Warnings: Minor spoilers through volume 16.

Disclaimer: Natsume Yuujincho still doesn't belong to me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

# # # Chocolates # # #

Hm, I think curry for tonight.

Taki Tooru wandered the aisles of the local grocery store, gathering items as she went.

Carrots ... I think I still have enough potatoes and onions ...

She stopped in front of a curry mix display, automatically reaching for a package of her favorite brand, then paused. Mother said she might be home for dinner tonight, didn't she? She grabbed a package of her mother's favorite instead.

Tooru had always found grocery shopping to be a soothing activity. The store was usually quiet, the choices clear, and no one except the cashier expected her to talk to them.

Not that that should be a problem anymore. But the habits she'd built up over the course of that terrible year had proved stubbornly difficult to break. Her fingers clenched on the handle of her basket. But I am still alive. Thanks to Natsume, I made it. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing the knot of anxiety squeezed around her heart to loosen. I don't have to be afraid of it anymore.

Her steps slowed as she approached the seasonal aisle. Liberally decorated in pinks and reds and whites in preparation for Valentine's Day, she couldn't have missed it if she'd tried. She bit her lip. … It couldn't hurt to look, right?

Both sides of the aisle were lined with all sorts of chocolates, in all sorts of sizes and levels of ornateness in packaging, and her fingers itched to choose something, but nothing she saw fit. She couldn't find anything that said "Thank you for saving my life, and being my friend, and opening to me a world that my grandfather spent the majority of his life trying to find".

Nor was there anything that said "Thank you for being my friend, for being the one person with whom I can share my frustrations when being Natsume's friend is hard, and my fear that he will someday slip away entirely".

Perhaps it would be best to just … not. There was nothing quite right, and it would be mortifying, and their classmates might misinterpret, and Natsume and Tanuma would probably both be terribly embarrassed themselves. She could just not do anything, and they would probably never notice. It would all be fine.

She reached the end of the aisle, and sighed. But I want to do something. They deserve to know how much they mean to me. I just …

"Tooru-chan? Is that you?"

She spun. "Fujiwara-san! It's, um, nice to see you again."

She'd mostly stopped flinching when she said people's names accidentally.

The older woman smiled. "I know I've told you to call me Touko, dear. You should come visit more often. I'm sure Takashi-kun would enjoy seeing you."

Tooru blushed.

Touko-san looked from Tooru to the aisle she had just left, and raised a hand to her face, smiling even more broadly. "My, is that the way the wind blows?"

"It's not – we're just friends!" Tooru protested, blushing even more furiously, though she couldn't help her own glance back. "I just … I wanted to do something for him and Tanuma-kun, but there's nothing … none of it seems right." She made a helpless gesture.

"Have you considered making them chocolates instead?" Touko-san asked.

Tooru bit her lip. Giving her friends hand-made chocolates would be even more embarrassing, but …

She shook her head. "I don't know how." I can't ask Mother. Even if she knows, she's far too busy to waste time on something so silly.

"Would you like me to teach you?" The older woman offered. Tooru stared, and to her astonishment, now Touko-san was blushing. "They were never the prettiest, I'll confess. But Shigeru-san always seemed to like them well enough."

Tooru shook her head. "I couldn't possibly …"

"Nonsense." Touko-san said. "It wouldn't be an imposition at all." She smiled conspiratorially. "Besides, it would be a wonderful excuse to surprise Shigeru-san. I fear I've fallen out of the habit in recent years."

"Um, all right?" If Touko-san was also using it as an opportunity, it wasn't really imposing, was it?

"Wonderful! This Saturday afternoon, perhaps? Or do you have club activities then?" Tooru shook her head again. Touko-san looked thoughtful. "Now I just need to come up with a good excuse to get Takashi-kun and Shigeru-san out of the house for a few hours. It wouldn't do to ruin the surprise, after all."

"We could use my house." Tooru blurted. "Um. I'm sure the kitchen isn't nearly as good. But it's pretty large. And we wouldn't be bothering anyone." Didn't Mother say she'd be on a business trip? … Not like it matters; she wouldn't be there anyway.

"That's too kind of you, Tooru-chan." But Touko-san looked pleased. "If you don't think anyone would mind –" Tooru shook her head, then startled as Touko-san looped her arm around Tooru's own and began gently but inexorably guiding her towards the candy aisle. "Now, let's find some proper chocolate to use. I think milk chocolate would be best, don't you? Takashi-kun does like his sweets, though not as much as Nyankichi does, of course. Oh, you do have a double boiler, don't you –"

Tooru thought she might have been wildly jealous of Natsume, if she didn't already know just how much he cherished the Fujiwaras.

… She couldn't help but be just a little jealous, though, all the same.

