s not be over dramatic,” says Shuuichi, and Natsume’s expression says very clearly that he wishes Shuuichi would choke on that piece of hypocrisy. “It wouldn’t have killed me. Maimed me, perhaps. Which is far preferable to taking you home injured and facing the caring, good-natured wrath of your mother.”

“Will you just help me up please?” Natsume says just this side of patiently, lifting his hands. “It’s a long walk back, and I want to get started before you work up to a monologue.”

Shuuichi steps over agreeably, but he hesitates to take the boy’s hands. “This is going to hurt.”

“Natori,” Natsume says. “It’s a sprain. I’ve had worse. Up, please.”

Oh, but he’s a proud little thing. Shuuichi bites back what he would like to say — that Natsume has no business getting hurt now, and he had no business getting hurt then, and it’s truly a crime that he did — and instead takes his outstretched hands and hauls him carefully upright.

Predictably, Natsume staggers. Hiiragi surges closer, as if to catch him, but he waves her off with a tight smile. “I’m fine,” he says, with pale good humor, “it just — hurts.”

Shuuichi tries to be subtle about taking most of Natsume’s weight as they walk. Truthfully he would carry his young companion — or ask one of the shiki to carry him — if he didn’t know for certain it would take a knock-down, drag-out argument for Natsume to even consider it.

“Of all the days for your little monster to stay home,” he muses as they make their mincing way back out of the wood and toward town. The footpath gives way to a dirt road, and the lavender fields bloom rich and purple on all sides, and the mountain air is fresh and sweet. It makes Shuuichi feel nostalgic, of all things. “He’s going to bite my face off when he sees you. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No one is going to bite your face off,” says Natsume in a measured tone Shuuichi has heard mothers use on their whining children in grocery stores. “I twisted my ankle. If I tape it well they might not even notice.”

Before Shuuichi can begin to unpack everything wrong with that statement, they’re accosted by twin cries of “Natsume!”

Two boys rush toward them from the end of the road, their bikes discarded so quickly the upended wheels are still turning.

“Nishimura,” Natsume says by way of greeting, an involuntary smile forming on his face, “Kitamoto. What are you doing out here?”

Shuuichi has met Nishimura once before, a surprise orchestrated by Natsume on Nishimura’s birthday last year that left him almost in tears. Today there isn’t an ounce of idol worship in the boy’s eyes when he snaps an accusing glare Shuuichi’s way and says, “Why is he limping? What happened?”

“Is it your ankle?” Kitamoto adds, reaching for him. “You shouldn’t walk on it, Natsume.”

“I fell,” Natsume lies easily. “But I’m okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re tough as nails,” Nishimura says impatiently. “You can fall off bridges without drowning and walk around on a busted ankle without passing out. That doesn’t mean you should.”

Both teenagers barely spare Shuuichi a glance as they fall into what appears to be a familiar role — they bully and cajole until Natsume agrees to a piggyback ride the rest of the way into town, without the battle of wits and willpower it would haven taken Shuuichi. Kitamoto carries him, and Nishimura pushes one of the bikes, and Shuuichi finds himself pushing the other.

Nishimura glances at him sidelong. Shuuichi doesn’t know what to expect.

“Your life is over the minute Touko-san sees him,” the boy says plainly.

“Oh yeah,” Kitamoto pipes up, “it’s gonna be brutal.”

“That is exactly what I said,” Shuuichi replies, smiling through a mild sense of dread. “Your friends are very wise, Natsume.”

Nishimura looks pleased pink, and that’s endearing. Natsume looks surprised, and that’s not.

His friends dropped everything to carry him home, they’re in complete agreement that his foster mother is going to have a big reaction the moment they step over the threshold, Hiiragi hasn’t moved more than three steps from Natsume’s side since he was injured, his stupid cat is going to kick up a huge racket and never let Shuuichi live it down—

and Natsume has the gall to say, “But it’s not a big deal.”

“Shut up,” Nishimura says, not unkindly. “Yeah it is.”

“She won’t get mad,” Natsume stresses.

“She totally will,” is Kitamoto’s cheerful contribution.

“Natsume,” Shuuichi says, as gently as he’s able, when Natsume curls his hands into Kitamoto’s jacket and just looks lost, “it’s not a bad thing.”

She cares, he would say, if he could think of a way to say it that Natsume would understand. We care.

Chapter Text

There’s a meteor shower starting in the next hour, and Tooru is going to watch it with her best and closest friends.

It’s a school night, but they’re staying out late anyway, with plans to sleep over at Tanuma’s house and head to school together in the morning. Natsume’s cat is snoring in Tanuma’s lap, and similarly Nishimura has nodded off against Natsume’s shoulder a few times, and that prompted Kitamoto and Jun to make a run to the nearest conbini for some coffees to keep them all awake. 

Tooru stretches her legs out, content down to her bones. 

“You look happy,” Natsume says, and she beams at him. 

“Of course I am,” she says. “This is so fun!”

“It hasn’t even started yet,” Tanuma puts in, glancing up at the sky. 

“Not that,” she insists stubbornly. 

They’re alone in a field away from the noise and faint light pollution of town, a spot Natsume’s friends among the yokai helped him find, and if she were by herself it wouldn’t be comfortable at all.

But she’s here with her favorite people in the world, so she can’t help the smile unfolding across her face.

“Hey,” Nishimura pipes up suddenly, making Tooru jump a little– she thought he’d dozed off again. “Natsume, why are you shaking?”

“It’s a little cold,” Natsume says defensively. 

“Touko-san told you to bring an extra coat!”

“It’s not that cold! Nishimura– oh my god, stop, get off.”

Nishimura looks wide awake for a boy who yawned the whole way here, flashing Tanuma and Tooru one of his brightest smiles, his arms wrapped around a struggling Natsume’s thin waist. 

“Come help me warm this guy up. If he catches cold, we’ll never get to take him out again.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Tanuma says, trying not to smile at the look of betrayal Natsume is shooting him. He maneuvers Nyanko-sensei up into the crook of his arm and says, “Taki?”

“Of course,” she replies primly, and they sandwich Natsume and Nishimura between them snugly. Natsume looks like he doesn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed, but considering the strength he’s used to fend off mean ayakashi, he’s not putting up as much of a fight as he could. 

Kitamoto and Jun find them that way a few minutes later, and their eyebrows shoot up. Kitamoto is quick to join in, all but throwing himself on the top of their comfortable pile, while Jun rolls her eyes and passes out coffee. Her fingers overlap around Tooru’s when Tooru takes a cup, and the touch lingers, and so does Jun’s smile. 

It’s a cold night, but Tooru has never been so warm. 

Chapter Text

Kaname wakes up to the feeling of fingers in his hair. Someone is stroking the sweaty fringe out of his face, their hand cool against Kaname’s hot skin, and he turns his head toward the touch.

“Tanuma?” Natsume’s quiet voice drifts by. “Are you awake?”

“Mm,” he manages. “I don’t know.”

“Can you try to drink some water?”

It sounds like Natsume would really like for him to try to drink some water. Kaname begins the arduous task of sitting up.

An arm slips around his shoulders, bracing him. It’s not Natsume, who is still a steady presence on his other side, and Kaname is too tired to wonder who else it could be.

“Here, Tanuma,” Natsume says, and guides Kaname’s hands to hold a cool glass. He even helps him drink, which Kaname doesn’t have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about. He’s mostly focused on completing this task so his friend will let him lay down again.

“Natsume,” he mutters when the water is gone, listing into the arm of whoever’s holding him, “my head hurts. Is it a spirit?”

Someone makes a surprised noise, but Natsume’s voice is clear and calm. “No, it’s just a bad fever. Your father went to get you medicine. He’ll be home soon, and you’ll be okay.”

He wants to believe that, but his head hurts so much—it can’t be anything other than yokai, not when it hurts this much. Which means he needs to stay awake, needs to be present and alert for Natsume’s sake….

But already sleep is wrapping its heavy hands around him, dragging him back down.

“Don’t get into trouble until I wake up,” he says firmly. “Don’t go anywhere without me.”

“I promise,” Natsume says.

“He sure told you,” says the person holding Tanuma, and he falls asleep while they’re still lowering him back into bed.

The next time he wakes up, the migraine is gone and his father is kneeling over him with a look of relief.

“There you are,” the priest says warmly, helping him sit up. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” Kaname says, rubbing his face. “I was sick?”

“Very sick. You took a turn for the worse last night and I had to run into town to find a doctor. I’m so grateful Takashi was here to keep an eye on you while I was gone.”

He gestures, and Kaname turns to find his best friend deeply asleep on a guest futon, Ponta dozing in the crook of his arm, pale face slack and peaceful.

The sight of him makes Kaname smile.

“Who else was here?” he asks. “I heard them talking. Was it Nishimura?”

“There was no one here but Takashi,” the priest says. “You must have been dreaming.”

Kaname considers that as his father leaves the room, his gaze straying back to Natsume. As if sensing the scrutiny, Ponta opens one eye and stares back at him.

“Was there someone else?” he asks. The lucky cat scoffs.

“What do you think?”

“Were they nice?”

“For a weakling, they weren’t so bad. They liked your fish pond.”

Kaname laughs, the sound coming soft and scratchy out of his sore throat. It’s nice to know Natsume had help. And he’s still here, where he promised to be.

Kaname lifts his eyes to the familiar shadows swimming on the ceiling and says, “I’m glad.”

Chapter Text

Natsume barely makes it to class on time. He ducks in right before the bell, making his way through the back of the room toward his desk. 

Satoru grabs him by the sleeve before he makes it to his chair. 

“Dude,” he says cheerfully, “where’ve you been? We waited for you by the gate– for–” 

The fabric of his sleeve is damp, kind of tacky. Natsume is already wincing as Satoru pulls his hand back. His fingers come away red. His pleasant morning churns to an absolutely sickly standstill. 

“What– “ There’s a painful little thrill of something like electricity jolting through his body. He’s sitting rigidly, like his muscles are shocked into place. “Natsume– is that blood?”

“Don’t,” his friend says absurdly. “It’s fine. I didn’t have time to clean it up, but I will after homeroom, so just– “

But Satoru is on his feet already, even though class is about to start. He catches Tsuji’s eye, and gestures sharply at Natsume with his clean hand– and maybe the class rep can read everything on Satoru’s face that he needs to, or maybe he knows better than to press for questions where Natsume’s concerned, because he nods easily and moves to the front of the room to intercept their teacher. 

That gives Satoru all the time he needs to hook a hand around Natsume’s elbow and haul him out, grabbing the first aid kit off the back shelf as they pass by.

“Nishimura,” Natsume tries again, sounding upset, “you’re going to get in trouble. I told you, I’m really okay.”

But Natsume’s a liar, is the thing. He lies about a lot of things, even little things, and half the time it’s not worth the knock-down, drag-out fight it takes to wrangle the truth out of him. He always looks so uncomfortable, so cagey, like an honest conversation is something way out of his comfort zone, that generally Satoru takes pity on him and stops asking and just sticks close to him for long enough the worry goes away on its own. 

This time, though, he’s hurt. Hurt in a way that Satoru can see, that Satoru can feel on his hands. His heart is up in his throat, because Natsume is bleeding, and tried not to let anyone see, and was just going to deal with it on his own at a more convenient time. 

Something made him like this. Something in those other places he lived cultivated this self-sufficiency in him. It’s something he lies about, every time it comes up, and it’s something Satoru may never understand. 

But he can’t leave him alone. He’s never been able to do that. 

He cleans Natsume’s arm under a faucet in the bathroom until the water runs clear, then again with soapy water and a paper towel. Applies the antibacterial ointment, and picks out a square of gauze big enough to cover the whole of it, and tapes it down carefully. Natsume submits to the clumsy doctoring with round eyes, as though he can’t understand why so small a thing is being handled with such care. He looks up at Satoru’s face once or twice, but never for longer than a second.

It’s less of a cut and more of a scrape– surface damage that doesn’t go very deep, the uppermost layer of skin rubbed away, like the road rash Kitamoto once sustained on his knee after a spectacular bicycle crash. 

Kitamoto, at the very least, let Satoru help him walk home. Natsume probably wouldn’t have without token protest, like his friends shouldn’t have to bother with him unless he’s at his very best, like he’s only worth as much weight as he can carry on his own. 

Half the time it’s not worth the fight it takes to make Natsume talk to him. He’s opened up a lot since moving here, but it’s a game of one step forward and two steps back. Satoru can never know if the risk is worth it– if demanding answers is worth the distance it will put between them for the next few days. 

“‘Kay,” he says, in a tone that strives for cheerful and misses by a mile. “I’m not a doctor, and I might never be one, but I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna die. Let’s go back to class.” 

He probably can’t sneak the first aid kit back in without getting caught by Nomiya-sensei, so he shoves it under a sink to retrieve later. Being Natsume’s friend means keeping secrets with him, even secrets he doesn’t really understand. He’s still trying to come up with a lie for where they went when Natsume touches his arm.  

He’s wearing an expression Satoru has only seen him give Tanuma and Taki and that ugly cat of his before. Something softer than should be allowed, full of thanks, full of caring. Like no one’s ever done this for him before. Like it changes something, that Satoru is willing to. 

“If you’d like,” Natsume says, slowly, carefully, picking out the words like someone picking their way over a tightrope, “I could tell you about what happened. It might be a little hard to believe, though.”

Satoru grabs for his hand before he can help himself, like Natsume might disappear along with this offer if Satoru takes his eyes off him for a second. His throat is so full he’s not sure what his voice is going to sound like when he says, “Right now?”

Natsume blinks, but that gentle expression doesn’t change. “Now? We’ll probably get a detention.”

“So? I hang out with you after school anyway,” he says, rubbing his eyes because they’re starting to sting. “Detention’s just a change of location.”

Natsume’s hand tightens around his, and a crooked smile fills his face, charming and warm and the smallest bit mischievous. And that– that’s new. A Satoru exclusive. Worth absolutely every minute it took to get here. Worth everything that might come later. 

“Follow me,” Natsume says, like there’s even a chance Satoru would go anywhere else.

Chapter Text

Tanuma blinks, looking taken aback. Takashi is only brave enough to hold his eyes for a few seconds before he goes back to staring at his hands.

“That can happen?” Tanuma finally asks, breaking the weighted silence with his soft, careful voice. “You can — lose your sight?”

“I guess so,” Takashi hedges. There’s a sick pit in his stomach at the thought, and he tries to ignore it, but he’s been trying for days now and he can’t. “I know it should be a relief — to think that one day I might be normal — “

But it’s not.

He would still have Nyanko-sensei in his lucky cat form, maybe, if he chose to stay— but all of Takashi’s friends in Yatsuhara would disappear to him.

The lonely spirits he meets, the lost bodies looking for home or rest or peace, the wavering, wandering, wistful souls that scared him as a child and make sad sense to him now —

They would all be gone.

And sometimes — sometimes — Takashi wouldn’t have anything if he didn’t have them.

Maybe this family won’t keep him, maybe this class won’t like him, but there will always be someone to talk to. He’s never truly been alone in the world, not truly, not when ghosts have been his constant companions for as long as he can remember.

Tanuma’s hand covers his own, startling Takashi into looking up at him. His dark eyes are warm, unfailingly gentle, and he looks at Takashi like he’s seeing right through him.

Heart in his throat, Takashi clutches at Tanuma’s hand. He’s blinking back tears, staring out at the fishpond in the yard. It’s usually soothing, but now he has to wonder what he would look at if it was gone.

“Even if you lost the sight, it’s not like you’d never see them again,” Tanuma points out, his voice much lighter than his expression. “Taki would be happy to draw circles for you whenever you asked. I’m learning how to draw them, too.”

It’s Takashi’s turn to be taken aback. Tanuma smiles.

“I know it’s not the same, but it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? It would be like going for a visit. Like how Shibata comes to see you every now and then. He can’t be here all the time, because you live too far apart, but he’s still your friend. Even when you can’t see him, he isn’t gone.”

He’s never thought of it like that. The icy fingers around his lungs loosen a little, enough that it’s a bit easier to breathe.

“No matter what happens, you won’t be alone,” Tanuma presses on, stubborn despite his softness. “You’ll never be alone. I know it’s hard to believe, but maybe someday I’ll convince you.”

Takashi is saved answering by the fat little body that comes waddling through the bushes toward them. Nyanko-sensei heaves himself up onto the porch with a grunt.

“What are you brats over here muttering about?” he demands. Takashi can’t help but smile at him, petting him with his free hand.

“I thought you went drinking with the chuukyuu, Ponta,” Tanuma says, accepting the interruption without another word.

“Next time,” the lucky cat says, and that’s all he says, settling in for a nap in the late afternoon sun.

He’s a warm weight against Takashi’s knee, and his rumbling purr is familiar, and sandwiched between him and Tanuma, Takashi can’t hold onto fear.

Chapter Text

Tanuma’s hand on Natsume’s arm is the only thing keeping him upright after he almost trips off his feet, not that Natsume is in the mood to care.

“Get off,” he mutters, shoving at Tanuma’s hand. “I’m fine.”

Tanuma patiently weathers the weak attempt, carrying half of Natsume’s weight with seemingly infinite patience and a mild expression, and Tsuji’s eyebrows go up so far they almost climb off his forehead.

Until today he wouldn’t have guessed that Natsume could even do grumpy, much less petulant.

“Natsume, I am this close to calling Touko,” Nishimura says severely from Natsume’s opposite side, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart directly in front of Natsume’s glassy eyes. “If you snark at Tanuma one more time— “

The threat seems to do its job. Natsume subsides with a scowl that he directs at the floor, and Kitamoto shares a look with Tanuma over his head that’s equal parts amused and long-suffering.

“You knew you were sick,” Kitamoto says, “so why did you think it was a good idea to come to school? Did you think we wouldn’t notice? Just ‘cause your parents are away on business doesn’t mean there’s nobody around to call you out when you decide to be self-sufficient at literally the worst possible time.”

Tsuji watches some complicated feeling swim through Natsume’s feverish expression. It’s there and gone too swiftly for Tsuji to make sense of, but at a glimpse it looked painful.

When he stepped into the classroom this morning, he wore a polished smile, said hello in a voice that didn’t break, and Tsuji was completely taken in by it. He marvels, a little, that Nishimura only had to take one look at Natsume to tell how bad things were.

“Doesn’t help that you passed out right after homeroom,” Nishimura blusters. His arm is wrapped carefully around Natsume’s waist, steady and supportive, at complete odds with the annoyed look on his face. “I mean, what are you trying to prove?”

Tsuji hurries ahead to get the next door for them, as they make their stubborn way toward the infirmary. Natsume’s feet are all but dragging, but he seems determined to do this under his own power.

As Nishimura and Tanuma maneuver Natsume through the doorway, Tsuji hears Natsume mutter, “I can take care of myself just fine.”

It makes something in Tsuji’s chest ache, his heart practically folding over— he remembers Natsume as a brand new transfer student, those lonely lunch hours he’d find the other boy napping by himself in unused classrooms, or eating a lovingly-packed bento alone behind the storage building— he remembers the principle and Nomiya-sensei both warning him, “Look out for him as well as you can, class president. He hasn’t had an easy time.”

He remembers, but it’s easy to forget, with how early on Nishimura attached himself to Natsume’s side, with how completely Kitamoto and Taki and Tanuma came to care for him after that.

It’s easy to look at Natsume and think he belongs here, between his friends, in Tsuji’s homeroom, on the country road he walks to school, and he never belonged anywhere else.

It’s easy to believe his smiles, even on days like this.

But Nishimura scowls, and Kitamoto sighs, and Tanuma says, in the tired manner of someone airing an old argument, “Of course you can, Natsume. We know you can.”

“It’s not like we’re here because we have to be,” Nishimura adds testily. “We just want to. You jerk.”

That painful expression touches Natsume’s face again, even more briefly than before— but this time Tsuji is ready for it, and he thinks he was wrong in the first place.

It’s a look that’s weighted, but not in a way that hurts. A lot all of feeling at once, but not hard to bear. Heavy without heartache.

And Natsume finally leans into his friends’ arms, the fight bleeding out of him.

“Fine,” he murmurs in that sick-sore voice. “Just this once.”

Yeah, right, Tsuji thinks, watching the three of them reluctantly surrender Natsume to the nurse’s exasperated care; watching Taki slip in to join them from wherever she ran off to before, smuggling a familiar cat in under Natsume’s jacket in her arms.

No way is it going to be just this once. Natsume’s stubborn may have met its match.

And Tsuji makes a mental note to pay more attention— to keep an eye out for Natsume, the way even silly, breezy Nishimura adamantly does— so he can be of more help on days like this.

He can be pretty stubborn, too.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Ogata Yuriko invites them all to her house for her birthday, through Natsume. Even Adachi gets roped along, and they’re all eager to make the weekend trip with each other.

“Shibata’s meeting us there,” Tanuma says on the train, looking up from his phone, and Kitamoto raises his eyebrows.

“That’s – what, seven of us? Eight, really, since sensei’s fat enough to count as a person.”

“She said it was okay,” Natsume says slowly, but his eyes trail over their group like he’s second-guessing himself now. He hugs his cat the way he only does when he’s getting nervous.

Nishimura gives Kitamoto a look that could have probably poisoned a lesser man – as attentive to Natsume’s moods as a wise old dog, apparently even when buried in a card game with Adachi two seats away – but Kitamoto doesn’t have time to backtrack before Taki is swooping in to save the day.

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. She wouldn’t have invited us otherwise! I’m looking forward to seeing her again, aren’t you?”

That coaxes a smile back to Natsume’s pale face, as he nods and agrees.

“I hope she likes her gifts,” he says, and Nishimura rolls his eyes so hard it’s a miracle he doesn’t sprain something.

“Oh, please. You got her autographed Natori Shuuichi merchandise. Like, stuff that isn’t even in stores yet. She’s gonna love it. Way to show the rest of us up, dude.”

Natsume muffles a laugh behind his hand, looking both apologetic and amused, and Kitamoto leans back into his seat with a smile of his own.

It will be nice to see Ogata again. Kitamoto thinks the rest of Natsume’s friends are in agreement. Aside from Shibata, she’s the only person Natsume knew from before that tracked him down to where he lives now. The only person stubborn enough to maintain a friendship despite all the time and distance between them.

And that makes her worth knowing, as far as Kitamoto is concerned.

Ogata is waiting for them at the station with another girl, and lights up when Natsume steps off the train. 

She greets him with a hug that Natsume shyly reciprocates. Ogata’s friend laughs without cruelty when Natsume fumbles to remember her name.

“Junko,” she introduces herself warmly. “We were in different classes, so there’s no hard feelings. But Yuriko talks about you so much there’s no way I’d forget your name!”

They move their group to the back of the platform where they’re less obtrusive, and linger there for another hour until Shibata’s train arrives. He looks harried and more than a little ruffled, and then Natsume lifts a hand and calls his name, and it’s a little funny, a little telling, how all of Shibata’s tension just floats away.

Of course, he puffs right back up and starts complaining about the cramped, long, boring train ride, but he probably would have traveled twice as long to hang out with them for the weekend, endless whining notwithstanding.

“Um,” Natsume says, right as they’re about to head out of the station, “I hope we’re not – imposing.”

Kitamoto feels it when three different glares are leveled at him at the same time, and winces. Ogata says, “Of course not, Natsume! I invited you all of you, didn’t I?”

But there’s something in her face that looks – guilty, maybe, or sorry.

“If it’s room you’re worried about, don’t be,” Junko puts in. “We’re having the party at my house, ‘cause my parents are away for the week. There’s plenty of space for our party, and even if there wasn’t, no one’s around to get annoyed!”

That makes sense, and Nishimura sees something at a kiosk that catches his eye, so he drags Natsume off to look at it, and that puts an abrupt end to any further conversation.

Off to one side, Taki and Tanuma are talking to Ogata in low voices. Their host looks a little upset.

“– were rumors, you know, awful rumors. I tried to convince my mom there was nothing to them, but she didn’t believe me. She didn’t want me to have anything to do with Natsume, but I couldn’t just – ”

Taki puts a sympathetic hand on Ogata’s arm, and Kitamoto turns away at that point, feeling abruptly like he shouldn’t be listening. 

He thinks that maybe Natsume wouldn’t have been welcome at Ogata’s house in the first place – that maybe there’s another, unspoken reason the party is at Junko’s house instead – but he can’t fault Ogata for that, not really.

There were rumors back in Hitoyoshi, too, when Natsume first transferred in. Rumors that he was an orphan and he moved around a lot, and a lot of speculation as to the hows and whys beyond that.

Tsuji and Sasada made it abundantly clear to their classmates what would happen to them if they made the new student’s life difficult in any way, so Natsume was never bothered about it – and it was only a matter of weeks before Nishimura adopted him and started dragging him everywhere. From there, it wasn’t long before Kitamoto became his friend, too.

It’s hard for him to understand why people might want to stare at Natsume, or whisper about him behind his back, instead of trying to make friends with him. He’s quiet, and he’s got that thousand yard stare, and maybe he’s a little hard to get to know, but he’s worth knowing.

He’s worth a lot.

Kitamoto blinks when Taki and Tanuma and Ogata fall into step beside him, still talking. Ogata’s mouth is firm, her face a study in determination, as she says, “I won’t let anything bad happen. You’re all here as my friends, and if anyone has a problem with that, they have a problem with me.”

Her eyes are trained somewhere ahead, and Kitamoto follows her gaze to the kiosk that lured half his friends away. They’re trying on cheap plastic sunglasses in various neon colors, trying to coax a pair onto an unwilling Nyanko-sensei, and Natsume is smiling, bright and unguarded. 

Ogata looks like she would fight for that smile. Kitamoto can’t help grinning at her, because that’s a sentiment the rest of them share. 

Evening finds them sprawled comfortably in Junko’s living room, eating birthday cake before ordering dinner because no one’s around to tell them not to. 

Ogata opens her gifts with a pleasantly surprised, somewhat bashful look about her, like she didn’t expect them all to bring her presents for her birthday. 

Her eyes get big and round when she opens the gift bag Natsume hands her and pulls out exclusive CDs and glossy prints with a familiar, flashy signature and handwritten happy birthday wishes. For a long moment she just holds them and can’t seem to think of anything to say. 

“I can’t really take credit,” Natsume says, not quite looking at anyone. “Natori is a friend, and he’s always a little too happy to send me his merchandise when I ask for it.”

“It’s like,” Nishimura says in a stage whisper, “he has no idea that being friends with Natori makes it more impressive.”

Junko dives to catch the merchandise when Ogata drops everything and lunges over to hug Natsume around the shoulders with what looks like all the might she can muster. 

“Thank you so much! I’m going to get these prints framed! I can’t believe you got Natori Shuuichi to wish me a happy birthday! Natsume thank you!”

“Wow,” Junko says. “He made the present I got her pretty much obsolete.”

Nishimura throws up his hands. “Exactly! That’s what I said!”

Natsume’s face is pink, but he’s grinning against Ogata’s hair as he hugs her back. And if she hangs on for an extra minute or two – well, Kitamoto’s not gonna say anything about it. They’ve all been there. 

“Thank you,” Ogata tells him again, muffled against his shoulder. 

“Of course,” Natsume says. “It’s your birthday.”

“Not just for the gifts,” Ogata says in that sweet, sincere way that girls have, refusing to be embarrassed as she sits back and looks Natsume right in the eye. “Thank you just for being here.”

Natsume looks as though it’s the first time anyone’s thanked him just for being there. 

As long as Ogata can put a look like that on Natsume’s face, Kitamoto is happy to call her a friend. 

Chapter Text

Tooru is no stranger to loneliness. Once upon a time her days were numbered, and every person whose name she called was dragged into danger, so she boxed herself up and kept her silence and spent whole months without a single friend.

She knows, better than she ever thought she would, what solitude feels like. She knows how it feels to be isolated, to get stuck behind walls you built with your own hands, to not be able to cry out for help or company or just the briefest, barest acknowledgement.

She knows that sad solitude inside and out, she’d know it from a mile away in the dark or pouring rain, because she lived in its shadow for so long she thought she’d never see the sun again. 

“Natsume,” she says lightly, hanging behind their group at the end of the lunch hour. “Can I steal you for just a minute?”

Kitamoto agreeably drags a protesting Nishimura down the stairs, and Natsume moves back to join her by the roof access door. And he sounds so normal when he says, “What is it?” and he looks like he’s got nothing on his mind but his friends and school and whatever Tooru is about to say. 

Tooru reaches out, closing the space between them to put a hand on his arm. It’s a soft touch, just her fingertips on his sleeve. Nishimura and Kitamoto get away with surprise tackles and full-body hugs, but they’ve been his friends for much longer, and Tooru is still a little new at this. She still takes great care.

“I want you to know,” she says, knowing what she would have liked to hear back then, “that I’m here for you. No matter what, I’m here.”

The surprise makes his eyes get wide, his expression clear and unguarded for one shining moment. The tired shadows on his face are almost nothing at all.

And then all of it is swept away behind that pretty smile that turns heads, effortlessly charming when it needs to be, assuring her, “Thank you, but I’m alright. Just a little tired, that’s all.” 

But that doesn’t explain why he barely said a word at lunch. Why he’s kept to the fringes of their group for days. Why he looks past and through them all like he’s a hundred miles away. 

It reminds her of her, of having a secret and being scared and not wanting anyone else to get hurt because of something she did. 

“If you weren’t alright,” Tooru says carefully, “you could talk to me about it. I might not be much help, but I would do whatever I could. I’d be happy to. Please don’t shut me out, Natsume,” she goes on, and her voice catches. “I’m here.”

I’m here, I’m here, she had wanted to cry, when she was so lonely she couldn’t bear it.

Natsume’s free hand covers hers. The pretty smile is gone, replaced by those pale shadows his friends all picked up on days ago. They’re more obvious, now that he isn’t pretending. 

And he doesn’t say anything, but Tooru twists her wrist until she can curl her fingers around his and squeeze tight, and he squeezes right back. 

They both know loneliness like it’s a worn footpath to a place they used to live. They both know what it’s like to be alone in the middle of a busy room. 

But they’re standing here together, hand-in-hand, while the bell rings them late to class. They can still do this, they can still reach out and be reached in turn, and Tooru thinks that’s more than enough to feel hopeful about. 

Chapter Text

Kaname is aware, on some level, that he’s dreaming.

The yokai fish are swimming in lazy circles in their pond, and what must be Ponta’s true form takes up the rest of the yard where he’s sprawled for a nap.

Kaname can see them and it isn’t a surprise. Dream logic, he supposes, and doesn’t linger on the thought. 

He looks down at Natsume’s hand, where it rests in his own. The wound from earlier, the one Kaname himself bandaged because Natsume refused to go to a doctor, isn’t there anymore. Even his old scars are gone.

“You have that look on your face again,” Natsume teases. “What are you thinking about?”

“You,” Kaname confesses. It’s easier to say now than it is when he’s awake. “And how reckless you are.“

Natsume shifts until he can lay his head on Kaname’s shoulder, his silver hair brushing against Kaname’s cheek. Even that brief gesture was elegant. Is this the same boy that trips over his own feet at school?

“You got hurt again, Natsume, because you ran off alone. And I was right beside you— I could have helped. Let me help,” Kaname goes on, aware that he’s pleading. “You can’t do it all on your own. You can’t. What if you— what if you die? What if one day I wake up and you don’t?”

It sends a cold chill through him. Just the thought makes him tremble, this fear he’s carried with him for years. The odd, pleasant dream begins to feel more like a nightmare.

Natsume says, “Well, that’s alright. I’d just become something you couldn’t see anymore. Like one of your pretty fish.”

Kaname jerks away from him involuntarily, stung, and Natsume looks surprised.

“I’ll still be here,” says the silver-washed version of Kaname’s favorite person, kind but not comforting. “You could talk to me in one of Taki’s circles whenever you wanted.”

It’s the most horrible thing he’s ever heard, and it hurts so much it wakes him up.

He’s halfway to his knees before his eyes are fully open, chest heaving, shaking hands shoving his blanket away. The room is bright with the beginnings of dawn, Ponta is a familiar lump down by his feet, and Natsume is inches away on a guest futon, bandaged hand curled by his face, deeply asleep.

Impulsively, Kaname reaches over and shakes him awake.

“Wh— Tanuma, what—“

His Natsume is warmer than that moonlit counterpart— golden in the morning light, groggy as he sheds his blanket and sits up, borrowed pajamas too big for his narrow frame, a crease on his cheek from the pillow, distinctly human, annoyed, alive.

Natsume squints at him grumpily. But in no time at all his expression is changing, shifting into something openly concerned, and he says, “Tanuma? Are you alright?”

‘Like one of your pretty fish,’ he said in the dream, and Kaname can feel his eyes burning, can feel his heart climbing up his throat, thinks of only talking to Natsume from inside a spirit circle and wants to cry.

“Don’t go where I can’t see you,” he says, and it’s so stupid, but he’s so scared. “Promise me, Natsume, promise you won’t disappear.”

Natsume’s eyes are wide. He looks down at his injured hand, and guilt steals into his face, and he clenches his fist even though it must hurt.

Then he pulls Kaname into a hug.

He smells like ozone and smoke, their adventure the night before lingering on his skin and in his hair, and he presses into Kaname’s chest like he’s seeking shelter there.

“Sorry,” he whispers, awkward and insecure and brimming with a stubborn compassion that could carry him for miles after his legs gave out. “I promise I’ll try.”

And it’s remarkable that something so uncertain could be such a comfort. But he means it, and he’s here, and just that is enough.

