Young blood intermingled with the aroma of impeccably clean kimono linen. The crisp autumn air fought for space in the lazy, open room. A lone figure lay sprawled in front of the open door, the light breeze whipping loose cloth over pale skin. No noise emitted from the room itself. Somewhere off of the luxurious house grounds, a dog yipped happily as it snapped mischievously at some unimportant child's heels.
Oh, what did it matter? It was another lazy autumn day and Akito Sohma was bored. At that very moment, nothing else in the entire world mattered more.
"HATORI!" the youth rolled away from the open doorway and closer to the center of the large, airy room. He didn't bother standing up. He never did, if he did not desire to. As a matter of fact, he always did just what ever he wished.
Impatiently, the youth waited for his main caretaker to arrive in the room. He let his eyes wonder over the familiar room. The woodworking, the paling shoji screens, and the sparse plants sitting in their ornate vases: all the way he liked them.
What seemed like an eternity passed as Akito waited. Still no sounds came from any direction. Usually faint footsteps or the sliding of a shoji screen could be heard not long after Akito called for someone. Today, the only sound was of the autumn day and his pet, a small white bird, which he kept with him almost all the time.
"HATORI, GET IN HERE!" he tried again, calling on the physician. He would have to make sure that Hatori was punished for not coming when he was called.
Still no one came.
Akito huffed, irritated, and pulled himself to a sitting position on the floor. He would just have to figure out what to do by himself. After a few more seconds of pondering, the youth stood up and started for the door. His movements were sluggish, almost as if he drunk. He left the shoji screen open as he slipped outside.
As the minutes swept by him, Akito's mind raced with suggestions to pacify his increasing bad mood. He continued walking towards the outer gate of the main house, his flowing kimono and robes dragging the ground behind him, gathering the dust from the cobblestone pathway. A rock jumped out into the middle of his path, causing him to fall gracelessly to the ground before he could catch his balance.
Then, as if something had struck him right in the head, an idea came to him. If he couldn't get Hatori to drive him some place interesting, he would just have to do it himself. All he had to do was make it to the car. No one would go against his will, preventing him from doing just as he pleased. At least, they had better not do anything to him. He was Akito Sohma, after all. One would have to be crazy to do such a thing.
Akito did not notice that the jumping rock had, in fact, struck him in the head, leaving a small line of blood oozing down the teen's forehead as proof.
A few moments later, the head of the Sohma family pulled himself, a bit more gracefully this time, to his feet. He carelessly smoothed out his robes and patted some dust from the sleeves, and continued on his small journey to Hatori's car. It wasn't too much longer until the sleek, black vehicle could be seen sitting quietly at the front gate of the estate.
Hatori was still nowhere to be found.
Akito reached the vehicle after another couple of minutes, having taken his time in getting there, and reached for the silver door handle. Locked, or so he thought. He tried the handle to the driver's side again, but nothing happened. What little patience he previously had flew away, never to be seen again. It may have gone to sit with Akito's little white bird, which was patiently awaiting its master's return, perched on the side of a floral vase back in the Akito's chambers.
"Curses!" he huffed at the car door and jerked at the handle once more for effect. This time it gave, having only needed a little convincing to open. The large black door swung open violently and nearly shoved Akito to the ground. He clung tightly to the handle and stayed upright. The youth peered inside the vehicle as if someone would be inside, but saw nothing. Just a normal, luxurious vehicle greeted his eyes.
"Humph." He slid carefully into the driver's seat of the car, the seat sitting far too back and the steering wheel a little too high. How to get that fixed, though? Akito stared cruelly at the steering column in search of a solution and hit the first switch he found. He didn't know that it was the windshield wipers he had just activated, because the car was not even running yet.
The teen continued his search for a way to bring the steering wheel down and did eventually find the right knob to push. He pulled the column down onto his lap and heard it click neatly into place where he had put it. The core of the Sohma curse reached for the small bar used to move the seat forward, yanked at it violently, and found himself sliding back faster than he could keep control of. The soft driver's seat slid on its tracks as far as it would go. In the wrong direction.
A gnarled yelp forced its way out of his throat as the seat stopped moving. Silently, Akito cursed the seat and every other one before, grabbed the handle above the window with one hand and the seat slidy switch with his other, and proceeded in scootching his way back up towards the steering wheel. Six clicks and multiple awkward positions later, the youth finally found himself ready to take off.
The world was his to command. In another moment, the fresh air would be racing over the details of his face and mussing his already messy hair. The open road awaited him.
Or something like that. It seemed like a good thought at the time.
Slender digits grasped the wheel as Akito's mind struggled to remember what he had seen Hatori do on the numerous times before. Not much could be seen from the back seat, but he did recall Hatori cranking up the car somehow.
His eyes scanned the dashboard, its surface littered with various gauges and needles. They continued their trek until falling to rest on the thing they sought. A single shining key was positioned snuggly in the ignition. Just what he was looking for. He leaned forward slightly in the oversized vehicle and twisted the key, the engine cranking into life with the simple action. It gave a slight grinding sound, warning Akito that if he did not release the key, the engine would continue issuing nasty sounds towards him in its disagreement.
Little did he notice the windshield wipers swiping crazily over the dry front window as if their non-existent life depended on it.
