Bad Ideas Gone Wrong Productions presents

Whistling at Night

A Fruits Basket fanfiction by Geoduck

There it was. Out by itself, in the middle of nowhere. A traditional Japanese house, tastefully landscaped in the woods. Deep, deep in the woods.

It smelled like money. Old money. Serious money.

Not that there would be cash on hand. A house like that wouldn't have currency lying around. The kind of rich people that lived in houses like that don't keep cash.

But they keep art and jewelry and electronics and expensive crap like that. Not as easy to cash in—dealing with fences is a pain in the ass—but still very, very profitable.

If this job turned out all right, it might be a year before the next job. Hell, longer than that, maybe.

There was no car at the house. No lights were on. No noises could be heard. Clearly, no one was home.

Showtime…

He had let himself in, thanks to an unlatched kitchen window. A modern kitchen. He was disappointed not to find any silver dishes or cutlery.

He surveyed the other downstairs rooms with increasing frustration. Apart from a couple of attractive prints on the walls, nothing in the way of art. The TV wasn't even a flat-screen: no way was he going to break his back hauling out an old-fashioned television.

The upstairs rooms were even more Spartan. No jewelry, no coin collections, no stereo equipment. Frustrating.

Finally, a bit of luck. The biggest (and messiest) room had a laptop computer—a new and pricy model. He quickly unplugged it and tucked it under his arm. Turning around, he quickly made it to the stairs.

…which was when he came face-to-face with a sweet-faced teenaged girl walking up. When she saw him, she seemed startled. He cringed.

"Oh my gosh! I must have walked into the wrong house!" She panicked. "I'm so sorry! But I was sure this was Shigure's house!"

'Is she an idiot?' he thought.

She looked around him and saw bedroom doors open. "Oh, but that is my bedroom. So this is the right house, then. I was afraid I had spaced out again and gotten lost. Kyo-kun would have scolded me. So, ah… are you a friend of Shigure-san's? I see that you are holding his computer."

"Ahh… that is…"

"You surprised me—I didn't see any shoes downstairs." She looked down at his feet. "Oh. You've still got your shoes on." She looked at his hands. "And you're wearing surgical gloves."

"Ahh… you see…" He had no idea how to talk himself out of this situation.

Her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh! You must be a burglar-san!" She panicked again. "I can't remember what I'm supposed to do! I think Uo-chan said I was supposed to hit you. But I don't have a steel pipe. Am I supposed to scream? Run away? Call the policeman-san?"

"Uh, miss, I don't think…"

Her eyes grew swirly with confusion. "I need to run and scream at a policeman-san! But… but I don't know what to yell about! What do I do?"

"Miss, I'm not going to hurt you… Miss! Miss!"

In her panic, the girl had stepped backwards awkwardly on the stairs and started falling. Instinctively, he dropped the computer he was holding and grabbed her shoulders. He jerked her around and she fell lightly, in a sitting position, on the stairs.

Unfortunately, the momentum from this action caused him to fall down the stairs instead. He came to a stop with his head on the ground floor and the rest of his body above him, lying prone on the stairs. "Oh, dammit."

Tohru Honda (as she had introduced herself) looked at him worriedly as he drank his tea at the table. "Are you sure you don't want me to call a doctor? You might be really hurt."

He shook his head no… then grimaced at the pain caused by that simple movement. "Ah, no. I'm pretty sure I'm not injured. Not seriously, anyway. And besides, I'd rather not go to jail."

"But I promise I wouldn't say a thing to the police about the very nice burglar-san! And I never break a promise! Oh, but wait, you really don't know me, do you? So maybe you don't trust me." She said the last part slightly sadly.

"It's not that I don't trust you, Honda-san, it's just that I don't want any record anywhere that I was here tonight. And, uh, besides… I can't really picture you as the type of person able to cover for me."

"Ehh?" The girl was confused.

"I mean… you don't seem the lying type."

"That's true. I guess that makes sense. Mom used to say I was too honest for my own good. I guess that's how I take after my dad."

"Your parents don't live here, do they?"

"Oh, no. They're actually both deceased."

He closed his eyes in frustration. "You mean… I was robbing an orphan?"

"Oh, but burglar-san had no way of knowing that."

He groaned. "Oh, I suck." He hit the table with his forehead in disgust, then immediately regretted it. "Oww…"

"Excuse me… burglar-san? Would you like some aspirin?"

"That… would be nice. Thank you."

She padded out of the room for a minute to fetch the medicine. He lay with his head on the table. This situation was absolutely insane. Here he was, being taken care of by his victim. And yet, it felt weirdly natural. It was like she was crazy—a special kind of crazy.

She came back with a bottle of pills and a glass of water. He gratefully took them from her hands, and swallowed two of the aspirin. After wiping his mouth, he looked at her and smiled. "Thank you."

"Ah… not to pry, burglar-san, but…"

"Yes?"

"Why… why are you a burglar-san?"

He thought a moment. "For the money, really."

"But why not… why not take a job?"

"Finding a job is a very hard thing for me, unfortunately. And even more unfortunately I have a family to support."

"Oh, burglar-san is married?"

"Divorced. And I have child support payments to make every month."

"You have a child? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Oh, she's my daughter."

Tohru was bubbly. "Oh, do you have pictures? I'd love to see her!"

"No… I wouldn't have anything like that on me when I'm on a job. Never carry any kind of identification."

"I see. That makes sense."

"But actually, I don't have any pictures of her at all. You see, I've never actually seen my daughter."