Chapter Text

“I don’t care what you say,” Kitamoto says succinctly, “you need me, so I’m coming home.” 

Satoru tightens his grip on his cellphone, wavering between gratitude and guilt. Guilt wins. Kitamoto never gets to see his grandparents, he was excited about going to visit them for weeks. This – this isn’t bad enough that Satoru should ruin his holiday. 

“Seriously,” he says, when he’s sure his voice won’t break, “don’t.”

There’s silence on the other line, for so long that Satoru would wonder if Kitamoto had hung up on him if not for all the muted background noise. Then his friend says, “Fine.” His voice is tight and unhappy. “Then go to Natsume’s house.”

“Huh?”

“You’re not allowed to be alone right now,” Kitamoto says with forced calm, “so you’re going to Natsume’s house. And I’m gonna call Touko-san as soon as you hang up to make sure of it.”

“Dude,” Satoru says, taken aback and somewhat betrayed. 

“Satchan,” Kitamoto says abruptly, almost cutting him off. That old childhood nickname does better than any well-reasoned argument would in shutting Satoru up and making him pay attention. “Please.”

Satoru thinks he should feel really embarrassed about this, but he doesn’t. He’s sort of floating above it all. His head is pounding, the skin around his eye and the corner of his mouth raw and tender, but he isn’t really thinking about it. Times like these, he always feels a little foggy, a little ungrounded. 

“Dad’s not gonna be home long,” he says, a last-ditch effort. “He told aniki he’s leaving after dinner.”

“That’s great. Start walking.”

Satoru rolls his eyes loudly and starts walking. Kitamoto stays on the phone with him as he crosses town, even though he should be spending his time with his family – and maybe it makes Satoru kind of a bad person, but he’s glad. 

When the Fujiwara house comes into view down the street, Satoru says, “I’m here. You’re not really gonna call Touko-san, are you?”

“Not really. See if you can spend the night there.”

“Why are you more of a mom than my mom is?”

“Someone’s gotta do it. Text me.” 

Satoru is just sliding the phone into his pocket when Touko comes into view at the gate with the broom she uses to sweep leaves off the pathway. Her face lights up when she spots him, and she calls out, “Satoru-kun! I thought that was you!”

Her smile drops when she gets a good look at him. Satoru smiles past it, even though it makes his mouth ache, and says, “Hi, Touko-san. Is Natsume home?”

Natsume is home, and his expression is even harder to look at than Touko’s. He takes Satoru’s hand to lead him upstairs, as if Satoru needs help finding the right room, and only lets go to slide the door shut behind them.

The bedroom is warmly lit in the setting sun, the window open to let in summer evening air. The second Satoru sits down, Nyanko-sensei crawls into his lap, and the heavy, purring weight of him eases pounds of tension of Satoru’s shoulders he didn’t even notice was there. 

Natsume says, immediately, “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah,” Satoru says with a shrug. “Dad isn’t home very often, he works overseas.”

He busies himself with petting Nyanko-sensei, and listens to a talkative crow that must be lurking somewhere in the backyard. It’s nice here. Even when the house is full of Natsume’s friends – those weekends when even Shibata and Ogata come visit – and they’re all rowdy and noisy, Touko and Shigeru are all unforced smiles and easy fondness. Satoru has never felt anything less than welcome here. 

“Kitamoto made me come over,” he adds.

“Next time, come over on your own,” Natsume says without missing a beat. His eyes are silvery and unflinching. Knowing. 

He gets it. Satoru looks down at his hands, buried in thick, soft fur. The understanding between them is a sad, unspoken thing. 

“It’s not as bad as you think it is,” Satoru needs to say. “I know that sounds stupid, but – I mean, I’m not sticking up for the guy, but, really, he’s never home. And even when he is, aniki usually keeps him away from me.”

Natsume nods, but what he says is, “It doesn’t sound stupid. You’re not stupid. And even if it’s not as bad as I think it is, it’s still bad. And even if it doesn’t happen often, it’s not fair that it happens at all.” 

It sounds like he’s reading a pre-prepared statement, or looking at a cue card – or, and maybe more to the point, it sounds like he’s repeating something he’s been told before. 

“Maybe I’m not the best person to go to, because I always make such a mess of things,” Natsume goes on, doggedly, “but I’m – I’m here. Even if you just need someplace to spend the night, or someone to talk to. Or a cat to pet,” he adds, with a faint smile. “I’m always here.” 

Satoru is sinking hard. It’s like he’s been watching a movie but it’s time to stand up and leave the theater now. It’s becoming real, becoming something he has to deal with. His hands are shaking, but Nyanko-sensei doesn’t move away.

“I never want you to feel like you’re not good enough. I never want you to feel like you’re not important,” Natsume says, very quiet. “I felt that way before I came here, and maybe I still do sometimes but you – and Kitamoto, and Tsuji, and Tanuma – you help. And I’d – I’d like to help, too. If I can.”

The room is warm and orange, and Nyanko-sensei is still purring, and Natsume’s eyes are steady and kind. Satoru kind of feels like a box full of loose parts that he needs more time to put together correctly. 

“I can stay the night?” he asks carefully, just to be sure.

Natsume says, “Of course you can. Touko-san would probably let you move in if you asked.” And then he reaches across the unremarkable distance between them, waiting a few inches away.  

Satoru lets go of the cat, dangles perilously off an edge for all of two seconds, and then feels secure again in the tight clasp of Natsume’s hand. They sit that way for what feels like a long time, their fingers tangled comfortably and Natsume peacefully describing what the clouds look like from his seat beside the window. 

By the time Touko calls them down for dinner Satoru feels like himself again, instead of an imposter knocking around in a Satoru costume. He squeezes Natsume’s hand, with a smile where a simple ‘thank you’ wouldn’t have been big enough, and Natsume lets go of a little sigh.

“There you are,” he says, and smiles back. 

Chapter Text

Nishimura’s got that look in his eye that Takashi has come to dread. It’s a look that says he’s three seconds away from losing his temper in a remarkable fashion.

This is usually about the time Kitamoto would step in, but Kitamoto isn’t here. 

So Takashi ventures a step forward. Hesitates to put a hand on Nishimura’s arm, his fingers hovering inches from his sleeve. Says, carefully, “It’s okay.”

“The hell it is,” his friend bites out. There’s disproportionate fury on his face, an anger so big it should belong to some other situation. Not something as silly as this. 

They’re in the city for the weekend to visit Shibata, and Kitamoto and Taki and Tanuma are all here, too. Takashi volunteered to go to the nearest convenience store for snacks, and Nishimura tagged along, and they ran into a few familiar faces on their way back. Two boys Natsume went to school with as a child. 

Absence doesn’t really make the heart grow fonder. All the years between now and then, and their immediate reaction to Takashi was disbelief, disdain, mean-spirited mirth. 

If it were anyone else beside him, it might not have escalated to the point that the manager of the 7-Eleven chased them off the lot with a broom. But since it was Nishimura, and Nishimura has a hair-trigger temper where his friends are concerned, it absolutely did. 

Nyanko-sensei is smothering laughter down by Takashi’s feet. Of course he would think it’s hilarious.

A little breathless from their brisk run, Nishimura shuffles plastic bags until he has a hand free to shove through his hair. His mouth is still screwed up, his eyes bright with anger, but what he says is, “You know I love you, right?”

Takashi blinks, a little taken aback but not startled. His hand sinks those last few inches onto Nishimura’s arm. 

“I know,” he says, unable to help the small smile that works its way onto his face. His friends are casual and generous with that particular truth, and it always makes him feel warm. “You’ve never given me reason to doubt that.”

Nishimura finally turns to look at him, and there’s so much feeling on his face it’s a wonder he doesn’t implode beneath it all. 

“None of it was your fault,” he says. “All of that stuff they said– about you being a liar– I don’t care what it was about. I don’t care what happened back then. I know you, and I know that it wasn’t your fault. Believe me?”

If someone told Takashi when he was six that he would have a friend like this, it would have been his turn to call them a liar. 

But Nishimura is here, too loud and stubborn to be a lie. He’s ferocious in his caring, as though he knows how much there is to make up for. He threw Shibata’s overpriced tea at a boy a head taller than him, just to shut him up two minutes faster than he would have on his own, and Takashi thinks he wouldn’t have done that for most other people.

“Like I said,” Takashi says quietly, so happy it sits in his heart like pain, “you’ve never given me reason to doubt it.”

It’s the right thing to say when Nishimura grins. He crowds into Takashi’s side, wrapping a familiar arm around his shoulders, and says, “What do you think the others will say when we tell them what happened to Shibata’s drink?”

Takashi stoops to pick up Nyanko-sensei, and Nishimura’s arm is still waiting for him when he straightens. It’s been most of a year, and it’s something like second nature to lean into him now.

“Let’s find out,” Takashi says, and finds he’s smiling at the thought.

Chapter Text

“You little fool,” Shuuichi bites out, somehow managing to speak around the painful knot in his throat. “I’ll never know what the hell goes through your mind. You shouldn’t have even been there!”

But of course, Natsume doesn’t answer. He’s limp and all but lifeless in the cradle of Shuuichi’s arms, head lolled back against Shuuichi’s shoulder, and if it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest Shuuichi would have flown into a panic by now. 

Stupid, stupid child, he thinks venomously. Natsume had no business following Shuuichi, no business butting in, that yokai could have killed him – would have, if not for Madara’s powerful light, a violent burst of toothed vengeance that left sunspots in Shuuichi’s eyes for an hour – and for what?

“You always help me,” Natsume whispered in the moments before Shuuichi lost him, his voice breathy from a blow that almost crushed his windpipe. “I wanted to help you.”

Professional relations aside, Shuuichi has never been close friend and mentor before. He’s never taken another person under his wing purely for the sake of expending effort and energy and resources to better their life at no benefit to his own. 

He looked to Natsume as a powerful pawn at first, a malleable child he could impress upon to be of use to him during his own ventures. Shuuichi wanted to be close to him, to gain his trust, for entirely selfish reasons.

And now – now – Shuuichi wishes he had stayed far away from this reckless, burdened boy, and his impossible caring, and his hopeless love for anyone who shows him even the smallest kindness. 

“You little fool,” Shuuichi says again, without heat, and holds him closer when the forest shadows start to creep in with nightfall. 

Madara left while his fur was still singed and smoking, promising to return swiftly with a yokai that would heal his bratty charge. Shuuichi’s shiki guard them watchfully, and the scattering of glowing eyes in the brush belong to Natsume’s friends among the ayakashi. They’re as safe now as they could possibly be until Madara returns and all Shuuichi has to do at this point is keep the battered child breathing, keep him warm. 

It’s painful, he realizes. 

Natsume’s trust is like a precious treasure strapped to his back – worth too much to set down or risk losing, even as the weight of it threatens to break him with every step. 

Chapter Text

When Tooru meets Natori Shuuichi for the first time, he looks nothing like he does in TV dramas and promotional videos. His expression is dark with anger, and his bright eyes linger on Natsume’s face like he’s committing the bruises there to memory.

“I’ll take care of this,” he says in a cold, cold voice. “You three stay inside. Madara, look after them.”

Nyanko-sensei gives a little huff, but there’s no heart in it. He’s tucked comfortably up against Natsume’s side as though it would take a force of nature to move him. 

“I’ll set up a barrier once you and your shiki are gone,” the lucky cat says. “So get going, brat.”

Natori nods, and his hand lingers on Natsume’s hair for an extra second he doesn’t have to spare, and then he turns with a sharp snap of his coat and plunges back into the dark. 

Tanuma shuts the door behind him. After a second’s thought, he locks it. 

A symbol lights up Nyanko-sensei’s forehead, glowing so white that Tooru has to cover her eyes. When it’s gone, and Tooru is blinking away sunspots, nothing looks any different but Nyanko settles with a put-upon sigh. 

“Don’t go upstairs or past the kitchen,” the cat grumbles. “The ward I put up is strong, concentrated to the middle of the house. Nothing short of a god can get in here now.”

It’s a relief to hear. Tanuma’s shoulders slump a little bit, but his eyes are dark and deep and full of worry. Tooru follows his gaze to their friend.

Natsume’s shirt is torn along the collar, falling open across his shoulder, and Tooru’s breath catches at the sight of his arm. A shadow of a hand, the blue-black impression of fingers that gripped so hard they left a mark. He’s shuddering, chest heaving, and he’s looking right through them as though they aren’t there.

Natori gave them a brief idea of what had happened. Another recruitment pitch from the head of an influential exorcist clan, who apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with abducting a fifteen-year-old on his way home from school.

While Tooru was chatting the afternoon away with Jun, and picking out snacks for movies at Tanuma’s house, Natsume was tied to a chair and left in a warded room with a hungry yokai. It would feed on his strength until he was too weak to refuse Matoba’s offer, and then Natsume would have been lost to them for good.

But he was never going to be without rescue, and he was stubborn enough to outlast the yokai until Nyanko and Natori arrived.

Tanuma kneels, as carefully as if he’s approaching a broken-winged bird, and says, “Natsume?”

But Natsume recoils violently from the hand that lands on his uninjured shoulder, scrambling away like it burned. His voice is hardly more than a whisper, and raspy, like he can’t get enough air to speak up.

“Don’t– don’t touch me, don’t– “

Tanuma looks like his heart is breaking, but his voice is as gentle as it’s always been. “I won’t touch, I promise. I’m sorry. Can you look at me?”

It doesn’t seem like he can, not at first. But sensei starts to purr, a grumbling, throaty noise like an ancient car engine, and after a few tense seconds, Natsume’s eyes dart up. 

Tooru presses against Tanuma’s back, her hands trembling. Tanuma says, “I know you’re scared. But you’re safe here, okay? You’re safe with us. We won’t let anybody take you away. Ponta’s right beside you and he looks comfy, I don’t think he’s letting you go anywhere anytime soon.”

Somehow, he knows what to say. Tooru wonders where he’s heard it before.

Natsume’s hands are clutched in the front of his ruined shirt. He wheezes, “I can’t– breathe– “ and Tooru has to steel herself not to rush to him. 

“Can you– “ she starts, and hesitates. But when Tanuma touches her hand, she dashes away her uncertainty and focuses on the dear friend who so plainly needs her. “Can you try to breathe with me? Just listen to how I breathe, okay? Watch me, Natsume.”

She inhales deep and slow, and lets it out with an audible exhale, and she does it over and over again until Natsume’s erratic gasps take on a similar rhythm. 

“It hurts and it’s scary,” Tanuma says very softly, “but it won’t last forever. This feeling will go away and you’ll still be here, safe and sound.”

“And if Matoba shows his face again, I’ll eat him,” Nyanko-sensei says plainly. It’s as close as he’s ever come to admitting how much he cares about the boy he grudgingly guards. “No matter how much you whine about it later.”

Natsume’s next breath breaks on a laugh, a choked, tiny little sound that nevertheless makes Tooru’s heart soar. This time, when Tanuma leans forward, Natsume doesn’t flinch away. His hands are shaking when he reaches out, as though he knows the distance is impossible but he can’t help reaching out anyway.

They sit there together for a long time, Natsume’s heart beating so fast Tooru can feel it through his shirt. She puts her head on his shoulder, careful not to dislodge Nyanko-sensei, and feels Tanuma’s arms come around them both. 

“We’re right here, Natsume,” he promises. “You’re safe, and we’re here.”

Tooru wakes up sometime later to find the room warmly lit. Someone has covered the three of them with a blanket that’s worn smooth beneath her cheek. Natori is sitting in a chair nearby, talking in a low voice to someone whose replies she can’t hear, and her boys are right beside her, and Natsume’s tear-stained face is slack and peaceful in his sleep. 

“Go back to sleep, brat,” Nyanko-sensei mutters, opening one eye to peer at her from Natsume’s lap. “There’s still time to rest until morning.”

A good idea, Tooru thinks, halfway there already. She pulls the blanket up a little from where it started to slip down Tanuma’s shoulder, brushes a kiss against Natsume’s tacky cheek, and murmurs a sleepy goodnight to Natori and his shiki as her eyes drift closed. 

“His friends are very kind,” an unfamiliar voice says, feminine and not quite human. Cool fingers touch Tooru’s hair, almost fond, a moment she’ll forget by morning. “I’m glad.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Kitamoto promised to keep Natsume busy and Satoru is on his own as he steps inside the Fujiwara’s inviting home.

“Sorry for intruding,” he says with a pale shadow of his usual enthusiasm, and manages a smile for the kind woman waiting to greet him in the hall. “Hi, Touko-san!”

Within moments Satoru is seated at the table with tea and youkan. The kitchen is warm and busy with whatever she’s cooking for dinner, and on any other day, Satoru would feel as at home here as he did Kitamoto’s place.

But today the youkan is mocking him. His stomach twists uncomfortably.

“Touko-san,” he finally blurts, dragging his eyes up from his hands.  “I came to say I’m really, really sorry. I never – I would never – I mean.” He flounders, heat rising in his face while Natsume’s mother watches him patiently. “Your cooking is awesome, don’t get me wrong – the best – but I’d never ask Natsume to ask you to cook for me.“

Satoru hurts at the thought of Natsume asking. It took Natsume almost two weeks to work up the nerve to ask for a bike, and that was after he brought home that ugly cat, and Satoru knows him. Knows he probably tallies up those things he asks for on some mental blackboard, as carefully as if there’s an imaginary quota he’ll reach when he asks for too much, and he still marked a tally for Satoru’s sake.

At this point, Touko draws him up short with a delicate laugh. “To be honest,” she says, “I was thrilled he asked.”

Satoru blinks. “You were thrilled?”

“That boy doesn’t ask for a lot. He barely asks for anything at all. So when he does, I can’t help myself. I have to do what I can to make sure he has it.”

Satoru knows exactly what she means. He’s melted under Natsume’s soft, stubborn glares more times than he cares to mention, and that’s still nowhere near as bad as Tanuma. But still, he can’t help but point out, “This wasn’t for him, though, it was for me. You made lunch for me, and – I’m – thank you, but – “

“Takashi told me you don’t often bring a lunch to school. It’s not good for you to eat sweets or snacks in place of a meal, Satoru-kun,” she says, a stubborn glint entering her eyes. She’s using the Mom Voice now, and Satoru is practiced at ignoring it from his own mom, but he finds himself quailing in front of Touko. “If you’re not looking after yourself, how on earth can you hope to look after our Takashi?”

“But,” he tries helplessly, unsure where he’s going with it. Touko shakes her head, looking stern.

“In the end, you’re doing me a favor, really. If I know you’re eating well, I know Takashi is in better hands. So do this for me, please?”

It’s such blatant kindness where he didn’t expect it that he’s not sure what to do. Satoru has always been quick to cry, and he can feel his eyes burning as he nods. “Okay.”

Touko softens with a smile, and says, “So that’s that. Now drink your tea before it cools.”

And much later, when the sky is burnt orange with dusk and Natsume is waving goodbye to them from his front gate, Kitamoto asks Satoru how it went and Satoru rubs a helpless hand through his hair.

“Touko-san’s nice but she’s scary. Somehow I came out of that conversation agreeing to what I was trying to apologize for in the first place? And she managed to feed me again while I was there, I’m still not sure how that happened.”

Kitamoto has the gall to look unsurprised. He just nods, commiserating, and says, “Moms.”

Chapter Text

Nishimura is definitely doing something he’s not supposed to be. It’s obvious in the way he jumps at the sound of the door opening and whips around so fast he nearly falls over sideways.

He and Atsushi stare at each other for a moment. Atsushi sets his armful of vending machine snacks down on the table very slowly.

He’s known Nishimura his entire life. It takes him about three seconds to assess the situation. Skittish Nishimura, guilty expression, Natsume’s charts hanging crookedly from a clipboard just behind him.

“Dude,” Atsushi says lowly, disapproving. 

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Nishimura says, which is the most suspicious thing ever. “I was just– I mean, I didn’t– “

“We’re lucky they’re letting us stay past visiting hours,” Atsushi scolds him, still quietly, in deference to their sleeping friend in the hospital bed a foot away. “If they find out you’re nosing around in the paperwork they’re gonna kick us out.”

Nishimura deflates, looking miserable. Atsushi hates that expression on his face, especially at a time like this. Natsume and Nishimura are inseparable on a good day, and while it’s not totally uncommon for Natsume to land himself in the hospital because of his anemia or his clumsy accidents in the woods, it never gets easier for Nishimura to deal with.

“I know you’re worried, but the doctors told us he’ll be fine,” Atsushi reassures him, tone relenting despite himself. “He’s gonna wake up soon and make fun of you for being so worried.”

“But isn’t that strange?” Nishimura blurts. His voice is a little too loud in the quiet room, vaguely echoey the way everything always sounds in a hospital. He winces at himself for it, but bulldozes on anyway. “I mean, that– that he’s so used to it. Getting hurt. He was as scared as I was that time you sprained your wrist, but remember his broken ankle? He hardly flinched. He looked at me like I was crazy for freaking out. Isn’t that strange?”

There’s something in his tone that’s sort of biting, sort of desperate, and Atsushi has known him so long that the mirror neurons in his brain start adopting some of Nishimura’s agitation as his own. He cuts a quick glance at the still figure in bed, taking in the bandaged curve of Natsume’s cheek, and the mussed cloud of silvery hair, and the vivid bruises of his blackened eyes. 

“Getting sick is one thing, but getting hurt?” Nishimura goes on, on the quiet precipice of certain panic. “Why would he be used to that?”

Whatever Nishimura read when he was sneaking through the paperwork, it freaked him out. Whatever it was, Atsushi reminds himself sternly, the Fujiwaras must know already, and they’re taking care of it. They take good care of Natsume. Atsushi can’t do anything for him that his parents can’t do.

But he thinks of a sunny afternoon after school, and teaching Natsume how to ride a bicycle, and how thin his back had felt beneath Atsushi’s hands. Rumors had followed him all the way to their quiet corner of the countryside, and even if Natsume laughs and rolls his eyes and teases a lot more now than he did in the beginning, it’s impossible to forget the way he used to smile with miles of absence in his eyes.

Atsushi rubs his eyes hard, and meets Nishimura’s stricken gaze. He holds out a hand and says, “Give me the file.”

At the very least, they can be worried together.

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand,” Takashi says quietly, but it’s mostly a lie. 

He thinks he does understand, and that’s why he had to sit down as hard as he did. His head is spinning. He’s staring at the stack of paperwork on the kitchen table like it might come alive at any moment and try to run away. 

Touko and Shigeru are sitting in their seats across from him, as if it’s any normal mealtime. As insistent as Touko was about pouring everyone tea, no one’s drinking it. 

“What part don’t you understand?” she asks. She’s smiling at him, and it’s as gentle as it was the night they met, when she was so kind and strange that Takashi wasn’t sure she was even human. “I’ll explain it to you.”

Takashi’s grip on Nyanko-sensei is probably too tight, but the cat doesn’t squirm away or even grumble. He starts to purr instead, a throaty, rumbling noise that Takashi can feel in his bones. It gives him something to focus on. 

“It’s just– you want to?” Takashi whispers. “Keep me? You’re sure?”

Touko gets up from her chair as though she’s been waiting for an excuse. She rounds the table and kneels by Takashi’s chair. By the time she puts her arms around him, he’s crying. He lets go of his cat to hold onto Touko instead, half-afraid she might disappear. Half-afraid this is all some spirit’s elaborate trick. Half-afraid it’s a joke or something they’ll take back or something they don’t mean. 

But they have all the paperwork ready. It’s sitting right there, waiting for his decision. 

“I wish you knew how good you are,” Touko says softly. “I wish you knew how much we love you.”

A hand settles in his hair– Shigeru, leaning against the table on the other side of Takashi’s seat– and the needle pricks of sensei’s claws dig painlessly into his knee. 

And this is–

Takashi has no precedent for this. He has nothing to compare it to. The closest his mind can dredge up was a day in homeroom when Nishimura clung to his shoulders and refused to let Tsuji partner him with anyone else. It was silly and the rest of the class laughed but Takashi was touched by his friend’s stubbornness. People are stubborn when they care.

Touko and Shigeru argued for him, he remembers. They got into a fight with their relatives for a chance to bring him home, before they even knew him. For long, long months they’ve been going through hoops with child services and Takashi’s former guardians just to present him with this choice.

They’re the most stubborn people he’s ever met. And they want to keep him. 

“So you’ve finally taken a name, brat,” Nyanko-sensei says much later, in the darkness of Takashi’s bedroom, when Takashi is laying awake hours after he should have been asleep. “Took you long enough. By the time she was your age, Reiko had taken a hundred.”

“This one is different,” Fujiwara Takashi tells him firmly. “This one is mine.”

The lucky cat’s smile curls, in what is either amusement or disdain or affection or pride, and he settles into a comfortable loaf on Takashi’s stomach. The fourth member of Takashi’s family, and every bit as stubborn as the rest of them.

“Then we had better take good care of it.”

Chapter Text

Nishimura grabs Takashi in a way Takashi is utterly unprepared for. A hand on either side of his face, fingers digging into his hair, one solid yank that brings them abruptly eye-to-eye.

“Stop,” Nishimura says, articulating his words very carefully. “Telling me. To leave you behind.”

Takashi blinks rapidly, forced into a bit of a crouch because Nishimura is a few inches shorter than he is, but he couldn’t complain even if it occurred to him. His mind is completely blank with surprise.

There’s a yokai prowling around, and the longer Nishimura stays the more involved he is, and Takashi only wanted him to go home where it was safe. He didn’t mean for– for an argument. 

He says, “I was– just– “

“I know what you were just.” This is the closest Nishimura has ever come to sounding properly furious with him. He gives Takashi’s head a solid shake. “I’m not going anywhere. Come up with a new plan.”

Takashi gazes at him helplessly. He’s not sure how effective a lie would be with only inches between them. He’s not sure he wants to try one.

“Can you believe me that it’s dangerous?” he finally asks, softly. “That you’d be safer if you went home?”

Absolutely none of the steel in Nishimura’s eyes relents. His grip on Takashi tightens, almost to the point of pain. He snaps, “Of course I believe you, you idiot. That’s why I’m not leaving you alone.”

There’s still a dangerous yokai nearby, looming in the pressing darkness, watching them with shining eyes. But somehow, Takashi can ignore the threat of it for the moment. Somehow it’s not the most remarkable thing here. 

“Well?” Nishimura demands.

And Takashi makes a decision he’s not sure if he’ll regret. “The shrine,” he says, stepping back and taking one of Nishimura’s hands as they fall. “We can beat it if we run.”

Nishimura shoots him a fox’s grin, half a mile wide and all teeth. 

“I’m right behind you,” he says, like he’s been waiting forever to say it.

Chapter Text

Takashi is frozen, hands halfway outstretched and too far away from his friend’s trembling shoulders to be of any comfort. He darts a quick look at Kitamoto for help. The taller boy folds his arms and pins him with an unimpressed stare.

Clearly a succinct ‘you’re on your own, buddy.’

Right. Okay. 

Steeling himself, Takashi takes the last step between them and lowers careful hands those last few inches onto Nishimura’s arms. Nishimura tenses immediately under the touch, and it’s almost enough to make Takashi snatch his hands back, but he manages not to. 

“Sorry,” he says. The shape of the word, the taste of it, is familiar in his mouth. He must have said it more times than he’s said his own name at this point. And it feels like for every time he’s had to say it, it loses just a little bit more of its power, until its all but worthless at a time like this when he really, really needs it to mean something. “Nishi– Satoru, I’m really sorry.”

“Shut up,” his friend mutters, swiping furiously at his face with his sleeve. He’s still turned away, so Takashi can’t make heads or tails of his expression– but his voice is thick with tears, and just that is enough to make Takashi want to crawl into a hole. “It’s fine. Go away.”

‘You’re forgiven,’ he doesn’t say. ‘Obviously I forgive you.’ It’s one more thing they’ll put behind them. A kindness that feels more like a failure than anything else.

Takashi can feel his expression on the edge of crumpling. His mouth works, lips pressed tight to keep an unhappy sound from spilling out. He blurts, “Do I have to? Go away?”

His hands are like anchors on Nishimura’s shoulders. He’d pick them up if he had to, but he would rather let them rest where they are, fingers curling into Nishimura’s jacket, not wanting to let go. Nishimura hasn’t shaken him loose yet, so maybe he won’t have to. 

He’s never, ever been here before. He’s never– done this. Hurt someone like this. Too many restless nights and early mornings, not enough sleep and too much to worry about, exams at school and trickery in the yokai wood and all the strange creatures and people that fill his days, and he gave into his temper at the absolute worst moment, at the absolute worst person. 

“I know you didn’t mean it,” Nishimura mutters. “I’m not an idiot. So it’s fine.”

But it’s not, Takashi thinks, and it’s such a big thought that it has to be spoken. “It’s not fine. It’s– awful. I hurt your feelings, and made you cry, and that’s terrible. It’s not fine.” 

“I’m not crying!” Nishimura snaps, characteristically taking issue with the most inconsequential part of a situation he can find. He whirls around to glare, eyes red and puffy in a way that gives himself wholly away, but his expression is far from fragile or sad. “You don’t know anything, Bakashi!”

Now he knocks Takashi’s hands away, but only to yank him forward into a hug. Takashi stumbles, because it’s sudden, but he’s quick to wrap both arms around Nishimura once he catches himself, squeezing tight and tucking his face into the shorter boy’s shoulder. 

“I’m really sorry,” Takashi tells him there. Nishimura’s whole body heaves against his in a sigh. 

“How many times do I have to say I know? I forgive you. You’re one of my best friends, and one ugly fight isn’t gonna break us up forever. You should see me and Acchan go at it sometimes.” 

At the reminder of Nishimura’s counterpart, Takashi risks a glance at him, half-afraid to find that forbidding expression still on his face. But Kitamoto has softened, smiling crookedly at him in a way that means all is well again, and says, “He cries really easily. Especially during an argument. It never stops making me feel like shit when it happens, though.”

Nishimura claps his hands over Takashi’s ears with a scandalized “Language!” followed by, “What the hell, I do not!” and Takashi is surprised into a laugh that feels more like a benediction than anything else.

Chapter Text

For a moment, Takashi isn’t sure what woke him. And then he shivers again, a painful, full-body thing, as if his fever couldn’t wait to remind him. 

The room is dark and cool, a pervasive chill lingering in the corners despite the best efforts of the space heater. Takashi tilts head, and feels the damp compress slip off his face, and says, “Sensei?”

He feels uncomfortably like he’s floating somewhere above the floor, and his vision is swimming. The lucky cat must be right there, but Takashi can’t find him. It sends a pang through his chest, a loneliness that doesn’t make sense, and he starts to prop himself up on an elbow. 

“Sensei,” he says again, louder, and little paws shove him right back down.

“What the hell are you doing, brat? I step out for ten seconds to send those useless mid-ranks on their way, and you find a way to do something stupid even while bedridden. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but you always find a way to one-up yourself.”

Takashi understands maybe a third of that. A fourth, at the very least. The words are all slippery, gliding through his head like a school of silvery fish before he manages to pin them down and make sense of them, but he’s not very bothered by it. As long as sensei is blustering and barking, he’s still here. 

Laying down agreeably and accepting the compress back, Takashi attempts to explain himself. “I thought you were gone.”

“Shows what good thinking does you,” comes the sharp retort. “Maybe if you practiced a little more you’d be better at it. I’ll never understand what goes through your mind half the time. Where would I go in the middle of the night while you’ve got a fever of forty degrees?”

There are a lot of places he could go, Takashi thinks. He vanishes often enough on those evenings Takashi doesn’t have names to return or errands to run in Yatsuhara, and he must do something while Takashi is in school during the week. Maybe he didn’t understand the question. 

“You could go anywhere,” he points out, though it comes out as little more than word salad, his voice not quite agreeing with the exercise. “You can fly. There’s nothing keeping you here.”

Silence greets him this time, for so long that he starts to get worried and look around again. “Sensei?”

“Shut up,” the cat says. Only that’s his other voice, his bigger voice, and Takashi’s vision is suddenly full of white. He doesn’t have to lift his head or roll over now, not when Nyanko-sensei’s true form has taken up the whole room. 

Something falls over his middle, and when his hands make the slow, clumsy journey out from under the duvet, they find a wealth of soft fur in the form of a long, cloud-like tail. It isn’t remarkably heavy, but Takashi feels pleasantly anchored by it nonetheless. 

“You’re a little fool if that’s what you believe,” the great yokai says, a mountain, or a rolling ocean, something so much bigger than should fit in Takashi’s small bedroom, in Takashi’s human life. “I’ll give you a pass just this once because you’re sick. Go to sleep and leave me alone until your head is on straight.”

With sensei’s true form curled around his futon, the chill in the room has no choice but to surrender. Within moments, Takashi feels warm. Velvet waves of sleep are pulling him down, pulling him under, and he mumbles, “Don’t fly away without me.”

A huff of air that must have been a scoff or a sigh, and the rustling of a paw moving or that wolf-like head coming to rest on the edge of the futon. 

After a moment or an hour, Takashi hears him say, “You and I are stuck together, little fool. Until the day comes that you leave, I will be here. And I will be here for long after that, too.”

Takashi doesn’t understand, half-asleep and disoriented and not even sure of what day it is. He doesn’t know what Nyanko-sensei means by Takashi leaving, when he’s finally found a place he’d like to stay in forever. And he doesn’t know why sensei would stay behind on that impossible, hypothetical day, either, when he’s never been content to be left behind any other time. And by morning, when his fever has broken and Nyanko-sensei is a pudgy ball of judgmental green eyes by the foot of his bed, Takashi doesn’t remember the conversation at all. 

