Dawn's early light pours through uncovered windows. Birdsong heralds the rise of a new day. An alarm clock wails and wails to no response. The clash of pots and pans accompanies the sweet, shrill melody of the birds. Tantalizing scents waft up through every opening in the house. A nose twitches in examination of the scents permeating the air. A stumpy tail lashes through the air and force coils in the spring of paws. A lunge and—
"Time to wake up, you stupid boy," Madara screeches in that creaky, old man voice of his. Pure music to Takashi's deaf ears. He nudges Takashi's slack face with the full force of his bristly face. Touko's high, clear voice carries to their room. Breakfast time waits for no one and that boy is lucky Madara had deigned to wake him up.
A soft murmur escapes Takashi's parted lips. Madara leans in further and hears, "Reiko." With a huff, Madara butts his head again into Takashi's forehead. Finally, with a resounding thud, Takashi groans himself awake. He bats blindly at Madara. With a haughty glance, Madara rotates and flicks his tail in Takashi's face. "See if I wake you up again if this is the thanks I get. You almost overslept, you fool!"
Takashi's brows raise unwillingly. Sensei, actually useful for normal life events? "Wow, thanks," Takashi says.
Madara squints at the ungratefulness in the reply. Human pets were so undeserving of a great yokai like him, he thinks half-heartedly. It's been so long with Takashi that his disdainful bluster had dulled—but only a bit! No matter what that moron says. He's not at all fond of the boy. In fact, he isn't even a little concerned about the how's and why's as to Takashi's uncharacteristic oversleeping, which had been occurring frequently these days.
"Why'd you wake up so late...idiot?" Madara tacks on belatedly.
"Weird dreams," Takashi says. He digs around his drawers for his uniform.
"Well," Madara says, "that's no good."
"Huh?" A shirt muffles Takashi's reply.
"It's making you even more useless than ever!"
"...Thanks." Takashi heads into the bathroom after being dressed. He brushes his teeth and listens to Madara's heavy footfalls chase after him.
Takashi goes through his morning routine in an uncharacteristic silence—uncharacteristic for Madara, who would usually grumble and pontificate about how magnanimous he was and how early it was to wake up.
He walks down the stairs, school bag in hand. Sitting down with Touko and Shigeru, he takes part in the morning conversations and hastily eats his breakfast. Madara is still silent.
"Is Nyankichi-kun sick?" Touko coos as she pets Madara.
"He's just grumpy," Takashi says. He bends down and with a grunt hefts Madara into his arms. Bidding his goodbyes, he and Madara set off to school.
After a few minutes into their walk, Madara pipes up, "Well? What dreams have you been having?"
"At night," Takashi begins carefully, "I dream of Reiko but I don't dream of memories. We are in the forest and she talks to me…"
"I've been waiting so long to wake up," Reiko whispers. Her dusty blonde hair is loose around her shoulders. Smooth and pristine with nary a hair out of place, it gleams in the sunlight. Her amber eyes are warm and crinkle at the corners. A smile barely curves the edges of her thin mouth. Her schoolgirl uniform is freshly pressed and clean. In the grass, the grey skirt pools around her kneeling knees. She is a static snapshot of her high school years.
"Natsume Reiko?" Takashi says. He hovers over her knelt form. This is no memory, he knows for certain. She is speaking to him and only him. There is nobody else in this clearing—the high noon sun, a leafy tree, and Natsume Reiko kneeling in shadowy refuge.
"Yes, Takashi," she laughs. She savors the sound of his name on her lips. Her sweet, resilient grandson finally come to visit. Natsume Takashi. How funny they've kept her name.
In all the memories Takashi had experienced, an undertone of sad surprise had always marred Reiko's laughter, as if she had never expected herself to laugh.
Now, her laugh is sweet and light. An intangibility to her laughter reminds him of fog. At a distance, there is an amorphous sea of white. In the midst of it all, the whiteness is nonexistent. Takashi could sink into the fog of her form and find himself on the other side. His grandmother, the illusion of times past.
Takashi reaches out a hand to touch her—to touch the soft skin of her cheek. He is surprised at his own daring but now he knows that she is no human. "Grandmother, you're cold," Takashi whispers as he withdraws his hand. The coldness burns him. His grandmother, the temptation of frostbite. As if touching her, again and again, could render her warmly alive.
She stares at him for a moment before slowly unraveling herself as she stands up. Head tilted up and shoulders thrown back, the delinquency of her youth shrouds her in its expectations. Her wooden bat, decorated with sutras, materializes in her hand.
"Oh, Takashi," Reiko sighs, all her bluster tossed away.
"I had always wondered," Takashi begins carefully, "who my grandfather was. None of our relatives ever knew when I asked. I just knew that you were unmarried and had my mother…" His eyes, sticky amber, beseech and beg for an answer, any answer.
"Ha," Reiko scoffs, "as if I would have told them anything when they hated me."
"Hated you?"
"They looked at me as if I was a storm they had to weather through. As if they had to endure me in the hopes that I'd eventually stop walking through their pitiful lives," Reiko snarls with flared nostrils and burning eyes. "They were happy when I left town with your grandfather. They were relieved."
