Title: It Started With A Break-In
Characters: Yubel, Juudai||Ship: Yubel x Juudai (very mild)
Word Count: 1,600/9,600||Chapters: 1/6
Genre: Friendship, Romance||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing Challenge, H10: at least 6 chapters; One Ship Boot Camp, #28, bunny; Three-Sided Box: 6 chapters, 1500 wpc
Notes: This takes place in Juudai and Yubel's past life. It's one of my many takes on how they first met one another.
Summary: The royal grounds were supposed to be for the royal family. Outsiders weren't supposed to find their way in there, let alone hunt anything reserved for the royal family. And yet...there they were.
Juudai stopped in his usual stroll around the palace grounds, one hand held in his mother's still. She looked down at him, one elegant eyebrow raised. He said nothing but looked over to where two of the guards were talking to one another. They weren't very far away, enough so that while they spoke in low tones, the nearby lake still carried the words over to the young prince.
" - whip them and have them staked out for the ants, covered in honey, that's what I'm going to do!" One of them ranted, fingers gripping around their spear.
The other one shrugged. "It's only a few rabbits. Why worry about it?"
"Because it's my job!" The first one insisted. "And if I don't stop whoever is doing it, I'll be turned out of the guard. You know the Captain's been coming down harder on us all lately."
The second sighed. "I know. But you don't need to go that far when you catch them."
Juudai looked up at his mother, eyes moving from her to the guards and back again. "They want to hurt someone?"
Queen Kaien considered matters before she took two steps closer to the guards. "What is the difficulty here?"
Both looked toward her and knelt as they realized who stood there.
"Majesty," the first one said, staring down at the tiled floor. "I hope I didn't offend you with my incompetence."
"Rise and look at me," the Queen ordered. "Tell me what is going on."
The guard rose up and fidgeted before he spoke. "There are rabbits that keep sneaking into the royal garden. The gardeners have been trying to keep them out, and it's part of my duties to help them, and to find out if it's really rabbits stealing the vegetables, or someone using them as a distraction. But it's been three weeks and I can't find anything other than rabbit tracks. I've never even seen a rabbit, let alone a thief."
Kaien tapped a finger against the side of her mouth for a few moments. "Keep doing your work. I will see what I can do."
"Majesty, this is nothing more than a thief at best and a few stray rabbits at worst!" The guard shook their head quickly. "You need not waste your time on this."
"I will waste my time on what I choose," Kaien told them before starting her walk again, Juudai pattering alongside of her.
They managed to make it just out of hearing of the guards before the Queen spoke.
"You want to find out what is going on, don't you?" She knew her son very well. He wasn't much more than eight years old, but he had an unyielding curiosity for all the things in the world that he could find out, and even some that he probably couldn't or shouldn't have.
He gets that from me. She couldn't have been prouder of him.
Juudai nodded quickly, eyes bright. "What if it's an evil demon stealing the vegetables? I bet I could stop it!"
"I'm sure that you could, Juudai. But you should be careful." Her son held the very power of life itself, and if it were a demon – which Kaien very much doubted – then Juudai could get rid of it without much of a problem. Assuming he didn't blow up half the palace in the process.
Thank goodness he didn't have full access to all of his abilities as of yet. They would have to find someone to take care of him before the Light gathered itself enough to send assassins for him. Let alone before their enemies gathered their forces and sent killers of their own. Kuragari wasn't a universally loved nation by any means.
For now, it would do no harm to have him sleep outside for a few nights, until he got the urge to be helpful out of his system or forgot about it altogether. She would arrange it as soon as possible.
Juudai settled in the little wooden shelter built in the crook of a tree, a cup in one hand and a little plate of food in the other. He'd insisted on starting his vigil early, so he'd missed dinner with his parents. He'd only done that before when he was sick, so this felt quite like an adventure.
Here he sat under starry skies, waiting eagerly to find out what sort of intruder thought they could get away with stealing royal vegetables.