“Thanks for keeping me company, sensei,” Takashi says after breakfast, taking a walk to stretch his legs, the lucky cat a heavy, familiar weight in his arms. “We can go get some manju if you’d like.” 

“No,” comes the surprising answer, “I’d rather go flying.”

Taken aback, Takashi says, “Really? Where are you going?”

Nyanko-sensei springs out of his arms and transforms before he hits the ground, a golden eye peering at Takashi through the smoke before the rest of his form is visible. It’s all the invitation Takashi needs to climb onto his back, gripping handfuls of white fur and feeling strangely anchored by it.

“We’re not going anywhere,” the yokai says, as contrary and mysterious as a real cat when he chooses to be. “That’s the whole point.”

Chapter Text

Touko may be a lot of things, but she likes to think that she is not a fool. 

When Takashi comes to the door with a stranger in tow, and the stranger introduces himself warmly as Matoba Seiji, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Touko smiles politely but all of her attention is on Takashi.

He’s clutching his cat like it’s a lifeline, the only thing keeping him afloat at sea, and his eyes are bleak. His hair is a curtain that he’s hiding behind, the way it only rarely is anymore. He is so tense beneath Matoba’s hand that it would be impossible to mistake them for friends. 

This man is not kind, she realizes instantly. Whatever business he has here, it’s nothing good. 

And she has to struggle for a moment against the very real impulse to reach out and snatch Takashi safely away. 

“And here I thought I’d met all of Takashi’s friends already,” Touko says instead, drying her hands on her smock in case they’re still wet with dishwater. “They come by so often, you know. Even our neighbors recognize them. Everyone knows everything that goes on around here, I’m afraid.”

Matoba’s eyes narrow just a fraction, even as his pleasant expression doesn’t change. He seems more aware, now, of Watanabe-san across the street sweeping leaves off her porch and pretending not to eavesdrop. Of old Saito-san walking his dog slowly past the unfamiliar car in the road, disapproving of its showy, sleek black lines with a scowl. Of the cluster of retirees with their easels and paints, heading past to the hill nearby where they’ve taken to painting the bright countryside, sparing Touko a friendly wave as they go, and Matoba a lingering look of small-town curiosity. 

It is not quite a warning, and certainly not a threat, but a gentle reminder. Touko is alone in this house until Shigeru comes home from work and Takashi comes home from school, but she is not without help if she needs it. 

“I’m usually too busy for house calls, unfortunately,” Matoba says. “I’m the head of a rather large clan, and there’s always work to be done.”

“And how is it that you know Takashi?” 

“He’s done some work for me before. He’s very talented. I was actually hoping to talk to you about a possible apprenticeship. We’ve reached an understanding, he and I, about what is important.” 

Touko laughs, though she doesn’t feel much like laughing, and presses a hand to her face. “Oh, dear, what a silly thing to say! Takashi is a smart boy. He knows very well what is important, with or without your understanding.”

They’re still standing in front of the house, Takashi and Matoba on the porch, and Touko just inside the genkan. There’s no invitation to come inside, and Takashi finally seems to realize he’s not on his own. He lifts his head to look at her, something like hope bleeding in his eyes.

Touko keeps smiling, and holds out her hands. 

She doesn’t have to say anything. This is her home, and this is her son, and when Takashi dares slip out from beneath the hand on his shoulder, Matoba only hesitates a moment before letting him go. 

Touko touches Takashi’s hair, a reassurance– for him or herself, she isn’t sure. 

“Why don’t you go inside and help me put away the laundry?” she asks him gently, eager to see him away from this stranger. “Your friends are coming over later, and I’d hate not to have the chores finished before they arrive.”

He hesitates. He badly wants to go, she can tell, shaken by whatever close call this was. But then his cat digs its claws into his arm– not hard enough to cut, just to startle– and starts to squirm. Takashi says “oh” in a quiet voice and hands the silly thing over to Touko, where it curls up in the crook of her arms guardedly. 

Takashi looks relieved that his guard cat will keep her safe, the sweet child, and ducks past her into the house. Matoba looks unsettled, close to anger, off-kilter without Takashi under his hand. He’s giving the cat a hateful look, and Touko has had enough of this shadow darkening her front porch. 

“I’ve no interest in letting Takashi go anywhere with you,” she tells the man with a frown. “And neither will his father. Please leave my family alone from now on.”

Matoba blinks, slow and thoughtful. Every move he makes is languid, self-assured, but when he takes a step forward it’s quickly aborted; Nyankichi growls low and deep in his throat, a clearer warning than any flashing sign. 

“There is a lot about that boy you don’t know,” Matoba says. He still hasn’t lost the half-smile on his face, as though it’s just another strange article he’s wearing like the patch over his right eye. “A lot I could tell you that would make you think of him differently.”

Touko presses her mouth into a thin line, trying not to give into anger. She thinks of the rumors that followed Takashi since he was a young child, and the countless homes he was recycled through, and his medical history of bruises and broken bones and the clinical charts of abuse. She thinks of the boy who came home to them that first time, little more than a golden shadow with faraway eyes, and she thinks of the boy who comes home to them now, with a gift of fresh flowers in his hand, or a pack of rowdy friends at his heels, or a laugh tucked away in the corners of his smile like a timid creature not yet sure of its safety. She thinks of a white crow, and the softness on Takashi’s face when he called it beautiful, gazing up into the sky at something only he could see. 

She looks at the young man in front of her, dark in all the places Takashi is light, and says, “What on earth do you think you could tell me, to make me love him less?”

It throws him off. She sees the surprise bloom in his cold eyes like winter flowers, and his smile finally falters. Nyankichi purrs in her arms as if in triumph. 

“I think you should leave,” Touko says firmly.

Matoba’s eyes move. He’s looking at something outside the house, around it, and above, on the roof. One would think Touko had a guard assembled around her, for the way Matoba seemed to be weighing his odds. But it’s just her, and Takashi’s spoiled cat, and a gentle wind that stirs up the dead leaves at their feet, that presses against her like a half dozen supporting hands. 

He takes a step back, then another. “I think you’re right, Fujiwara-san.” 

It’s polite, with another one of those unfeeling smiles, and then Matoba bows shortly and leaves. Touko watches him walk away, and sighs her relief when she’s sure that he’s gone. 

“My, my,” she tells Nyankichi, heart racing now that the confrontation is over, “Shigeru will hardly believe it when I tell him how we protected the house!”

“He’ll believe it,” Takashi says from right behind her. He must not have gone far. His expression is impossibly caring, as close to love as he’s capable of yet, and he looks at Touko like a child looking at the moon for the first time. When his eyes move around her the way Matoba’s did, whatever invisible things he sees there make him smile. “I’ll tell him, too. He’ll have no choice but to believe us then.”

Touko laughs brightly, meaning it this time, and passes his heavy cat back. A good boy I’ve got, she thinks fondly, and closes the front door behind them when they’re all safely inside. 

Chapter Text

It’s late– close to three a.m. on a school night, according to the digital clock on the wall– but Natsume is a light sleeper. He wakes up at the sound of a light tapping on the living room window, and turns to find Nyanko-sensei’s eyes glinting in the darkness from beside his pillow. 

“Some weakling has come for their name,” the lucky cat says, voice low in deference to the sleeping bodies piled around them. “Want me to send it packing?”

Natsume sits up, thinking very carefully. “A weakling? You’re sure?”

If Nyanko-sensei knows where he’s going with this, he doesn’t comment beyond, “Not even as strong as your little kappa. Reiko must have been playing a joke when she took this one.”

With a glance around the room, eyes lingering on the sprawled forms of his  friends, Natsume makes up his mind. “Take it to the roof. I’ll meet you there.”

By the time the window is sliding shut behind the cat with a soft snap, Kitamoto is blinking blearily and Tanuma is shoving hair out of his face and Nishimura is whining, “Natsume, what?”

“Do you remember what I told you?” he asks in a whisper. “About my grandmother’s book?”

This has Tanuma’s interest at once, eyes flying to meet Natsume’s like lightning. The other two are a little slower on the uptake, but they seem to glean the importance of the question just from Natsume’s tone, or from the strange time of night for him to be asking, or maybe just because it’s been three years and they’ve always been able to figure him out. 

“The book of scribbles you showed us, right?” Kitamoto asks. “The names she took when she was our age that you’ve been returning?”

“Right. Would you like to see?”

Tanuma brightens, there’s no better word for it. His smile could fill the room. 

“I’ll go get Taki,” he says, and heads down the hall on silent feet to where their missing friend is sleeping in Mana’s bedroom. 

“You sure, Natsume?” Nishimura says, hair a messy halo, eyes still smudged with sleep. “You don’t have to prove anything to us, you know. If you say there are spirits, then of course there are. And if this thing with your grandma is special to you, and something you want to keep secret, then you should.” 

“Can’t deny we’re curious,” Kitamoto adds, his voice soft in the dark, because his parents and sister are sleeping just a few rooms away. “But if you’d rather we stayed behind, we will.”

And they would, if he asked. They wouldn’t mind at all. They’d ask Taki and Tanuma a hundred questions when they returned, and bemoan not seeing the spectacle for themselves, but they would never push. 

Natsume’s heart is so full there’s not really any room for fear, but with that his friends would have banished it anyway. He told them the truth what feels like a long time ago, in their second year of high school, and they accepted it as easily as they did everything else about him. Graduation is just around the corner, and they all have big plans of moving into a house together while they tackle jobs and university, and Natsume is certain of his friends the way he’s certain of the Fujiwaras, that they’re good and they’re safe and they’re his to keep. 

So he says, “You can get us up to the roof, right? I know the access door is locked, but Nishimura says the three of you always sneak up there on Mana’s birthday to light sparklers.”

His friends grin at him, as bright as they were the day they taught him to ride a bike. Taki and Tanuma make it back to the living room as they’re all shuffling around trying to find jackets without knocking anything over. Taki whispers, “I’msoexcitedNatsumeyouhavenoidea,” and Nishimura squeaks when he misses the step into the genkan and almost falls, but they manage to slip outside the apartment without waking Kitamoto’s family. 

The locked door is easily circumvented with a sharp twist of the handle, and the night air is cool as they pick their way up the stairwell and onto the roof. 

The spirit waiting there is about as tall as Natsume’s knee, not counting the six-inch antlers. It looks a little bit like a stoat, dressed in a neat yukata, wringing its hands nervously as it lingers on the very edge of the roof like it’s second-guessing its decision to come to this human place. 

“There you are,” Nyanko-sensei grumbles. He waddles over, pawing at Tanuma’s pant leg until Tanuma sighs and stoops down to pick him up. “The weakling was beginning to think you wouldn’t show and I only brought it up here to eat it.”

“Sensei,” Natsume scolds him, but it’s ruined by Nishimura stifling laughter.

“Would it be okay if I drew a circle, Natsume?” Taki asks eagerly, holding up a piece of the colored chalk she tends to keep in her pocket for moments just like this one.

Natori has explained the taboo to her about a dozen times now, but he would have better luck convincing the sea to sit still than he does convincing Taki not to use the legacy her grandfather left behind. Natsume knows better, and gives her the go-ahead.

It’s the work of an efficient fifteen seconds, and when she stands back with an accomplished smile and blue-dusted fingers, Natsume addresses the spirit kindly. 

“Step into the circle, please. It won’t hurt you, and my friends would like to meet you before you go.”

It hesitates, but Natsume has learned nothing from life if not patience. He waits, relaxed and nonthreatening, and his friends take their cues from him. It doesn’t take longer than two minutes for the spirit to brave the first step forward. 

When it’s visible to the others, Taki gasps, “Oh, how lovely!” and it stands a little taller. Kitamoto and Tanuma both snort, and Nishimura says, “Okay, when’s the last time a girl said that about one of you?” and a whispered argument picks up like clockwork.

Natsume rolls his eyes, but his chest is warm. He settles in front of the spirit and opens the book in his lap. The pages begin to rustle apart, and Natsume says, “You don’t owe me any more favors, but could you tell me what my grandmother was like? She took your name, so I’ll understand if you’re angry with her, but I didn’t get to know her at all before she died.”

The spirit tilts its head, round eyes searching. It says, “Reiko wasn’t very much like you at all. She was always by herself. She liked deals and games, and she would rather win something than just ask for it. I was her friend, I would have given her whatever she asked for, but that just wasn’t her way. You’re really her descendant?” When Natsume nods, the spirit considers him carefully and then says, “Good. She would have liked you.”

It’s the first time anyone has told him that, and Natsume struggles to find his voice again. He wants to ask more, to ask everything, but he’s borrowed enough of this little spirit’s time as it is. So he says thank you, and locates its name, aglow with the confusing and exhilarating idea that his reckless, daring, amazing grandmother might have liked him. 

“Shut up, brats, or you’ll miss it,” Nyanko-sensei snaps from somewhere behind him. “And I’m not chaperoning another field trip like this one if you do.”

“They were talking! It would have been rude to eavesdrop!” comes Tanuma’s scandalized reply. 

“Your friends are silly,” the spirit says, as Natsume tears its contract from the book. It’s finally smiling, and its expression has softened. “Reiko would have wanted you to keep them.”

Natsume grins back, unchecked. “That’s the plan.”

Chapter Text

There’s definitely something to be said for having the class president in your corner. All Nishimura has to do is catch Tsuji’s eye and shoot a meaningful look at Natsume, who keeps swaying a little in his seat, and Tsuji puts it together in like three seconds.

When he does, he closes his workbook with a decisive snap and heads to the front of the room. The teachers are so used to him coming and going that he doesn’t even interrupt the lecture; sensei only stops his reading when Tsuji steps up beside the podium, and even then only for as long as it takes to flick a glance back at Natsume and nod. 

Tsuji gives Nishimura an “OK” sign on his way back to his seat, and Nishimura takes that as his cue to begin the thankless task of hauling Natsume out of class and toward the health room.

“S’class over?” Natsume murmurs, shifting his weight and easing so gingerly out of his chair its as if every inch of him hurts. With the way his eyes are only barely open, face pinched and tight, Nishimura would bet his bike it’s a migraine. 

“It is for you,” Nishimura tells him firmly. If ever there’s a time to be grateful they sit in the back of the class, it’s now. Nishimura manages to get the door open and slide it shut behind them without letting Natsume fall over, which he considers a win. “Why are you like this, man?”

“Shh.”

“Oh, no, you don’t get to shush me unless you can walk a straight line on your own,” Nishimura retorts. “This wasn’t cute when you were sixteen and it sure as hell isn’t cute now. This is exactly why we’re not letting you go off to university by yourself. You’d forget to eat or something and faint in class.”

“Please shut up,” Natsume hisses quietly. “Just shut up.” 

There’s no real bite to it, because he’s Natsume; and even if there was, it would be hard to take it to heart when he’s this wobbly on his feet. Nishimura huffs, tightens his grip on his annoying friend, and keeps them moving. 

Natsume is a walking disaster at the best of times, but that’s not the only reason his friends are sticking around. They’re all going to the same university– they’re even renting a big house together because the student apartments weren’t cat-friendly– and that’s not exactly the kind of commitment they’d sign up for just because they worry he’ll lock himself out of his apartment or sleep through his exams.

It’s more because they love him than it is anything else, obviously.

But Nishimura isn’t gonna tell him that. There’s no point in giving him a big head. 

“You better pitch in for the gift we’re gonna give the school nurse after graduation,” Nishimura tells him instead. “She’s been keeping you alive for the last three years out of the goodness of her heart. She’s the best friend you ever had, you know.”

A sound that might be a laugh wheezes out of Natsume, barely more than a puff of air. His head dips to the side a few inches, until it bumps against Nishimura’s, and he says quietly, “Not the best.”

Chapter Text

Kaname hesitates for a second when he realizes what city they’re going to for the weekend, but only for a second. When his friends look around at him with expectant grins, waiting to hear whether or not he’s coming along, Kaname meets them with an easy smile. 

“Of course I’m going,” he says, his arms full of Natsume’s fat cat, his chest full of that squirming joy that comes from being so close to such warm people. “Someone’s got to keep all of you out of trouble.”

It’s a big city, and he hasn’t lived in it for years. What are the odds they’ll run into anyone there that he knows?

And so, naturally, it happens on the first day. 

They found their inn and dropped off all their bags, and now they’re combing the streets for a place to eat lunch– they’ve made it about three blocks when a vaguely-familiar voice says, “Tanuma?”

A boy he went to middle school with is in the middle of the crosswalk, coming over to their side of the street, and he looks incredulous and delighted. Something in Kaname’s stomach sinks like a stone. He’s glad to still be holding Ponta; now he understands why Natsume is often hugging him to his chest like a shield. 

“Yamamoto,” he mutters by way of greeting. 

“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again after you dropped out,” the shorter boy says cheerfully. 

“I didn’t drop out. I just couldn’t finish the school year.” Kaname is aware of his friends behind him, quiet and watchful, and wishes the sidewalk would swallow him up, or that there was a yokai was around that might do it. “I was– “

“Sick,” Yamamoto parrots with him, rolling his eyes. “No surprise there. It’s a wonder your parents ever let you out of the house. And what is that?”

He waves toward Ponta. The lucky cat bristles. Kaname doesn’t think it’s safe to soothe him aloud, not when it would only prompt more mockery out of Yamamoto. 

As it is, his old schoolmate is viciously pleased to ask, “Is that your cat?”

“No,” Natsume says abruptly. Kaname jumps a little; he hadn’t expected Natsume to be right behind him. “It’s my cat. Is there a problem?”

That’s a tone Kaname has only heard once before, when Natori tried to warn Taki off of using her grandfather’s circles, and Natsume shut that right down in a big way. It’s the same tone he’s hearing now, and he glances to the side quickly to find his best friend gazing at Yamamoto with cool, dark eyes. 

Yamamoto looks wrong-footed. “Why would there be a problem?”

“You tell me,” Natsume says. “So far you’ve called Tanuma a drop-out and made fun of him for being sick as a child. If those are jokes, I don’t understand them.”

It sounds like– it almost sounds like he’s trying to pick a fight, except that isn’t like him at all. He looks the way Ponta does when there’s something in his sights that he can eat if he’s wily enough.

Kaname turns to look at the other four, stupefied. Adachi, Taki, Kitamoto and Nishimura all have the same expressions of wonder on their face, steeled by the prickly loyalty of protective friends. 

“They’re not– I mean.” Yamamoto doesn’t seem to know what to do with Natsume. He’s always talked to Kaname like this, and years down the road is a little too long and too late to reevaluate his behavior. But it looks like he’s trying, framing his words in this new light, and some of that sharp-edged joy that always stuck to him like armor is peeling away. “Oh.”

He looks at Kaname. Kaname blinks back, equally as confused. 

“Why didn’t you say something?” Yamamoto blurts. “If I’ve been hurting you– “

“It’s not his fault you did,” Natsume says, bristling like his cat. His eyes are impossibly green. He looks like something out of a folktale, melted off the page of a storybook to stand here between Kaname and someone who used to make Kaname relieved to be too ill to go to school. 

“No, I didn’t mean– “ Yamamoto backpedals helplessly. Kaname feels sorry for him. His friends are like a force of nature sometimes. 

“It’s okay,” he says kindly. “We were just kids. I don’t think about it very much. Until I saw you just now, I hardly remembered you at all.”

The shorter boy stares at him, one hand curling into a loose fist and uncurling again at his side. “Oh,” he says. And then, “I’ll let you, uh– sorry for interrupting all of you.” With a quick bow, he’s on his way again, bustling through the crowd on the sidewalk and turning the corner like he’d really rather run. 

“Tanuma,” Nishimura says before anyone else has the chance to speak. He puts a hand on Kaname's arm, as serious as the grave. “I’m sorry that happened to you. And that guy was an asshole. But this is the best day of my life.”

“Same,” says Taki immediately.

“Hard same,” says Kitamoto. “I’ve never seen Natsume go off like that before in my life, and now it’s the only thing I want to see forever.”

“Shut up,” Natsume says waspishly. He looks almost jittery, as though there’s all this energy built up inside him that has nowhere to go now that Yamamoto made his escape. “That guy– Tanuma, you– “ After a brief struggle, he blurts, “Is this how you all feel when we meet someone I used to know?”

“Uhh, yeah,” Nishimura says, lifting an eyebrow. “Are you going to stop scolding me for making a scene next time we meet one of your evil cousins?”

“We’ll see.” Natsume looks up at Kaname, and all those hard, angry lines in his face relent into the spring meadow softness of him that is so utterly familiar. “Tanuma, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says honestly. Aside from that initial dread and embarrassment, he really didn’t have time to feel anything else. “I should have– I mean, I used to live around here, and I didn’t say anything while we were planning our trip.”

“So? Natsume never does, either,” Kitamoto says, slinging a friendly arm around Kaname’s shoulders. He’s the only one of his friends tall enough to do it comfortably. “Even without the heads up, we’re here for you.”

Kaname ducks his head, pleased, and leans into the touch. He never had friends like these growing up– never thought he’d have them, either. He missed the boat, he sometimes thought; he didn’t know how to interact with people his own age, didn’t know how to introduce himself and get to know someone without stumbling over his own mouth and feeling like a fool. He always felt scrutinized but somehow never felt seen. 

But now Kitamoto is here, an arm around him as casual as anything. And Taki is sliding her hand into the crook of Kaname's elbow, eyes warm and caring. And Nishimura and Adachi are on either side of Natsume, peppering him with questions that seem to be calming him down under the guise of riling him up more. And Ponta is purring in Kaname's arms, a throaty rumble that sinks into his bones and washes out the lingering bruises anxiety left behind.

And Kaname can feel himself letting go of that lonely boy he used to be. Not all at once, not quite yet, but– maybe soon. 

That night, as they’re arguing over takeout menus at the inn, a few rapid knocks at the door of their room has them all glancing up in some confusion.

“Might be housekeeping?” Kitamoto says. “Tanuma, you’re closest.”

Rolling his eyes, Kaname nevertheless deftly extracts Nishimura from his person and unfolds himself from the cushion, wandering agreeably over to the door and pulling it open to find– 

“Sorry,” Yamamoto blurts in lieu of a hello, hands pressed together in gassho. “I know you super don’t want to see me right now, I totally get it. But– I backtracked earlier and realized you must have been staying at this inn and I told the lady at the front desk I was a friend of yours– sorry! I just– “

He digs into his pocket and withdraws his phone. Clutching it at his side like a token or a good luck charm, he goes on, “Can we talk? Sometime?”

Behind him, Kaname hears someone getting up. There’s a low round of “ooooh”s from the rest of the peanut gallery, which means it’s definitely Natsume. 

“Give him a chance,” Adachi mumbles, tugging Natsume back into his seat. “You gave me one.”

“That’s different,” Natsume hisses back. “This is Tanuma.” 

Kaname finds himself smiling as he pulls out his own phone. Yamamoto lights up a little bit, expression torn somewhere between surprise and hope. 

“Sure,” Kaname tells him. It’s not even difficult to tell him. “What’s your email?”

Chapter Text

They move tea into the sitting room when the kitchen became too small to accommodate. It seems as though none of Takashi’s friends are willing to be left behind this evening, showing up in harried ones and twos and brimming with stubbornness. Just try to turn them away now, when Takashi is so quiet and afraid, when he so clearly needs the courage they can give him.

Even Katsumi and Yuriko are here, muddy up to their knees from whatever adventures they’d been coaxed into down at the river. They’re visiting for the holiday, and the whole lot of them are staying at Kaname’s big house since it’s empty while his father is traveling. Touko hadn’t expected to see much of the children until school started again. 

But then Satoru arrived on their doorstep, the scowl set deep on his face incongruent with the careful way he was holding Takashi’s hand. He said, “We need to get this over with,” and “I texted the others, if they don’t make it in time that’s on them,” and Takashi only clutched his friend tighter and seemed not to know how to keep his breathing steady. 

Touko’s heart had leapt into her throat. She asked “Are you hurt?” and then “Is there something you need from me?” and then “What on earth is it, sweetheart?” when both the first questions earned her a quiet ‘no.’

Shigeru said, wryly, that perhaps they ought to give the boys’ friends more than a few minutes to get here. “They won’t thank us for starting without them,” he’d said, and led the way into the kitchen for tea. There was the beginning of a smile on his face, almost knowing. He had some idea of what this was about, but when Touko pressed into his side as he filled glasses with iced tea, nearly frantic with the need to understand, he only shook his head.

There’s nothing to worry about, her husband told her gently. It’s Takashi, after all. 

And it only took about ten minutes for Kaname, Atsushi and Tooru to burst through the door. They’re winded, as if they ran the length of town to get here, and Nyankichi squirms from Tooru’s arms to waddle with a proprietary air into Takashi’s instead.

“Where’s everyone else?” Satoru demands. He’s still holding Takashi’s hand, as though he’s forgotten it’s there, or as though he very much hasn’t. No one does anything to upset this status quo; Kaname moves over to sit on Takashi’s free side, leaning their shoulders together. Atsushi and Tooru settle next to Satoru and Kaname respectively. It’s almost ritual, like they’ve sat this way a hundred times before. “We’ve been waiting forever.”  

“Shibata fell in,” Tooru says plainly. 

When Katsumi, Yuriko and Kei arrive, Katsumi is dripping water and clutching a stitch in his side. “I’m gonna kick your ass, Nishimura,” he wheezes. “A little heads-up would have been choice.”

“You’re lucky we didn’t start without you,” Satoru says waspishly. 

“Start what?” Touko can’t help but ask, a hand pressed to her chest. The worry has mostly gone now, at the easy way they’re bickering, but she can’t help lingering on the pale fear in her son’s eyes. She wants to reach out and soothe it away, but he’s so firmly ensconced in the honor guard of his closest friends that it almost feels as though it would be an act of trespassing.

“A conversation,” Kaname says, in his gentle, implacable way. “One we probably should have started years ago.”

The ‘we’ is a kindness. It bolsters Takashi into speech. “One I should have started. I should have– I was just– “ He digs his fingers into Nyankichi’s fur, but the silly cat only purrs a little louder. “It’s not fair to not have told you. Not when everyone else has found out one way or another. I just didn’t want you to… I didn’t want… “

How many families turned him away? How many times was he rejected? How many months did it take him to feel safe enough to talk freely in their home? How on earth could Touko begrudge him this small means of safety?

“You don’t owe us anything, Takashi,” she says firmly. “Your secret is yours. If it isn’t hurting you, you can keep it.”

The way all the children– young adults, really, by now– smile at her is like sunshine filling the room. The very air feels warm with it. Satoru nudges Takashi as if to say ‘See? What are you so worried about?’

“If I had to guess,” Shigeru says, “I would say this has something to do with a strange girl I once knew.” 

Takashi steadies himself with a breath. He glances around the room at his friends; his eyes even linger in the empty spaces in between them, as though the room is fuller than Touko is aware of. And then he looks at his parents the way he’s looked at them for the last three years, full of hope, full of the aching, tentative little creature called trust that will sometimes skitter back at a sharp noise or sudden move, but always, always comes inching forward again. 

Touko does reach out to him then. Takashi meets her with his free hand, clings to her the way he clings to Satoru, as though he might fall if she lets go. 

She has no plans of letting go. She can see that absolutely none of them do. Takashi is held here, and safe, and whatever secret he’s carrying, it can be held and safe here, too. 

“It starts with her,” Takashi says softly. “But it ends, I think, with me. It’s not– it’s not a bad story. I used to think it was. It’s sad sometimes, and lonely sometimes, but it’s funny and clever, too.”

“It’s noble,” Tooru interjects.

“Ballsy,” Kei supplies. 

“Kind,” Katsumi says, then looks embarrassed for having said it.

“It’s a good story,” Satoru says. “You should tell it, Natsume.”

And so, with one last look at his cat, he does. 

Chapter Text

The house is empty when Takashi wakes up. He’s lived in this sleek apartment for a week, and he’s almost gotten used to the silent mornings. 

He gets himself dressed for school. He doesn’t dare venture into the kitchen, very much his auntie’s domain, to search for breakfast. She must have forgotten to leave something out for him again. 

As usual, there’s money on the table for him to buy himself a lunch box. Takashi pockets it carefully, and makes sure he has his key, and leaves with enough time to stop at the combini he passes on his way to school. 

The familiar cashier at the combini helps him pick out a lunch box. They have his favorite kind in today, she tells him cheerfully, and she made sure to save one just for him!

Takashi stammers his thanks, and declines a plastic bag, and hugs the plastic bento to his chest all the way to school. He’ll put it away when the city blocks give way to residential ones, when there are other boys around to poke fun at him. 

He moves away two days later, his busy auntie admitting she just doesn’t have time to afford him the care he needs. She looks regretful for a moment and touches his hair while a cousin carries his box of belongings out the door, but then her cellphone rings and she turns away to take the call. 

It’s three years before he sees that combini again. Shigeru’s boss scheduled him on a day trip to the city, and Shigeru asked Touko and Takashi if they’d like to come. Then, after thinking it over for a moment, he added, “Why don’t we invite your friends, Takashi? That way you don’t get bored.”

Takashi nearly dropped his cup in surprise, and stammered in his haste to get out, “No, that’s okay, please don’t go to any trouble,” but Touko clapped her hands together in delight and said, “I’ll pack lunches!” and that seemed to be that. 

So while Shigeru and Touko have an important company lunch, Takashi and his friends have a few hours to themselves. They make it two blocks before they realize they managed to leave the bag of drinks behind, and Nishimura laments wasting time in turning around, but Takashi says, “That’s alright, there’s a convenience store just ahead.”

The worn sign of the combini is the same as it was three years ago, and the bell above the door rings just the same, and not much has changed inside, either. Nishimura and Taki make a beeline for the drink aisles, and Tanuma and Kitamoto start to peruse the odds and ends up by the counter, and the woman behind the register gasps. The look on her face is one of recognition. 

“I know you,” she says, and her lined face shapes a kind smile that Takashi has never once forgotten. “Are you here to pick up lunch? We still have your favorite.”

Kitamoto and Tanuma are hovering watchfully, but Takashi doesn’t need protecting this time. He smiles back, and lifts the bento he’s holding by the furoshiki that Touko tied around it lovingly that same morning. 

“That’s alright,” he says. “I actually have a new favorite now.”

Chapter Text

Two hours after his father left, the front door rattles open again. 

It takes Kaname longer than it usually would have to figure out that’s probably not a good thing. 

But by the time he lifts his aching head, and starts puzzling out how he’s going to deal with a potential burglar when just sitting up causes the whole room to spin, a familiar face is peering into his bedroom. 

“Oh, you’re up,” Nishimura says brightly, stepping further inside. “Didn’t wanna wake you if you weren’t.”

Kaname stares. He wonders for a split second if he’s hallucinating. 

“You look like you’re gonna fall over,” Nishimura goes on, frowning at him. “Lay back down, dummy.”

No, that’s definitely Nishimura. Kaname lays back down. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, watching as his friend sets a plastic bag on his desk and shrugs a backpack to the floor. “I thought you had plans.”

“I did, up until my friends got sick. You and Natsume are like magnets for every single bug that goes around, I swear.” Nishimura takes a seat in Kaname’s computer chair, spins it once on principle, and stops himself when he’s facing the bed. “We can go some other time.”

He spent the last two and a half weeks gushing about the new Natori movie, all but vibrating with excitement every time it came up in conversation, and now he’s poking idly through some comic books he’s already read as though one is just as good as the other.  

Kaname feels a stab of guilt. It goes straight through him, pinning him down. 

“Sorry,” he says. It’s important that he says it. “You could still go if you wanted to.”

“Duh,” says Nishimura. “Obviously I don’t want to.”

“Obviously,” Kaname parrots weakly. 

It turns out Nishimura has come prepared. The plastic bag, bearing the familiar 7-Eleven logo, contains bottles of Pocari Sweat, a cold compress, and little plastic cups of grated fruit. He sets up shop with the relative competence of someone who knows what they’re doing. 

Kaname watches, blinking slowly. The guilt gets smaller and smaller, like every companionable second is another blanket laid over top of it to make it quiet. 

It’s really nice to have a friend here with him, even if Kaname isn’t very good company. He’s never had a friend come over when he was sick before. 

“Well, your old classmates were missing out. They sound like morons anyway,” Nishimura says plainly, reading Kaname’s mind. Or maybe he said that out loud. “You did, Tanuma,” Nishimura goes on, grinning by now. “Man, you’re out of it. Drink some of this.”

He twists the cap off a bottle of Pocari before handing it over. He’s at ease in this role, sitting on the edge of Kaname’s bed so Kaname has something to lean against when he’s a little unsteady sitting up. He lifts the bottle out of Kaname’s hand when it starts to list, and doesn’t seem to mind that Kaname’s head has found a home on his shoulder. 

“How come you didn’t go to Natsume’s house?” Kaname mumbles. 

Almost immediately, he regrets the question. He’s not sure if he wants to hear the answer. Isn’t it good enough that Nishimura is here, whatever the reason? Isn’t he lucky that his friend came to see him, even if Kaname was only the second choice?

“Both his parents are home, what’s he need me for? You didn’t even have any electrolyte drinks. Totally hopeless.” Nishimura digs his phone out of his pocket and holds the screen where they can both see it as he scrolls through Youtube playlists, completely prepared for the inevitability of Kaname falling asleep on him. “When you wake up, we’re gonna bully Acchan into bringing us dinner.”

Kaname can’t help it; he laughs. His yokai fish are swimming in shadows on the ceiling, and his friend has found a baby goat compilation to watch, and Kaname feels much better than he did twenty minutes ago. 

