Remember, this chapter was written by Tohru.
…
I'm not going to call everyone by their cast names all the time, because I think it would be odd for me to keep referring to myself as 'the step sister.' This is just for the me of later not to get confused as to why the me of now wrote the way I did. Enjoy, Me-Later!
Everything was really quiet in the Yakinku Shop. It was pretty early in the morning, and no one would start wondering in till about lunch time. So Tohru, Cinderella's step-sister, rinsed her face in the sink to wake herself up, and decided to go for a walk while she was still free. Her mother always slept late and Cinderella wandered about at night for a long while, so she wouldn't be leaving her room before just-before-lunch hours either.
It was really a wonderful place, the Yakinku Shop. The Royal House of Sohma had given her and her family so much, financing Cinderella's shop like this! She meandered though the place and opened the door to a gentle creaking of the hinges and a tinkling from the bell. There was Uotani, the prince's right hand man, (Uo-chan was a man in the play,) who was always ready for a fight and would never hesitate to protect those that mattered. There was the extended family, which always made her feel comfortable, polite and kind as they all were. And there was the master of the Palace hounds, Shigure, who had always been funny and was always there for her when she truly needed help. She had been confused by him at first, though she had never told this to anyone. There were moments when he had laughed at her to her face when she had been quite upset, but every time she would turn to leave there would be his hand on her shoulder and, still through giggles she could not understand, he would help her.
The story… was not about her. It was about Cinderella. But Tohru did love those evenings when her sister's Magician would appear into the kitchen in a whirl of sparks. She loved being able to take his hat and hang it up with the others, and sit with him at the table in the back room, cutting vegetables or looking over books on different flowers and trees that grew in this magical kingdom. There were so many magical, beautiful things in this world that she had never known of before this Story with the Sohmas began…
Tohru squatted down in the road in from of the shop, careful not to let her dress skim through the dust as she did so, and waited. She licked her lips a little and then let out a gentle purr. And another. And then, there he was. The ginger cat she loved so much. He didn't like being around people too much, which made her all the more honored that, when she announced her presence, he deemed her worthy of his beautiful, warm company. She opened her arm and, his face being that of one resigned to act for someone else's enjoyment, he came to her. It was always like that. He had expressions like a human, and he never leapt into her arms contentedly like a rabbit might have done.
But he really was beautiful, she thought as she stood up again, now with the ginger cat in her arms. She could feel his body bloat and contract with every breath he took, and she remembered again how very happy she was that they, Cinderella, the hounds' master, Uotani and the Magician, were all alive and there with her.
"Let's go for a walk, alright?" she said, her voice very quiet in the morning air. With the cat in her arms, she began the brisk walk down the cobblestone road, her buckled boots clomping loudly as she went. The cat looked up at her sulkily, as if idly incredulous that any creature could be so awkward and loud, while he himself had such silent silken paws. Tohru just smiled at him and took one of his paws between her fingers. It really was silken, she reflected, as she rubbed it playfully. But she also knew that his now hidden claws were very long and certainly something to be avoided. They had once made short work of one of the Magician's hats.
She was glad he was a cat. He was haughty sometimes and cross, but she could do things with him which, if he had been a transported Prince (like those that sometimes cropped up at frog ponds) he might never have let her tuck him under her coat and share her warmth when it rained, as she had done last week, when they had still had to go a good distance to get back to the house. And he might never have let her pet him as she so dearly loved. Tohru smiled and began to wrack her fingers through that coarse, straw-like ginger hair, rubbing bits of fur between her fingers to admire the color and settling her palm firmly against his stomach so that she could again feel his beating heart and the rising and falling of his belly.
I think I'll go to the bakery, she thought. And it was still so early… perhaps the morning market had not closed yet and she could get the cat some tuna. Then, with her hand still on the cat's belly, her favorite thing in the world happened. He purred. Tohru grinned outright, with eyes only for the ginger cat. His red eyes had closed a little, and he had relaxed in her arms. She loved this and could not for the life of her understand why more people did not take the time to pet his fur and hold him close, because he was such a beautiful creature.
She thought back to another creature with ginger colored hair that, for the last few weeks… she had also dared to consider beautiful. Absentmindedly she hoisted the cat a bit higher and kissed it on the top of its hard head. It purred again, and she smiled into its fur. Admittedly, she had first liked this other being because he had reminded her of the cat. Now, however, she had to wonder if every time she took up this or any other cat and smiled at it, if it wasn't because the cats reminded her of him.
