Warnings: Spoilers for Volume 12.
This story follows directly after my other story, "Glasses", but can be read independently. All you really need to know is that Natori gave Tanuma a pair of glasses.
This was meant to be a birthday fic for Tanuma. It … didn't quite make it, unless I have readers out in the middle of the Pacific (if so, hi!), but happy (belated) birthday anyway, Tanuma!
# # # Sight # # #
For a week, the glasses Natori-san gave him sit on Tanuma Kaname's desk, unused. He tucks them behind a stack of books in the upper left-hand corner, safely hidden from anyone looking into his room from the doorway. His dad rarely ventures further into his room than that, since in recent years he seems to have gotten the impression somewhere that teenage boys Kaname's age need their space and privacy.
He has no idea what to tell his dad about the glasses. The truth is too entangled with all those things that they sort of know but never actually say, and any lie he thinks up seems silly and obvious. Besides. He doesn't want to lie to his dad.
So he sort of hides them in not really plain sight, and is never quite sure whether he hopes his dad will find them, or that he won't.
Still, they're all too visible when he sits at his desk, constantly dragging at his attention when he's supposed to be concentrating on homework. (Not that he's terribly good at focusing on homework at the best of times, but he tries, if only because he knows to take advantage of the good days when they come. He's missed or done poorly on entirely too many assignments when there haven't been any good days. And even though the good days are more frequent now, he still hasn't quite gotten to the point where he trusts that, yet.)
Then his dad departs on a business trip – just two days, and he leaves in the afternoon so really it's more like a day and a half – and that excuse is gone, but it's still far harder than he expects to pick the glasses back up and put them back on, even here, where he knows (assumes) that no one is watching.
On the other hand, it's far more interesting than working on a history assignment that's not due for another three days.
He looks around his room first, but sees nothing of particular interest – he thinks he sees a patch of shadow in one corner, but that turns out to just be a trick of the light. On balance, he's a bit more glad than disappointed – he'd rather not have creatures he can't see haunting his room while he sleeps.
Standing up and leaving the room is another strangely hard step, but once he is out in the hallway, he knows there's only one place to go.
The pond shimmers like a heat mirage, despite the slight bite of chill to the breeze that lightly ruffles Kaname's hair.
The colors are faded and the shapes blurred, but the fish really are red.
An indeterminate amount of time passes as he stares at the fish; at the pond. Struck by a mad whim, he rushes to the kitchen and, after some digging, finds a heel of bread, just starting to go stale.
He's far more relieved than he has any right to be when he sees that the pond is still there. He walks almost to the edge but can't quite bring himself to touch the water. He doubts he'd feel anything but the grass, because it's hard to believe that glasses would improve any sense but sight, but as long he doesn't try, he can pretend.
When he crumbles the bread up and tosses it into the pond – doubly glad, now, that he is at home alone, because he can't even imagine how he'd explain why he was tossing breadcrumbs into an empty patch of grass – the hazy red fish swarm there, as though fighting for the scraps.
For the first time, he wonders if youkai fish get hungry. What would they eat, normally?
At least none of them appear interested in strolling their way out of the water or thanking him for the food. No matter how much he wants to know more about youkai and the world that they inhabit, that might be a bit much.
He spends the rest of the afternoon wandering the rest of the temple grounds, retracing the steps he'd taken several months ago, when they'd first moved here.
For the most part, his home also remains unchanged. He startles a couple of birds into flight that he only realizes weren't entirely ordinary when they disappear from his peripheral vision. Catches a few flashes of shadow at the corner of his vision that hide when he turned to try and get a better look.
And then there is the pond.
Near the back of the temple, next to a burnt out shell that is all that remains of one of the older buildings, he finds another pond. It's easily three times wider than the one by the main building. He can't see any fish, but a stand of reeds lines the far side, and several clumps of water lilies flare bright pink petals, fuzzy around the edges.
I have to show Natsume this, he thinks, and then, But how will I explain how I found it?