#

Saturday, Tooru jittered her way through class, rushed straight home after, and spent the following two hours cleaning the kitchen, sitting room, and every other place she'd already made spotless the night before. She'd had Natsume and Tanuma over before, but that had been sudden, not giving her a chance to worry. Besides, they were boys. Touko-san was an adult, and Tooru had seen how clean and organized she kept her kitchen.

By the time Touko-san arrived – right on time – Tooru had fretted herself into such a state that it was almost a relief.

Touko-san looked around as she entered, slipping her shoes off and her feet into the guest slippers that Tooru had almost forgotten to set out. "This really is a beautiful old house. Your family has lived here a long time, hasn't it?"

Tooru nodded, feeling a little bit more at ease. "My grandfather always used to say that the house has belonged to our family since before the Restoration. I think we have a family tree that he drew up buried somewhere."

"That long?" Touko-san sounded impressed. "It must be very important to your family."

I wonder. "It's important to me." Tooru said, and winced at how defensive she sounded. Thankfully, they had just reached the kitchen, so she had an excuse to change the subject. "I pulled out the pot, and the chocolate we bought. I wasn't sure what else we needed?"

"That should do nicely to start with. Now let's start with heating up some water …" Touko-san put down her bag and walked the pot over the sink to fill it before Tooru had a chance to protest. "We'll need to wait a bit before it's ready. Now, for the shape, I was thinking …" she bent down and pulled a short stack of bright yellow molds out of her bag, holding them out in Tooru's direction. "How about these?"

Tooru leaned in to take a closer look. She couldn't help her squee. "They're manekineko! Like Fluffy-sensei! Touko-san, that's perfect!"

"Fluffy –? Oh, Nyankichi." Touko-san smiled, a bit bashfully. "I picked them up on a whim several years ago, but I only ended up using them once. Don't you think the boys will like it?"

"They'll love it." Tooru asserted. After all, who wouldn't? "Oh, could we maybe do white chocolate spots on the forehead? Then they'll look even more like Fluffy-sensei!"

"That's a wonderful idea." Touko-san said.

"I think I have another pot we can use somewhere." Tooru started digging through the cabinet. "It shouldn't need to be as large, right?"

"Yes, a smaller one should be fine."

"Found one!" It took a bit of wrangling, but Tooru finally managed to extract the smaller pot and lifted it triumphantly as she turned, grinning. "And we can –" She faltered at the fond look on the older woman's face. "Touko-san?"

She shook herself. "Oh, don't mind me. I was just thinking how good it is to see you smile, again." She looked down and away. "I always regretted I couldn't do more for you, after your grandfather passed. But I feared I'd just be a nosy old woman, poking around where I wasn't wanted."

"It was … probably for the best that you didn't." Tooru said reluctantly, though she couldn't deny the warmth at the idea that Touko-san had noticed, had wanted to help. "I was in a pretty bad place for a while in there, and not really up to dealing with people, a lot of the time." She suddenly noticed that she had started hugging the pot, and hastily put it down on the stove.

She stared through the pot and into her memories, of the fear and the isolation and the sudden desperate hope when she started hearing the rumors. Then huffed a quiet laugh as she looked back at Touko-san. "And in the end, you helped immensely, by giving Natsume a home here."

She turned away, feeling raw, and busied herself with filling the smaller pot with water and getting it started heating as well. She looked over at the larger pot. "Do you think it's about ready?"

Touko-san peered in. "A couple more minutes would probably be best. Let's start chopping the chocolate."

Tooru breathed a quiet sigh of relief as she retrieved two knives. Perhaps Touko-san would leave the subject as that.

For several minutes, the only sounds in the kitchen were the steady beat of knives against cutting board. Then Touko-san said "Takashi-kun is very important to you, isn't he?" and Tooru slipped, almost cutting herself, and yelped.

"Are you all right, dear?"

"Fine." Tooru said, a bit shakily. "I'm fine. Just a bit startled." She stared at the cutting board for a long moment, trying to figure out how to respond. He saved my life would open doors she knew Natsume wouldn't thank her for. He is the embodiment of everything my grandfather spent his life searching for even less so. And even that was just the most easily described tip of the iceberg.

"Natsume … and Tanuma, too, but I met Natsume first." She started, trying to figure out how best to word it without saying anything she shouldn't. "They're the first friends I've had who haven't thought I was weird for liking my grandfather's research. They're … just really, really precious to me." She flushed. "Sorry. That sounded weird, didn't it?"

Touko-san met her eyes. "Not at all." She said. "I'm so glad that Takashi-kun has found friends like you and Kaname-kun. He was so closed off when he first arrived … I'm sure you mean a lot to him, too."