“Pancakes,” he decides.

“Whatever you want, buddy,” Nishimura says, with the easy sincerity of someone who means it. 

Chapter Text

Shuuichi’s publicist is getting braver by the day. Locking him out of his own phone and refusing to give it back until he agreed to her terms was a stroke of brilliance, and when he stops being annoyed about it, Shuuichi will tell her so. 

“You do pretty things on camera, I keep you popular,” Haya says in a severe tone, holding his phone away from him at arms length. “You are going to go on a nice lunch date with your costar, and you’re going to smile for the paps, and it probably won’t kill you to act like you’re having a good time.”

Shuuichi gets it. The resulting interview will make for a nice TV spot, guaranteed to stir up more interest in the upcoming movie. But– 

“I’m expecting company today.” He gives her his most apologetic smile. “I’ve had this afternoon free on the schedule for weeks. We’ll have to work something else out.”

“No need!” Haya says brightly. “If you leave right now, you’ll return just in time to greet them. I already have a car waiting outside.”

Oh, she is good. Shuuichi can hardly believe this is the same wide-eyed, stammering creature he first met two years ago. 

“Fine,” he snaps. The PA who was approaching cautiously with his coat stops dead at his tone, and Shuuichi rearranges his scowl into an easy smile. “Of course. Thank you for your hard work.”

His cheerful tone promises retribution. Haya eyes him warily as he puts a hand out, and places his phone in his palm with the exacting precision of someone mincing around a landmine. 

The date is fine. Seijun smiles prettily when he joins her at a corner table in a nearby bistro and pretends not to notice the cameras outside. They both know why they’re actually there together, and they don’t have terribly much in common, but they’ve filmed together for the last two months. That’s enough material for an hour of decent conversation, and if Seijun’s eyes linger on his hands, or if she leans in a bit more than necessary to share a piece of gossip, it’s easy for Shuuichi to ignore.

Entertainment tabloids like to speculate on why he’s single; a rich, handsome actor who’s built a successful career out of romance films ought to have an easy time of finding a date. There are internet forums and blogs dedicated to the discussion. Fans he’s met clamor that Natori Shuuichi is a gentleman, he just hasn’t met the right person yet; critics have their own unflattering theories, that start somewhere around a secret addiction and spiral out into dangerous ties to the yakuza. 

It’s true that Shuuichi likes to flirt, and he likes to act the gentleman, and he likes that he can control the tide of conversation or the focus of a room with charisma and a flattering smile. Shuuichi can hold someone in front of a camera, can kiss someone if it’s in a script, and he can make it look so moving that the audience is moved to tears. 

But romance is an act, and he has never intentionally led anyone to believe otherwise. The concept of investing in it honestly makes his stomach turn. 

It doesn’t make sense not to ride back to the studio together. Seijun keeps Shuuichi’s hand for a moment too long when he helps her out of the car, and he smiles through it without missing a beat, because that’s just the job sometimes. 

And then Hiiragi touches his shoulder, and Shuuichi glances up in time to see a group of high school students come around the corner, laughing with a friendly PA only slightly older than they are who must have been conned into giving them a tour. 

Nishimura and Taki are in the lead, all but bouncing on their feet and talking over one another in their enthusiasm. Nishimura turns around to walk backwards for a few steps, saying something to Natsume that makes him roll his eyes. Tanuma is holding Madara in his ugly cat form, and Kitamoto and Adachi are trailing alongside him at the end of the group; three boys and a spirit cat who all look as though they’d rather be anywhere else. 

Shuuichi feels himself grin. Next to him, Seijun makes a quiet sound of unpleasant surprise. 

“I know that boy,” she says, smoothing out her perfect blouse. “The odd one.”

It’s the worst descriptor in the world. At a casual glance, there’s nothing odd about any of them. Tanuma is rather tall for his age, and Nishimura is energetic, and Adachi’s buzzed head only takes Shuuichi aback because his hair had been bleached blond and long enough for a ponytail the last time Shuuichi had seen him, but those things don’t exactly jump out. They’re a perfectly ordinary-looking group of teenagers. 

Somehow, regardless, Shuuichi knows she’s talking about Natsume. 

“He’s a distant cousin, I think,” Seijun says, leaning in unnecessarily, the way she did at the restaurant. “He stayed with my mother and I for about a month once, back when he was in grade school. You wouldn’t believe how strange he is.”

Shuuichi hasn’t been spotted yet. He offers Seijun a smile, doesn’t move closer but orients his body language to give her the illusion of his full attention. 

“Tell me,” he says, in the tone of a co-conspirator. 

She does. She spares no details. Actors are horrible gossips, it comes with the territory, and this story is one she must have told a dozen times before, at little coffee dates and family events. 

Hiiragi’s mask is pointed towards Seijun, the shiki’s stillness giving nothing away, but Shuuichi thinks he knows her pretty well. He thinks she’s as angry as he is, watching Seijun laugh at the peculiar mannerisms of a child who was already a vagrant at nine years old, homeless and often afraid and terribly alone. 

And then the PA catches sight of Shuuichi, and says something to the kids that make them glance in his direction. Their faces light up, and they wave and call hello, and Natsume gets shoved and jostled to the front of the group, obviously appointed the famous actor liaison. 

His step falters when he recognizes Shuuichi’s companion. He seems to get smaller, his eyes dropping to a safer middle ground. Seijun looks as though she has no idea what to do with his unexpected company. 

Shuuichi smiles through it, because that’s the job sometimes. He balls up his anger into something small and tight and holds it in a fist where it can’t get away.

“Natsume, it’s so good to see you!” he says gladly, taking the boy by the shoulders and giving him a playful shake. “Sorry I was late to greet you, and after I finally got you to agree to come visit me. PR can be such a hassle, so I had to endure a lunch together with my coworker here this afternoon. I suppose it was fitting,” Shuuichi goes on, glancing brightly at Seijun, “since I probably won’t be seeing very much of her anymore. We filmed our final scene together just yesterday, so there’s no real reason to keep her around, is there?”

Seijun’s eyes are wide in a pale face. She doesn’t say a word, but bows quickly and makes a quick escape. Humiliated, probably. Good. 

“That wasn’t very kind of you, Natori,” Natsume says quietly. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Shuuichi replies. His expression warms into something real, and he puts a hand on Natsume’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Help me plot revenge for my publicist instead. I might ask Urihime to haunt her for a few days, what do you think?”

“What? That’s a horrible idea. Whatever she did to you, you probably deserved it. Leave her alone.”

But he’s smiling again by the time his friends catch up, and really, that was the whole point.

Chapter Text

The thing is, nothing even happened. 

Satoru got woken up early in the morning, beating the sun by a good margin. Kiyoshi’s frenetic energy was familiar in a dread-inducing way, enough to jolt Satoru wide-awake almost on its own. 

He pulled his school uniform on while his brother shoved workbooks into his bag, heart pounding as he listened for the sound of footsteps in the hall. 

Kiyoshi hustled him down the stairs, into the dark of the kitchen. He gave Satoru a few bills out of his own wallet, told him to buy himself breakfast at the combini when he stopped to get a lunch box.  

Satoru pocketed the money numbly. Something in his face gave his brother pause. 

“He’s only here for the weekend,” Kiyoshi said. It was a moment that felt stolen and daring in this house where their father could appear at any moment. “Just stay with Atsushi, alright? I’ll call you when he’s gone.”

It was their usual arrangement. Most times, mom would tell Kiyoshi when their father had a flight home, but sometimes even she didn’t know. 

Satoru didn’t even sit down to put his sneakers on properly, just crammed them on so the backs were folded under his heels, and eased the door open as quietly as he could. 

“See you,” he said, and took off into the cold morning. 

What he didn’t say was that Kitamoto had plans this weekend. His dad was well enough to travel, so the whole family was going away to visit Kitamoto's grandparents. Mana had asked Satoru to water her plants. 

What could he say? Kiyoshi was already worried and frustrated. The absolute last thing Satoru wanted was to give his brother another reason to pick a fight with their dad. The best thing to do was keep your head down.

The lady at the combini was coming off an overnight shift, but she stayed long enough to ring Satoru up. She and the clerk coming in to take over for her chatted with Satoru for awhile, keeping him company while he picked apart a melon bread and the sky turned rosy and bright outside. 

When the bell above the door rang, Satoru looked round to see Tsuji gaping at him. 

“Masa-chan!” he said brightly, spreading his arms for a big hug. 

The class president sputtered, but there was an involuntary smile starting on his face, and already Satoru’s horrible morning was edging a little bit closer to okay. 

“It is way too early to deal with you,” Tsuji said, but the way he bumped Satoru’s shoulder on his way past said he didn’t mean it. 

Satoru heckled him while he picked out a lunch box, and then endured a lecture about healthy eating that had him picking out the same one. The clerks were smiling as they checked out, and didn’t charge Satoru for his breakfast, since, the first clerk pointed out in a kindly way, he didn’t seem to enjoy it. 

Tsuji was giving him a sidelong look as they walked to school together. 

“Everything okay?” he asked. “I stop by that store all the time this early in the morning, and I never see you there.”

“My phone died last night and I ended up going to bed super early,” Satoru lied cheerfully, swinging the plastic shopping bag back and forth. “So I woke up super early, too, and couldn’t get back to sleep! At least I had extra time to finish my homework.”

Tsuji rolled his eyes, placated by an on-brand excuse. There was a hollow pit in Satoru’s chest, and it was a miracle his hands weren’t shaking, but it did help having a friend to talk to about an upcoming school trip and the latest chapter of a manga they both follow and whether or not Suzuki from class three is going to muster up the courage to ask Adachi on a date.

By the time Natsume steps into homeroom, Satoru feels mostly okay. He greets Natsume cheerfully, leaning forward over his desk on his elbows, and invites himself over for the weekend. Natsume smiles at him as he sets his bag down, and tells him sure, of course he can come over, Shigeru is away for a work conference and Touko would love to have someone else to cook for. 

Having a solid plan settles some of Satoru’s jangling nerves. He can’t focus during class, his mind darting away like a startled bird at every other second, but somehow he isn’t called on even once. He’s worried about Kiyoshi, he’s worried that dad might take umbrage with Satoru avoiding him, he’s worried that he’ll have to face dad before he leaves again. 

Natsume turns around in his seat, tapping Satoru’s desk with his fingers to get his attention. He looks fondly amused when Satoru jerks back to the present.

“We’re meeting the others on the roof, right?”

Satoru grins woodenly. “That’s the plan! You go ahead, I’m gonna stay here and finish my maths homework.”

Natsume tilts his head. “Tsuji told me you finished your homework this morning.”

When had that conversation happened? A glance around the room proves Tsuji has already bustled off somewhere. Satoru says, “I got most of it done. I managed to forget my maths workbook though.”

“Why didn’t you just ask to see mine?” Natsume asks, reasonably enough.

“‘Cause I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.” He sniffs haughtily, digging through his bag for the appropriate workbook so he doesn’t have to look at Natsume’s thoughtful expression. “I can’t believe you want me to cheat. I’m telling Sasada.”

“A new leaf,” his friend says dryly. He seems to buy it, though, and settles back in his chair. “Well, I’ll just wait for you to finish.”

Panic shoots through him, white-hot, like electricity. Satoru’s fingers seize, bending the cover of his book. He gives himself a second to try to tamp it down. 

“Come on, you don’t have to do that,” Satoru says, hoping it sounds casual. 

It must not. Natsume frowns. “It’s not a big deal.”

Of course it’s not. But if they don’t go up to the roof, then their friends are going to find them here instead, and Satoru doesn’t think– he doesn’t want– it won’t be good. Natsume is still looking at him, and his frown is reaching into his eyes now, so Satoru pushes himself out of his chair with a grin.

“You’re right! I’m just gonna go get a drink real quick. Be right back.”

“Nishimura– “

Natsume’s bewildered voice follows him out the door. Satoru tries to convince himself he isn’t actively running away, and he doesn’t really manage it; he’s a pretty bad liar, as it so happens. He weaves through the busy hall and wracks his mind for somewhere he can go and be left alone. Not the vending machines on the first floor, not the roof– the library? The bathroom?

Wait. Tsuji mentioned an empty classroom, he was going to use it for a club meeting after school. 

Satoru can barely get the door shut behind him, fumbling at the recessed handle so badly that it takes both hands. He’s dizzy, like he can’t get enough air in. He lurches over to the nearest chair, buries his face in his arms, and tells himself to stop. 

Nothing even happened. 

Kiyoshi got him out of the house, Natsume is going to let him stay over, everything is going to be fine. 

The door rattles open and Satoru doesn’t hear it. Chairs are moving around, and the door closes again, but it takes a hand on his wrist to alert Satoru to the presence of others in the room. He jerks his head up, and Kitamoto’s worried eyes meet his. 

Satoru quickly finds someone else to look at. Taki is right behind him, her arms folded tightly against her middle as if she needs the physical reminder not to reach out and snatch Satoru up in a hug. 

“You’re missing lunch,” he says dumbly. 

“Lunch has been over for five minutes,” Taki tells him in a gentle tone. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Tanuma and Natsume are here, too, looking anxious. They’ve pulled in chairs as close as they can, their knees and shoulders smushed together. Satoru is craning his neck to look around at them instead of Kitamoto. He’s quickly losing his grip on this situation, he can feel it getting away from him.

Satoru’s heart is still pounding. It feels like it’s going to give out at any moment. He’s senselessly, intensely afraid. 

“I didn’t mean to,” Satoru starts, and to his horror, his voice loses strength and sort of tapers off. Clearing his throat, he tries again. “I’m being stupid. Let’s go back to class before we get detention.”

None of them budge an inch. Kitamoto says, “Satchan.”

Satoru bursts into tears. 

It’s an ugly, gasping thing. Mostly silent, a trick he learned early on. He’s always been quick to cry, ever since he was a kid. Kiyoshi’s been protecting him for a long time. Satoru tries to make it easy when he can. 

Kitamoto lets go of his wrist and wraps both arms around him instead. Taki makes a wounded noise and presses against Satoru’s back. The weight of them, the warmth of them, is grounding. It gives him something to focus on, something that pushes the lingering dread far away, then farther, until it finally falls off the edge of some precipice and Satoru can’t reach it anymore. 

For the first time since Kiyoshi woke him up this morning, Satoru’s heart begins to settle. He’s breathing slow and deep and even, buried in the familiar smell of Kitamoto’s laundry detergent and shampoo. It’s what Kitamoto’s bed smells like on the nights Satoru sleeps over. It’s an instant comfort. 

Kitamoto squeezes him tighter when the last little bit of tension in Satoru’s body finally goes away. 

“Okay,” he says evenly. “Talk to me.”

It really is that simple. With Kitamoto, it’s always that simple. That’s the whole reason Satoru was trying to avoid him. They’ve known each other forever; no one loves Satoru better. All it takes is one word from his best friend and Satoru is spilling his guts. He doesn’t want Kitamoto to feel torn in two directions; Satoru knows he’ll feel bad about being gone for the weekend while Satoru’s father is in town, but Satoru doesn’t want him to miss a trip he’s been looking forward to. 

“It’s only for the weekend,” Satoru says. “Natsume said I could stay at his house.”

“Of course you can,” Natsume says fiercely. “Touko would let you move in if you asked. One of us would probably try to smother the other with a pillow within one week of sharing a bedroom, but I’m sure we could work something out.”

“You could stay with me, too, Nishimura,” Tanuma interjects. “My dad loves having you around.”

“We haven’t had a sleepover in ages.” Taki is still nestled against Satoru like a barnacle, her voice a pleasant hum. “Isamu likes arguing about movies with you. You know my parents are overseas, there’s no one I have to ask for permission. You can just come over, any time.”

Kitamoto scoops the hair back off of Satoru’s forehead and plants a kiss there instead. He doesn’t care that Satoru is all sweaty and gross, or that their friends are watching. 

“See? Even if I wasn’t going to take you with me this weekend, you would have plenty of other places to go,” Kitamoto says. He messes up Satoru’s hair, his grin crooked and affectionate. “But I am. You and my grandma are gonna get along like a house on fire. Text Kiyoshi and let him know, okay?”

Taki makes an annoyed sound. Satoru smiles a lot sooner than he thought he’d be able to. 

When they get back to class, Nomiya-sensei just waves them to their desks. Tsuji is turned around in his seat to watch them cross the room, concern writ large across his face. He probably told Satoru’s friends where to find him. He probably let their teachers know they’d be a little late returning to class. He didn’t say anything, but he must have been worried since this morning.

“Alright?” Tsuji asks in a whisper as they sit down.

“All good, Masa-chan,” Satoru whispers back. The nickname makes Tsuji’s face wrinkle in that reluctant, can’t-help-himself smile; it makes Satoru feel a little more like himself. “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe all this rain,” Tooru says. She’s sitting on the window ledge, swinging her feet. “It was so nice an hour ago. Where did it come from?”

Natsume smiles at her, his chin propped up in his hand, leaning on the point of his elbow. It’s so nice having him in her homeroom now that they’re third years. Even classroom duties are more fun when she can do them with one of her friends. 

The two of them are the only ones left in class, and neither of them are in any rush to get home. Isamu moved to the city when he graduated. The Fujiwaras are at a family gathering that Natsume didn’t want to go to. 

It’s easy to feel lonely on a rainy day, especially when there is no one waiting for you.

“Might be a spirit,” Natsume says mildly. “There have been a few new faces in Yatsuhara lately, causing mischief.”

Tooru beams at him, practically glowing with enthusiasm. “If they give you any trouble, just call me!” 

She’s gotten better at her circles, ever since the day Nishimura stumbled upon one by accident back when they were fourteen. There is one drawn on her inner arm in one of the soft pink tattoo markers Tanuma gave her for her birthday. She can see spirits easily as long as she’s wearing it, but that is the least of her abilities now. 

Tooru has built upon her grandfather’s work. She can trap spirits in place for a short time, and render them harmless to any humans they want to hurt, and compel them– only in dire circumstances– to listen. 

Natsume is her best friend. She wants to help him with everything, with classroom duties and with monsters that come down from the mountain to wreak havoc. She doesn’t want him to be alone on a rainy day. She doesn’t want him to have to face the scary things alone ever again. She’ll get better and better and better until he has no choice but to count on her. 

The shadows in Natsume’s eyes are lesser than they were when she first met him. Over the years, the topography of his face has restructured itself. His expressions are built on a foundation of quiet joy now. 

He’s looking at her now the way he’s always looked at her, the way he always looks at things that no one else can see. 

“I’ll call you anyway,” he tells her. It manages to sound like a promise. “What would I do without you?”

Thunder rumbles in the distance somewhere, a long way off. Natsume used to be afraid of storms, but he looks up at Tooru with clear, bright eyes. He isn’t afraid anymore.

Tooru isn’t afraid, either. She rubs the circle beneath her sleeve with certain fingers.

“You’ll never have to find out,” she says. It sounds like a promise, too. 

Chapter Text

Kaname and his father moved around a lot before they finally settled in Hitoyoshi, and it’s something Kaname would say he was used to, if anyone thought to ask. 

It does feel a little strange to pack up his room at the temple, his time in this weird and wonderful town reduced to a dozen cardboard boxes, but he doesn’t have a chance to feel lonely. 

Every other time he’s done this, his father hired movers, and Kaname sat to once side and watched the undertaking without much participation. He was constantly sick, and rarely steady enough on his feet to help haul heavy furniture around, and his father didn’t think it was worth the risk. 

Kaname understood— understands— but he thinks it would have been nice to have some part in the process. To feel, for once, like he had a real place there, instead of just going along.

When moving day dawns, a crisp, pink April morning that seems to swell with promise and anticipation, no one asks Kaname to sit out. 

For all their careful planning, it’s hectic. Taki and her brother arrive looking over their shoulders like wanted criminals (”She took everything in grandpa’s study that wasn’t nailed down,” Isamu says dryly, to which Taki cheerfully retorts, “Mom and dad won’t notice until it’s too late!”), Shibata and Ogata are blowing up the group chat because they were too excited to sleep and ended up at the new house nearly five hours early, and Kitamoto and Nishimura are still having an argument that started almost a full week ago about the amount of comic books that could physically fit in the rental truck. 

“Maybe we should have hired movers,” Natsume says idly. His long hair is drawn back into a tail, pale blue sweater almost picture perfect against the bright sky. 

Kaname aches sometimes, just looking at him, but it’s an ache that he looks forward to. 

“No,” he says, “this way is better.” 

It takes two hours to fill the empty, eager cavern of the rental truck, twenty minutes for Touko’s tearful goodbyes even though she already has plans to come and visit on the weekend, another twelve to agree on seating arrangements for the drive. 

He falls asleep almost as soon as the truck starts moving, cheek pressed against the window, Taki’s hand folded firmly around his. 

And if Kaname was exhausted before, it’s nothing compared to how he feels when he’s carrying the last box into their new house. He’s got a headache, and his muscles are sore in places he didn’t even know he had muscles, and every step takes as much energy as a full period of gym class. 

But the front door rattles closed behind him, and it feels like a victory.

Shibata and Nyanko-sensei are pouring over local takeout menus in the kitchen, weighing dinner options based on taste and immediate gratification; Nishimura and Kitamoto are still arguing, the sound of it familiar and somehow immensely reassuring; Natsume and Taki are trying to set up the TV Adachi’s mother gave them, Taki pouring over a complicated-looking page of instructions while Natsume picks apart a tangle of wires; Ogata patters down the hall with an armful of clothes that ended up in the wrong room; Adachi comes around the corner and says, “Oh, there it is, thanks,” and lifts the box out of Tanuma’s hands.

Tanuma sinks down onto the nearest cushion and closes his eyes.

Moving has never felt like this before. He’s always stood by and let it be another thing that happened to him. But this— this hard work, and this new house, and this next chapter— he chose this. He was a part of it. 

He belongs here. 

Sliding to one side, Kaname ends up pillowed against a soft shoulder instead of the floor he was aiming for. 

“Wake me up when it’s time to eat,” he says to whoever the shoulder belongs to, half-asleep already.

The body beneath his shakes with a quiet laugh, and Natsume’s voice tells him, “Welcome home.”

Chapter Text

It’s hard convincing his eyes to cooperate. They keep drifting away from his workbook until Takashi shakes himself and refocuses. 

He missed a whole week of school, and the big tests were coming up. He can’t afford to nap his weekend away, no matter how bone-tired he feels.

So Takashi struggles through another few pages and it’s frustrating work. More than once, he has to double back whole sections when he realized he wasn’t actually absorbing any information. 

There’s a pitcher of iced tea on his desk, and an assortment of snacks, and he lets them sit there. He’ll reward himself when he manages to catch up on his homework and not a moment sooner. No matter how tempting it looks. 

He turns a page stubbornly. 

The rotating fan Shigeru brought upstairs for him ticks quietly in the corner. Taki tied colorful little streamers to the face of it that blow playfully in whichever direction it turns. The window is open, the perfumed air from Touko’s little garden wafting in on a gentle breeze. He can hear the busy chatter of bugs getting the last of their work in before evening falls. His new cellphone buzzes every so often.

With a start, Takashi realizes he’s zoning off again, and yanks himself upright sternly. 

The book is plucked neatly out of his hands.

“What—” He follows its process up and away to meet a familiar scowling face. “Nishimura?”

“When Touko-san bought you a cellphone, it was with the idea that you would answer it now and then,” his friend says in an unamused tone he must have adopted from Tsuji. “We’ve been texting and calling all day.”

Takashi wrestles with the immediate guilt that sets in. He hadn’t meant to ignore anyone, just turned the ringer off so it wouldn’t distract him. Very small and quiet is the thought of I wasn’t really expecting anyone to call me anyway. 

Nishimura senses weakness and pounces upon it like a lion closing in on an injured gazelle. 

“You know how we are, always jumping to the worst conclusion,” he goes on. “You didn’t answer and we were worried maybe you relapsed. You can’t just leave us hanging like that, Bakashi.”

Takashi would chafe at the emotional manipulation if it were coming from Sensei, or from Natori, or from one of his friends among the yokai of Yatsuhara. But this is his friend, who has proven his caring so many times that the fact of it has almost become redundant, and if he doesn’t have the right to scold it’s fair to say that no one does. 

So Takashi meekly shuffles over to give Nishimura a place to sit in front of the fan. He starts pouring tea, and Takashi is newly suspicious of Touko’s ulterior motives when he notices for the first time that there is more than one cup on the tray. 

Nishimura gives a very pointed look at Takashi’s phone. Embarrassed, Takashi snatches it up and unlocks it to find a veritable flood of texts and missed call alerts. It’s overwhelming. He locks it again and sets it back down. 

“Okay,” Nishimura says.

“You’re here now, so you can just tell me what it is that’s so important,” Takashi snaps, but there’s a pleased feeling elbowing its way to the front through the self-consciousness, like a little sun rising inside him. Even when he was alone, his friends were thinking about him somewhere else. The little messages on his phone are proof of that. 

His eyes skate back to the pile of homework on his desk. This is why, he reminds himself in a heady wave of fresh resolve. He has to catch up. 

But Nishimura disarms him immediately, easily, with a simple, “We missed you.”

Takashi blinks at him. “That’s it?”

His friend frowns at him. “Oh, easy for you to say. Just imagine you wanted to see me after I’d been sick and holed up for a whole week, and I wasn’t answering your calls. You wouldn’t worry even a little bit? Or come make sure I was just being a jerk and hadn’t, I dunno, ended up in the hospital or something?”

He takes a wounded sip of tea, as petulant as anything, and that sun inside of Takashi grows three sizes. 

“Sorry,” he says. He tries not to throw the word around as much as he used to, tries to save it for the occasions when he really needs it, so that it actually means something when he does. Sure enough, it gets Nishimura’s attention. “I just… Between you and Tsuji, I got my homework every day, but I wasn’t well enough to work on it until now. I have a lot to catch up on.” 

Something like understanding has dawned on Nishimura’s face. His head tips to the side a bit, and he’s doing that thing x-ray thing with his eyes where he’s looking clean through Takashi to get to the heart of things.

Unsaid is I’m afraid you’ll leave me behind but Nishimura probably heard it loud and clear.

“Why didn’t you say so?” He puts his cup down and picks up Takashi’s phone. He guesses the PIN right on his second try. “We’ll help you study.”

“But it’s Sunday,” Takashi blurts. “You probably have better things to do.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nishimura tells him, and Takashi figures that’s fair. A very strategic-looking text is fired off, and Takashi’s phone is handed back, and Nishimura adds, “You’re stuck with us, you know.”

Takashi can’t help but smile. He nods. 

Nishimura gives him a shrewd look, helping himself to one of the snacks. They’ll need a lot more, if the excited texts Takashi is getting are any indication. 

“Nah, you don’t,” Nishimura says succinctly. “But you will. You’re pretty smart. You’ll catch up sooner or later.”

Chapter Text

“For the last time,” Madara barks, “get out of here now!”

It’s a less forceful demand to make in this lucky cat body than it would have been in his real one, but he has to give Taki the benefit of his narrowed eyes and pointed teeth since she wouldn’t be able to see them otherwise. 

She and Natsume were both thrown from the bridge into this dry riverbed. She cut her face on a rock, and Madara’s unlucky charge bounced his head off one.  He’s still out cold, and Taki has an arm around his shoulders, his cheek pillowed carefully against her collar. Her stubborn scowl puts Madara in mind of Reiko at her absolute worst.

Taki doesn’t even seem to notice the fresh graze above her eyebrow, still dripping a tacky line down the side of her face.

The sight of the blood makes Madara’s hackles rise.

The violent ayakashi is still lurking nearby, hungry and watchful. It is not nameless, only opportunistic; this far up the mountain, relatively few humans would have made a meal of themselves by wandering across its bridge. 

Madara shines his light, and the ayakashi recoils, curling in on itself, but doesn’t disappear. 

As close to feral as these things can get, probably half out of its mind since its river ran dry. The light has barely faded before it’s creeping in again, feathered edges inching forward like wisps of sun-starched cotton.

“I won’t tell you again,” Madara snarls.

Without missing a beat, and with a bit of a snarl herself, Taki snaps, “I’m not leaving him!”

“I’m not asking! Move or I will make you!”

He should have known it wouldn’t be so simple. The girl’s eyes go steely and her mouth twists into a frown, even as she surrenders her protective handfuls of Natsume’s jacket and lowers him carefully to the ground. 

It’s only after she’s climbed up the crumbling bank to relative safety that Madara transforms. Showing all his teeth, he says, “You’ve ruined my afternoon, weakling. I hope you realize that.”

The ayakashi doesn’t have the good sense to back off even then. Its eyes track Taki’s retreat for a moment, and then sink back to the more readily available Natsume, laying still and quiet and prone. 

It’s not as though Madara cares about these children, not really. What a waste of time that would be. He’s not foolish enough to have formed some sort of attachment to the boy lying at his feet, to the girl who had to be forced to leave even when her life was in danger, because that would be sentimental and stupid and human.

But he stands there between Natsume and the creature that means him harm because it really doesn’t occur to him to do anything else. He’s reluctant to dash too far ahead in attack and give the slippery thing an opening. He wants, with the same reckless urgency that compelled him to attack a harvest god not even a full year ago, to keep Natsume safe.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, Natsume’s friend feels exactly the same. 

“Hey!” Taki shouts. 

Madara and the ayakashi turn sharply to find her standing barely a stone’s throw from the empty river, a seeing circle sketched crudely into the earth by her feet. 

There is no one left to stand between Taki and the spirit. Madara can’t do it without surrendering Natsume. She was supposed to have run away. Anger– it must be anger– sends Madara’s heart racing. 

“Stupid brat! I told you to leave!”

“Don’t call me names,” Taki says. Her hands are shaking, so she balls them into fists. “I told you I wasn’t leaving him.”

It takes about two seconds for the ayakashi to decide to pounce. It tears towards her with inhuman speed, and Taki simply lets it come. She takes a step to the side, standing behind that damn circle as if it might somehow protect her. Madara’s muscles are coiled to give chase, when suddenly the ayakashi stops cold.

It’s caught in the circle. It screeches and tests the lines immediately, throwing itself against the barrier, but it can’t get out.

Taki smiles. 

She steps around the hostile creature, and climbs clumsily back into the riverbed. Her eyes peer around for Madara in something like polite curiosity, entirely unbothered by his invisible form. It’s only a small comfort that she doesn’t see the way he’s gaping at her.

“I’ve been studying grandpa’s books,” Taki says simply. “I’m tired of being helpless. From now on, anything that tries to hurt my friend will have me to deal with.

“Now,” she goes on, hands on her hips. “Are you going to carry him home, or do I have to do that, too?”

Humans are self-serving and stubborn and loyal to a fault. They will do downright stupid things for each other, as if their fleeting lives aren’t short enough already. They tend not to let abstract concepts like reason and common sense stand in their way. They are fundamentally predictable. Madara has been around long enough to know that for certain. 

He wonders when they’ll stop surprising him.

Chapter Text

“Thank you for your help!” Taki says brightly, setting her tray of seedlings on a worktable. 

Takashi copies her, gazing around the clubhouse at all the greenery. “You’ve been busy.”

“Oh, it’s been a lot of work but it’s so much fun,” Taki gushes, pushing the hair out of her face with the back of her wrist and leaving a smudge of dirt behind. “I’m really glad I signed up! Now that— now that I can , I want to, you know?”

Takashi is a little amazed by her, this girl who knows monsters and knows solitude and still manages to smile so sweetly over a row of tiny green sprouts. 

He knows those things, too, but he’s not anything like her. 

“I should go,” Takashi says, feeling out of place. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Hang on!” Taki appears before him with a handful of flowers. “Take these with you! You really helped me out today.”

‘These’ are a cluster of small white flowers, with round petals and a yellow center. Takashi takes the small pot they’re nestled in gingerly. 

“Um, thank you,” Takashi says. “But I don’t really— “

“I bet your foster mother would like them,” she adds without guile, and Takashi forgets the rest of his refusal. 

So he leaves with his school bag hanging over his shoulder and the pot of flowers carried in both hands. He’s past the bridge, well over halfway home, when he encounters trouble. 

In the back of his mind, he’s surprised he made it that far. 

“Reiko!” 

It’s not a human voice that calls out; the pitch is all wrong. The yokai behind him looms like a shadow in the middle of the road, incongruent with the sunshine and the cheerful fields of lavender on either side. 

“My name,” it croaks, lumbering closer. “Give it to me.”

“I will,” Takashi stays, matching every step it takes forward with two steps back. “I’ll return your name, just— “ 

It lunges. Takashi nearly trips, loose gravel skidding beneath his sneakers. The flower pot Taki gave him tumbles out of his hands and breaks against the road with a heady crunch, just as tapered fingers fold into the front of Takashi’s shirt. 

Then something heavy lands on his shoulder.

“Nothing but trouble,” a familiar voice grumbles, at the same time a white light all but blinds him. 

When it clears, Takashi is alone on the road, with Nyanko-sensei beside him and trampled flowers at his feet. 

“A weakling like that got the best of you? How embarrassing,” Nyanko-sensei sneers. 

Rattled, Takashi snaps, “Some bodyguard you are.”

He kneels by the broken pottery. It feels like a failure on his part, but he’s used to swallowing down that particular sting. 

“Where’d you get those things, anyway?” the cat asks, unbothered.

“They were a gift,” Takashi mutters. “Taki gave them to me, for Touko-san.”

Only one of the blossoms is still whole and undamaged, and he parts it from the rest of the mess with careful fingers.

Touko greets him warmly when he finally makes it home, and ushers him toward the stairs so he can change before dinner. 