He returns to his room, then, and tucks the glasses away, unable to reconcile his desire to share with his fear that if he told Natsume what he'd done, he'd try to convince him to get rid of them. To stay away. The way he always seems to, whenever Kaname stumbles into one of that sort of situations.
He doesn't touch them at all the following day, though he itches to worse than ever. (Had there been three clumps of water lilies? Or four?) When his dad returns from his business trip, he asks all the usual questions and listens to his dad's stories – his dad always comes back with stories – all the harder because it helps distract him.
By the next time his dad leaves on another business trip – three days, this time – he's barely left before Kaname pulls them back out. He just. He can't not.
He tries to explain it to himself, to make some sense of it, but words are completely inadequate to describe the tangled snarl of feelings that the glasses sit at the center of.
How can he explain the crawling sensation, like he doesn't fit right in his skin, when he thinks about just how much is out there that he can't properly see?
How amazing it was, seeing through the eyes of the youkai who had possessed him, or in Omibashira's mansion seeing with his own power. Feeling even briefly like he was being useful to Natsume, even if he still ended up a burden in the end. How much he wishes not to be a burden anymore, even as he also knows that Natsume would probably rather he not be involved in the first place.
How he sometimes wants to just stand in the middle of a field or a forest or – in his worst moments – in the middle of a city street, and shout to the world that he is right there, as though if he just attracts the attention of enough youkai, he'll finally be able to see them, too.
It's not like him. Natsume's probably right about that.
But … maybe it could be.
He's tired of being the cautious one, of always letting himself get caught up in worrying about the consequences. Sometimes he wishes he was the sort of person who could just act, instead of always being paralyzed with the fear that he'll get it wrong, that he'll break something precious if he's not careful.
He wants to see.
He tells himself he doesn't care about the danger, which is … not precisely true. But he has a suspicious feeling that he doesn't care enough.
#
Gradually, his explorations expand. He wanders the forest behind the temple, the shortcut he sometimes takes on the way home from school. Never the stairs or the road that leads up to the temple, usually not even what passes for well-traveled paths in the woods. The first several times he ventures out, it's with tension running through him that can be ascribed more to his fear that someone will see him than worry about what he might find.
(And he knows that that's ridiculous, but he can't help feeling like he's doing something wrong, like he's intruding somewhere he doesn't belong.)
(But not enough to make him stop.)
Most of the time, the woods don't look that different. He sees shadows at the edges of his vision a lot more frequently, now; occasionally sees tiny blurry creatures scurrying away that he thinks are probably some kind of forest spirit.
Soon, that too is not enough. He makes a makeshift glasses case from an old sock and takes to carrying them in the bottom of his schoolbag; almost always takes the shortcut unless he ends up walking home with Natsume and the others.
Part of him wonders why no one has noticed, when he feels like his guilt is written in bright letters all over his face, but the worst that happens is Kitamoto throwing erasers at him during class, teasing him for having his head in the clouds, and that was true before, too.
When he walks through town, or past fields of rice or flowers, he wonders what else is there. When the rare shadow strong enough for him to see unaided lurks in the periphery of his vision, he wonders what it would look like if he had his glasses on.
(He wonders what Natsume would see, too.)
(But he knows his limits, and he knows that they'll never be that broad.)
But even though he knows his classmates would think nothing of it – would just assume he needed them and probably let him off with a bit of teasing about too much reading in low light – he can't quite make himself take that additional step and start wearing them in public.
Right now it's his secret, it's safely transitory, it's something he tells himself he can stop at any time.
(Even though he knows, by now, that he won't.)
If he starts wearing the glasses in public, though, he'll have to admit that they're here to stay, and face what consequences may come of that decision. Face Natsume.
So he slips into the woods and puts them on; takes them off as the trees begin to thin and he knows he's close to school or home. He tries to ignore the niggling guilt and the mocking voice in the back of his head that sounds just like his own, that laughs and asks, hadn't he wanted to stop being so cautious all the time?
He doesn't want to admit that, as much as he wants this change, he's also afraid of it.