"So…who was my grandfather? An exorcist?"
Reiko laughs and laughs. "Exorcist! Is that the rumor going around?"
Her laughter does not end.
Takashi wakes up.
"You were so beautiful in the memories that I've had," Takashi confesses. "You and your bat…I admired your courage, your strength to live so fiercely even when you were more alone than not. You were still kind."
"Am I not beautiful now, boy?" Reiko drawls out. The sentiment of Takashi's words sinks into her skin. It itches. Her bat thunks against the dirt in a one-two tattoo. The cock of her head is impish and arrogant. An eyebrow arches up in a pronounced curve of disdain. But her eyes, oh, her eyes! The warmth of them is as the sun for slumbering beasts—a palpable heat, almost heavy in the slumber it entices. Takashi wants to fall asleep further into this sun-drenched dream. Let it cling to his mind like vines instead of the cobwebs that infest his mind in the morning, only for their gossamer strands to unravel into dissolution. If only reality and dreams would collide into a glorious manifestation.
"I was a silly fool desperate for love," Reiko says with all the blunt force of a hammer on bone. It was a chronic ache that she could never shake. The neglect of her earlier years had molded her into the woman she was now.
"You loved each other then," Takashi murmurs. Anything else would disrupt the fantasy he had built up in his head. When he was younger, he used to pretend he had a family of his own. He would imagine the day-by-day life: his mother gardening, his father reading, his grandmother scolding, his grandfather listening, and Takashi underfoot. They would live together and be happy. It's hard to describe that sort of familial happiness. You would live it and you would know. It's the security of opening a door and knowing you lived in a home and not a house. Your voice wouldn't be an echo but a melody in the song of their joy. It would be that sort of bone-deep happiness that would palpably exude from them. It is a sweet, petal-soft dream. An idealized concept of home rests on Reiko's slim shoulders. His grandmother, holding up the world of his dreams.
"I think," Reiko muses, "that he loved me more than I could have ever loved him. And that's why I'm stuck here in this book of mine. He could not bear to lose me and so he bound me. He told me about the power of names. He told me what a fun game it would make. He told me a great many things. And I was fool enough to go along with it." A strange smile ghosts her lips. Takashi could not interpret it without encountering a multitude of possibilities. His grandmother, the enigma.
In those memories Takashi had had, Reiko had seemed so direct and clear-cut. To discover that she was as human as him with motives and emotions that could not be easily parsed with just a look at her body and actions—how odd. She had always been grandmother Reiko with her wooden bat and her Book of Friends. She had bad table manners and an equally bad memory. Painted in broad strokes, those memories did not let him know her further until now.
"When Reiko died," Madara says, "she died wrong."
"Wrong? How can a person die wrong?" Takashi asks, brow furrowed and a frown tugging at his mouth. Natsume Reiko died young and under a tree. It was a fitting end for a woman more at home in the woody forest than in wooden houses. There is no uncertainty in death, Takashi had always thought. There is only living and dying—binary states requiring no elaboration of the rightness or wrongness therein.
"There is more than one reason as to why writing names is a forbidden technique. You know that it's too much power over yōkai but did you never realize in all things there must be a balance? And so when Reiko, foolish girl that she was, began to take down names, she bound herself in equal measure."
"Bound herself?"
"With every name and every soul she bound in that book of hers, she bound herself in turn. But in the end, it wasn't enough. She was only human and only had so much power to sustain it all. And so she…died wrong."
"I still don't understand, sensei. You said she died wrong."
"Boy, why do you think you dream of her as she is and not as she was? Those are no memories."
"She's alive?"
"Idiot. She is the Book of Friends. When she finally died, she became the Book of Friends. It's a half-life of sorts. With every name you release, her tethers loosen. And now you've woken her up."
"Is it so bad that she's woken up?" Takashi asks with a bitter twist to his lips. He did not want to regard Reiko's existence as a problem to solve. To solve her meant that she would disappear. His grandmother was alive, albeit partially. He had always longed for the revival of his blood. The ties with his other relatives had melted in the heat of their disdainful neglect. The Fujiwaras were his truest family now but he had never forgotten the warmth of his parents. To be so palpably connected to them via Reiko was far too much of a temptation to resist. His grandmother was alive and why couldn't he enjoy it? Those memories, he realizes, were never enough.
"Boy," Madara says slowly, "it would be a mercy to let her fall asleep and one day, truly never wake up. Humans aren't meant to linger for so long." She must be an odd, fey thing by now, having been trapped for so long in that book of hers. No human could endure the long slumbers of the yōkai. The solitude of it all must have lain heavy on her soul.
"I...don't want to stop," Takashi confesses. To talk to her and have her reply is more than he could have ever hoped to do. He had so many questions left to ask. He had so much left to know about her. To find a way to stop these dreams is the least of which he wanted to do in regards to his grandmother. Why can't these dreams continue? He could just wait until he finished returning all the names...it would be enough time for him.
Pity is a strange look on Madara.