“Oh,” Takashi says at the foot of the staircase, remembering himself and the small flower in his hand. “Um, I understand if you don’t want it, but— “

He holds it out to her. She blinks in some confusion, a split second that has Takashi wishing he’d just left the flower with its friends on the roadside, before her whole face lights up.

“For me? Oh, how lovely!” 

Touko takes it from him with more delicacy than it deserves and bustles away into the kitchen. Takashi follows, feeling like a leaf caught in a summer wind. The flower goes into a small glass of water, and then up onto the windowsill in place of pride, and Touko stands back to admire it with him. 

It soaks up the evening sun with what Takashi can imagine is helpless gratitude, this tiny little thing that gets to live a little longer because of a better person’s kindness. 

“I’m sorry it’s just the one,” Takashi feels he needs to clarify. His heart is doing something uncomfortable in his chest, tripping over itself as he tries to explain why the gift could have been much more than it was. “Taki— my friend from school— she gave me a whole bunch to give you, but I dropped them on the way home.”

“Never you mind,” Touko says kindly.  “Thank you for thinking of me, Takashi.”

Later that night, Takashi starts to unfold his futon only to find a lucky cat in the way. 

“Sensei,” he scolds. The cat flicks a derisive ear and doesn’t move. 

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, because you’re an idiot,” Nyanko-sensei finally says, which isn’t a promising start. “But I know of a flower not far from here. Just up the mountain a ways.”

Takashi squints at him warily. “What kind of flower?”

“A yokai flower. It’s migratory, and drifts from place to place as it pleases, but it’s decided to bloom here for awhile.”

“What does it look like?” Takashi asks despite himself. 

“Whatever you want it to,” Nyanko-sensei says. “It takes on the form the beholder likes most. Just focus on the flower you hope to see, and it’ll do the rest.”

Takashi’s gut-punch reaction is to say no, not interested, because yokai have only ever brought him misery… but this time, he hesitates. 

And decides maybe it would be worth it, if he could bring Touko better flowers than the one she got.

Nyanko-sensei has to be persuaded to give Takashi a lift, which Takashi thinks is a bit rich, since the whole thing was his idea to begin with. 

His great golden eye peers into Takashi’s bedroom, followed by the low voice that sometimes still sends chills down his spine:

“We haven’t got all night, brat. The humans will notice if you’re not here in the morning.”

Takashi nods slowly, staring apprehensively through the open window at the dark summer night, and at the spirit waiting to ferry him across it. 

“We’ll definitely be back by morning?” he can’t help but ask. 

“If you get a move on sometime tonight, we will,” the yokai mutters. 

So Takashi gathers his courage and climbs onto the yokai’s back. They fly for miles along the black ribbon of the river, over a dark sea of treetops, until sensei finally starts to descend halfway up the mountain. 

The forest looms. There’s hardly a better word for it than that. The trees stretch infinitely in the twilight; Takashi, comparatively, feels very small. 

“I have no idea where we are,” he says, digging through his bag for the flashlight he brought along. “Don’t you dare wander off and leave me here.”

“If only I could get rid of you so easily.”

Following the beam of the light, Takashi sets off down the path. Nyanko-sensei prowls beside him, this giant, wolf-like creature, even though his silly cat form would make navigating the narrow way easier. Branches snap against his side, thistles tug deep into his fur. Takashi thinks about offering to carry him, then decides against it.

The path opens up to a meadow. Wind rustles through the tall grass like a hundred whispered voices, and the chatter of nighttime insects comes to an abrupt halt as the arrival of a boy and a spirit interrupts their end-of-day gossip. The waxing moon paints everything in silver; it’s as if Takashi has stepped into another world. 

“It’s somewhere around here,” Nyanko-sensei says, advancing to the left. “A small valley. If you hit the river, you’ve gone too far. Don’t get eaten.”

Takashi rolls his eyes and plunges into the dark in the opposite direction. 

Glowing eyes blink up at him from both sides of the footpath; something scurries past his shoe that is too long to be a scurrying sort of animal. But they’re all little spirits, curious and nocturnal. They probably mean about as much harm as a thicket mouse. 

It’s odd, Takashi realizes. This far into Yatsuhara, one would expect to see dozens of yokai of at least the chuukyuu’s rank. He wonders if there is a shrine or something else nearby warding them away. 

A low rush of water greets him at the end of the path; the beam of his flashlight skims the black surface of the river. Takashi sighs, annoyed, and starts to turn around. 

“You’ve gone too far,” someone tells him. Takashi flinches in surprise, whirling to find whoever spoke, but all there is to see is the dark outline of trees. “That guardian of yours put up an impressive barrier, but it will hardly do you any good if you wander past it .”

A shadow parts from the rest of them, a tall, tapered figure. Takashi stumbles back and nearly falls. The flashlight goes spinning off into the dark. 

“I get so few humans around here,” the spirit says, advancing with unearthly speed. “What a treat!”

It would have been impossible to run if not for the little spirits still guarding the footpath. Eyes wide and upturned like lamps, they guide Takashi back in the right direction— but after just a few steps, he feels a many-fingered hand close on the back of his shirt. 

He’s pitched to the ground. The spirit leans over him. 

“Foolish thing,” it says with mean-spirited glee. “Coming here alone.”

And then sensei is there, ripping the frightening yokai away the way a dog rips meat off a bone. He lets it dangle from his jaws like the last bite of a good meal. 

“Foolish thing,” sensei parrots, a mockery. “Thanks for bringing me a snack, brat.”

“Don’t eat it, sensei,” Takashi says, sitting up gingerly. “Just make it go away.”

Nyanko-sensei doesn’t look at all happy about mercy as a concept just then. He clenches the creature in his teeth, crushing it into something small and wisp-like. It’s the size of a bird when he lets it go, and flees back into the dark without another sound. 

Then Nyanko-sensei rounds on Takashi furiously. 

“What did I tell you about the river, idiot?”

Takashi looks up at him. Realizing, now, why he hasn’t seen any other yokai on the mountainside all night. It was no man-made thing keeping them away.

He isn’t sure what to do with this knowledge. Even just sitting in his head, though, it makes him feel warm. 

“Sorry, Nyanko-sensei,” he says agreeably, picking himself up. “It was hard to see. And I lost my light.”

“ Humans,” sensei snarls, but there’s no real bite to it, especially not when Takashi has a fresh example of a hateful yokai to compare it to. “Get on my back. You’re too much trouble left on your own.”

This time, Takashi climbs on without any hesitation, adjusting the strap of his bag with one hand and holding onto sensei’s ruff with the other. 

The night air is cool, and the tall grass bends away from them like a sea as Nyanko-sensei romps through, and the sky above them is turning gray with the faintest idea of dawn. 

Nyanko-sensei slows to a walk. He takes a short leap down some natural embankment, and then another, and finally says, “End of the road.”

Eagerly, Takashi slides down, leaving one hand in the thick fur at sensei’s side. He searches the valley with a glance, but all he finds is a few odd clusters of wildflowers and the bright eyes of some night creature darting away at their abrupt arrival. 

“They’ll bloom at dawn,” Nyanko-sensei says before Takashi can open his mouth to ask. “We still have a few minutes.”

“I can’t believe it’s nearly morning already. I hope the Fujiwaras aren’t awake yet.”

“Not likely. With a child as troublesome as you to look after, I’m sure they snatch every moment of rest that they can.”

Takashi takes a seat on a mossy stump. With a pop of forcibly displaced air and a curtain of thick smoke, Nyanko-sensei waddles after him. He hops up onto Takashi’s lap and makes himself into a comfortable loaf. Fondly, Takashi pets him between the ears.

“What flowers are you hoping to see, sensei?” Takashi asks.

“Bah,” comes the grumpy retort. “I don’t care. You’ve seen one flower, you’ve seen them all.”

Takashi rolls his eyes, but keeps petting. As safe as Nyanko-sensei’s true form tends to make him feel, Takashi thinks he prefers his company like this. 

He won’t tell him that— not when Nyanko-sensei has too much ego as it is— but the thought is still there, kept secret and safe, like Takashi keeps most important things. 

“Do you think Touko-san will like these new flowers I bring her?” Takashi asks, apropos of nothing. 

“I think she was happy with what she got,” sensei replies, as blunt as ever. 

It takes Takashi by surprise. “But it was just the one. It wasn’t the whole bunch it was supposed to be.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nyanko-sensei says shortly. “You missed the point. It’s not about the flowers , idiot. She told you, didn’t she?” 

What did she tell him?

“Thank you for thinking of me, Takashi.”

Takashi blinks, and wonders how on earth something so small could mean so much. And then, right on the heels of that thought, feels foolish.

The smallest things are sometimes the most important. And after all the little gestures from her that have changed his life entirely, maybe Takashi can understand why Touko’s face lit up when he brought her a single flower. 

“It’s time,” Nyanko-sensei says, and Takashi lifts his head with a start. 

Like a time-lapse video, stems are picking themselves up from the grass and tilting to meet the rising sun. The flowers that unfold are rounded and white, just like the ones Taki sent him home with. Almost glowing in the new morning, opening up as if they’re taking a stretch after all this time asleep. 

Takashi wonders if they’ll bloom here again tomorrow. He thinks it might be nice to bring Taki to see them. It would be a good way to thank her for the flowers she gave him. 

I wonder if she knows how to build a garden, he thinks. Maybe she would help me build one for Touko-san.

It isn’t until he’s finally home, laying his futon out at something like five o’clock in the morning, that Takashi remembers himself. 

“Sensei?”

“What now?” the cat grouses, curled up on his cushion. He doesn’t even open his eyes. 

“Thank you.”

“Enough. Go to bed.”

Takashi can barely stay awake long enough to slip beneath the duvet. There are birds beginning to chatter outside, and sunlight is creeping in through the window shades. 

“What kind of flower did you see?” Takashi asks sleepily.

The answer is all but buried in a storm of grumbling, but Takashi knows what to listen for; and so he hears it when Nyanko-sensei eventually mutters, “I don’t see what’s so impressive about those little white flowers you like so much, anyway.”

He saw what I saw, Takashi thinks, and hides a smile against his pillow. 

Like Taki’s seedlings— not so much flowers as the brand new idea of flowers— the thought puts down fresh roots in his mind and digs for purchase. 

It might even grow into something wonderful, if only he gives it the chance.

Chapter Text

Suzuki’s eyes are wide and glassy in a way that preludes tears. Nishimura, who is and always will be a sympathetic crier, straightens up from his slouch  across Natsume’s desk in alarm. 

“I’m so sorry!” their classmate wails, clutching handfuls of cheap, lilac-colored fabric. “I was fixing one of the hems at the breakfast table and my little brother poured soup all over it. It’s completely ruined.”

Her twin brother has a look of grim resignation on his face, obviously having dealt with this level of dramatics all morning. Tsuji moves in to begin damage control. 

“Okay, well,” he says helpfully, “maybe it’s not so bad! Maybe we can–”

As soon as the Suzukis unfold the costume, Tsuji’s mouth clicks shut. What looks like a full serving of miso soup has stained the entire front panel. Their little brother couldn’t have done more damage even if he tried. 

The silence stretches for a beat, maybe two. Suzuki’s eyes get even wetter. 

And then Natsume surprises the hell out of the rest of them with a sigh. He rubs the back of his head, mouth twisting as if two parts of himself are at war with each other, before he finally surrenders, “I might have a solution.”

It’s a mark of how much he’s grown in the past two years that he doesn’t flinch away from the collective attention of the entire class when it lands on him a second later. 

“Like, to get the stain out?” Tsuji asks. 

“No, that’s hopeless,” Natsume says apologetically. Suzuki hangs her head. “I just meant, I might have something at home we can use to replace the costume.” 

“Beats trying to sew another together before the play tomorrow,” Nishimura pipes up, always and forever on Team Natsume. He doesn’t even know what’s going on, really, but it doesn’t matter when Natsume slants him a grateful smile. 

“Okay,” Tsuji says. “Let’s ask sensei if we can go by your place. Yes, Nishimura, you can come. Everyone else, run lines!”

It’s late afternoon by now, but the whole school is abuzz with last-minute festival prep. They pass Taki by chance on their way to the lounge and Nishimura slaps her an enthusiastic high-five without breaking stride. The teacher’s lounge is a beacon of peace and serenity in the storm of madness, and Nomiya-sensei slides open the door warily at Tsuji’s knock. 

He was their homeroom teacher when they were first years, and he smiles at the familiar trio they make. Kurusu-sensei is on the phone, but through a game of charades they procure permission to leave campus, and Natsume texts Touko to let her know. 

And that’s how, twenty minutes later, Nishimura finds himself in the kitchen with Touko and Tsuji and Nyanko-sensei, while Natsume reluctantly goes upstairs to put on the replacement costume. Touko insisted he model it for them, so she’d know if she needed to make any alterations before they whisked it away.

Nyanko’s ugly face is exceptionally smug-looking, and that should have been enough to tip Nishimura off that Something Was About To Happen.

As it is, he still inhaled iced tea and spent a fraught ten seconds coughing and hacking it out of his lungs while a distracted Tsuji thumped him half-heartedly on the back.

“Shut up,” Natsume snaps, his face bright pink. He looks– he’s dressed in– 

“Takashi-kun, where on earth did you get this outfit?” Touko asks, hands folded in delight. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“A friend gave it to me,” he mutters. “I sort of… I was in a sort of festival a few years ago. I played the role of the Harvest God.”

“Some play,” says Tsuji, sounding very sorry he missed it. 

Touko is already tugging at the collar of the costume and straightening the shoulders to make it lay flat. There’s an amused, affectionate smile on her face at the Natsume-typical shenanigans playing out in her kitchen. After a moment, Natsume tentatively glances at Nishimura as if to gauge his reaction, one bright brown eye and a sliver of his face all that’s visible from behind the antlered mask. 

It’s the exact second Nishimura was waiting for; he snaps a picture with his cellphone. 

“Nishimura!” Natsume howls. He rounds the table at a run, and Nishimura jumps out of his chair to put Tsuji bodily between them. “Oh, don’t you dare!” 

“I have to show Tanuma!” Nishimura yells back, frantically texting. “I have to!”

There’s a whole lot of commotion at that point, Tsuji trying to extract himself, Nyanko-sensei yowling when he gets underfoot, Touko laughing airily, Natsume and Nishimura wrestling for the phone. 

Natsume is bright with fury when he finds the picture successfully delivered to the group chat and a whole stream of excited texts pouring in even though everyone is supposed to be working on their class projects, and pins Nishimura with his most impressive glare. 

It’s more impressive than usual, because he looks downright intimidating in this beautiful, regal-looking dress up, like a creature melted off the page of a fairy tale, but it’s also not very impressive at all, because it’s Natsume. 

So Nishimura offers him his brightest, get out of jail free card smile. 

“Hey,” he says, “they’re all gonna see it tomorrow, anyway.”

“Yeah,“ Natsume grits out. “On Suzuki.”

But he can’t stay mad at Nishimura for very long. The standing record was a miserable eleven minutes back when they were fifteen, and Nishimura doesn’t even remember what that fight was about anymore. Sure enough, Natsume’s eyes soften after a minute and he hands the phone back.

“You’re the worst,” he says succinctly. 

“I did you a favor. If Tanuma wasn’t in love with you before, he definitely is now.”

He’s chased out the door by a livid mountain god, but that’s just part of life these days. Besides, running is excellent cardio; since making friends with Natsume, Nishimura’s been in the best shape of his life.

Chapter Text

Kaname glances outside on his way back from the kitchen. It’s storming hard,  rain drumming against the roof like nature has a point to prove, and he’s glad to be safely ensconced in the warm indoors.

“Sorry that took me so long, dad called, and I….” 

Kaname trails off as he steps into the sitting room, because there’s no one there to hear him. The cushion his friend was seated at five minutes ago is empty. 

He sets the tray of tea down on the table slowly. 

“Natsume?”  

Another crack of thunder seems to rattle the windows, chased by lightning a bare second later. For a prolonged moment the room is illuminated as if by a floodlight, stark and over-exposed, and Kaname’s eyes catch on the figure huddled in the farthest corner of the room. 

Heart lodged in his throat, Kaname rounds the table at a run. 

“Natsume, what is it?” he whispers, his voice a rush. “Is it a spirit? Are you hurt?”

His friend is shaking, eyes wide and terrified, knees drawn up to his chest, hands clasped against his ears. The storm rumbles outside and Natsume shudders in time, curling into something even smaller than he already is. 

“Is it– the thunder? You’re afraid of– ?” 

It’s a surprise, but only because Kaname didn’t know. They’ve been friends for close to two years now and somehow this has never come up. Somehow he’s missed it. He crouches there on his knees, hands hovering inches away from Natsume’s trembling arms, and thinks How did I miss it?

“What do you need?” he asks desperately. “Should I– here, let me go get the tea– “

But the second he starts to draw away, fingers latch onto his sleeve. Natsume’s hand curls into a fist there, as though Kaname is the last solid thing in the world. For all that he’s been utterly silent, his voice is as hoarse as if he’s been shouting for hours when he blurts, “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

Kaname covers Natsume’s hand with one of his own, squeezing as tight as he dares. “I’m here, okay? I’m here, Natsume. Just hold onto me, you’ll be okay.”

They sit there until the rain stops, until the thunder is a distant grumble over the mountain somewhere and Natsume is drooping with exhaustion against Kaname’s shoulder. But their fingers are still tangled together between the press of their bodies, and neither of them really want to let go. 

“Stay,” Natsume murmurs, face a mess of half-dried tears. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kaname tells him, but only because he’s not quite brave enough to say, “I’ll never leave you.”

Chapter Text

Natsume is home late. This in itself isn’t worrying; the four missed calls, on the other hand?

The door slides shut quietly behind him, and there’s unobtrusive rustling in the genkan as he slips off his shoes and hangs up his jacket. He comes around the corner like a ghost, pale and tired, with his cat held to his chest the way he used to hold him when they were high school students, when he didn’t have anything else to hold. 

He stops short in the hallway. Likely, he wasn’t expecting all of his roommates to be up waiting for him, seated around the kitchen table like some sort of grave council. Raising an eyebrow, Taki gestures at the empty chair. 

“Sit,” she says in her sweet, low voice. 

Natsume is smart enough not to take it as a request. He sits. 

“I told you they’d be angry, brat,” Nyanko-sensei says without sympathy. He worms out of Natsume’s arms, removing himself from the line of fire like the absolute coward he is, and circles the table to hop up into Tanuma’s lap instead. 

Natsume tracks his progress with a glare. Nishimura leans across the table and taps it with his fingers, twice, just loud enough to get his attention. 

“Hey,” he says. In the warm light of the kitchen at two o’clock in the morning, his expression is earnest. “You promised.”

It’s simple, but it tears through Natsume’s defenses like a fist through a rice paper door. Nishimura has always been the best at that. Kitamoto watches the fight drain out of Natsume before he even had a chance to do anything with it. 

“I know,” Natsume says, “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to. I was on my way home from work, and– ”

“Hold the phone,” Shibata says, holding up both hands to stall any further excuses. He points at Natsume’s sleeve. “Is that blood?”

Natsume blinks and looks down at himself. He gives it some thought before he says, “No?”

“That’s not a question you’re supposed to answer with another question,” Kitamoto informs him, feeling a sudden and intense sympathy for all the shit his mother put up with during their teen years. He scoots his chair back enough that he can turn and face Natsume properly, waving impatiently until his friend surrenders the arm in question. Working the sleeve up reveals a relatively minor wound; it looks more like a scrape than a scratch, about the width and length of Kitamoto’s palm. It isn’t bleeding anymore, but Kitamoto glances up and says, “Satchan, grab the first aid kit?”

Nishimura makes a face, but pushes away from the table and thumps down the hall toward the first-floor bathroom. They have medical supplies tucked away everywhere in this big old house, but the first aid kit in the first floor bathroom has the cartoon bandaids that Nishimura so loves to impose on his family. 

Natsume looks grimly resigned to his fate. His long hair is slipping out of its tail on all sides, and there’s a leaf stuck to his sweater, and splatters of mud all the way up to the knees of his pants. 

“I really am sorry,” he says softly. 

Tanuma tucks Nyanko-sensei into the crook of his arm and gets out of his chair. Taki leans across the table and offers her hands. Natsume slips his free hand into both of hers and she holds it tight. 

“Can you tell me why you didn’t answer your phone?” she asks.

He winces. “It died. I forgot to charge it again.”

Kitamoto finds himself mollified by the excuse. It’s very on-brand for their technologically-disinclined friend, and better than thinking he’d been ignoring them all night. And the scrape on his arm isn’t really that bad; they’ve both had worse from crashing their bikes when they were kids. 

Shibata opens his mouth, clearly less than satisfied, but Nishimura chooses that moment to return and cuts him off as neatly as if he’d timed it that way. 

“I’m getting you a power bank for that stupid phone tomorrow,” he says. The mood of the room is shifting already, lightening as he meets Natsume’s eyes and smiles crookedly at him. Forgiven, that smile says. “Susumu and I are going shopping anyway. You don’t have to work, right? Wanna come along?”

Natsume’s eyes are wide and moon-like. Sometimes he still looks the way he did when they first knew him, when he was fourteen and so lonely it hurt just looking at him. It’s been almost a decade since then, and he hasn’t spent a single day alone since, and he’s so loved now it’s a wonder he hasn’t suffocated from it yet… but sometimes he lets himself forget. 

It’s nights like these, when he comes home to everyone waiting up for him, worried for him, that help him remember. 

He smiles back. The tired shadows seem to peel back from his face one by one.

Tanuma returns from the stove with a steaming mug that he sets by Natsume’s elbow. He tugs gently on the end of Natsume’s ponytail before he sits down, a gesture that means as much as one of Nishimura’s full-body hugs. 

Kitamoto packs the scrape with ointment and gauze, and wraps it with a dressing, relieved for the hundredth time that he decided to follow his mother into the field of medicine, after all. For the little cut closer to Natsume’s elbow, he picks out a pink bandaid with tiny white rabbits on it, and smooths it carefully into place. 

“Okay,” Kitamoto says. “You’ll live.”

“Of course he will,” Nyanko-sensei mutters shortly, closing his eyes and laying his head on Tanuma’s knee. “With you lot around, what choice does he have?”

“Some of us have to work in the morning and need our sleep,” Shibata says in a very haughty tone for someone whose work consists of lounging on the sofa and not-writing on his laptop for most of the day and then writing furiously for an hour to meet some deadline or another. “So start talking, Takashi. I wanna hear everything.”

Natsume twists his arm around to get a good luck at the bandaid. When he sees it, his smile widens. The ghosts all fall away until it’s just him, and his family, and the seven of them seated together around a table more comfortably meant for four. The kitchen is warm and well-lit, and none of the nighttime darkness dares to reach them inside. 

No darkness ever reaches them here. 

Chapter Text

Nyanko-sensei says it’s nothing too alarming. That since it happened once before, it’s perfectly reasonable that it might happen again. 

“He got knocked loose, that’s all,” the lucky cat says, sounding entirely unbothered. 

“Uh-huh,” Kaname replies faintly. 

Natsume is– well, his body is laying on the floor of Kaname’s sitting room. Kaname is so anxious he feels like he’s about to have an out-of-body experience. 

He’s grateful his father is gone for the weekend. He wouldn’t know how to explain this. He’ll call Touko-san and let her know Natsume is staying the night at his house. He already called Taki, who left her house at a run and promised, over the sound of her front gate crashing closed, that she would be there in fifteen minutes. 

Now he’s just sitting here, mechanically feeding his lunch to a spirit cat, staring at the lifeless shape of his best friend on the floor. 

“Um,” he says, feeling vaguely as though this is a bad dream he might wake up from if he thinks about it hard enough, “I should call an ambulance, right?”

“Nah,” Nyanko-sensei says. “He isn’t hurt. No bump on the head this time. Think of it like tripping and losing a shoe.”

Kaname nods like he gets it, even though he doesn’t get it at all. His hand is shaking as he passes the cat another bite of egg. He thinks maybe he should call Natori, too. He has the number saved in his phone in case of emergencies. Natori had told him, very seriously, not to be afraid to call. 

And Kaname still is afraid to call, a little, but he’s more afraid of this. He’s terrified of this, actually. 

“Alright, already,” Nyanko-sensei snaps so abruptly that Kaname jumps. The chopsticks clatter to the floor, but the cat only shoves them aside. “I’m getting an earful over here from this brat of mine. You’re lucky you can’t hear him, Tanuma.”

Kaname blinks. For the first time since they showed up on his doorstep, he tears his eyes away from Natsume and meets Nyanko-sensei’s keen gaze. 

“He’s here?”

“Where the hell else would he be?” Nyanko-sensei gripes. “I told you it isn’t like last time. He’s not off wandering Yatsuhara without an idea of who he is. He just lost a shoe.”

Oh, Kaname thinks, and he’s so absurdly relieved he feels like he might cry. 

“You didn’t tell me that,” he says, pressing the heel of his hands against his eyes. 

He was thinking about those long, frightening days spent combing the forest, searching for his comatose friend’s restless spirit. Those long, frightening evenings in the hospital room, sitting at Natsume’s bedside and praying that he would come back.

“I would have if I’d known I’d have to listen to this otherwise,” the cat mutters. But maybe he sounds a little rueful. One ear twitches, down and back up again. He adds, “Guess I’m stuck playing messenger for you brats until that girl gets here with her seeing circle.” 

Kaname casts a glance around the room. The yokai fish are swimming up the walls and across the ceiling, faint shadows of those vibrant creatures he can’t actually see. 

Natsume doesn’t cast a shadow. That doesn’t stop Kaname from looking for him. 

“Where is he?” he asks, eyes trailing. He tries to make a joke. “Right behind me?”

“Right in front of you, actually,” Nyanko-sensei says. 

There’s nothing in front of him. Kaname faces it anyway. He smiles a little, even though he doesn’t really feel like smiling. It’s different now that he knows his friend is watching. 

“Even if you had nowhere else to go, I’m glad you came here,” he says. “You’re always going to be safe here. So don’t wander off again, okay?”

The front door rattles open with force somewhere behind them. A very winded Taki is calling out a greeting while she stumbles out of her shoes, five minutes sooner than she said she’d be. She really must have run the whole way here. 

At the same time, while Kaname’s attention wavers between the sitting room and the entry way, he catches a flash of color in his periphery. It’s only for an instant, but he’s sure of what he saw. 

Natsume’s silvery hair. His head resting on Kaname’s shoulder like a pale cloud. 

“He says not to worry,” Nyanko-sensei interprets grudgingly. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

Chapter Text

When Shuuichi called the Fujiwara house to invite Natsume to the upcoming wrap party, he was braced for the type of dogged, exacting negotiations better suited a hostage situation. 

Instead, after a pleasant fifteen-minute conversation with Touko, he was painlessly gifted custody of his friend for the weekend. 

“Shigeru-san and I need to meet with one of his relatives about some of Takashi-kun’s missing belongings,” she says, a sliver of steel in her sunny voice that promises, in no uncertain terms, that these relatives will almost certainly have a fight on their hands. “I’d hate to have to bring Takashi-kun along, but I don’t like to leave him here alone, so this is quite the neat solution!”

Natsume is grim and resigned when they meet at the train station, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, his ugly cat tucked into his arms. Shuuichi can’t help but beam at him, having come out of this arrangement fully on top. 

“Shopping!” he announces gleefully. “You’ll need something fancy for the party. And then we’ll get lunch– my treat, of course. And if you don’t listen to me, Touko-san will be sad!” 

If looks could kill, Shuuichi would almost certainly have met his unfortunate end right then and there. 

Natsume has been uncomfortable all evening, in a fixed position at Shuuichi’s elbow and nursing the same flute of champagne that was foisted upon him at the door. 

He’s in dark-washed jeans and a smart blazer, his hair tucked out of his face with a few strategic clips. He toes the line between youthful and stylish well, and his quiet personality comes across as shy instead of standoffish. The cast and crew are all delighted to finally meet the kid Shuuichi told them so much about, and Natsume is doing his best to hold up under all the attention.

So it had taken a bit of blackmail and bribery to get him here– was that so unusual between friends? 

Networking is a necessary evil, and usually Shuuichi is stuck at these functions until the early hours of the morning. But it’s only a couple of hours before Natsume starts to flag. He’s edging into nonverbal territory, only mustering eye contact for a few seconds at a time, and Shuuichi doesn’t waste time in steering him away from the press of the party and into an out-of-the-way office. 

“Who’s office is this?” Natsume asks quietly. When Shuuichi presses lightly on his shoulders, he sinks into a leather armchair without fuss. 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m famous, I can do whatever I want,” Shuuichi says with a winning smile. 

Natsume is recovered enough by then to scowl at him, a knee-jerk reaction. 

“I hate you.”

“Why? I’m lovely.”

After that exchange, Shuuichi feels alright about leaving Natsume alone with Hiiragi while he sweeps off to make their excuses, and say his goodbyes, and steal some food for the road. 

And now they’re bundled in coats and scarves, making their way back to the hotel. Natsume looks much livelier now that they’re outside, working on the second half of an egg sandwich that Shuuichi smuggled out for him. 

“I can’t believe you do that for a living,” the boy murmurs after a moment. “It’s exhausting.”

“You get used to it,” Shuuichi says. “And I’m good at talking.”

Being charming and personable on cue is one of his greatest skills. No closed door, or VIP entrance, or members-only sign has ever kept him out. 

When they get back to the hotel, an ugly cat is waiting for them outside. Natsume smiles to see it, his pace quickening, and offers the yokai the last bite of his sandwich. 

Madara takes it with a scoff. “This is all you brought me? I want barbecue!” 

“What kind of party do you think we were at?” Shuuichi mutters. 

“Maybe tomorrow, sensei,” Natsume says agreeably, lifting the cat into his arms. 

“Hmph. In that case, I guess I’ll pass the message along.” Settling into a comfortable loaf in the crook of the boy’s arms, the cat squints at them with shining, dark eyes. “Someone came for their name while you were gone.”

Shuuichi stiffens in alarm. They’re hours away from Hitoyoshi, where Natsume’s reputation proceeds him at every turn. To have been tracked this far, despite the wards… 

Natsume only looks mildly surprised. “Are they still here?”

“No, they’re waiting for you in the woods,” Madara says. “Human settlements make them nervous.”

Nodding as if this is all perfectly reasonable, Natsume glances at Shuuichi. Shuuichi, waiting for his cue, says, “Absolutely not.”

“Natori,” his friend says, with the same tone of a tired mother attempting to wrangle an unreasonable toddler.

“In what universe would I allow you to wander off into the forest in the middle of the night?” He opts to ignore the rich orange dusk above and around them, and the fact that the streetlights haven’t kicked on yet. Natsume’s eyebrows are inching toward his hairline, so he decides to play his trump card. “Your parents said I’m in charge.”

Hiiragi sighs deeply. It’s only after Shuuichi says it that he realizes how juvenile it sounded, but by then it’s too late. He has to double down. 

“Let’s just go inside, and we’ll discuss it over a proper meal,” he says with a smile. He waves Natsume toward the door, but Natsume doesn’t budge.

Shuuichi realizes he used up all his authority earlier, in forcing Natsume to the department stores and restaurants and the wrap party. The boy has played along thus far but he’s clearly reached his quota for the evening. He doesn’t even entertain the idea of listening to Shuuichi this time. 

“I’ll be quick,” Natsume says plainly. He turns back the way they came without another word. 

Shuuichi struggles with it for a moment, but he really doesn’t have any choice but to follow. It doesn’t help that the ugly cat is laughing at him, or that Hiiragi is judging him silently with every step.  

Honestly, if Shuuichi were feeling marginally more generous, he would admit that there was some sort of cosmic justice at work here. He had forced Natsume out of his comfort zone all night, and now the tables have turned entirely. 

The trees tower around them as they pick their way up a faint foot trail, stretching up into a dark, endless canopy. The wind combs through branches and leaves in eerie, hushed whispers. They only have the shiki’s night-eyes and the flashlight on Shuuichi’s phone to see by. 

“This is my life now,” Shuuichi complains, out of breath. “I climbed this hill and now I’m going to die on it.”

“Shut up,” Natsume replies mildly. “We’ve only been hiking for twenty minutes.”

He certainly seems comfortable here, for all that he’s never been in these particular woods before. With his green eyes and silvery hair and thousand-yard stare, Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. 

The thought cinches painfully in Shuuichi’s stomach, and he speeds up a bit until they’re walking alongside one another. 

“How do you know you can trust this spirit?” he asks.

“I don’t,” Natsume says, sounding surprised by the question. “How do you know you can trust any of those humans you work with?”

“Because they’re human.”

For a moment, they just stare at each other. Shuuichi can see his own incomprehension reflected in Natsume’s expression. There’s a sudden chasm open between them, a lack of understanding that goes both ways.

Natsume looks away first. He doesn’t quite hang his head, but he isn’t standing as tall as he was before. Shuuichi remembers, belatedly, just how many humans have hurt Natsume up to this point. He realizes that what he just said was very stupid. And on top of being grossly inconsiderate, he managed to alienate his friend at the same time.

This is what he gets for being so smug all day. 

He puts a hand on Natsume’s shoulder, throwing a line across the chasm and hoping it will hold. He squeezes, waiting until Natsume has mustered the courage for eye contact once more, and only when he has the boy’s full attention does he say gravely, “I have a lot to learn from you. I’m only sorry I won’t have the chance. And I apologize for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life.”

