Author's notes: This is the first chapter of Musical Chairs, a Fruits Basket fic. Each chapter will be in the POV of a different character. This chapter is in the POV of Sohma Yuki. Mild spoilers scattered in different areas.
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Prelude.
Sohma Yuki.
He is the rat.
The smart one.
The sly one.
The admired one.
The ostracized one.
Sohma Yuki, he has never liked his life.
He has never loved. He has never been loved.
He is afraid. He is afraid of getting too close. He is afraid of loneliness.
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Until she came. That klutz of a girl, with her straight brown hair and high voice. She is pained, like him. But she is not afraid.
She gives the ones around her strength to live too.
He sees the glances that baka neko casts upon her.
He doesn't want to see the similar expression she wears on her face when she replies him with that smile. The smile that is especially reserved for that orange-head. Sure, she smiles at him too. But never in the same way.
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All his life, he has never made any long-lasting friends. After all, they throw him away like a toy they'd gotten sick of once they learnt what he truly is.
"Hatori, please don't do it…" Yuki would beg the older male, clutching to his shirt with his tiny, pale hands.
But the result would always be the same, no matter what he did. Hatori would push him away gently and leave him crying in the dark. He doesn't want to, but all these years, he's been holding a silent grudge against the quiet man for taking away his "friends".
He is ridden with guilt.
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"If my memory ever gets erased… Please be my friend again!"
She said it so earnestly. Yuki had been trained since young to read between the lines and this statement took him aback. He didn't know such purity and innocence existed in the cold, hard world he had grown up in.
He has found light in the darkness he was drowning in. But he's lost it to a stupid cat.
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"I realize that she is just a motherly figure to me," he confesses one day, to a highly unlikely listener.
Manabe Kakeru shifts about with indifference.
"Aww, don't cry, Hime," he says, grinning his usual stupid grin. Yuki sends a soccer ball into his stomach subsequently.
He's met with a revelation. His wrenched up heart seems to have untangled somehow. He feels… lighter.
Whoosh, and here comes another revelation. Good things seem to come in pairs. He's made friends. True friends, and all on his own. For the first time, he is smiling properly.
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And then there's another problem. He can't seem to leave that girl alone.
"Kaicho isn't like a prince at all," she says in her monotonous voice. That's a first. Perhaps that's the only reason why he can't leave her alone. Or perhaps it isn't.
"Machi… You don't like structure, do you?"
Now he's even found out her problem.
She looks at him with the same emotionless eyes. No, wait. There is a flicker of emotion. And then her eyes are flooded with tears as she opens her heart out to him.
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In the next student council meeting, Yuki reaches for a piece of chalk in the chalk box. Machi is trying her best not to fling the chalk all over the room. They're white, and arranged in a perfectly neat structure. She looks away in desperation.
"Crack."
He breaks the chalk into two. Her eyes widen. No verbal communication is exchanged. But Machi knows that actions speak louder than words.
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Sohma Yuki has reached the shore at last. He sees light. She's still out there, struggling in the dark waters.
And he's going to save her.
"Let's go out and step on the snowy roads together next time," he says to an astonished Machi.
end.
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To readers: I hope you liked that! This chapter took quite a long time to write because plotbunnies kept refusing to hop into my head. :D I'm trying to do the chapters according to the zodiac but that'll probably be messed up sooner or later. Please review!