#
If anyone asks, he'll refuse to admit it ever happened, but he gets lost once.
There's a reason he normally never strays too far from the temple grounds; the forest grows deeper and wilder as it climbs the mountain at its back, and the deeper it gets, the easier it becomes to get turned around. He doesn't even have a good excuse for it – he was just distracted, watching tree spirits and other indeterminate shadows.
Sometimes, if he pretends hard enough that he's not interested, turns his head slowly or just looks out of the corner of his eye, those shadows will stay still long enough for him to catch a closer look. Sometimes they flit past so quickly that he wonders if they noticed him at all.
When he finally gives in and admits that he truly is quite thoroughly lost, he sits down on a fallen log half-covered in moss – on the end that doesn't have a couple of tiny mushroom youkai huddled, staring up at him in fear – and sighs. He rubs the bridge of his nose, a maneuver that he still hasn't managed to figure out how to do without knocking the glasses askew, and closes his eyes briefly. He's got several hours until sunset, but, "Dad's going to be so worried if I miss dinner."
His words ring jarringly in the otherwise peaceful forest and he winces, not having meant to say them aloud.
"Is the human lost?" a thin voice, barely above a whisper, asks. "Should we try to help him get back to the human place?"
"It's better not to get involved with their sort." The second voice is slightly deeper, but no less quiet. "They're very unpredictable, and not very bright. My grandmother's sister said one of them almost stepped on her once."
Kaname bites his lip, trying to restrain his amusement. Still carefully not looking in their direction – he is fairly certain it was the mushrooms that had spoken – he says quietly, "If you would be willing to guide me back to town, I'd be very grateful. I promise not to step on you."
The second one squeaks and hides. The first, contrary to the other's exhortations, approaches. Kaname carefully refrains from moving, and is rewarded by it pulling itself up onto his knee. It seems to weigh almost nothing.
"You can see me?" it asks, voice scarcely louder than before.
"Not very well," Kaname admits, resisting the urge to squint at the small youkai. It never helps. "I can't hear you very well, either, but I would still appreciate your help."
Even this close, the mushroom youkai's face is a bit too fuzzy for him to tell for sure – he resists trying to blink the blur out of his eyes because he knows from experience that that doesn't work either – but from the way it tilts its head and crosses its tiny arms, he thinks it's considering.
"Okay!" it says. Peeking around from the other end of the log, the other mushroom makes a noise of protest. "Don't worry," the one now halfway up his shirt says, "I'll be back in a while. It'll be an adventure!" It reaches his shoulder and settles. Kaname wants to turn his head to take a closer look, but the feather-light touch against his hair and neck makes him reconsider the idea. He doesn't want to accidentally knock the little youkai off.
"You can call me Takenoko," the little youkai says, and at least from right beside his ear its voice is far easier to hear. "To start with … hm, go that way."
Kaname follows the instructions as well as he can. It gets easier once he figures out a way to position his head that lets him keep a better eye on the little youkai but still more or less see where he's going, though it's just awkward enough that he suspects his neck won't thank him the following day. "… You don't look like you're related to bamboo," he observes during a brief pause in the instructions. It seemed a very odd name to give to a mushroom-like youkai.
"Is your name 'Human', then?"
Kaname laughs quietly. "Fair enough. No, it's Tanuma."
The little mushroom eeps and topples forward. Kaname barely catches it in time. "Tanuma of that temple?"
"You know about the temple? Can you lead me there instead? But no, that's my father."
"Wow ..." Even as he sets the little youkai back on his shoulder, he can barely hear its voice. "You must be very brave, to live with someone so scary."
"My dad isn't scary," Kaname protests. Although, to someone as small as Takenoko ... "You don't have to take me there if you don't want to," he says, starting to feel a bit guilty. "I can find my way back from town, too. I'm just grateful you're willing to help at all, honestly."
"Um. Um. No, it's okay," the little youkai says, shuffling inward until he can feel it leaning against his neck, slightly cool and so light that it feels more like a touch than a lean. "I'll show you how to get back. But you'll protect me, right?"