Natsume splutters, and then laughs, and those sad, clinging shadows peel away from him as easily as a broken spiderweb. “You’re not going to get murdered!” 

“Hm,” Shuuichi says, deeply unconvinced (and deeply relieved to hear his friend laughing).

“Honestly, if you’re this worried, why not just wait at the hotel?” Natsume asks. He’s animated again, picking his way ahead confidently. Shuuichi is happy to follow, leaving that painful, aborted conversation behind them for another day. 

“Because Touko told me to look after you this weekend,” Shuuichi says mulishly. He’s still clinging to the thin veneer of being in charge, for all the good it’s doing him. “How could I look her in the eye if I let you go charging off into danger?”

“Easily,” Natsume mutters. “Charmingly. And with a bouquet of roses, probably. You said it yourself, you’re good at talking.”

Now it’s Shuuichi’s turn to laugh. He thinks of his conversation with Touko earlier that week– he thinks of how, even now, she and Shigeru are off getting into a fight with their family for their foster son’s sake, with Natsume none the wiser. 

“You’ve sorely underestimated how protective she is of you,” Shuuichi says ruefully. “That’s fine. I’m sure you’ll get to see it firsthand when I take you home, since I’ve made an absolute mess of this weekend so far.” 

Natsume tips his head curiously, but whatever he might have said is interrupted as they come around a bend that opens up to a glade.

There’s lantern light up ahead. The glow is unnatural, slightly off-color, and the lights sway even though there isn’t a steady wind. Hiiragi goes tense and alert at Shuuichi’s shoulder, and Shuuichi himself feels a cold thrill of anticipation, his fight-or-flight reflexes primed. But Natsume lets out a little huff of relief, and Madara says, “Finally!” as a rabbit spirit steps onto the path to greet them. 

It’s about as tall as Shuuichi’s waist and dressed in a neat yellow yukata. It greets them politely, and apologizes for making them go out of their way, and invites them into the glade. Madara jumps out of Natsume’s arms to lead the way, and Hiiragi follows distrustfully, but Natsume lingers for a moment. 

“What if Touko hadn’t said anything?” he asks, in the tone of someone testing a theory. 

For all of about three seconds, Shuuichi considers lying to preserve his dignity, but he gives it up for a lost cause. He sighs, and musses his hair up even more, and admits, “I’d still be here.”

Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. But then there are times like these, when his face lights up like a summer sky, and he smiles as though he’s never been hurt, and Shuuichi has never met anyone more human than him.

Chapter Text

Shibata just happens to be there. 

Nishimura wanted snacks, and volunteered Natsume to go to the convenience store with him, and Shibata invited himself along. He’s only here for the weekend, after all, and Nishimura gets to have Natsume’s attention all the rest of the time. 

Natsume sighed, because he knew they’d bicker all the way to the store and back, but he still held the door and waved them through, arguments and all.

Now they’re walking back to Natsume’s house, the plastic bags between them bulging with sandwiches, and pancakes, and rice balls for poor, boring Tanuma. Natsume isn’t carrying a bag because he’s carrying that lazy sensei of his instead. 

Their breaths cloud in the crisp January air. The pink and orange of sunset has faded from the far corner of the sky, leaving it a deep, vivid blue. 

And it’s there, as they step off the sidewalk and head through the grass, cutting a familiar path through a familiar field of weeds and wheat, that Natsume seems to stumble upon courage.

“Hey, Satchan,” he says, “can I tell you something?”

It’s so casual, almost off-handed. Shibata almost misses it entirely. He’s trying to make sure his new shoes don’t get too muddy, distracted and looking at his feet while they trudge along. 

Nyanko-sensei’s eyes are very green in the fading light, glinting with animal brightness. Nishimura tips his head, silly and flighty at all other times, but super attentive when a friend calls his name. Particularly so when it’s Natsume.

Shibata can’t even make fun of the cutesy nickname, because Nishimura is impossible to embarrass. And Shibata has slipped up and used it before, too. 

“You can tell me anything,” Nishimura says plainly. If anything, he’s confused that Natsume thinks he needs to ask. 

And it’s this moment. Here, in the sprawling, rambling countryside. Here, in the blue hour, when the sun has gone down but the sky is still rich with color. Here, where home is just down the road and their friends are waiting.

Natsume says, “I can see spirits. I’ve always been able to see them.”

Shibata nearly trips, and it takes some real expert maneuvering to save his bag of convenience store food from an unfortunate meeting with the dirt. Nishimura stops walking abruptly enough that it’s almost a trip, too. His eyes are round and full. 

“I’ve never told anyone before,” Natsume goes on, sounding amazed by his own daring. “Well– not really. Not since I was in grade school. No one believed me back then.” 

He’s always so pacific and detached, even when he’s in pain or afraid, that the edge of nervousness creeping into his tone now almost seems out of place.

For his part, Shibata is gaping. He can’t believe this. He wasn’t prepared. His eyes dart from Natsume’s anxious expression to Nishimura’s stunned one, and he starts shoring himself up. If he has to intervene, he will. He’s seen more proof than any reasonable person needs, and he’ll shove Nishimura’s face in it like a disobedient dog if that’s what it takes to make him understand. 

But it’s only a moment– only seconds really– before Nishimura’s face clears. He shuffles his bags to his left hand so his right one is free, and he touches Natsume’s arm the way Shibata has seen him do a thousand times. 

“That makes sense,” he says, nonsensically. “More sense than my esper theory, anyway.”

Natsume’s expression would put the sun to absolute shame. His smile is slow at first, but inexorable, like a stream of water picking its way around the bend that meets the river. He must be the brightest thing for miles. 

“You thought I was an esper?” he teases, laughter in his voice. “You watch too much TV.”

Nishimura throws up his hands, the contents of his shopping bag rattling ominously. “I saw you float in homeroom once! Like, a foot off the ground! ESP is way more plausible than you’re making it out to be, thank you very much.”

Shibata stares at them, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for this scene to shift. It can’t be that easy. It can’t be that painless. Nishimura must be lying to save face, or hiding what is most certainly a freak-out of epic proportions, because belief like this is impossible.  

Except now Natsume is introducing Nyanko-sensei properly, and Nishimura is talking to the cat– surprise and wonder melting into acceptance as easily and naturally as a spring thaw. 

“You knew exactly what you were doing every time you stole my food!” Nishimura complains, tugging on one of Nyanko-sensei’s soft ears. “Natsume, your cat owes me money.”

Natsume laughs. He laughs, head tipping back, healthy color rising in his wind-chapped cheeks. In this moment, he’s so far removed from that tiny, overshadowed boy that Shibata used to bully on the playground that he might as well be another person entirely. 

Could it have been like this back then? Shibata wonders suddenly. The thought is intrusive and unwelcome. 

If he had been a kinder child, if he had suspended his disbelief for long enough to get to know the strange little boy no one wanted to sit next to in class, would Natsume belong to him the way he belongs to Nishimura and Kitamoto, Taki and Tanuma, Shigeru and Touko?

“Shibata,” Natsume says, in the tone of someone who’s said it more than once. “Hey, are you okay?”

Shibata blinks, arresting his attention. Natsume is watching him with a puzzled frown. Nishimura is waving his arms around and inching forward, as if he’s playing a strange, abridged version of Marco-Polo.

“Fine,” he blurts. “What’s your idiot friend doing?”

“He’s yours, too,” Natsume says peacefully. “And he’s looking for Nyanko-sensei.” 

“What, he poofed?” Shibata looks around the empty field, too. “How did I miss that?” 

“Who’s the idiot now, Sumi?” Nishimura calls over his shoulder. 

The annoying nickname slides right off Shibata like water off an oilskin coat this time. He’s still trying to catch up to this conversation. He almost feels winded, like he’s huffing and puffing across the finish line of a marathon that no one had the decency to warn him about. 

“I can’t believe you just blurted it out like that,” he says, barely mustering the strength to talk above a whisper. “You took ten years off my life, easy. I was hyping myself up for a big fallout or something.”

"I can’t believe it, either,” Natsume admits, smiling. “But it wasn’t even that scary, really. Definitely not as scary as I always thought it would be. Maybe because you were here.”

Shibata very quickly looks down at his hands to readjust his shopping bags and not because his eyes are stinging in a telling way.

Nishimura gives a sudden squawk of surprise, hands spread out against the empty air, eyes huge and moon-like. Then his face splits in a grin, and laughter comes bubbling out of him as easily as it always has, and he smooths one hand to the side as if he’s petting something. As if he’s petting Natsume’s ugly cat where it’s fallen asleep in his lap.

His trust is a wild, reckless thing. It’s almost infuriating to watch. 

Could it have been like this back then? If I was a better person?

“You said he can fly, right?” Nishimura demands. “I wanna fly! Tell him to take us the rest of the way home! He owes me at least a dozen rides, considering all the food I’ve given him.”

He’s already searching for handholds, trying to find a way up. Natsume stoops to gather the forgotten bags of snacks and loops the handles around his wrist before making his way over. To Shibata’s intense dismay, rather than tell Nishimura that it’s a stupid idea and he’s stupid for thinking of it, Natsume helps him climb up instead. 

“I have a concern,” Shibata says dryly. 

Natsume huffs. It’s not really a laugh, but it’s not not a laugh, either. “Just one?” 

“No, but I didn’t think you’d let me speak my piece if I told you how many I actually have.”

“You can walk if you want to,” Nishimura calls down. “No one’s making you come along.”

It’s very surreal to see him sitting on nothing, well above Shibata’s head. It’s still very annoying to watch him take to this strange new world with enthusiasm and aplomb, as if he was simply born to exist in this moment and be Natsume’s friend. 

Never one to be outdone, Shibata ignores his own uncertainty to drawl, “And miss the chance to watch you make a fool out of yourself in new and unprecedented ways? Never.”

Nishimura crows with laughter, too delighted to take offense. Natsume sighs just like he did before they left, when he resigned himself to their noisy, obtrusive company. He holds out his hand the same way he held open the door. 

He’s always standing on that threshold. He’s always holding out his hand. 

Shibata has already missed so many chances to reach out and take it. He’s not going to miss any more. 

Chapter Text

Tsuji forced all his friends to take a first aid class with him over the spring holiday. To the collective surprise of the entire group, Nishimura and Kitamoto were certified already. 

Kitamoto’s mom is a doctor, he explains, and believes in her kids (biological or otherwise) being as prepared for the world as she could make them. They go to all those pop-up classes the clinic and community center have to offer. They’re CPR-certified and could probably triage in their sleep. 

When Taki thinks about it for longer than fifteen seconds, it stops being such a surprise. 

“Hey,” Nishimura says, stooping to an easy crouch in front of Tanuma, fearless in the face of what is probably the scariest thing Taki has ever seen. “Look at me, buddy. I’m gonna take your hands, okay?”

Tanuma’s dark eyes are– bright and glassy, almost vacant. He looks at Nishimura like he’s looking right through him. But when Nishimura takes his hands, Tanuma’s grip is vice-like. He might as well be dangling off a cliff’s edge for how hard he holds on. 

Nishimura doesn’t even twitch. His face is like an open wound, hurting and raw, but he’s absolutely steady; a rock for the ocean to crash against. 

“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I know you’re scared. You’re allowed to be scared. But I need you to breathe, okay?” 

Taki thinks she understands, now, at least part of the reason why he and Natsume struck up such a fast friendship. Natsume is such a loner, and Nishimura has an extremely tight-knit relationship with his best friend, they’re both hard people to get to know. But they were friends inside a week, inseparable inside a month, and part of it must be this– Nishimura knowing how to tend these invisible hurts– letting someone in pain hold on to him too hard. 

“I’m gonna count, and you’re gonna breathe,” Nishimura is saying. His tone isn’t urgent. It’s friendly and quiet, like he’s talking during a sleepover when not all of their friends are awake yet. “Normally it’s a ten-count, but that seems generous. Let’s aim for three, okay? Inhale for three, exhale for three. You can do this, Tanuma, I know you can. I’ll do it with you.”

It’s a matter of minutes, long and painful, before Tanuma’s shallow breaths take a more controlled tone. He’s trembling, as if he’s cold, and Taki wants so badly to throw her arms around him that she’s trembling, too. 

She leans against Nishimura, instead; soaking up comfort and hopefully sending some back in turn.

“Can you talk to me now?” Nishimura asks. Tanuma seems to consider for a second, some awareness bleeding back into his eyes, and then nods his head in a sharp little jerk. “Oh, good. You’re doing really good. I want you to try to name five things you can see, okay? Just look around and tell me when you spot something.”

This seems to be an overwhelming task at first. Tanuma’s eyes slide away and then dart back a couple times, as if afraid to lose the one safe touchstone of his friend, front-and-center. But Nishimura is infinitely patient, more patient than Taki has literally ever seen him before, as if he saves all of his self-control for these specific occasions, wheedling and coaxing until finally Tanuma plays along. 

“Nishimura,” is the first thing Tanuma says, and Taki thinks that it’s the beginning of a request, but Nishimura smiles. 

“Cheating a little, but we’ll count it. Four more.”

The sky is the second thing, hanging above them in a curtain of vivid blue, impossible to miss. Nishimura’s schoolbag is the third, discarded in the grass beside them where he dropped it without a second thought. A bright yellow pencil case is the fourth, spilled out of the bag alongside workbooks and graded homework. Taki is fifth. She beams at him, and remarkably manages not to cry. 

“Awesome,” Nishimura praises him. “Let’s keep this ball rolling. Four things you can feel.”

It comes a little easier this time: their hands, still joined, skin pressed white from the force of their grip; the grass underneath them, soft and springy; the late afternoon sunshine; the breeze. 

They keep going through three things he can hear, two things he can smell, and by the time Nishimura asks for one thing he can taste, and Tanuma says, “Um– I don’t really taste anything? My mouth, I guess?” Taki can let go of the last of her fear. She finally leans in to give Tanuma that hug. He leans against her with a sigh that sounds so weary it makes her heart physically ache. He only hugs back with one arm, because he’s still holding one of Nishimura’s hands with the other. 

Natsume returns at that point at a dead run, a plastic bag dangling from one hand, Nyanko-sensei keeping pace at his feet. He’s windblown and breathless, but not as haggard as he would have been if he’d really run all the way into town and back again, so Taki has her suspicions that he flew most of the way. 

“I got everything you said,” he says by way of greeting. He shoves the bag into Nishimura’s hand and then glues himself to Tanuma’s side. Taki magnanimously allows it, only releasing Tanuma when his arm around her loosens first. 

Nishimura hums his thanks, rooting through the Family Mart bag without urgency. He produces a green tea first, twisting the cap off before handing it over. When Tanuma has taken a few agreeable sips, Nishimura holds up a dark chocolate bar in one hand, and a yogurt cup in the other. 

“Snack time. Which do you want? Choose wisely because I’m eating the other one.”

Tanuma cracks a smile and takes the chocolate bar. Probably, Taki thinks, because he recognizes Nishimura’s favorite yogurt when he sees it. And it’s that, more than anything, that reassures her that everything is okay. 

Nyanko-sensei crawls into Nishimura’s lap instead of Tanuma’s, surprising them all. Suspiciously, Nishimura holds his food up and away from the creature, but Nyanko-sensei only huffs and settles into a comfortable loaf. 

“Um,” Tanuma says, because of course he does, “I’m really sorry about– ”

“Nope,” Nishimura replies. “Tell him the rule, Natsume.”

Ruefully, Natsume recites, “‘No apologizing after a panic attack because it’s not nice to make our friends angry on purpose.’”

Taki digests that silently. Apparently Natsume has these terrifying episodes, too. 

“It’s like apologizing for having an allergic reaction or something,” Nishimura says, a little heatedly. He stabs viciously at his yogurt with the little plastic spoon it came with, not looking anybody in the eye. “Like, it doesn’t make sense.” 

“I– I guess so?” Tanuma says uncertainly. “I mean, that doesn’t seem like the same thing at all– ”

“Nishimura is the expert here,” Taki cuts in, not unkindly. She gives Tanuma’s knee a gentle thump. “We’ve only had one first aid class. He’s had about four-hundred.”

“Yes, exactly,” Nishimura says, “thank you, Taki.” 

Tanuma looks bewildered, and pale and tired, and he’s still leaning against Taki like he doesn’t have the strength to keep himself up. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself if he isn’t allowed to apologize, but Nishimura doesn’t give him another opening. Once the tea is gone and the snacks are consumed, he rallies everyone to their feet with a clap of his hands, with all the energy of a kindergarten teacher. 

“Movie night’s still on, right? Kitamoto is probably waiting at your place already, Natsume. Let’s get a move on!”

Later, when Taki is two hours into her Internet research of how to handle any similar situation with even a fraction of Nishimura’s competency, she’ll learn how important it is to stick around after a panic attack. Had it been up to her, she might have suggested they reschedule, that Tanuma would probably appreciate his own peaceful, quiet home for the rest of the night instead, but even this much is part of the process. Keeping him company, keeping him distracted, giving his thoughts no chance to settle on whatever it was that had so upset him in the first place. She has so much to learn. 

Kitamoto is waiting for them, after all, sitting on the engawa with Touko-san as they stroll up. He smiles automatically when he sees them, but Taki is watching for it, waiting for it, and she sees it– the sharp way his eyes zero in on Tanuma after all of two seconds. 

But all he says is, “There you are. Aunt Touko and I thought we were going to have to send out a search-and-rescue team.”

Touko laughs, and goes around to welcome them all inside properly. Her hand lingers on Tanuma’s shoulder, and her eyes are so warm and caring that she doesn’t need to say anything at all. Tanuma ducks his head, the tips of his ears turning pink. Natsume beams at his mother. Taki smiles, too, but she doesn’t follow them inside. 

Her eyes are drifting back to the yard, where Kitamoto is attempting to gently interrogate Nishimura and Nishimura is pretending like he doesn’t hear him. 

“Stop talking about yogurt,” Kitamoto is saying. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.” 

“And I’m trying to subtly avoid it,” Nishimura shoots back. 

“You don’t have a subtle bone in your body, Satchan,” Kitamoto says. His voice and face go very soft, like morning frost thawing in the sun. “Tell me what happened.”

Nishimura seems to hold out for all of five seconds. Then he blurts, “Tanuma had a panic attack. I have no idea what set him off. I talked him through it but I didn’t know what I was doing, I was fumbling through it the whole time like an idiot, I wish someone else had been there, he deserves better than that– ”

Taki is startled, almost horrified, but Kitamoto doesn’t seem surprised. He just looks sad. He reaches out, even though Nishimura’s hands are still full of Natsume’s cat and the Family Mart bag, and tugs Nishimura forward against his chest. Then both his arms wrap around Nishimura’s shoulders like a blanket, like Kitamoto is trying to fold him up into something he can carry with him everywhere, safe and secure.

For the first time all afternoon, Taki realizes that Nishimura must have been terrified. He loves his friends loudly and unselfconsciously, and no amount of training would have made it easy for him to watch one of them in the grip of a panic attack, struggling to breathe and clinging to him for help. 

This is why Nyanko-sensei stuck with Nishimura, Taki thinks. Tanuma had the combined support of three of his closest friends, and all Nishimura had was a grumpy old cat. 

“It’s okay,” Kitamoto says. “You did good.”

“You weren’t even there, you don’t know that,” Nishimura snaps, only it sounds more like a sob, and Taki is frozen in the open doorway of Natsume’s house. 

“Of course I know that.” Kitamoto pillows his cheek on the top of Nishimura’s head and just holds him, like he has nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. “I know you. I know you did good.”

Taki gives in to her baser instincts. Leaving the door wide open behind her, she charges over to the two of them and all but slams into Nishimura’s back. Kitamoto sees her coming, but Nishimura gives a yelp of surprise, and Nyanko-sensei grumbles as he’s further squished. 

Worming her hands between them in order to better hug Nishimura as hard as she can, Taki says, “You were amazing, Nishimura. You were perfect. I’m so grateful you were there. Thank you so much.”

“See?” Kitamoto says. Taki can’t see him, but his voice is shaped like a grin. “I have an inside source right here.”

Nishimura squirms, like he’s thinking about making a break for it, but they have him sandwiched pretty securely. He subsides with a grumble that Taki can tell is fake. It makes her smile and squeeze him even tighter. 

“Don’t tell Tanuma,” he mumbles, all wet and muffled because he’s crying and his face is buried in Kitamoto’s shoulder. “He already feels guilty. We gotta be on our A-Game so he doesn’t get sad.”

“You’re benched for the rest of the night,” Kitamoto replies. “You’ve done more than your fair share. Me, Taki and Natsume can take it from here, if Aunt Touko doesn’t swoop in and fix everything herself before we get the chance. Right, Taki?”

Taki thinks its impossible how much she loves her friends. She understands completely why Nishimura is so noisy about it, why he refuses to be embarrassed about it. She thinks she never, ever wants to be in a situation like that again, where two of them are suffering right in front of her and she can’t do anything to help. She thinks, the next time one of those classes are offered at the clinic, she’s going to go. She thinks she’s going to talk to Tsuji about it tomorrow.

“Right,” she says. “We’ve got you.”

Chapter Text

Natsume’s eyes are bright and angry. His arms are folded across his chest, posture guarded. It’s as if Shuuichi is looking back in time, back when Natsume was a skinny, cynical fourteen-year-old who didn’t trust him. Who didn’t really trust anyone.

It makes Shuuichi wince and just keep wincing. His chest feels as though it’s caving in. It’s been years since Natsume has looked at him like he’s a complete stranger.

And Shuuichi is– tired. It’s too small of a word, but it’s the right one. He’s weary down to his bones. He could just lay down here and sleep. In the back of his mind, he only wants to close his eyes. Keep them closed. Breathe slowly. Rest.

But Natsume is angry, rightfully angry, and looks as though he’s seconds away from storming out the door. And Shuuichi has to– has to fix it. He has to fix it first.

“Takashi,” he says. His voice is gentle. He’s approached feral, half-mad creatures with less care than he’s approaching this.

Natsume’s head jerks, in something like a quickly-aborted shake. His fingers dig into his sleeves. He probably doesn’t know how young he looks.

Tanuma was in class when Shuuichi showed up, but a single text from Taki was all it took for him to leave in the middle of a lecture. He’ll be here soon, and Taki isn’t leaving, and Natsume’s face is shuttered.

Shuuichi deserves that.

He’s casting around for a starting point, for something to say, for any way to bridge this chasm between them that yawns wider and wider with every second of silence, when Natsume beats him to it.

“Where have you been?” he asks.

“Ah,” Shuuichi says haltingly. “It’s a long story.”

Natsume’s eyes flash, like he took lessons in being terrifying from the ugly cat haunting his shoulder.

“You let me think you were dead for eleven months. I have time.”

Eleven months.

Shuuichi gives into the want to close his eyes.

He reaches out, unseeing, and Hiiragi fills the place beneath his hand in a heartbeat. She’s not warm but she’s solid, familiar, and one of the only reasons he’s still alive.

His grip would have been bruising, were she human. It feels like he’s been awake for years. He’s so tired.

“You were on the other side, weren’t you?” Madara says suddenly. “You went across the river.”

The breath almost audibly goes out of the room. Shuuichi is still standing there like a fool, eyes closed, hand curling and uncurling around Hiiragi’s because he needs the reminder of her.

“What are you talking about, sensei?” Natsume asks.

“I can smell it on him,” Madara says. “The river. The one all you humans cross someday.”

“I’m sorry,” Taki says loudly, not at all apologetically, “but what the hell does that mean?”

Madara is talking again, explaining, but Shuuichi isn’t following it anymore. His eyes are still closed, so tightly that stars start bursting through the dark.

Eleven months. Almost a year.

A hand lights on his arm, as gently as a bird coming in for a landing. When he pries his eyes open, it’s to find Natsume much closer than he was before. His guard down, his heart pried wide open, the way it always is for his friends.

He’s warm. Shuuichi hasn’t been warm in a long time. Longer than he realized.

“I didn’t know it was a year,” Shuuichi tells him. It seems like an important thing to tell him. “I tried to get back.”

“Okay,” Natsume says warily.

It’s his turn to approach with care. It’s unfair that his anger should have to take the back-burner to whatever this is. He’s allowed to be angry– Shuuichi did what he promised he would never do and fully disappeared from his life.

But Natsume has never been one to cling to anger. He says, “You’re back now. So it’s okay.”

Even now that he’s not hugging himself, holding himself together, Natsume still looks laughably young. His hair is falling out of its tail, fringe hanging into his wide green eyes. He’s wearing Tanuma’s sweater, two sizes too big.

He’s Shuuichi’s family. One of the two closest things he’s ever had to a little brother. One of first things he thinks of when he thinks of home. The touchstone that guided him back, through the dark. Through the water.

Shuuichi can’t let go of Hiiragi, but he has two hands. When he lifts his other one, Natsume snatches it like it’s an offer that might expire. Wraps both of his hands around Shuuichi’s one and holds on tight. Anchors him.

“You’re back,” Natsume says again, as though one of them still needs convincing. His eyes are glassy. “I’m sorry that you– that I didn’t– I thought you– ”

“I prefer you shouting at me to whatever this is,” Shuuichi croaks, partly because it’s true, and partly because it makes Taki bark out a laugh, half-hysterical, and Natsume verbally trip over whatever apology he was trying to scrape together. “Where did that angry face go? It was precious.”

“Shut up,” Natsume says immediately, a knee-jerk reaction. “How are you like this? Right now?”

The front door opens with a considerable amount of noise, and then there’s the telling clatter of Tanuma and his gangly scarecrow self tripping over the umbrella stand, and when he finally comes into the room it’s with a sheepish expression and a bag full of takeout.

“You brought him food?” Madara asks skeptically. “For all you knew, he’d been playing dead for the last year. And you thought he deserved free dinner?”

“When a friend comes back from the dead, the least they deserve is free dinner, Ponta,” Tanuma says.

He’s not as soft-spoken as he was when he was a boy, but his tone is always gentle. He always speaks kindly. He sets the bag down on the table, and smiles at Shuuichi as though it hasn’t been a year since they last spoke. Another little sibling. Another anchor. All three of them.

“If he didn’t have a reason for being gone, he wouldn’t have come back,” Tanuma adds. “I knew that much as soon as I got Tooru’s text.”

“That’s because you’re a better person than all the rest of us put together,” Taki says. She’s smiling now, too, the last of the uncertainty and worry leeched away, because Tanuma’s presence in a room just does that. Always has.

Natsume hasn’t budged. He’s still looking at Shuuichi with wide green eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t help you,” he says. “I– we looked for you. But we should have done more. We– I should have helped you.”

He’s clearly shaken. Whatever Madara told him about the river, whatever that ugly cat has been saying while Shuuichi’s mind drifted in and out of service like a cellphone with shitty reception, it’s enough to give him an idea of the kind of place Shuuichi was trapped in.

Shuuichi is too tired to have this argument. He’s swaying on his feet. If he doesn’t pay attention, his mind makes up monsters, dredges up the memory of dark, rushing water. He can still almost hear it, a fuzzy white noise in the back of his mind. He’ll probably always hear it. He went someplace he wasn’t supposed to go.

So he holds onto Hiiragi, holds onto Natsume, listens to the sound of conversation and cutlery as Tanuma and Taki set the table. He’ll tell them everything tomorrow.

For now, he says, “You did help. You were there.”

They all were. All three of them. He never would have made it back across the river without these kids– without Hiiragi’s strong, guiding hands– without this cramped little kitchen waiting for him at the end of a long, crooked bridge, reminding him of what he could have again if he only kept walking.

Chapter Text

Kitamoto warned him, but Tanuma was still unprepared.

He’s got one arm looped around Natsume’s shoulders, something that happened almost entirely involuntarily, and the other is clutching Nyanko-sensei against his chest because the cat’s ears are lying back and his claws are pricking through Tanuma’s sleeve in an alarming way.

This leaves no hands free to corral Nishimura, and Tanuma thinks he’s going to need about three more to do that anyway.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Nishimura is raging, too loud, attracting eyes from all directions. “Who the– who do you– who are you? The prime minister? Is this your private property? Do you own this park?”

The unfamiliar boy they bumped into is nearly a head taller than Nishimura but he seems almost cowed by him– appropriately so, Tanuma thinks fairly, because if he were on the receiving end of this tirade, in a public space, he probably would have started crying by now. An honest assessment.

“I’m asking who you are,” Nishimura all but shouts, when the boy in front of him takes more than one second to respond. “What is your name? Do you have an identity?”

“I’m– my name is Yoshida. I know the fr– the guy behind you. We were classmates. That’s all.”

“Oh, is that all,” Nishimura says. It’s clearly not all.

Yoshida’s eyes flick past Nishimura, just for a second, but it’s enough to make Natsume twitch. Tanuma doesn’t miss it, since Natsume is still tucked snugly beneath his arm. Nishimura doesn’t miss it either, because Nishimura is in this heightened state of pissed off that Tanuma has never witnessed before.

He snaps his fingers, says, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know it’s rude not to look at someone when they’re talking to you?”

It’s amazing he doesn’t choke on that piece of hypocrisy.

“So you used to know Natsume or whatever, and somehow, in your mind, that translates to… literally attacking him out of nowhere?”

“Nishimura,” Natsume says. It’s the tone of someone burdened with an impossible task, like stopping a runaway train before it crashes with nothing but his bare hands and hopeful intentions. “He didn’t attack me.”

Nishimura whirls around and points at him (rudely). “You be quiet! He attacked you!”

“He pushed me. I fell down. That’s not an attack.”

“That’s literally assault! That’s– ” He pats at his pockets, clearly looking for the cellphone that he shoved into Tanuma’s bag two hours ago, after it died taking roughly one million pictures of the cat at the train station. “Tanuma, Google the Penal Code!”

“I’m not going to do that,” Tanuma says gently.

Kitamoto did warn him. He wanted to stay home with his dad this weekend, and urged them to go visit Yuuki without him, but the second the others were distracted, he snagged Tanuma by the sleeve and drew him aside.

“I won’t be there, so if something happens, it’s up to you,” he said. His tone was so serious and grave that for a second Tanuma thought they were talking about the yokai situation and he had absolutely no idea how to process that. And then Kitamoto added, “Nishimura tends to go off the rails a bit when someone’s mean to one of his friends. I mean, you’ve seen it. I just really don’t want my best friend getting arrested for disturbing the peace while I’m not around.”

So, that was a warning. Looking back, Tanuma should have taken it to heart.

Nishimura is Tanuma’s smallest friend, an inch or so shorter than Taki now, but only in stature. If he were as big as all his caring, he would tower over cities. He’s right now shouting down someone much larger than he is, without an ounce of sense or self-preservation.

This is the same boy who steals out of Natsume’s bento at lunch, and makes faces behind Tsuji’s back when he’s lecturing them about passing notes during class, and gets into heated arguments with Isamu over the TV Guide literally every time they have a sleepover at Taki’s house.

And it’s the same boy who taught Natsume how to swim, one sunny August day almost two years ago now, at the river because Natsume was afraid to go into the pool. The same boy who has coaxed Tanuma through more than one panic attack, his hands a familiar shape around Tanuma’s own at this point.

His caring is loud, Tanuma thinks. Even when it’s quiet.

A few passersby have stopped, lingering nearby like they’re going to get involved, and clearly it’s making Yoshida feel outnumbered. The fight went out of him about three seconds after Nishimura started yelling in the first place, so all the rest of it has maybe been a bit overkill.

“So, is he just going to keep going? Like, until he runs out of breath?” Yoshida’s friend asks.

She’s been standing quietly to one side this entire time. Her face had folded with disapproval when Yoshida initially pushed Natsume down, but no one had a second to get a word in edgewise before Nishimura exploded about it, and now she simply looks as though this is the best punishment for her friend that she could have hoped for.

“Um, probably,” Natsume says. He’s unfamiliar with her, but she smiles at him.

“I only transferred here last year,” she says. “And I don’t listen to gossip. And anyway, with friends like these, those rumors about you couldn’t possibly be true.”

Her whole demeanor is calm and self-assured. She reminds Tanuma of Tsuji, and similarly, Natsume’s guard seems to relent. He smiles back at her.

This leaves Tanuma free to step away without feeling as though he’s abandoning him. With Nyanko-sensei in the crook of his arm, he reaches out and draws Nishimura back by the hood of his jacket, the way he’s seen Taki and Kitamoto do one hundred times a day since they were fourteen.

Nishimura squawks in outrage, and struggles against Tanuma’s grip, but… well, he’s little. And Tanuma has been back in karate for the past year, give or take, so his core strength is fairly solid. It only takes a small amount of effort to reel Nishimura back and tuck him under his arm.

This is better. He feels his heart start to settle. Right here, Nishimura can’t fly off the handle any more than he already has, and Tanuma can keep him from getting hurt.

“Are you sure I can’t punch him in the face?” Nishimura seethes. 

“Yes,” Natsume says quickly.

“What if I just break his nose a little?”

“Satchan,” Tanuma tries, and that, at least, gets Nishimura to stew quietly for a moment instead. “You’ve made your point. I’m sure Yoshida is sorry.”

“He is very sorry,” Yoshida’s friend says peacefully. “He’ll be especially sorry once I tell his mom that her only son acted like a stupid bully. Let’s go, Hiroo, before you get beat up.”

She bows politely, and then carts Yoshida away. Yoshida, if anything, looks relieved to have an out, and retreats without so much as a backwards glance.

“Ugh,” Nishimura says. He isn’t even winded. “Ugh! Just wait till I tell Kitamoto about that creep! He’ll wish he’d been here!”

