In which Black and White battle for dominance, and the only one who can help the unlucky ox is the lucky rabbit [Hatsuharu/Momiji].
Hatsuharu knew something was wrong when he passed by a restaurant while attempting to get home. He stopped in his tracks, then slowly craned his neck back to reread the restaurant's name.
"Red Flower Sushi," he murmured under his breath. And then... "Nagoya's best sushi restaurant."
The ninth grader moved swiftly out of the direct center of foot traffic on the street to take a seat at a nearby public bench. Once away from the masses, he began to take in his surroundings. The name 'Nagoya' came up quite a bit in the crowd, rather through a passing tourist group's 'I Love Nagoya' t-shirts, several eateries that proclaimed themselves as the best in the city (the city Nagoya), the faint differences in accents from the locals, and the greater amounts of regular civilians milling about wearing traditional clothing - a common action, for the city was entrenched in Buddhist and Shinto temples the same way Tokyo was entrenched with odd pop culture fads.
Hatsuharu tried to remember how he ended up three hundred and fifty kilometers away from home over a course of a single school day, then tried to remember if it even was a school day. Frowning, he pulled his cellphone out of his school uniform pockets and checked for irregularities. Of course, everything he thought he knew about the day was wrong. It wasn't Wednesday, it was Saturday. He hadn't been walking from school to home because it was ten in the morning. And a familiar ache thudded through his bones; a soreness that was unmistakably from maintaining a long transformation.
Unlike the other members of the Zodiac, Hatsuharu quite enjoyed spending time in his form. He felt more relaxed, more whole as a simple-minded black and white beast than he did as a sharp-minded black and white human. Thus, he held onto the animal spirit far longer than everyone else did, as everyone else immediately transformed back to human once their animal slipped out of their physical form.
He also supposed he was one of the only Zodiac members that were socially allowed to do so. Nobody would dare hurt a cow, no matter how strange it would be for one to just wander the backstreets of a crowded city. Hatsuharu thought that cats and dogs would also be socially acceptable animals to just hang around as, but the former seemed to abhor any relation with the cursed animal and the latter simply didn't care enough to bother getting more in touch with his inner dog spirit.
Then again, holding down a spirit that wasn't meant to be held down was the most likely reason of the ninth grader's current predicament. Whenever his emotions were incredibly wrung, he developed a proclivity to become lost and a streak of bad luck a mile wide.
If he had become so lost he was three hundred fifty kilometers from his true destination, then there was something sick about the ox spirit.
Hatsuharu felt a terrible foreboding upon his soul.
He considered his options. a) He could try to navigate his way back home while undergoing the memory splits. b) He could just continue wandering to wherever Black wanted. c) He could ask for help.
Option C was the wisest and most mature answer, since he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting any reasoning behind Black while his mind was in a state of perpetual confusion.
Mind begrudgingly made up, Hatsuharu flipped open his phone and pressed down at his contacts list. As a Sohma, he didn't use modern technology as much as his classmates did, so he didn't have too many options to choose from. Sighing, he pressed call at the only name that would come for him without hassle.
Ring. Ring. Ring. "Hey, Momiji."
"How'd you get in a whole 'nother city?" Chirped the perpetually happy blond once they found each other on the same street Hatsuharu has been sitting near for the past two hours.
"How'd you get here so fast?" He retorted calmly, immersing himself in his favored White personality. Momiji bounded over and took Hatsuharu's hand, and the ox spirit suddenly felt flushed from noticing how much larger his hands were than the delicate, almost feminine and soft hands of the blond's.
"Eh," the blond boy shrugged. "I flew here. But I have a certain amount of flying miles per month, and I used up most of it during my trip to Beijing for that class project, so I don't have any left for us to fly back."
Hatsuharu smirked, offering, "You could ride me - ."
He eyed the other ninth grader steadily, hoping to rile a reaction out of his sweet, beautiful face.
" - home. Ride me home in my ox form. I don't know how long it took the first time, but I think I've been gone for four days."
Momiji giggled cutely, but the taller boy sensed a minuscule amount of... panic? And forcefulness? In his reaction.
"Haru-chan," he was chided. "Your sense of direction is going to get you in trouble some day. I've been wondering why you've been skipping so much class this week. But don't worry, I bought us train tickets. We'll get home by at least dinner time."
And the lucky rabbit took the unlucky ox's hand and walked to the Nagoya central train station.
He supposed they were an odd sight to behold. Him, a punk delinquent with dyed hair holding hands with a cute, elementary student looking blond haired blue eyed child. Or, blonde, as it may be, since Momiji usually came off as a girl to people. What people didn't know was that they were both starting their last year of middle school, and White Haru was more gentle than a dead bug.
He considered Black Haru to be unacceptable for sweet Momiji's presence, so White and Bunny bounded together to catch their train.
Since it was a two hour ride and Hatsuharu couldn't remember the last time he slept (or ate, for that matter), he tried resting his head on his friend's shoulder. Except they were about thirty centimeters apart in height, and it took more effort than it was worth to crane his neck in such an awful downwards angle.
Momiji smiled at the display, and patted his lap as an alternative measure. Grateful, White shuffled his hulking body and rested his head on the ridiculously lacy pants his friend insisted on wearing all the time.
And White Haru fell asleep.
A/N: In Japan and some other countries, Elementary school is 1st - 6th, Middle school is 7th - 9th, and High School is 10th - 12th.