Kyo. 'Prince' Kyo. The very thought of these feelings seemed silly! She could hardly admit them to herself without feeling foolish. She knew what other people would think, though they never suspected that she knew. She was an outsider. He was born to live in seclusion. Birth right stood against them. She was quiet. He was hot tempered. Nature stood against them. And for all she knew, his own opinion of her stood against anything that might have been called 'them.' The cat puffed up in her arms a little. She had squeezed him a little too tightly. But the stolen moments she had spent with him, Kyo, were precious gems to her. He was the 'landlord' of Cinderella's Yakinku Shop, and so he stopped by there frequently. She had not expected it to be so easy to get moments alone with him, and sometimes she dared to foolishly fantasize that he wished for such moments as she much as she did. Silly really. Still, it was something to hope for, if only in a fairy tale.
She sighed and looked in though the glass window of the patisserie that she was now in front of, with freshly baked scones and pastries just behind the glass. Perhaps she should have come later in the day with her sister's and mother's orders. Both of them loved pastries. She smiled. She liked sweets herself. "Alright," she said, tangling her fingers messily into the ginger cat's fur once more. "We'll go here first, and then we'll go buy you some fish." His warm body reverberated against her fingers. She loved to touch, to hold him so.
Half an hour later she was sitting on the curb of a street, a paper bag of pastries by her side on the pavement, and the cat prostrated on her lap, something else he would never have done if he were some Prince. The Prince.
She watched with silent fascination as she gave him another tuna and how, at shocking speed, his head drew forward and he nipped it from her fingers.
They, the other members of the Souma house, considered the Prince an outcast.
Those little teeth sunk into the fish once.
But really, he was just like the cat.
Twice.
Claws, teeth, sultry nature. Creature or Monster or whatever it was they called him.
And the fish vanished down in a swallow.
Tohru walked back home slowly, pasties and tuna in the bag on one hip; cat on the other. They ostracized him. Perhaps pitied him. But she, (was it wicked of her?) she often found herself pitying them. She loved him, Kyo, as he was. A cat with such fur. A man with such a beautiful contented smile that so few took the time to find. And she pitied those who could only look and see a monster, and nothing else. "I'm back!" she called as she backed in through the front door into the shop. As ever, when she crossed one foot over the threshold the cat stiffened in her arms, flexed its powerful legs, and leap away from her, back to the outside before she herself could fully make it into the house. Tohru hovered there on the threshold for a moment and watched as the cat smoothed himself out and arched his back beautifully.
She had seen the Prince in combat before. It was the same. How could anyone, in cat or man, ever reject such palpable strength and beauty? Of all the mysteries about the Sohmas, it was this simple matter that confounded her the most.
The cat's ears perked up and he became still. Then… he was off. Tohru blinked after him as the ginger cat shot around the corner and out of sight. It took her a few moments longer than the cat to hear it: the sound the carriage wheels and horses' hooves. Her eyes widened at what it must mean. After all, carriages did not commonly pass through the network of the town, but kept to the main roads.
"Gah! Mother! Cinderella!" He was coming. He was actually coming. Tohru stopped at the stairs for half a moment, "Mother! Cinderella! Kyo is coming!" It actually felt really wonderful to shout it out for the world to here. 'Kyo is coming.' It would have been wonderful to shout out to the world every single day.
Motion and sound erupted on the second floor as Tohru's mother leapt into action, rousing living Hell and Cinderella along with it. Rushing into the kitchen behind the store, dumping the bag of pasties on the table, pulling the container of tuna out and sliding it towards the ice-box, Tohru looked around frantically for a mirror to fix herself up.
How often had this been a problem? How often, when he had come upon her unexpectedly, when she had heard the door open as it did now, or his voice at the entrance, how often had she wished there was a mirror in the kitchen? "Tish," A small, trivial whim, and certainly one that would have gained suspicion if fulfilled. After all, there was no real purpose to a mirror in the kitchen… except that it was the place that Kyo usually went first, and the place where she usually was when he did come.
He really could not have known what his presence did to her. It was the same every time he walked in through that door. And it had only gotten infinitely worse over time. First she had been able to appraise him with admiration, even 'friendship,' but it had only been so long until that began to change. She did not know if it was because her own resolve was weakening, or because he was just getting through to her now.
However it had occurred, the situation now stood that every time that orange mop of unruly hair appeared before her she felt her knees go weak. He really could not know…
He was just leaning against the door frame to the kitchen.
"K- Your Highness," she curtsied graciously. At least, she hoped it was gracious. It was probably as awkward as could be.
"Hey." He nodded in acknowledgment. He sighed. "Thank God it's you! I thought that if I came this early I could avoid your freaky sister," he said, now tilting back onto his own two legs and walking into the kitchen fully.
Tohru looked up. "Um… I… "
"Yo! Sorry for the sudden call-in Tohru, but if Orange-Top didn't come now he would've lost his nerve, right?" Uo-chan, Kyo's friend and tormentor, appeared next to him. He ruffled the Prince's hair endearingly.