Akito narrowed his eyes in concentration, preparing to send the vehicle into motion. He let go of the key finally, the engine stopping its grinding in praise of this act. He grabbed hold of the stick, to take the car out of park, and jerked hard on it. He didn't actually know how to drive, so what do you expect out of him? The car jerked slightly as it waited on the stick to make its mind up as to where it would finally rest, and went forward a few inches and back again as Akito jerked at the stick again.
"Work!" The boy gritted his teeth angrily as the vehicle refused to comply with his wishes. He let go of the stick and huffed with agitation.
The vehicle actually started to move!
"Aha! One can only hold out against me for so long." He smirked arrogantly, clutching the steering wheel triumphantly as the vehicle began to eke towards the gate at what Akito considered a successful speed of 5 miles per hour.
Backwards.
Somewhere on the grounds, Jumping Rock was snickering at Akito's expense from its safe spot on the cobblestone pathway.
The car crept ever closer to the gate of the Sohma estate, Akito still grasping the wheel firmly as he turned his head almost completely around to see, keeping it from turning the vehicle towards the walks alongside the driveway. He wasn't brainless, after all. He knew well and good that he was going backwards. It wasn't as if he didn't ride in this very vehicle every time he went out. It was merely easier to alleviate his boredom without having to turn the large automobile around.
Hatori Sohma had no idea where his main patient had gone. The boy wasn't in his room, and the only hint of Akito Sohma he could find anywhere was a small spot of blood on the pathway. He didn't even know if that was Akito's blood. As a matter of fact, he had only just noted the small smudge as he paced briskly up the path towards the youth's spacious rooms, having heard that the boy was calling for him and was quite agitated. But he wasn't there.
Hatori glanced calmly around the room, telling his mind that the boy had merely gone outside for a walk... only... Akito never took walks. He was almost always in his room.
Suddenly from somewhere on the grounds he heard a sort of maniacal cackling. It sounded like something like a rodent that was the lovechild of an ecstatic squirrel and a doped up chipmunk would sound like. Generally vermin-like in nature was this cackling, with a touch of that very human grace.
It could only be one person.
Akito's glee at having gotten the vehicle closer to the gate was apparent as his handle on the vehicle became more careless. It still crept backwards, now only a few yards from the large wrought iron gates. He let his guard down for a moment and threw his head back, letting loose a primal hoot of triumphant. The laugh seemed to echo from within the car, and even through the very doors and out over the grounds.
Out of the corner of his eye, Akito did not notice a lone figure running towards the car at full speed. The figure had come from clear across the entire grounds in one dash.
The motor vehicle was almost over the threshold of the gate when suddenly his door popped open, and a very stressed-looking Hatori Sohma stared at Akito from the door. He panted faintly, struggling to catch his breath from the long sprint he'd just made across the grounds after seeing what he thought was a thief trying to make off with the Sohma car. The car did not stop for him, but it didn't really mattered. It was going slow enough so as one could simply walk along side of it at a comfortable pace and still keep up.
Hatori's eyes widened noticeably as he realized who the one sitting at the wheel of his car was.
"Sir!" He paused for an instant, still in shock and a little bushed from his lengthy dash. "What... what are you doing?" Keeping his voice calm was a strain on his will, but he still managed to pull it off more or less perfectly, even under the conditions.
Akito stared back, equally as surprised, and kept his steadfast grip on the wheel. The shocked look on both of their faces remained for another good 15 seconds before Hatori made a move. He worked his way partially into the vehicle, almost on top of Akito, and jerked the transmission into park, stopping the vehicle. Akito's shocked expression warped into a much harder, angrier one in record time.
"HATORI!" he virtually screamed at the older man who was on top of him now. "Where were you? I called for you and you did not do as you were told!"
He didn't seem to notice that his source of amusement was now stopped precariously close to the intersection of the main road the driveway of his estates led to. Hatori jerked the key out of the ignition and hauled himself back out of the vehicle. He immediately bowed down low to the teenager at the wheel, knowing that he had probably incurred the impending wrath of his family's head.
Akito's unnecessarily building anger reached its climax at having now noticed that the car had been stopped and Hatori had taken the key. Had there been a floral vase lying around somewhere nearby, he probably would have thrown it at the man in front of him. It was just the way he worked.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid that it isn't safe, nor is it legal, for you to be driving like this. Think of your health." The adult of the two kept his head bowed to the other as he tried to sooth the other into submission. "Just come back to your rooms with me. If there is something you need, I am certain someone will make sure it is done."
Akito glared at Hatori and slowly slid to the shotgun side of the vehicle, refusing to give in to Hatori, but at the same time insinuating that the older one needed to get in and drive him back onto the grounds.
30 seconds later, after Hatori turned off the windshield wipers, the vehicle was resting quietly in its original parking spot.
Akito had only managed to drive the vehicle, backwards, just beyond the gate and almost into a "quiet" intersection beyond.
The two Sohmas got out of the vehicle, one with a little help from the other, older one, and headed back down that cobblestone path towards Akito's main room.
The two made their way back to the room, Akito probably more dependent on Hatori than need be. Awaiting them was a plethora of floral vases, a certain small white bird, and the patience, which had flown in recently which it sat happily and chatted with.
A small rock hitched a ride on the ends of Akito's robes, snickering to its self without actually doing so. Hatori did not notice the small drop or two of blood staining its surface.
fin