Tooru turned back to her chopping, uncomfortably aware that she was still blushing. She liked to hope so, but … she wasn't anything special, not really. All she had was a circle that she wasn't even supposed to use anymore.

They finished chopping in silence, and Touko-san poured the first batch into the top part of the double boiler and showed Tooru how to stir, slowly and smoothly. Once she was satisfied, she started to chop the white chocolate.

"… Your grandfather was really interested in old legends, wasn't he?"

Tooru nodded. "He travelled all over the place collecting interesting antiques and stories. Our storehouse is full of them."

"Do you know if he ever came across anything that mentioned white ravens?" Touko-san sounded hesitant, and Tooru suspected she knew why. Natsume. She hesitated for a long moment, wanting so desperately to just tell Touko-san about what Natsume saw. Use her circle to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't crazy, since it was so painfully clear that it wouldn't change Touko-san's opinion of him one bit.

But she wasn't sure Natsume would ever forgive her, if she did.

And she had to admit, knowing the nightmares that occasionally woke her at night, and the worry she carried around almost constantly, that she understood not wanting to inflict that on Touko-san. She just wished he didn't feel like he needed to lie to his family.

"… I don't think so." She said, and wished the truth didn't feel quite so much like a lie.

"Oh." Touko-san shook her head. "Never mind me. Just an old woman's idle curiosity."

Seeing Touko -san's disappointed face, she couldn't leave it at that. "I'm nowhere near finished sorting through his notes, though. And I doubt even he managed to collect all the legends out there." She smiled fondly. "No matter how full the storehouse got, he always used to say that he'd only started to scratch the surface."

Touko-san started the white chocolate heating up as well, and Tooru pointed her towards another spoon she could use to stir. "I've never made a proper study of them, but I must admit to having a fondness for old stories myself. Would you mind telling me some of your favorites? If it's not too hard."

Tooru concentrated on her stirring for a moment of silence, trying to remember what it had been like, sitting at her grandfather's knee, listening spellbound to his descriptions of his adventures. She'd always vowed that when she grew up, she'd have even better ones.

She hadn't had any idea, back then, how frightening real adventures could be.

But even so, it was so worth it.

"There was this one story, I must have made my grandfather tell it a hundred times …"

#

It took several tries before they figured out how best to get the dollop of white chocolate in place, but once Tooru figured out the knack, filling the rest of the molds didn't take much time at all. Once they'd cleared out enough space in the refrigerator and put the chocolates in to set, Tooru led the way down the hall and out into the yard. "Are you sure you want to see that kokeshi doll? Natsume and Tanuma were pretty freaked out." She winced. "Don't tell them I said that? They'd probably be embarrassed."

Touko-san grinned. "It can be our little secret. And after that story you told? Of course I do!"

Tooru couldn't help the brief burst of trepidation as she opened the door to the storehouse, even knowing that she'd come back in here several times since and had nothing happen. Maybe she'd eventually be able to enter it without remembering how Natsume had cowered just over there, threatened by something she couldn't see. But not today.

Touko-san crowded in behind her, and let out a little gasp as she saw the kokeshi. "Goodness! That really is quite startling."

But after that, she walked up to it without fear, while Tooru opened the windows to let more light in. "This is certainly the biggest one I've ever seen, though. And your grandfather said it was haunted?"

"According to the story he heard, it was." Tooru confirmed. "The former owner hired an exorcist to get rid of the spirit not long before my grandfather found out about it, though. He was crushed."

"Exorcists …" Touko-san shook her head. "You hear mention of them occasionally, but I'd never thought of them as real. Not in this day and age. What a strange, wonderful world we live in …"

If only you knew. Taki hadn't met any exorcists personally – that she knew of – but Tanuma had told her about his encounter with Natori-san. (She still couldn't quite believe it. He was in so many popular shows and commercials. How did he find the time?)

"What's that?" Touko-san pointed to a scroll hanging from the wall, painted with a minimalist depiction of a daruma doll and accompanied by a long string of characters, made nearly illegible from age. Tooru scrambled to remember what her grandfather had said about it. "I think that was from this one trip he made to Fukuoka when I was seven …"

#

By the time they made it back to the kitchen, the chocolates had long since set. They popped them out of the molds and set about dividing them into three sets. Touko-san insisted that Natsume and Tanuma's shares be larger than Shigeru-san's – "They're growing boys, after all."

Tooru's first several attempts had to be disposed of in the obvious fashion, of course, since they were clearly unfit to be seen. A couple of others from the other batches quickly followed. "Just in case." Touko-san said, with a wink and a laugh, as they exclaimed over how good they tasted. "It wouldn't do to not taste-test, after all."