Kitamoto, who is basically a modern-day prophet, will definitely wish he had been here, though not for the same reasons Nishimura seems to be thinking of. Tanuma needs to reevaluate a lot of the conversations they’ve had in the past. How many times has Kitamoto said something like “they almost called the cops on us” totally offhand and actually meant it?

“You’re insane,” Natsume says the second they’re alone again. There’s a mark on his cheek from where he hit the ground that will be a bruise tomorrow. When their friends see that, they’ll all be quick to side with Nishimura over this, so it’s important that they get as much scolding in now as possible. “I don’t want you picking fights like that, okay? What if it had gone differently, and he’d hit you or something?”

“Good,” Nishimura says hotly. “Then our faces would match.”

This remark disarms Natsume completely, and his expression turns warm and affectionate. Nyanko-sensei makes a noise that is almost a laugh. His eyes are slitted in something like approval. Kitamoto’s warning of “it’s up to you” rings loudly in Tanuma’s ears. Okay.

He gives Nishimura a gentle shake with the arm still curled around his shoulders, and stands firm when Nishimura looks up at him.

Or, well. Almost stands firm. He does try. He’ll tell Kitamoto he tried.

“Come to karate with me next week,” he says. “If you’re going to pick fights with people twice your size, at least be able to back it up.”

Nishimura’s face lights up. If he hadn’t been there to see it for himself, Tanuma never would have guessed what he’d been doing one minute ago. This is the boy who dozes off on Natsume’s shoulder during long train rides, who complains about Nyanko-sensei stealing his food but slips him treats beneath the table anyway, who is delighted just by the idea of spending extra time with Tanuma after school.

“Definitely! No take-backs!” he announces, thrilled. “Just wait till I tell Acchan!”

Natsume gives Tanuma a sympathetic look. Tanuma decides then and there that the next time Kitamoto stays home, he’s staying home, too.

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Kitamoto says, and then stops talking, because he doesn’t actually know what to say.

“Okay?” Ogata prompts. She’s only just barely still on the functional side of hysterical. Her hands are shaking, but not in the way they do when she’s scared or over-stimulated– more like they have absolutely no idea which direction to fly in first.

Which, granted, is understandable. Any less of a reaction and Kitamoto would probably have taken offense.

Because Natsume just went limp next to them, mid-step, eyes rolling back and limbs folding beneath his body like a paper craft. It was only thanks to two years of playing libero on her high school volleyball team that Ogata had the reflexes to reach out and catch him before he crumpled to the ground.

CPR training has been drilled into Kitamoto since grade school, so the first thing he did, light-headed and spacey with panic, was roll Natsume onto his back and make sure he was breathing. He was.

So now Kitamoto and Ogata are just. Sitting on the ground.

Little patches of sunlight peek through the trees overhead, creating pale confetti patterns that drift and sway across Natsume’s face. Ogata brushes the hair back from his eyes, her touch lingering and uncertain.

Kitamoto doesn’t even check to see if he has cell service, because he knows he doesn’t. Tanuma’s temple home is beautiful, but it’s literally in The Middle of the Woods, Nowhere, Hitoyoshi. They barely get cell service at the Family Mart downtown.

“Okay,” he says again. “Um, he should have… come around by now. And he hasn’t.”

Natsume has fainted before, is the thing. In class once, after school a few times. Nishimura was only dragged along to about half of all those CPR classes that Kitamoto was subjected to, but he’s still somehow inherently better at telling when Natsume’s restless, dizzy, or tired demeanor is the type of restless or dizzy or tired born of just not sleeping for like three days in a row, or one that prefaces an abrupt date with the floor. He’s anemic– or something, Kitamoto thinks cynically– and he has low blood pressure, like, constantly. He’s always the first to catch any bug that goes around and the last to recover from it. He’s stubborn and stronger than most people will give him credit for, but he’s not well.

He was chronically mistreated as a child, and that left marks that lasted long after any bruises went anyway. Kitamoto understands that. All of Natsume’s friends understand it, as much as they never talk about it.

Kitamoto knows this is something different.

Natsume just fell. Like some invisible creature swooped by on an errant summer wind and snatched the life out of him. And now he’s laying there as if deeply asleep, breathing slowly. Dappled sunshine still twists those kaleidoscopic patterns across his slack face. He shows no signs of waking. It would be a peaceful picture, if it wasn’t, like. Horrifying.

When Kitamoto glances up, Ogata is staring at him. She’s poised on the edge of springing into action. Her hands are still shaking, but she has them curled into fists on top of her knees.

She knows, too.

“I don’t think he fainted,” Kitamoto says.

“No,” Ogata agrees.

“Ordinarily, I would say that one of us should run to Tanuma’s place to call emergency services and the other should stay here with him, just in case,” Kitamoto goes on doggedly. “But in this case–”

“There’s nothing ordinary about Natsume.” Ogata’s tone is a little odd, worried and shaken, and somehow at the same time, warm. Fond. It’s a tone Kitamoto is intimately aware of, because everyone who loves Natsume has talked about him like that at least once. “So what do we do?”

What they always do.

“Help me carry him,” Kitamoto says.

Chapter Text

“You need to sleep,” Hiiragi says. Her tone is unchanging, an unhurried monotone, but somehow it manages to carry a thread of concern.

Shuuichi waves her off, sifting through papers. “In a minute. I just have to finish this.”

A group of exorcists in over their heads sent these reports earlier today. Yesterday, now, Shuuichi amends inwardly with a bleary glance at the clock in the kitchen, which reads an inappropriately cheerful 6:07 AM. And they’ll arrive to collect them, along with Shuuichi’s notes, in just a few hours.

“They are presumptuous,” Hiiragi says, “to assume you had this time to spare them, and on such short notice. You’re busy.”

“Not with anything that matters,” Shuuichi laughs. It comes out not sounding like a laugh at all. Hiiragi tips her head incrementally to the side, no doubt staring at him behind her mask.

“Your work does matter.”

“This work does,” Shuuichi says, laying a hand on the papers scattered across the desk. “The other stuff– ”

“The ‘stuff’ that pays your bills,” Hiiragi says. “The 'stuff’ that keeps you fed, and gives you reason to leave your house and interact with people who won’t make you think about ghosts.”

It’s Shuuichi’s turn to stare. “I didn’t realize you were such a firm believer in my acting career.”

“I don’t understand it,” she says frankly. “But you enjoy it. It may not be…. 'vanquishing evil,’” she goes on, quoting the report the exorcists sent as if it’s something slimy she’s peeling off her shoe, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”

It might be the lack of sleep talking, but Shuuichi feels strangely touched. He has to swallow before he can reply, something that happens rarely, if at all.

“I’ll make sure to sign an autograph for you,” he teases, grinning. “But only after I’ve finished this.”

“Hm,” Hiiragi says. She doesn’t call him an idiot, at least. A few minutes after that she leaves from the living room window, ostensibly to patrol the neighborhood.

Shuuichi will just finish his notes, and then set an alarm for– he checks the clock again, and winces– an hour and a half. He’ll get that much sleep, at least. He’s worked with less.

At some point, the front door opens. That’s odd. Only a few people have a key to his apartment, and none of them who do live anywhere near here. His shiki certainly don’t use the door.

A familiar voice says, “Hi, Natori-san.”

Shuuichi lifts his head, so fast his vision swims. There’s Natsume, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room, hands full with a cardboard drink tray and a brown paper bag bearing the distinctive golden arches. He looks decidedly windblown, as if he flew the whole way here. He probably did.

His brow is wrinkled, mouth tucked into a frown. It’s the way Shuuichi imagines Hiiragi’s face looks behind her mask at least ninety-percent of the time.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Shuuichi says, pushing himself upright. He has to lean on the desk to get there. Natsume clocks it with a flick of his eyes but doesn’t comment. “Don’t you have school today?” Shuuichi goes on, desperately trying to remember what day it is. Friday, right?

“No school,” Natsume says, putting the drinks and the bag on the counter. “Teacher’s institute.”

“Are you in trouble?” Shuuichi asks carefully.

“I have to be in trouble to come visit you?”

Natsume wanders into the sitting room and sets his messenger bag and his ugly cat down on the sofa. He actually points a stern finger at the cat in clear warning that it needs to behave itself, as if it isn’t actually a giant monster capable of leveling buildings should it so choose. Something about that manages to be hilarious, where it isn’t slightly horrifying.

Shuuichi smiles a bit. This weird kid means the world to him.

“Did you bring me breakfast?” he asks lightly. “I hope that’s coffee.”

Natsume is so receptive to any manner of kindness, even after the life he’s lived, that he smiles back like a knee-jerk reaction. It still feels like an accomplishment when he does.

“Tea,” he corrects. “And some egg sandwiches. The sausage ones are for sensei. Can you eat with me, or– if you’re too busy– ”

“I can take a break,” Shuuichi says, and slings his arm around Natsume’s shoulders, steering him back into the kitchen. “Let’s talk about what dragged you all the way out here in the early hours of the morning, shall we? Does your mother know where you are?”

“Of course she does,” Natsume insists. “She even sent some leftovers with me. I put them in the fridge already.”

Shuuichi is in a vulnerable state, and that just about undoes him. He clears his throat and takes a big, scalding gulp of tea instead of saying or doing anything embarrassing. “Tell her I said thank you,” he manages.

“Or you could just call her,” Natsume points out dryly.

“Or I could just call her,” Shuuichi agrees.

In his defense, Shuuichi truly didn’t stand a chance. The combination of heavy food and a hot drink… the pale fingers of dawn creeping through the shades at the kitchen window… the steady back-and-forth of comfortable, friendly conversation… no one asking anything of him, expecting anything from him, except his company…

He dozes off in his chair at the counter, face buried in his folded arms. He feels someone draw a blanket around his shoulders, their cold fingers lingering protectively near his nape, and Hiiragi’s voice says, “Thank you. He’s very stupid.”

“No he isn’t,” Natsume replies loyally. “Well, not all the time.”

It’s ridiculous how well Shuuichi sleeps after that.

He wakes up a solid ten hours later, the blanket slipping to the floor. The TV is on in the next room. Hiiragi is perched on the counter beside him. Her mask somehow manages to appear both smug and judgemental without actually changing at all.

“Sleep well?” she asks with no inflection.

“What– time is it?” Shuuichi asks blearily, looking around for the clock.

“A little after four,” Hiiragi says. “Those exorcists have come and gone.”

“What?”

“They didn’t come inside. Natsume dealt with them at the door.”

“Sorry, Natori-san,” Natsume pipes up in the doorway. He shuffles a bit, self-conscious until Hiiragi seems to catch his eye. Then he lifts his chin a little and says, “You seemed tired, so I handled it. Hiiragi and Sasago both said it was okay.”

Betrayal, Shuuichi thinks, glaring hard at Hiiragi. She gazes serenely back, entirely unmoved. He’s firing her.

“Natsume, I appreciate it,” because there’s very little in this life that Natsume could do that Shuuichi wouldn’t back him up on, “but don’t talk to strangers. Even though they’re exorcists, that doesn’t automatically make them trustworthy.”

“I don’t trust most exorcists,” Natsume says plainly. “You’re one of, like, two exceptions.”

And there’s a lot to unpack there, but for some reason the first thing Shuuichi thinks of to ask is, “One of two? Who’s the other one?”

After a beat, in which Natsume looks as though he doesn’t want to answer, he admits, “Hakozaki-san.”

“Hak– the recluse with the dragon shiki? The owner of that mansion we watched burn?” Shuuichi laughs, unable to help himself. It unwinds tension in his body he hadn’t even realized he was holding. “Natsume, you never even met him!”

“I still liked him!” Natsume says hotly, embarrassed. “He was friends with yokai!”

“And I’m sure if he’d had the chance to know you, he would have spirited you away as his son and heir within two business days.” Shuuichi chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Lucky for me he didn’t have the chance, I suppose.”

Natsume huffs, but he still climbs into the seat next to Shuuichi. After a beat, Nyanko-sensei hops up into his lap.

“I might have gotten you in trouble with those exorcists,” the boy admits. “I told them to do their own homework from now on. That if they kept taking advantage of your kindness, you wouldn’t help them anymore.” He glances at Shuuichi sidelong from beneath his fringe, and adds, “They got mad, so I sicced sensei on them. I, um, think they thought he was my shiki. I also think they thought I’m from your clan. I couldn’t tell ‘cause they were all, um– screaming, at the same time.”

And– okay. There is a right and a wrong way to react to this, clearly. A teenage boy using his terrifying yokai friend to menace people within Shuuichi’s network? Not good! Very bad, even!

But Shuuichi has to lean forward against the counter, face buried in his hands, because he’s absolutely howling with laughter. Natsume is stammering, trying to explain himself, but he doesn’t say sorry. He isn’t sorry for sticking up for Shuuichi. He showed up at Shuuichi’s apartment at seven AM with McDonald’s on his day off from school, and chased a bunch of exorcists out of the building, because his friend needed a break and that’s just the kind of person Natsume is.

The kind of person who deserves something fancy for dinner tonight, Shuuichi decides, and he’s still smiling as he reaches for his phone.

Hiiragi places it neatly in his hand.

“I don’t want your autograph,” she says. She doesn’t call him an idiot out loud, but she’s probably thinking it.

Hell, he’ll order something fancy for her, too.

Chapter Text

“If you committed a felony, I’m removing you from the groupchat,” Shibata says by way of greeting.

Nishimura, only halfway through the front door, stares at him.

“Huh?”

“The groupchat,” Shibata replies, pushing himself upright from his lazy lean against the wall. “You can’t keep a secret to save your life and I’m not going down as an accessory.”

Nishimura is squinting at him. “I know all those words, but I have no idea what the hell you’re saying.”

It’s close to three in the afternoon, and the hallway is bright with sunshine pouring in from the kitchen on one side and the sitting room on the other, but Nishimura looks as though he’s ready to go to bed and stay there for the next two years.

Shibata usually takes a lot of pleasure in antagonizing Nishimura every chance he gets (it’s mutual) but clearly someone else got to him first.

It pisses Shibata off. He’s the only one allowed to make his friends miserable.

“Tell me how lunch went,” he demands.

Nishimura toes his sneakers off and steps up out of the genkan. He reaches over and snatches a hoodie that is clearly too big to belong to him off one of the hooks on the wall and tugs it on. Shibata scoots aside so he can shuffle past toward the kitchen, and then falls into step just behind him.

“It sucked,” Nishimura mutters, dropping his bag in one of the chairs crowded around the table. “Kiyoshi didn’t even show up. We waited for him for like twenty minutes. Mom was pissed.”

Kiyoshi, who swore up and down that he’d be there. Kiyoshi, who was supposed to be a buffer between Nishimura and his mother, so that the lunch date wasn’t entirely miserable.

Oh that bastard. Shibata yanks out his phone and fires off a text to Taki. Her brother works with Kiyoshi, and will be happy to kick his ass if Taki asks him to.

Shibata shoves his phone back into his pocket just as Nishimura turns around.

“Latte?” he offers.

“Duh,” Shibata says.

Their entire household is going through a specialty coffee phase. The fancy espresso machine on the counter was a house-warming gift from Natsume’s big brother, the famous actor Natori Shuuichi, because Shibata’s life is actually ridiculous.

At first Natsume claimed Natori wasn’t actually his brother, but no one bought it. Now he just goes along with it instead of wasting his breath.

So they’re not related, so what? Shibata isn’t related to a single one of these jokers he lives with, and that doesn’t make them any less his family. Besides, if Natori promised Natsume he’d show up to protect him from a shitty relative, he’d be there. He’d move heaven and earth to be there.

That stuff matters way more than whatever a family registry might say.

Shibata sits at the table and watches Nishimura steam milk. He’s moving mechanically and his eyes look as distant and heavy as Natsume’s sometimes do. The familiar motions of a cup of coffee are probably as soothing as the borrowed hoodie he’s wearing, sleeves rolled up his wrists because they’re too long.

This is his house, where his friends leave comfy sweaters laying around. It’s his kitchen, where he knows how to use the tricky coffee machine. No one is going to shout at him here. No one is going to tell him that social work is a waste of his time, that it’s not as impressive as his brother’s pre-med degree.

Because that would be bullshit.

Shibata sends another text, to Natsume this time– a visit from Natori will cheer Nishimura up. He already has a reply from Taki, promising vengeance. The groupchat starts lighting up, too. Good, he thinks, overseeing the controlled chaos taking place, forces are mobilized.

“Here,” Nishimura says, and Shibata glances up from his phone as a novelty mug shaped like a cat is set in front of him. Its curved tail serves as the handle. Across from him, Nishimura is sipping from the prized Moomin mug that he, Adachi, Shibata, and Taki fight over every morning.

“I’ll let you have it this time,” Shibata says, pointing at him.

“You’d have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers,” Nishimura replies peacefully.

They’re capable of getting along. It’s their best-kept secret.

“Hey,” Shibata says. “Next time your mom calls, let me answer.”

That works a bark of laughter out of Nishimura, who has to set his coffee down or else inhale it.

“I don’t know who that would be worse for.”

“Definitely her,” Shibata promises.

Nishimura smiles at him, sideways and slightly soft, the way he smiles at Touko when she comes to visit, or Mana during her weekly video calls, or Natsume when he’s being defensive about something stupid. Those very special people he’s very gentle around.

Shibata doesn’t need gentleness; he doesn’t often want it. But it’s nice, sometimes, to have it.

“I’d hug you right now, but you’re probably covered in evidence–” he starts.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Nishimura interjects, rolling his eyes.

“–and I also really don’t want to,” Shibata finishes plainly.

“Sure, Sumi.”

Their friends will come bursting through the door soon, and fill the kitchen with their individual brands of noisy caring. Nishimura won’t be so strung-out by then; the combination of sweet coffee and good company will have melted him, until he’s back to the goofy, good-natured guy they all actually depend on quite a bit. He’ll be happy to see them, and he’ll lean into their worry and care, because he may not have had a decent family growing up, but he had Kitamoto, and then he had Natsume and Tanuma and Taki, and now he has Adachi and Shibata, too.

His mom doesn’t love him and sometimes his brother doesn’t show up, but Nishimura doesn’t need them, anyway.

“Okay fine,” Shibata says, breaking the silence. “One hug.”

Nishimura grins, already halfway out of his chair.

Chapter Text

The absolute last person Joji expected to see today was Natsume Takashi.

Joji slows to a stop on the corner of the street, a block away from the train station, and stares shamelessly.

It’s been a decade since the last time he saw Natsume, but he recognizes him immediately. Of course he does. His light hair and eyes aside, Joji has thought about him on-and-off since junior high.

Joji remembers that rainy day when he was thirteen, an empty desk in the middle of his eighth grade classroom, Ito leaning over in his chair to whisper, “Did you hear? Natsume was in the ER. He almost died. The police are looking at his foster parents.”

It was as if he’d been plunged into a pool of ice water. He sat there, frozen, while their teacher called them to attention for homeroom and announced that Natsume wouldn’t be in their class going forward.

What was the last thing Joji had said to him? “It’s no wonder your parents didn’t want you.” Why the hell had he said that? A book, if he remembers right. He’d lent it to Natsume and Natsume gave it back all water-damaged, like he’d gone for a swim with his backpack on. Natsume’s eyes were on his hands, on the ruined book, and he’d tried to apologize, said he’d pay for it, but Joji just snatched it away, ticked off.

“This is what I get for trying to help you, I guess. It’s no wonder your parents didn’t want you.”

Joji is almost twenty-four now. He’s going into pediatrics. His fiance, Sakura, is a foster parent. She is currently the proud and fiercely protective mother of two beautiful twin girls.

Sora and Miu are terrified of adults and they go everywhere together and sometimes they make up stories. Sometimes they lie, about why their uniforms are torn, why they’re home late, why their lunchboxes are covered in dirt. They have this look in their eyes sometimes like they’re just waiting to get hurt again.

Sakura has the patience of a saint. She never raises her voice. She stitches their torn uniforms, replaces their lunchboxes, and, on more than one occasion, has marched into their junior high school and threatened the staff with physical violence if her babies come home with bruises one more time.

Needless to say, Sora and Miu adore her. It took them longer to warm up to Joji, but they’re there now; no longer flinching when he moves in their direction, greeting him happily when he comes over for breakfast, smiling shyly when he staggers into the apartment underneath the weight of two giant stuffed rabbits that cost nearly half his paycheck, because it’s their birthday, Sakura, they need them.

Joji tries to imagine someone telling them “this is why your parents didn’t want you” and goes absolutely breathless with rage.

Natsume glances up from his phone to look right at Joji, as if someone had pointed him out. Caught staring, Joji shuffles in place for a moment, and then squares his shoulders and heads over.

He’s expecting the Natsume of his memory; he’s expecting him to curl his shoulders and duck his head, the way Joji’s girls still sometimes do when a stern auntie wants to talk to them.

He’s not expecting Natsume to level him with a clear, politely confused gaze. He pockets his phone, and shoves his hands into the front pockets of the cardigan he’s wearing; a size too big, like something he borrowed out of someone else’s closet, but it’s a charming look on him. He’s dressed well, in dark-washed jeans and white high-top sneakers, and his silvery hair is long, probably long enough to fall past his shoulders if he didn’t have it piled up in a bun. There’s a squat calico cat at his feet, glaring up at Joji with judgmental green eyes.

“Can I help you?” Natsume asks kindly. His voice is a shock to the system; Joji remembers him like it was yesterday.

“Oh,” Joji says, stymied. It never occurred to him that Natsume might not recognize him in turn. “Um, I’m Watanabe Joji. We were classmates in eighth grade.”

“That’s right,” Natsume says with gratifying quickness. He looks a little embarrassed now and returns Joji’s short bow. “Sorry, it’s been a long time.”

And we weren’t exactly friends, he doesn’t say, but that common knowledge sits neatly between them.

“Ten years!” Joji replies with some forced enthusiasm. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Sorry?”

“The, ah, reunion this weekend? Ito, from our homeroom back then, put together a whole thing. Our whole class is getting together for dinner and drinks.”

It occurs to him that Natsume might not have been invited. Joji thinks that’s less because he isn’t welcome and more because Ito almost certainly didn’t have his contact information. The few times his name has come up, Joji’s friends have gone quiet and melancholy. A few of them are parents now, or aunts and uncles at least. All of them know better than they did when they were mean, shitty little teenagers.

Joji opens his mouth to assure Natsume that they’d love to have him, but Natsume cuts him off with a laugh.

It’s not a mean laugh. It’s not unfriendly in the slightest. But it stings anyway, because Natsume is laughing out of pure disbelief.

“No, no,” he says, waving a hand, “god, no. Could you imagine?” he adds, glancing down at the cat. The cat huffs, settling a little more solidly against Natsume’s ankle. “We’re just passing through, actually.”

“We?” Joji asks dumbly. Did he mean himself and the cat?

It’s Natsume’s turn to get cut-off, this time by a long, drawn-out shout of “Takashiiii!”

A short, russet-haired young man around Joji’s age comes barreling down the sidewalk toward them at a flat-out run. Joji’s first inclination is one of alarm, but Natsume steps forward with his arms outstretched, and the stranger collides with him in an embrace that looks like it hurts.

Natsume is laughing again, but it’s softer this time. It’s the warmest sound Joji has ever heard him make.

“What’s this for?” Natsume is saying, patting him on the back.

“Just missed you,” his friend replies.

“You saw him twenty minutes ago, Satoru,” comes the exasperated call from further down the road, and Joji glances over to find a small group headed their way, laden with shopping bags.

“Yeah, exactly,” Satoru says, leaning back without letting go, just enough to gaze up at Natsume with a cheeky grin. “I’m all Takashi-deficient. It’s pretty serious.”

“Sounds serious,” Natsume replies, and agreeably keeps an arm wrapped around his shoulders as the rest of their group catches up.

A tall, dark-haired man stoops to pick up Natsume’s cat, and it settles agreeably in the crook of his arm. The brown-eyed woman beside him lets out a coo, shifting all her bags to one hand so she has one free to scratch it behind the ears.

“We’re being rude,” the dark-haired man says in a soft, pleasant tone. “Who’s this, Takashi?”

Natsume introduces Joji as an old classmate, giving absolutely none of their history away in tone or expression, but somehow all of his friends seem to clue in to something anyway. Their collective demeanor shifts, in an unidentifiable way, even if their polite smiles don’t slip an inch as Takashi introduces each of them in turn.

All but Nishimura Satoru, still tucked up against Natsume’s side, who gives Joji a positively poisonous look.

“Okay, Satchan, you’re going to lose privileges if you can’t be nice,” Kitamoto says dryly, and extracts him from Natsume’s person with a deftness that speaks of years of practice.

“Nooo,” Nishimura says, but it’s curbed quickly by Shibata shoving a bag at him and snapping, “Carry this! It’s that stupid lucky cat statue you just had to have, and it’s heavy!”

“It looks just like sensei! Tooru loves it, too!”

“I do,” Taki admits.

It’s a warm afternoon, right at the end of August, the sky turning golden with the beginnings of dusk. Joji still manages to feel cold.

He grew up, but Natsume did, too. He always regretted what he did, he always wondered if Natsume was okay, wherever he went, but Natsume hasn’t seemed to spare him a second thought. He’s got his own friends now; bright, kind people who look like they’d raise hell for him. Who run to meet him.

Joji missed the chance to have a place in Natsume’s life. He’s a footnote, now, and not a very good one.

“Jojojojo!”

The bright voices have him spinning around, forgetting everything else, and he lights up when he spots Sora and Miu waving at him from the other side of the street. Sakura has a firm hold on their jackets so they can’t go spilling out into the street until the pedestrian crossing sign lights up, and then she releases them like a couple of eager hunting dogs.

Natsume’s friends shuffle to one side politely, and Joji steps forward to catch his girls when they reach him. They’re so beautiful and he missed them so much, this weekend they were away to visit Sakura’s parents. He kisses them each on the head, and then kisses Sakura on the head in the name of fairness, and it makes all three of them laugh.

Taki coos just like she did with the cat, hands clasped together under her chin.

“What sweet girls!” she says. “Are they yours, Watanabe?”

“Yes,” Joji says proudly, putting one arm around each of their shoulders. They’ve come so far, not hiding behind him from the group of strangers, even if they press into his sides shyly. “This is Miu, and this is Sora. We’re adopting them.”

Sakura shifts her weight imperceptibly, a barely-there tell. Waiting, he knows, for the surprise, or outright condemnation. She’s dealt with a lot of bullshit for taking these kids in, from family and ex-friends and even total strangers. It rolls right off her, and she usually gives as good as she gets, but she hates when Sora and Miu have to hear it. They don’t deserve to hear it.

Joji will have to explain it to her, later, why he brought it up. Why he knew it would be safe to bring it up in front of these strangers.

Sure enough, all their faces soften immediately, a gentle transformation. Natsume crouches, gazing at the twins with an expression that Joji remembers from his childhood. The delicate resilience, the willingness to reach out even if he got hurt.

The look on his face ten years ago when he handed back that ruined book, owning up to his mistake and trying to fix it, buying Joji a replacement even after Joji said something unthinking and cruel.

“I was adopted, too,” he says.

“Really?” Sora asks quietly.

“Really,” Natsume tells her. “My parents died when I was little. I wasn’t an easy child to care for, even though it wasn’t my fault, so I got passed around a lot. It took me a long time to find my place, but I found it. Did you find yours?”

“I think so,” Sora says, glancing around Joji at her sister.

“Me, too,” Miu adds.

Sakura clutches Joji’s hand hard enough to bruise. She won’t cry here and now, but he already knows it’s going to be an ice-cream-for-dinner kind of night.

Natsume looks up to meet Joji’s eyes when he says, “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”

It’s forgiveness. Joji hears it plain as day. He didn’t get a chance to ask for it– isn’t sure he deserves it– but there it is, freely given. And it’s reassurance, too.

When Joji’s daughters used to curl their shoulders and duck their heads, it would always tug at the memory of a boy he used to know, who was as kind as he was desperate for kindness.

Now, he thinks, when his girls are making a mess of the kitchen trying to follow a pancake recipe with their friends, or dragging a stray cat inside with big, hopeful eyes, it’ll remind him of this afternoon. Natsume’s clear, bright eyes, and the protective cluster of friends surrounding him.

The world wasn’t fair to him; it left a mountain in his life that he had to climb, complete with all its pitfalls and crumbling paths and bad weather.

And here he is on the other side, goodness intact. Smiling. Loved.

He found his place. Sora and Miu found theirs.

And god, if that doesn’t give Joji hope for everyone else.

“It was nice to see you,” he says thickly, hoping Natsume hears his honesty. “Don’t come to the reunion, that was– a stupid thing to say, but– would you– dinner?”

Natsume hears it. He tilts his head, considering, and then says, “We missed our train, anyway.”

“And I’m starving,” Tanuma says agreeably. Clearly, he says it more to agree with Natsume than anything.

Nishimura is the hardest sell, watching Joji with hard eyes. But then his gaze dips to Sora and Miu, and all his sharp edges go soft, like butter melting in the sun. After a handful of tense seconds, he visibly gives up on his anger with a huff. His friends, watching patiently, all give absurd little cheers when it’s clear he’s on board.

“Fine, but if you live farther than three feet away, we’re getting an Uber,” Shibata threatens, rustling the shopping bags in his hands with annoyed fervor.

They drift in the direction of Joji’s home, and Kitamoto talks Shibata down from the Uber with the promise of ducking into a 7-Eleven for ice creams instead, and Taki and Sakura are fast friends, rolling their sleeves up to compare tattoos– Taki’s is a strange, occult-looking circle that Joji makes a mental note to ask about– and Tanuma lets Sora carry the fat cat, while Miu pets it with reverent fingers.

Natsume walks beside Joji, calm and unhurried, with Nishimura on his other side. He grew up with so much grace.

“Can I add you to the class groupchat?” he asks without thinking.

“Good luck with that,” Nishimura butts in, not unkindly. “He’s the most unreliable texter you’ve ever met. He left me on read for like two days once, and we live together.”

“You’d have better luck with an email,” Natsume says apologetically.

It’s more than Joji thought he’d get; they exchange contact information, in the middle of this chaotic, noisy group making its way down the street toward the well-lit combini on the corner and then, beyond that, home.

Natsume doesn’t seem to have any interest in reconnecting with his old classmates, and Joji doesn’t blame him for that. Even though it will certainly piss Ito off to be kept in the dark, even just for a few days, Joji decides it’s for the best.

Nishimura’s goodwill can’t be stretched that far.

Chapter Text

“Tanuma, I need your help.”

That was all Natsume said on the phone. And it didn’t sound like he was in danger or anything– a little frazzled, maybe. So there was no reason for Kaname’s heart to fly into his throat the way it did.

But. Well, when has Natsume ever said that to him? Getting him to admit to a need is like pulling teeth. He’s stubborn and self-reliant to a fault. Once he tried to walk home on a sprained ankle, even though Kaname and Nishimura were right there, all because he didn’t want to bother them.

So Natsume says ‘I need your help’ and Kaname barely remembers to say goodbye to his dad before he’s flying out the door.

Halfway down the road that leads into town, Natsume calls him back.

“I’m sorry about that last call! I just realized what that sounded like! I’m sure I worried you. It’s really nothing–if you’re busy–”

Kaname doesn’t want to admit that he was worried over that first phone call, because it says more about himself than he would like it to. Instead, he says, “I’m not busy.”

“Are you sure?”

He can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m already on my way over. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Natsume sounds as relieved as Kaname feels. “Okay. Just let yourself in when you get here.”

It’s immediately apparent why Natsume called, and also why he wasn’t able to get up and greet Kaname at the door.

There’s a fox sleeping in his lap.

“Oh,” Kaname says, stopping just short of the sitting room. “Is that your friend from the autumn festival?”

“He’s sick, so I’m looking after him,” Natsume says, somewhat desperately. “But every time I move, he wakes up. And when he wakes up, he cries. And I still have chores to do before Touko-san gets home.”

Kaname finds himself smiling. “So you need me to do your chores?”

Natsume couldn’t have looked any more appalled if Kaname had just announced he was running away to join the Matoba clan.

“No! I just need you to hold him while I do my chores.”

Holding a baby fox definitely trumps doing the dishes, so Kaname crosses the room agreeably and sits cross-legged next to his friend. Natsume begins the delicate process of extraction, working his hands beneath the creature carefully and ignoring its heart-wrenching little whimpers as he lifts it up.

Kaname holds very still as Natsume sets the fox in the ready-made nest of his legs. It sniffs wetly at Kaname for a few moments, getting the measure of him. Natsume runs a hand over its head, a practiced, familiar gesture. It settles down after that, curling to tuck its little snout by its front paws and sighing deeply.

“Thank you,” Natsume whispers.

Carefully stroking one of the fox’s velvety ears, Kaname doesn’t say that this is one of the more pleasant favors he’s ever done for anyone. He doesn’t say that it’s always such a comfort to realize that there can be yokai encounters like this– that they’re not always painful or scary.

He would still be here even if it every single one of them was painful and scary. He isn’t going anywhere. But he definitely prefers a day like this one.

Instead of any of that, Kaname says, “Any time.”

While Natsume does the dishes and hauls out the trash and takes the laundry off the line, Kaname keeps his little fox company. It shivers every now and then, and presses closer as if for warmth. Kaname carefully picks his way out of his hoodie so he can drape it over the fox as a blanket.

He scrolls through his phone with one hand, stroking the fox’s head with the tips of his fingers. It starts to making a purring sound, low in its belly. It’s probably the best lazy afternoon Kaname has had in weeks.