"… I'll do my best?" Just considering fighting against his dad makes Kaname feel sick, but he also can't imagine it being necessary.
When Kaname starts seeing familiar roofs through the trees, he stops and sets the little youkai down on a large rock, covered with enough moss to make it almost as green as the trees. "I can find my way back from here," he says, crouching, "so you don't have to get any closer. … I'm sorry I've taken you so far out of your way, I hadn't realized I'd walked so far. Are you sure you'll be all right getting back?"
"It's all right, I have family in the area." Takenoko says cheerfully. "And I'm good with directions!"
Kaname chuckles and hesitantly pats it on the head with a single finger. "You certainly are. Well, if you see me again before you go home, feel free to say hello. I'll try my best to listen."
He waits to take his glasses off until almost the edge of the trees this time – he doesn't want to accidentally step on anyone's family – and can't help the stronger than usual flood of regret that accompanies it. He wonders if he'll see the little mushroom youkai again.
He wonders if Natsume feels like this sometimes, too.
#
"Is that the boy?"
A little less than two months have passed since Kaname first started wearing the glasses, and they've finally started feeling natural on his face. Sometimes he tries to nudge them back upwards when he's not even wearing them; he likes to think he looks reasonably natural when he converts the motion to either running his hand through his hair or palming his face and sighing. Nishimura has a talent for providing opportunities for the latter.
"Yes, that's him. I heard he's the son of that priest."
The youkai living in the area have also gradually grown used to both his more frequent invasions of their realm and the fact that he can sort of see them. They still often run away, but not always as fast, and not always as far.
"Yikes! Is he scary too?"
He still hasn't figured out why all the youkai in the area seemed to be so frightened of his dad, though. It seems kind of impolite to ask.
"He must be, I saw him acting all friendly with Natsume once, too!"
Kaname slows to a stop, intrigued. He looks around, but can't see any sign of the two youkai whose words were scarcely louder than leaves rustling in a light breeze. Had it not been a still day, he doubted he'd have heard them at all.
"That Natsume?"
"Is that so …?"
A third voice interrupts, a little bit louder than the other two and speculative enough to make him wary. He almost expects it when a youkai only a few centimeters shorter than him drops out of a tree off to his left, but flinches anyway.
"Oh ho, so Natsume's friend really can see," the third youkai says. "How … entertaining."
It paces several steps forward, and Kaname has to resist the urge to step back. "Is there something I can help you with?"
Beneath an unadorned white paper mask, it smiles a smile even Kaname can tell is entirely too full of too-sharp teeth. "Oh, nothing major. I'd just like to have a little – fun."
It lunges.
Kaname shifts to the left, right hand instinctively coming up to deflect the youkai's nearer hand out and down.
Create an opening.
Slide forward and palm strike to chin.
Step behind the knee.
Wrap the neck.
Down.
Time slows to a more normal pace as he stumbles back, torn between wanting to put distance between himself and the youkai now looking up at him, stunned, from the forest floor, and being unwilling to turn his back on it.
Bushes rustle to his right and he settles into a ready stance even as his mind scrambles to catch up and his eyes struggle to track both things at once.
A white blur bounds out, bounces off the youkai's chest just as it starts to sit up, and lands on the far side of the clearing. "Oi, Natsume, I told you I smelled something interesting!"
"Like what, another source of free sake?" He hears Natsume asking sarcastically just before he too emerges into the clearing. His eyes go first to Ponta, then to the youkai lying to the ground, then to Kaname.
Who has just realized he was still wearing his glasses.
And yet, as Kaname looks from the youkai on the ground to Natsume, somehow what comes out of his mouth is "I had no idea I still remembered how to do the kubiwa throw."
Natsume stares.
Kaname stares back.
The youkai climbs to his feet, looks between the three of them, apparently decides not to risk it, and runs.
Natsume stares some more; makes a vague sort of gesture that Kaname thinks might be meant to indicate the youkai that had just disappeared or his glasses or the forest as a whole or maybe all of the above.