Tooru giggled as she hunted through the cabinets for the small plastic bags she'd used in the past for cookies. They were a bit small to fit everything. "But," she observed, as she popped another couple of chocolates in her mouth and only felt slightly guilty about it, "that's a pretty easy problem to solve."

Touko-san snuck one last piece out of Shigeru-san's batch before twisting the bag closed and tying it with a bit of red ribbon Tooru had set aside the previous night. "So it is." She agreed.

They grinned at each other. Tooru looked at the countertop and stove, with the chocolate-encrusted pots and the now-empty molds and the three bags of miniature chocolate cats sitting next to each other, and suddenly felt sad. "I guess … I should probably let you go." She said reluctantly. "It took a lot longer than I expected. But thank you! I really enjoyed it."

Tooru only saw a flash of Touko-san's gentle smile before she found herself suddenly enveloped in the older woman's arms. She stiffened. How long had it been, since someone had hugged her like this? Probably not since her grandfather started getting sick.

Slowly, she relaxed into it. She'd forgotten how good it felt. "I had a wonderful time, too." Touko-san said as she released Tooru. "Let's do this again next year." She smiled mischievously. "Maybe by then one of your boys will have caught your eye properly."

"Touko-san!" Tooru spluttered, face flaming again. "… I'd really like that."

The older woman got a distant, sad look on her face, and murmured, low enough that Tooru almost didn't catch it, "If Takashi-kun is even still here, then …"

Tooru knew the polite thing to do would be to pretend that she hadn't heard. But she couldn't. "I think he'll stay forever, if you let him." She said quietly.

Touko-san looked startled for a moment, then smiled, eyes over-bright. "I do hope you're right."

#

Sometimes Tooru hated that she was in Class 5. Her classmates were fine, but it meant that her classes almost always ended up on the opposite side of the building from Natsume and Tanuma's. She'd gotten to school early, but they'd both been almost late; Natsume had even had to run. (She supposed she ought to be glad they'd both actually attended, given their respective problems with ayakashi-related illness.) She'd tried half-heartedly to seek them out during lunch, but they'd been with Nishimura and Kitamoto and several other boys, and she just couldn't.

And now the day had ended and they were almost out the school gate as she ran across the yard. "Natsume! Tanuma! Wait up!"

Because that's not super conspicuous. But she forced the thought away as they stopped to wait for her, allowing her to finally catch up.

"Is something wrong?" Natsume asked, worried as he so often was. Tanuma hovered next to him, a silent shadow beginning to look equally worried.

"Oh! No." She hadn't really thought about how Natsume might interpret her actions. "I just." Words failed her, so she dug into her book bag and pulled out the two bags of chocolates, thankfully mostly undamaged by the day they'd spent in her bag. "Here." She shoved one at each of them.

Tanuma blushed immediately, staring at Tooru with wide eyes, while Natsume looked at his, mildly puzzled. "To Tanuma …?"

"Oh no." Tooru wanted to sink through the ground. I can't even do that much correctly?

Tanuma came to her rescue, plucking his bag out of Natsume's hands and replacing it with the one she'd given him. He smiled at Tooru, face still endearingly flushed. "There we go."

Natsume blinked at his bag, starting to turn red as well. "You mean … for me?"

"For both of you." Tooru said, and swallowed, throat suddenly dry. "As thanks. For being my friends. And for, well, everything."

"No thanks are necessary." Tanuma said, suddenly serious. "You're my good friend, too, Taki."

Taki ducked her head.

"Oh! Yes! Of course." Natsume said hastily. "I don't – thank you, Taki."

And if his thanks were a little bit too heartfelt, a little too rawly honest, well, it was Natsume, after all.

"What's this? Chocolate?!" Natsume's adorable cat appeared from a nearby bush, launching himself at Natsume's shoulder. "Oi, brat, give me some."

"Cats aren't supposed to have chocolate, Sensei." Natsume said with the tone of a long-standing argument.

"I'm not a cat!" He protested at once. "How dare you deny my noble self?!"

"Taki … are these little manekineko?" Tanuma asked, holding one up. He sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "And with little white spots on their heads … are they supposed to be a color-swapped Ponta?"

Tooru grinned. "Aren't they adorable?!"

"What? That idiot was nowhere near as grand-looking as my noble self!" And as quickly as he had appeared, Natsume's adorable cat disappeared somewhere in a huff.

Tooru and Tanuma watched him leave, confused, then turned to Natsume. "What was that about?" Tanuma asked.

Now Natsume looked like he was trying not to laugh. "Not long after I came here, I ran across a cat who looked almost exactly like Sensei, except it was black …"

Tooru settled in to listen, heart so full she feared it might burst.

Thank you both so much, for being yourselves. I'm so glad to have met you.

#

14 February 2014