“You’re spoiling him,” Natsume says when he finally returns, with two glasses of iced tea in hand and a rueful smile on his face. He doesn’t sound displeased about it.

“He’s adorable,” Kaname says in his own defense. “Does he live by himself? Is that why he came to you?”

Nodding, Natsume explains, “He’s grown up a lot since I first met him, but he’s still just a kid. And some of his neighbors are mean. He just wanted to feel safe.”

Kaname understands exactly what it’s like to be a sick child, to want to feel safe. He thinks Natsume understands, too.

That’s about when the fox fully wakes up. It yawns and stretches, and Kaname swiftly takes a few more pictures of it on his phone, to share with Taki later. When it sits upright, the hoodie slips off of it, and it blinks in almost human confusion.

It looks around for Natsume, ears slanted back only slightly. It reminds Kaname of a toddler who isn’t sure whether or not they should cry yet.

“This is my friend,” Natsume says in a gentle tone. “You met him at the festival. We watched the fireworks together.”

Those ears perk back up. It barks once.

“He wants to know your name,” Natsume translates.

“Ah, I’m Tanuma Kaname,” Kaname says quickly, feeling a little impolite for not having introduced himself yet. “You can call me whatever you like.”

“No you can’t, because that would be rude,” his friend chimes in immediately. “Now tell him your name.”

Wriggling happily, it barks again, a sharp, high-pitched sound.

Absolutely charmed, Kaname glances expectantly at Natsume, who tells him, “He didn’t have one until recently. Nature spirits don’t often worry about those things. But now he tells anyone who stands still for longer than two seconds that his name is Anzu.”

Anzu climbs out of Kaname’s lap and starts nosing at Natsume’s jacket. With a sigh, Natsume reaches into his pocket and pulls out a plastic bag of dried apricots.

“Ohhhh,” Kaname says, understanding all at once. It’s enough to make him laugh. “So you named him.”

“Anzu is a good name,” Natsume says defensively. His shoulders are hunched a little, and he’s resolutely not looking Kaname in the eye. This is the same guy who named Nyanko-sensei, after all. “Apricots are his favorite.”

For a split-second, in the golden light of late afternoon that spills into the room from the open porch doors behind them, Kaname can see him; a little boy with long brown hair and a tidy kimono, gazing up at Natsume with bright, adoring eyes. The boy turns that smile towards Kaname, and then that shift in perspective is abruptly gone again.

The fox gives him a big canine grin, tail wagging.

“I think Anzu is a great name,” Kaname tells him honestly. “I’m glad I got to meet you.”

Natsume’s eyes go soft. “We’re glad, too,” he says.

Chapter Text

Nishimura never thought he’d be here, crouching under a window with his best friends so that the tall figure prowling around outside doesn’t catch a glimpse of them. 

Kitamoto is clutching one of Satoru’s hands and one of Natsume’s. He looks like he’s very carefully not freaking out. 

“It’ll be alright,” Natsume says gently. “I’ll make sure you get home.”

“We’re not going anywhere without you, idiot,” Kitamoto says without missing a beat. 

“Oh– no, I know, that’s not what I–”

“Focus up!” Nishimura hisses. “We have five people trying to kill us right now, what are we supposed to do?”

“Actually, it’s more like eight,” Natsume says apologetically. “A few of them brought their shiki.”

“Oh! I’m sorry I wasn’t specific enough!”

Natsume winces, but he doesn’t clam up the way he used to when they were kids. They’re in university now, and they share an apartment right down the hall from the apartment Shibata, Taki and Tanuma share, and Natsume has come a long way from the shy ghost he was when they first met. 

But this situation seems to be a bit more personal than most. Natsume has been on edge ever since they left the udon booth, glancing over his shoulder as if they were being followed, even though the street was winter-dark and mostly empty. 

“They aren’t trying to kill us,” Natsume mutters. “It’s more of a, uh… recruitment pitch.”

“Wait, is this that weird guy with the eyepatch that tried to kidnap you in high school?” Kitamoto asks. “How did he figure out where you live?”

“He has a lot of connections,” Natsume says, sounding more weary than worried. “And a powerful family.”

“That’s not okay,” Kitamoto says with a mighty scowl. “I’m calling mom when we get home. She and her partners at the firm eat creeps like him for breakfast.”

Nishimura’s phone buzzes. It’s Shibata in the group chat, asking where the hell they are with dinner. Nishimura, acutely aware of the bags of food going cold next to him, texts back, We’re ghostbusting, don’t bother us. 

Tanuma: Wait what?

Shibata: It’s a school night!!!

Nishimura slides his phone away and peeks out the window. He doesn’t see anyone, but it’s possible he’s looking right at a ghost. He quickly changes his mind about peeking out the window. 

“What now?” he asks. 

“Sensei said he would take care of it,” Natsume reassures. 

Resigned, Nishimura digs into the bags and passes his friends each a to-go container of the udon and a sleeve of disposable chopsticks. They’re both looking at him strangely, and he scowls. 

“Well, we’re just sitting here anyway! And I’m cold!”

When Natori shoves his worried way into the building around ten minutes later, frazzled and frantic, it looks as though the last thing he expected was to find the three of them sitting comfortably on the floor, eating soup and watching a vine compilation on Kitamoto’s phone. 

Nyanko-sensei waddles past him and announces, “I scared the weaklings away and brought back-up! Give me tempura!”

Natori puts his face in his hands and just stands there without talking for a minute. And to think, he thought Natsume moving to the city with his friends would make his life more convenient. 

“I was under the impression you were in danger,” Natori says, muffled. 

“I mean, kind of,” Kitamoto points out. “We had to hide in here from Eyepatch-san. We’re gonna sue the hell out of him.”

“Come eat Shibata’s udon,” Nishimura pipes up, offering up another container. “You’ll feel better.”

“Your friends are weird, Natsume,” Natori mutters. He looks like he regrets every decision he made that brought him to this place, which is kind of rude. They’re just sitting here. “Please get up off the floor and pack up your food. I’m taking you home.”

“Hey, quick hypothetical question, how angry will you be if we get there and Taki has those taboo circles drawn everywhere?” Nishimura asks. 

Natori stares at him really hard and says, “Very angry.”

“Okay, cool, just wondering,” Nishimura replies, and pulls his phone out to text her a warning. Natori pinches the bridge of his nose and counts to ten. 

“Up,” he says shortly. “Out. Before we get arrested. I’m not having that conversation with any of your parents.”

“It’s okay, my mom’s a lawyer,” Kitamoto says, at which point Natori begins physically steering them out of the building. 

His annoyance seems born of very real worry, and Nishimura feels bad enough that he falls into step with Kitamoto agreeably. 

Behind them, barely loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the traffic, Natsume says, “I’m really sorry if you were busy. I just– I hate dealing with Matoba by myself. My friends in Yatsuhara were powerful enough together that I only had to call on them to make him go away, but I don’t have them here.”

Nishimura glances back in time to watch Natori ruffle Natsume’s hair. That cocktail of irritation and ill-concealed concern seems to have been left behind in that abandoned building, because Natori is smiling now. Not his charming TV smile, but a better one. 

“You may not have them anymore, but you’re far from friendless. And when you need help, you don’t have to second-guess it. Just call me, and I’ll be there.”

Natsume knocks his hand away, but he’s smiling, too. Back into the groove of being the Cool And Hip Older Friend, Natori slings an arm around Kitamoto’s shoulder and says, “Now, please let me in on the suing Matoba scheme. I have money, fame and connections.” 

“Sure! I’m gonna call my mom on Zoom as soon as we get home,” Kitamoto says brightly.

“Wait, were you serious about that?” Natsume blurts, wide-eyed. 

“We just got chased through the city by ghosts with an agenda,” Nishimura reminds him, “and ate soup in an abandoned building while we waited for your bodyguard to tell us it was safe to leave. If Acchan doesn’t call Auntie, I will.”

Still, Nishimura thinks, bag of cold food swinging at his side, his friends’ animated voices filling the December air all around him as they plot legal revenge, there are worse ways to spend an evening. 

Chapter Text

The weather is changing.

Kaname clocks it even before the leaves start to turn color, on the first night he gets out of bed to close the window and keep out the chill. Summer is over, he realizes, and something deep in his chest gives a twinge.

He isn’t a fan of the cold.

As a child, Kaname was sick all the time, but it was especially bad in the winter. He caught virtually every single bug that went around every year and he was always laid up for twice as long as his classmates.

He can’t count how many days he spent at home by himself, watching snow build up outside the window. No matter how many blankets he found, he could never seem to get warm.

It makes him feel lonely just thinking about it. It makes him shrug on an extra jacket on before he leaves for school.

As the summer truly gives way to fall, Kaname can feel his mood sink with the temperature. And because he has wonderful, entirely-too-nosy friends, of course it doesn’t go unnoticed.

So when Kitamoto asks him why he’s glaring at the leaves on the ground like they insulted his dad, Kaname only makes an off-handed remark; I’ve always had bad luck with winter.

“What’s that mean?” Nishimura demands.

“It’s no big deal,” Kaname says weakly. “I got sick pretty easily when I was a kid, so I had to stay home by myself a lot. That’s all.”

He doesn’t want to make a thing out of it. It’s really not a thing at all. Especially not compared to some of his friends’ things– the way Nishimura and Taki both seem to shrink a little bit when they’re ignored or talked over; the split-second of worry that darts through Kitamoto’s eyes when he gets an unexpected call from his mother and how he’ll sometimes answer with “is dad okay?” instead of a hello; how taken-aback Natsume still is every time someone proves they care about him.

Compared to all of that, Kaname’s seasonal low isn’t even worth mentioning.

“You know we know where you live, right?” Kitamoto asks skeptically.

“Yeah, we’ll come visit!” Taki pipes up sweetly.

Natsume is gazing at him with deep, thoughtful eyes, but he just smiles when Kaname glances over at him, and shrugs as if to say ‘what can you do?’

Kaname is expecting them to forget about the whole thing. Kaname forgets. To be fair, his days are pretty busy even when there isn’t a mildly terrifying yokai situation to contend with between study sessions and weekend day trips.

He’s dragged along to sleepovers and shopping trips and movie marathons that start in the early afternoon and only end when Touko gently wakes them up because if they sleep any longer it’ll be too dark to get home.

By the time winter arrives on their doorstep and unpacks its bags, Kaname has been too busy to dread it. One morning he wakes up to snow outside his window, and his father leaning through his bedroom door with an expression of fond amusement.

“You’ve got company,” his dad tells him.

Kaname gets dressed and wanders into the sitting room to find all of his friends beaming at him from around the room, dressed for battle in thick coats and knitted hats. They cheer when Kaname comes in, wide-awake despite it being seven AM on a Sunday.

Natsume stands to meet him, smiling. “It snowed,” he says by way of explanation. “Nishimura has big plans.”

“Did any of you even eat breakfast?” Kaname can’t help but ask.

“We’re getting combini pancakes!” Taki and Nishimura chant in practiced unison. Okay then.

“Are you coming?” Natsume asks.

The temple is almost a mile outside of town, uphill through the woods. The only reason they’re here is because they wanted to include him. They went out of their way to come drag him out of bed to get pancakes and crash around in the snow.

Winter is here, and somehow he forgot to worry about it. He’s forgotten how cold it used to be.

“I’ll get my coat,” he says. He’s grinning as he rushes past his dad, looking forward to whatever nonsense he just signed up for.

His friends clamor noisily around him as he tugs on his boots and pats the pockets of his coats to find his gloves. He can see his breath in the genkan, clouding in front of him, as everyone starts to file outside.

There’s a voice in the back of his mind that is still seven years old, still worried about getting sick and getting left behind, but it’s very quiet. He almost doesn’t hear it at all.

Chapter Text

“Natsume, I can’t help but notice that you don’t seem to want to be here,” Taki says with a commendable amount of tact. 

“Yeah, you look like we’re forcing you to plan your own funeral service,” Nishimura says with significantly less tact. Kitamoto shoulder-checks him, but Natsume only smiles. 

“I don’t, really,” he says. “If it weren’t so important to dad, I probably would have just asked to stay home.”

He’s more honest now, some two-and-half years since they first met him, but it’s something his friends know better than to take for granted. They had to work for it, after all.

Shigeru is ahead of them, mingling with his relatives. Natsume and his friends are lingering in the entry way. Tanuma puts his hands out to take Nyanko-sensei so Natsume is free to shrug out of his jacket. 

“How come?” Tanuma asks in his quiet, unassuming way. 

“I used to live here,” Natsume says. “Not in this house, but in this neighborhood.” 

Just that is enough to make his friends stand a little straighter, a big red flag. Kitamoto feels his eyes narrow involuntarily at the first stranger who looks in their direction. 

“Do you think they remember you?” Taki asks as they pick their way down the hall. 

“I sure hope not after what I did the last time I was here.” Natsume’s voice is wry with good humor. He’s so changed from the kid who was frightened to say more than “yes” or “no” or “I’m sorry” or “I’m fine.”

“What did you do?” Nishimura asks with great interest.

“You’ll find out.”

Kitamoto is beginning to understand why Touko opted to stay at the hotel. Her well-timed headache seemed a bit too convenient at the time, but he wasn’t about to call his favorite aunt out on something like that. Besides, the speaking look she traded with Shigeru made it pretty clear that she wasn’t trying to be subtle about it, anyway. 

The kitchen is huge and polished to a gleam, and on sheer reflex Kitamoto reaches out to grab Nishimura by the elbow and reel him in against his side. 

“Don’t touch anything,” he advises. One of those crystal glasses looks like it cost more than everything in his mother’s china cabinet back home. “Not even the food. We can just stop at a combini on our way back.”

His friends all nod, conceding to his wisdom. Shigeru turns to find them slinking through the doorway like a herd of prey animals and shakes his head. 

“Get over here,” he says, not unkindly. “Katsuya and Hiromi have been looking forward to seeing you again.”

The promise of a couple of friendly faces is enough incentive to brave the rest of them. Tanuma passes Nyanko-sensei back over to Natsume; a changing of the guard. They barely make it halfway across the room before there’s a sharply drawn breath, and a “You!” that punches through the polite conversation like a rock through rice paper. 

The woman is only slightly older than Kitamoto and his friends, maybe closer to Kiyoshi or Isamu’s age. She doesn’t look happy to see them.

Natsume breathes out slowly. There’s a moment where he shuffles self-consciously, about to duck his head and curl his shoulders– Kitamoto can see it telegraphed in every inch of his body– but at the last second he only bows neatly and then lifts his head again. 

“Hi, Sara-san. It’s been awhile.”

For a moment, she’s speechless. Most of the party-goers have turned back to their own conversations, but a few are still watching with interest. Shigeru and his cousin Katsuya are frowning openly. 

Sara says, “I can’t believe you came back here. You– we got rid of you.”

“Wow,” Nishimura says out loud. Kitamoto squeezes his arm in warning, but Nishimura goes right on, “And my brother says I’m rude. You didn’t even greet him.”

“Satchan,” Tanuma hisses behind him. 

“Who is this, Natsume?” Taki asks. Her tone is bright, but Kitamoto’s not buying it. “An old friend of yours?”

“A cousin, I think,” he says. “I used to live with her and her mother not too long after my biological dad died. I think I must have been eight or nine.”

“You vandalized our house,” Sara says. It doesn’t come out angry as much as it does surprised. It seems like this is a confrontation she never thought she’d have to deal with. “You broke all the overhead lights on the first floor. There was broken glass everywhere. We called the police!”

Kitamoto blinks. The room was so quiet that if someone dropped a yen coin, you probably could have heard it down the street. 

“I’m sorry,” he says slowly, abruptly forgetting they weren’t supposed to be picking a fight. “Did you just say you called the police on an eight year old?”

Sara flushes. She glances around for help that isn’t forthcoming. “Well– ”

“How in the hell does a little kid break an overhead light in the first place?” Nishimura jumps in. He’s scowling, because he only has like two settings where Natsume is concerned, and they’re both sitting on a hair-trigger. “He must have been like four feet tall.”

“He’s weird,” Sara says helplessly. She’s slightly quieter now, and looks like she desperately regrets initiating this conversation. “He’s always done weird things. Everyone has stories about him.”

Stories about a frightened little kid trying to compartmentalize the total upheaval of his whole universe, Kitamoto thinks, a sour feeling in his stomach. Maybe he did act out, maybe he did do weird things. He still deserved kindness from you. 

“Hey, Uncle,” Taki says, looking up at Shigeru, “what’s the weirdest story you have about Natsume?”

“Dad, please don’t,” Natsume blurts. 

Shigeru grins, and Katsuya laughs outright. 

“Remind me and I’ll tell you later,” Shigeru says. “Why don’t you get something to eat and then come find me in the sitting room?”

“We can come now,” Nishimura says plainly. “We’re not eating here.”

“Convenience store fried chicken!” Taki cheers. “And a shortcake for Aunt Touko, since she had to miss the party!” 

“She’ll be sorry she missed this,” Shigeru mutters, and begins herding them all into the next room. 

Hiromi is waiting in there with drinks, and beams when they file in, greeting Natsume and all of his friends by name. The conversation comes easily, and the rest of the evening passes by pretty painlessly, and if Nyanko-sensei keeps a sharp eye on the door the whole time, Kitamoto isn’t going to mention it to anyone.

The sound of laughter draws a few more people into the room. They come either curiously, or ruefully, and pick out seats on the fringes. Someone apologizes for Sara, and it sounds as though they mean it. It might be wishful thinking, but it seems like these relatives are willing to revise their opinion of that strange little boy none of them bothered to get to know. 

Natsume is tall and healthy now, and as close to confident as he’s capable of, his long hair swept back with a headband he borrowed from Taki that morning. He’s nothing like the broken child he used to be. Everyone can see that. 

“I’m glad they got rid of you,” Nishimura says as they’re leaving, loud enough that a firmly-scolded Sara can almost certainly overhear. “If they can’t appreciate a good thing when they’ve got it, they never deserved you in the first place.”

“Stop trying to pick a fight,” Natsume says, giving him a playful push out the door. His face is warm with affection. “At this rate, they won’t invite us back next time.”

“I think Touko is counting on it,” Shigeru says dryly, and the door closes on all their bright laughter. 

Chapter Text

Nishimura is flighty and breezy at all other times, constantly running late for school and doubling back on the way home for a forgotten school book or jacket, but it’s not like him to just not show up. 

It’s so much out of character that Taki knows even before Kitamoto says anything that something is wrong. 

“I’m going to his place,” Kitamoto says. “You guys can go ahead.”

Taki feels herself bristle, probably exactly the way Nyanko-sensei does when he’s denied a treat, but Natsume beats her to the punch. 

“We’ll come with you,” he says in his quiet, implacable way. He’s already standing, bag slung over his shoulder. He’s been checking his phone this whole time, too. 

Kitamoto hesitates, but just for a second. He’s always known when to pick his battles. 

So they miss the train as a group. But it’s fine, Taki thinks, because they can just catch the next one. Nishimura’s house isn’t so far away. 

When they get there, Kitamoto lets himself through the gate with the ease of long familiarity. He steps over a loose stone in the pathway up to the door without even looking. This time, when he waves them back and says, “Wait here,” Taki hangs back. She’s never actually been here before, and Kitamoto obviously has. 

And on top of that… 

It wouldn’t be fair to say his expression is grim, or even foreboding, but it’s a certain amount of apprehensive that makes Taki sort of nervous. Like he’s bracing himself for something. Like he knows more than the rest of them do. 

So Taki hangs back. 

When Kitamoto slides the door open, announcing himself as he steps inside, they’re greeted by the sound of raised voices. Muffled, as though someone is shouting down the hall and through a wall or two. 

All of Taki’s closest friends are a gentle sort, and she can tell right away that the yelling makes Tanuma and Natsume both uneasy. 

She plants herself firmly in front of them, as casually as she’s able. She’s not very big or tall, but she won’t let that stop her. She doesn’t scare as easily as she used to. 

A young man comes to the door, with a “Sorry now’s not a good time” on the edge of his tongue, but he stops short when he sees Kitamoto. 

“Hey, Kiyoshi-niisan,” Kitamoto says. Now it’s fair to say he sounds grim. “We both know I’m not going home without him, so what’s the play?”

Kiyoshi– a name Taki recognizes as Nishimura’s big brother’s– looks tired, and angry, and maybe like he’d like to say something unkind. Taki doesn’t think he’s looking at Kitamoto like that, though, or she would have something to say about it.

“Aunt Niko is here,” Kiyoshi says at length. 

It’s all he needs to say, apparently, because Kitamoto is kicking off his sneakers and stepping up out of the genkan without another word. He must have forgotten his friends were here with him– he doesn’t spare them a single backwards glance. 

Kiyoshi, with the air of someone resigned to watching the ship go down, says, “The three of you can come in, if you’d like, but I don’t think you’ll be here very long.”

“I have the same feeling,” Tanuma says faintly. 

Kitamoto slides a door open at the end of the hall. The sound of shouting intensifies for a split second, and then abruptly cuts off. Kitamoto steps inside, and he must not even say two words to that Aunt Niko, because he’s out again barely ten seconds later, dragging Nishimura behind him. 

And Taki finds herself hurrying inside, after all, blown in like a kite on a string, because Nishimura looks as though he’s been crying and Taki can’t bear it. 

She stops at the very edge of the genkan and stretches out her hands, waving them impatiently when Kitamoto doesn’t surrender Nishimura to her fast enough.

Nishimura’s hands are cold when Taki finally takes them. He staggers down into the entry way next to her like he has no strength left in his legs. But it’s okay now, Taki thinks a little frantically, because she’s got him.

“Shoes,” Kitamoto says tersely. “I’ll get his jacket.” 

They’re out the door again in an efficient manner of moments. Kitamoto says a quick goodbye to Kiyoshi and then closes the front door behind them with a decisive snap. 

None of them speak, hustling down the path and out the gate. Nishimura is still clinging to Taki’s hand like he’s afraid of what might happen if he lets go. 

All of her friends are a gentle sort. When she first met him, Taki wouldn’t have guessed that Nishimura was gentle, too. But since then, she’s seen him talk Tanuma away from the edge of a panic attack, and take Natsume’s hands as carefully as someone picking up a fallen bird’s egg, and belligerently stare down kids from other classes who make fun of Tsuji for caring too much. She’s seen the shape his kindness takes. 

He’s loud and silly, but he always shows up. 

“Nishimura,” Natsume murmurs, “are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nishimura says, like a knee-jerk reaction. Then, “Actually, no,” with an honesty Taki finds admirable, considering how much emotional wrestling it would have taken to get Natsume to admit even that much. Then, “Wait– you all missed the train.”

“We don’t care about the train,” Tanuma says, sounding pained. 

“You were supposed to meet up with Shibata tonight,” Nishimura insists. He’s getting worked up.

“You were, too,” Natsume points out softly.

“He’ll understand,” Taki assures him in turn. “I’ll text him right now.”

“This is stupid,” Nishimura blurts. He stops short, yanking Taki to a stop with him. His eyes are glassy with frustrated tears. “You ruined your plans for no reason. You should have just gone without me.”

“Why the hell would we do that?” Kitamoto snaps. “When have I ever done that?”

“Aunt Niko said–”

“I don’t care what Aunt Niko said. Listen to what I’m saying.” 

Kitamoto takes Nishimura by the shoulders, not without care, and rattles him a bit. 

“We’re not going anywhere without you,” he says. “We’re not leaving you behind.”

There’s a lot of fond exasperation in there, hiding behind what looks like plain annoyance. If you didn’t know him very well, maybe you’d miss it. 

But Taki knows better. All of her closest friends are gentle people. She knows what their love looks like. 

Chapter Text

To tell the truth, Shibata has mixed feelings about Natsume’s hometown. 

On one hand, Shibata doesn’t like being out in the middle of nowhere, where the WiFi is spotty and he can’t walk the length of town without losing cell service at least twice. It’s not entirely cut off from civilization, but sometimes it feels like it. 

On the other hand, his friends live here. 

“I can’t believe this is what I’m doing on my holiday,” he says archly, hands on his hips as he surveys the tragic scene unfolding around him. 

They’re in Kitamoto’s family home, dusting and cleaning and dragging furniture out of storage. It’s been closed up for years, his family living out of a little apartment instead for convenience’ sake while his father wasn’t well.

Now that his health is on the mend, Kitamoto’s family is beginning the transition back into the house he grew up in, and Kitamoto hasn’t stopped smiling all afternoon. 

It’s nice. 

But still. Manual labor. 

“I’m going to eat all of your dinner tonight if you don’t pick up that broom and make yourself useful,” Nishimura says without so much as a glance in Shibata’s direction. 

Shibata scoffs, and drags the broom with him when he skulks down the hall to join the more sympathetic Tanuma. He’s in the kitchen with Taki and a boy from their school that Shibata has met once before named Tsuji, unboxing dishware. 

Taki is filling the sink with soapy water, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Tanuma’s hair is up in a stupid bun. Tsuji’s wearing one of Taki’s extra headbands to keep the fringe out of his face. They’re each wearing a borrowed floral-print apron. 

It’s kind of annoying how unselfconscious all of these people are, when Shibata second-guessed his outfit three times this morning.

“Since when is Nishimura so invested in chores?” Shibata complains by way of greeting. They all smile at him anyway. 

“Nishimura practically grew up here,” Tsuji says. “He doesn’t really get along with his mom. He spends a lot of time at Kitamoto’s apartment, but he feels bad about taking up space there, you know? Since it’s smaller.”

Shibata feels wrong-footed by the explanation, as simple as it was. The sincerity takes him by surprise. His friends back home don’t talk so openly with one another, and this is the first time he’s been back in Hitoyoshi in almost a month. He’s still recalibrating.

“I didn’t know that,” he says, for lack of better thing to say. 

“He and Kitamoto are both so excited to move back in,” Taki says cheerfully, waving Tanuma over with the first stack of dusty glassware, a sponge in hand and a determined glint in her eye. “That’s why we’re all here to make it happen!”

Feeling vaguely out of place, Shibata and his broom stage a tactical retreat. 

He backtracks through the house to the yard, where Natsume is taking the laundered bedding off the clothesline and Nyanko-sensei is napping in a hamper full of sun-warm blankets. 

“I’m getting really tired of pretending I’m not evil,” Shibata announces.

“Mmhm,” Natsume says disinterestedly. 

He looks absurdly content standing among the lines of clean laundry. It makes Shibata feel itchy and restless, but also kind of… glad.

This town is two hours away from anything actually interesting, and none of the restaurants deliver, and whether or not Netflix will work at any given time is anybody’s guess, but these people, with their sincerity and their kindness and their blatant disregard for the things that don’t actually matter, make Shibata look forward to his visits more than just about anything.

He can’t just say that, though. It would give his friends too much satisfaction, and they’re already smug enough as it is.

“I’m serious,” he says instead, taking the other end of a blanket so it’s easier for Natsume to fold, and then placing it on top of the sleeping Nyanko in the hamper. “It’s exhausting, acting like I care about all this stuff. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

“That sounds really painful,” Natsume says, not even pretending to be fooled. “We appreciate all your hard work.” 

At least he’s decent enough not to mention it when Shibata winds up with blisters on his palms after sweeping the whole second floor with that damn broom. Shibata tucks his hands into his pockets and strikes up a lively argument with Nishimura over dinner, just to keep things balanced. 

Chapter Text

Nishimura shoves his bag into Atsushi’s hands and lunges forward without warning, just in time to catch Natsume when he staggers. 

“I knew you looked pale,” Nishimura snaps as Atsushi and Adachi struggle to catch up with the last six seconds. “Who do you think you’re fooling anymore, huh?”

Despite his tone, he maneuvers Natsume down onto the grassy riverside with unending care. 

“Holy shit.” Adachi is hovering nervously. “Is he okay? What happened? Should we call somebody?”

“He’s anemic,” Atsushi replies at length. “This is normal, I guess.”

“If you two are just gonna stand there, you could make yourselves useful and get him some water or something,” Nishimura says waspishly. 

Adachi is shaken enough by Natsume’s sudden fall that he springs to do as he’s told, which is a first and probably only. As he’s digging through his bag for a water bottle, Atsushi kneels on Natsume’s other side.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve seen him like this. You think he’s sick?”

“C’mon, Kitamoto, when isn’t he sick?” Nishimura gripes. “But god forbid he say something to anybody. Sure, we all like him and we’d do anything for him, but it’s much more convenient to just pass out on the way home.”

Atsushi tries not to smile as he tucks his jacket under Natsume’s head. He doesn’t do a very good job, because Adachi looks at him like he’s crazy and Nishimura rolls his eyes with gusto. 

“Sorry,” Atsushi says quickly, “it’s just—you sound different when you talk about him.”

“Different how?”

“Aren’t we supposed to like, elevate his legs or something?” Adachi chimes in, water bottle clutched in both hands—but it’s then that Natsume stirs, eyelashes fluttering open around hazy amber.

“What happened?” he mutters, sounding no worse for wear.

As relieved as Atsushi and Adachi both are, there’s a moment where it looks like Nishimura wants to lose his temper and snap something unfortunate. Then the moment passes harmlessly and he huffs, picking up Natsume’s hand and wrapping their fingers together warmly.

“You fainted,” Nishimura says plainly, “straight into my arms. You know, if you really wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

Natsume blinks at him, not quite firing on all cylinders. Then he says, “But I really felt fine. I would have told you if I didn’t.”

And Nishimura rolls his eyes, looking totally done with him, and says, “You’re a menace, I can’t trust a thing you say,” but he’s infinitely more forgiving as he helps Natsume back onto his feet. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Natsume is shuddering, probably only partly from the cold. He’s soaked through, hair plastered to his head, thin sweatshirt sodden and heavy and hanging off his body like the wings of a downed bat.

That’s one thing about this horrible night that Kaname has the power to fix. He starts to shrug off his own jacket. He’d had the umbrella when Natsume went running off, so he’s in much better shape than his friend.

“Natsume, here. You’ll catch cold.”

But Natsume doesn’t take it. He doesn’t even turn to look at him. He’s staring straight ahead, even though there’s nothing to look at except the otherwise empty train compartment. His crossed arms tighten, as if he’s hugging himself together. As if he’s putting up a wall.

“No thank you,” he says quietly.

Kaname blinks, stopping short. He’s still holding the jacket out. It just hovers there between them like some sort of sad offering.

Nyanko-sensei is watching them silently, eyes narrowed and very green. Unease twists Kaname’s stomach into knots.

The past two hours have been an exercise in what to do when absolutely every single thing goes all the way wrong, and anxiety has been on a slow simmer in the back of Kaname’s brain since the moment Natsume’s cousin sat down at the lunch table with a quiet sneer, but finally getting on the train home felt like a step in the right direction. It felt like they were heading out of a storm, metaphorically and literally.

But Natsume isn’t looking at him. His fingers are white-knuckled where they’re digging into his own wet sleeves.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, in that same quiet tone. “I don’t want your pity.”

It’s not a shout, but it feels like one. It lands like a blow. Kaname flinches from him, he can’t help it. He snatches the jacket back. Abruptly, he feels too big for his skin, clumsy and stupid and unsure of himself.

The other kids used to make him feel like this in those other places he lived. The friends he has now never have. He didn’t think they ever would. He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong.

Nyanko-sensei’s eyes narrow further, but it’s not Kaname that he’s glaring at. 

“Don’t be obtuse, brat,” he says, as short and peremptory as Kitamoto’s mother can be when Kitamoto and his friends are getting too rowdy. “Your eyes are too good for you to act this blind.”

It’s Kaname’s turn to stare nowhere. Nowhere feels like the only place to look. In his periphery, he sees Natsume glance towards him, and in a complete turn of events, Kaname finds himself wishing that he wouldn’t.

He’s twisting his jacket between his hands. He doesn’t want to talk anymore. He wants to go home.

Then Natsume is sliding out of his seat, and he’s kneeling in front of Kaname’s, and his dark eyes are wide and bright and present. He looks like himself for the first time since his cousin started shouting from across the table, since he stood up with an abrupt rattle of dishware and bolted out into the rain.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. He sounds it, his voice stricken and plaintive. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. Not to you.”

Kaname manages to look up into Natsume’s face, but only for a second. His hands are a safer place for his eyes to settle.

“It’s not—pity,” he mutters. He wouldn’t be able to raise his voice now if his life depended on it. He feels like a ghost. “I’ve never felt—sorry for you.”

“I know.”

“I just didn’t want you to be cold.”

“Tanuma,” Natsume chokes out, “I know. I’m sorry. I know that.”

Nyanko-sensei hops up into the seat that Natsume vacated with a put-upon sigh. He settles into a comfortable loaf and presses into Kaname’s side, a warm, solid weight. His sturdy presence is bracing. The lurching, jittering thing in Kaname’s chest settles down into something it doesn’t hurt to breathe through, something that he can make sit still.

It isn’t about you, Kaname tells himself. He was taking it out on you because you were there. It’s about his cousin and whatever haunted them when they lived together and a million other things.

It still hurts, but it isn’t about him, so he can pack it away. He pets Nyanko-sensei, smiling a little when the lucky cat climbs into his lap, and finally musters the courage to look up at his friend properly.

Natsume is still trembling, still looks half-drowned, and he seems newly shaken now. He’s staring at Kaname as if Kaname might somehow disappear from the moving train if he so much as blinks. His hand is hovering between them, on the verge of reaching out.

Earlier, Kaname would have taken it. He wouldn’t have second-guessed it. But right now, he…isn’t sure. He doesn’t know if Natsume would want him to. He doesn’t want to get it wrong again.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re my best friend, Natsume. Of course it’s okay.”