For a handful of seconds, Kaname considers making light of the situation. He's not sure how, but he wants to do something. He doesn't want Natsume to worry about him getting into trouble when they're not together.
Except.
Except isn't that what Natsume said, too?
And hadn't Kaname and Taki tried, multiple times, to convince him that while they appreciated the thought, they'd rather know?
He understands better, now, he thinks. If Natsume hadn't stumbled in, he would probably never have said anything. Because it was so much easier to just brush things off, to pretend they didn't matter.
Far easier than admitting that the worrier might have a point. That everything had been all right this time, but that maybe next time it wouldn't be.
But.
If he wants Natsume to tell him the truth, to trust him to worry, isn't it only fair that Kaname extend him the same courtesy?
"It's … kind of a long story." He says instead, and gestures in the general direction of the temple. "If you don't have anything else planned …?"
It's hard to tell whether that makes Natsume more worried or less. Either way, he smiles – the false one, the one that Kaname hates because it makes it even harder to tell what Natsume is actually thinking. "Okay."
Ponta bounds over. "There will be snacks, right?!"
#
Natsume wants him to stop, of course.
It's their first real fight, Kaname is pretty sure, and it hurts, like his lungs that one time he caught pneumonia, but just like he kept breathing then, he keeps fighting now.
Because maybe if this was just about Natsume, he'd have a right to order Kaname around, but it's not, and he's not going to stop, and if that means that he sometimes gets into trouble, that's just the way it's going to be.
He'll get himself back out.
At the end of it Natsume is so pale, Kaname seriously wonders if he's about to faint. "But what if you don't?" he asks, and his tone of voice hurts worse than any other part of the fight thus far.
Kaname tries for light-heartedness. "Then you'll come rescue me, obviously."
"But what if I can't?"
Kaname holds back the first three responses that spring to mind, none of them helpful. Takes an extra few moments to line the words up in his head, wanting to make sure they're right. "Then I'll fight my hardest, and if in the end I can't make it, I won't be sorry. Everything, every experience up to that point … it will have been worth it." He meets Natsume's eyes. "If you had the choice to get rid of your ability to see, if you could cut all your ties to that world, you wouldn't, would you?"
Natsume looks somehow even more stricken as he turns away like Kaname's gaze burns. He clenches his fists, puts his hands over his face, and it's all Kaname can do to sit still, because he hates the fact that Natsume is this upset, and he hates even more the fact that he's the one who's done this to him. And he wants to do something to fix things, but he doesn't know what, because he's not going to take back a single word he's said. He can't.
He's really, really bad at this friend thing.
"No." Natsume's voice is muffled at first, but then he lowers his hands, looks back up at Kaname, and even Kaname can tell that he's still upset, but his gaze is a bit clearer, somehow. "No, I wouldn't. But –"
"Then please don't ask me to, either."
And no, it's not the same, but it's similar enough, and maybe Natsume finally understands that, because although he closes his eyes for another long moment, when he reopens them he gives Kaname a weak half-smile – a real one – and says, "Okay."
#
Kaname's steps slow as he approaches his dad's office. The light is on inside, shining a warm glow through a crack in the door, so he's fairly certain his dad is in there, much as he'd like to pretend otherwise.
But.
He remembers that afternoon, and that flash of sickening understanding. And if he deserves to be given the chance to worry about Natsume, if Natsume deserves the chance to worry about him …
His dad deserves the chance to worry about him, too.
He won't tell him everything – those of Natsume's secrets that his dad hasn't guessed aren't his to tell. But … there are things his dad should know, if he's truly committed to this path. And he is.
"Is that you, son?" A shadow approaches the door, and his dad slides it open and pokes his head out. "Is there something wrong?"
Last chance to back out.
But Kaname knows it's not a choice at all. Not really. So he swallows, and grabs his courage with the hand that's not in his pocket, clutching his glasses so hard he's worried they'll break, and smiles.
"Do you have some time? I'd like to talk to you about something."