He stared out at the spread of the gardens. On one side he could see the shape of the guard, who didn't have the nice things that he had, and would be staring at the gardens even more intently as Juudai was.
But Juudai would be the one who found out what was going on and stop it. He knew he would be.
He kind of wanted it to be a demon. But he more hoped that it would be rabbits. Rabbits were cute and he could adopt one and it would be his friend. He didn't have a lot of friends. Most of them were only his friends because he was the Prince and their parents wanted them to be his friends.
Juudai wanted a real friend. A friend who liked him because he liked them, and who wouldn't be afraid to say things to him that needed to be said, just because he was the Prince.
But someone he could buy things for and help them, because he was the Prince. It went both ways, after all.
He made himself more comfortable, munching his way through his dinner, and leaving the leftovers on the plate. Someone would pick it up later, probably when they came to check on him. Now he watched, waiting for the slightest hint of movement.
Was that movement? What was it?
It was the wind caressing the leaves of a tree. Boring.
Juudai kept on watching, straining to keep his eyes open. He wasn't going to fall asleep. He wasn't, no matter how much he wanted to.
The stars overhead moved in their gentle dance. The moon began to rise, not a fat and happy full moon, but one slender and giving almost no light at all.
And Juudai slept, as a thin hand stole the last pieces of his food, and slipped away in the shadows.
"Rabbit tracks! Again!" The guard's cry brought Juudai's head snapping up and he looked around quickly, confused for the first few seconds on why he was in a tree and not in his comfortable bed.
"And more missing vegetables!" The guard wailed in anguish. "This is a disaster!"
Juudai blinked and rubbed his eyes before his attention fell on the plate still next to him. It had been wiped absolutely clean, almost good enough to eat off of again, and covered with a light coating of dew. He didn't see any signs of any rabbits, though, or anything else.
Slowly he rubbed his eyes again before he wiggled down to the ground and started toward where the garden guards stood. The guard he'd encountered the day before – or that his mother had – stood there, scanning around and on occasion gesturing to a patch of slightly damp grass with a few tracks in it.
"We're going to have to set rabbit traps," he said. "We should have done that to start with." His eyes narrowed. He didn't seem to have noticed Juudai yet. "If we can catch them, I'm going to have rabbit stew for dinner. And roasted rabbit. And maybe see if the furrier can make gloves for me."
A movement caught Juudai's attention. It wasn't much of one but he'd spent a lot of time watching for small movements to avoid when trying to get out from under the guards' eyes to go have some fun.
What is that? He took a step toward them, his foot striking a small stone that bounced across one of the paths. As it did, there was a faint hint of a rustle, nothing more than that, and then nothing else.
"Your Highness!" The guard stared at him, a touch pale, and then straightened up. "Of course, you were … helping. Did you see anything?"
Juudai opened his mouth and started to raise his hand to point to where he'd seen the flicker. Then he stopped himself. He'd heard what the guard said and whether or not rabbits infested the garden, he wasn't going to tell on them to someone who wanted to eat them.
"Not really." He rubbed his eyes again, wondering how sleepy he really looked. It must have been enough because the guard nodded, dismissing him with a wave.
"You should go inside. Get some real sleep."
Without even waiting to see if Juudai did that, he turned his attention back to the garden and the small tracks there. Juudai glanced at them himself, wondering if he could see anything.
There wasn't much to see, just a few impressions that were clearing up even as the morning dew dried. Juudai took the long route around, tingling in anticipation as he got near to where he thought he'd seen that little whatever.
If he'd really seen anything. Or if it had been anything worth seeing.
The more he looked, the less he saw, though. At least anything interesting.
Maybe it wasn't anything. He headed inside, a slow wave of weariness making its way over him, not thinking much of anything until he was tucked into his bed again. Then one single observation stirred before he slept.
Rabbits couldn't get to where I was.
To Be Continued
Notes: I have no idea of when I will update this. But I will, eventually.