Every day, they waited.
Kuroh now understood that Neko knew, but she wouldn't believe it. She refused to believe it.
"When he comes back, I'll give him his umbrella and we'll go out for fried fish again!" She would proclaim, proudly holding up said object. She had given up turning back into a cat, for the most part, and every night she slept while hugging the umbrella tightly to her chest. She carried it with her everywhere, too. It was almost as if she believed that, if she let go of the umbrella, she would be letting go of him, too.
At first, Kuroh had been in a rut. He had finally found a new king he could serve under, someone he could trust, someone he felt he could die for-and they had died for him. For all of them, to keep them safe. It was so unfair.
In the words of his late master, "Beauty is like a butterfly-here one day, fragile and delicate and oh-so desirable, and gone the next."
Gone.
Shiro was gone.
Neither of them had ever said those words out loud. It was an unspoken agreement between them. If they said those words out loud, it was the truth.
But Shiro wasn't gone. Not yet.
Somehow Neko's constant denial of the truth had convinced him, made him start lying to himself as well. It was a beautiful lie, one that he could cling to for support. Because all they had left was each other, and the promise they had made on that day, with only Shiro's umbrella and the bleak, gray sky as their witness.
We'll wait for you. Our king.
And they would. They would wait for him, for as long as it took, because Shiro was not a delicate little butterfly.
He was their king.
And even if it took forever, they would wait for him.
After all, irresponsible idiots do take longer than most to find their way back home.