"You've never seen her?"

"My wife and I… we were divorced before my girl was born. And the courts decided I had no visitation rights. So I've never seen her. I don't know where she lives. I don't even know her name."

Tohru seemed upset at the burglar's situation. "That's… not right."

"I can't really complain about it. To be honest… I was in prison at the time."

"So, burglar-san has been in prison?"

"Yeah. And not for what you are guessing. I wasn't doing break-ins back then. I had a regular, legal job. I was a bookkeeper, and I had this investment opportunity that couldn't lose. Trouble is, I didn't have the money to invest in it."

"What did you do?"

"I decided to use the company's money. I'd make a quick profit, return the money I borrowed to the company without them even knowing, and I'd have a nice sum of my own cash to invest with. Only one problem."

"The investment didn't pay off?"

"You guessed it. Worst day of my life when I found out I had gotten robbed by someone who was a better crook than me. That was even worse than they day they caught me. You see, I was able to hide the losses for awhile. But not forever."

"And so you went to jail?"

"I was sentenced to three years because it was a first offense. I got off a year early for good behavior. But not too many businesses are eager to hire a crooked accountant."

"And when you were in… there, she…"

"Divorced me. Yes."

Tohru's eyes watered. "And you've never seen your little girl because of that?"

He waved his hands in denial. "Oh geez, please don't cry. You shouldn't cry for me. I mean, I have no illusions about myself. I totally deserve whatever I get."

"But… burglar-san… when you say something like that, don't you think it's like you've given up on yourself?"

This was not what he expected to hear. "Eh?"

"Do you think you need to model the rest of your life after one mistake you made in the past?"

He felt a keen ache of guilt. "Listen—it's not like it was one mistake. My wife… she didn't leave me because I embezzled the company money. She… I…" He stopped. He didn't want to tell her the details. He didn't want to tell how, after he lost the money, he would come home drunk and angry and scared. He didn't want to tell her that he used to hit Mari. That he used to hit Mari, even when he knew she was pregnant. "…I'm not a good person. I've done terrible things. And I can never make up for them." He was mortified to find tears collecting in his own eyes. What kind of girl was this to make him think about the past in this way?

Tohru spoke very deliberately, as if in thought. "Shall I tell you the story of the monster and the dandelion?"

"Eh?"

"Once there was a monster in the forest. The monster was gigantic, with huge and heavy paws and claws. And because he was so big and his paws were so big, he ended up trampling over all sorts of things in the forest. Plants, mushrooms, small trees, tiny animals. He felt like he couldn't even move without crushing things. At first it made him sad, but it happened so often and for so long that it began to harden his heart."

He listened closely, wondering where the story was going.

"One day, the monster was walking to the river to get a drink. He looked out in front of himself, and saw a dandelion on the ground, right where he was about to walk.

"'Oh please, don't step on me, monster-san!' the dandelion said.

"'But I've already stepped on a million dandelions before,' the monster said, 'surely one more won't make me any worse. And not stepping on you won't make me any better.'"

"'But if you spare me, monster-san, I can help make the world a little brighter. No matter what you have ever done before, when I bloom, it will be because you helped me to. I will be shining brightly partly because of you. And the next time you see another dandelion, perhaps it will be easier for you to step over it.'

"And so, the monster spared the little flower. And after the dandelion bloomed and went to seed, it turned into a hundred dandelions, each of them carrying a tiny bit of the mercy the monster showed. And each of those hundred dandelions turned into a hundred more.

"The monster did not change the past. It did not bring back to life any of the flowers he had crushed before.

"But he did change the future. He helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of beautiful tiny yellow flowers to grow. And they were so full of the monster's mercy and care, they brought joy to the hearts of everyone who saw them.

"Burglar-san says he has done bad things in the past and he can never make up for them. Maybe it's true. But it is also true that he can do wonderful things in the future. Things he can't even imagine he is able to do. And maybe, if he works at it hard enough, he can even manage to make his little girl smile, even if he can't see her do it."

He shut his eyes tightly. He couldn't bear to cry in front of this girl.

"And no matter what, there will always be a little dandelion that has faith in you."

And that was it. Like an idiot, he was sobbing in front of a girl, maybe half his age. Some criminal he was. And the worst of it was, he knew she was right.

Thirty minutes and another cup of tea later, he had collected himself, and he was getting ready to leave. As they stood at the entrance of the house, the roles of victim and burglar had long been forgotten.

"Are you sure there isn't anything else I can do for you?"

"No, you've done plenty. I thank you humbly for your hospitality, Tohru Honda-san."

"Then please, travel safely. And I apologize if I said anything out of line, earlier."

"No apologies necessary. So… good night."

"Good night." She waved as he disappeared into the darkness.

'Tohru Honda,' he thought. 'You are really something.'

Some days later, Shigure stopped Tohru in the hall, as she was carrying a load of laundry. "Tohru-kun? Ever since I got back from the main house, I've noticed my computer not working completely correctly. Would you know if anything happened to it while I was gone?"

"Ah, perhaps. I'm afraid a monster may have stepped on it."

"A… monster?"

"Yes. But don't worry. The dandelions are just fine."

He looked after her quizzically. She said the oddest things sometimes.

Author's note: This started off as a silly little story about Tohru inviting a burglar in for tea, much in the same way as Kyo and Yuki imagine during the New Year's story (volume 2 of the manga). It turned into this. I hope I was able to get the right Furuba-ish feeling for this. Please enjoy!