"SAY WHAT?! Ya know, you could just as well have stayed home, you-"
"Your Highness?!" Tohru's mother cried from the stairs.
Uo-chan's grip tightened on Kyo's hair. "Right. Diversionary tactics. Leave the hag to Shigure, and Cinderella," Uotani smiled dashingly, "to me… That is, if she even got up… LATER!"
And with that, Kyo and Tohru were alone again. What a really silly fairy tale picture this was. But, even if it was, is, only possible in a fairy tale, it's really nice.
Within moments Shigure's voice was bouncing off every corner of the house, singing every syllable in that bombastic way of his, detouring Tohru's mother from going any further. Dear Shigure.
"So, how've you been?" Kyo said, closing the door behind him and walking around the kitchen. He looked at this labeled bottle or that string of dried herbs. The clatter beyond was now somewhat muffled through the door.
"Fine!" It really was a wonder to her that he didn't ever seem to notice that her voice became so much higher when he was there. But then, it had probably been shifting gradually over time, like her heart. The one time Kyo had arrived while the Magician was present Tohru had wondered if he had noticed the difference.
Kyo and the Magician did not get on any better than the cat and the Magician's hat. But then, they were such completely different entities. Yet they both managed to be so marvelously exceptional. The Magician… he was calm, and quiet, and Tohru knew that many had though him to be a 'perfect match' for her. His beauty and refinement was like that of blown glass, appearing brittle as could be, but sharper than a knife if wrongly touched. Kyo… he was forward and outspoken and had learned from experience that he alone could hope to let the world know who and what he was. He, and it was a silly allusion, but to Tohru he was like a tree: growing, sometimes bending in harsh winds, but becoming stronger, fueled by some invisible force of the Earth which other's couldn't hope to draw from. She would have loved to be ivy… to just wrap herself around him… because his strength and his warmth offered her so safe and wonderful a hold.
"… I said, are you alright?"
"FINE!" Oh god! How often had that happened?! How often had she stared like that, captivated by him, without realizing it? But again she had to wonder why the entirety of his family didn't see what was enough to rid her of concentration.
And he was smirking. Probably laughing at her. Then he sighed. The room was quiet again.
"Sir, if there is something you wish to tell me please…do not hesitate."
He blinked at her in surprise. She had thought right! People…so often people marveled at her perception. Ha! If only they knew how apprehensive she was to voice her thoughts to others, for fear of being wrong. If only he knew the absolute warmth she felt when, with him, she was always, always right.
"The King demands that I forfeit all such indulgences as 'supporting' this store, and that I should stop mingling with…"
He could say it. She had heard it often enough. 'Commoner.' Did he think that it bothered her? It did not. Or rather… it had not… until she had realized that 'commoner' and 'prince' were yet another force working against each other… and them.
Tohru did not speak. Did he mean what she thought he meant? Had it finally come? She felt cold. Hollow. She lived in fear of it. Every so often she would wake in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, trying to muffle her gasps of alarm, lest the ginger cat on the roof should hear her through her open window. The king would separate them. She had no place among such royals as the Sohmas. The king would separate them…
It's hard even to write about, even if it's just a fairy tale.
"I see," she turned away from him, and began unpacking the pasties from the bag. The sound of rustling paper was not loud enough to cover her sniffling, nor could it hide the quiver in her shoulders.
She felt fingers roll over her shoulder and a hand griped it firmly. "Crying again, Tohru?" He had seen her cry more times than any other person she could think of. Indeed, he was the only one who had ever seen her cry. So often she would just begin to tear up in front of him for reasons he could not have understood. He probably thought she was a total sob.
But she wasn't. She really wasn't! It was that… she felt it was alright not to smile in front of him. That was wrong and she knew it! After all, weren't people supposed to smile the most in front of people they cared about?! But she spent so much time smiling… She didn't mind it. She hardly noticed it sometimes. But then he would appear, and it would be like a spring going loose inside her… and she would just shed every single smiling pretence. She really was very, very silly. And he probably didn't even like her.
"You know… when Uotani and I were going around getting that glass slipper fit on everyone," his voice was quiet. A whisper. "Yours was the only foot that was too small, rather than too big. Remember that?" Yes, she did. Funny what vain little things stuck in the memory.
There was something orange dangling in front of her face, and for one wild moment, she thought that it was the cat's tail.
"A sock," she said matter-of-factly.
"Yeah. Sorry about the hole in it. It's from my favorite pair, if that makes up for it at all." He said, holding it in front of her.
She turned her head, and looked at him. He was leaning up from behind her, his face right by hers. His red eyes, which had been fixed forward at the sock, slid to meet hers. And he smiled nervously. That had been the first thing she had ever learned about him. Behind that hot temper was a warm, awkward smile.
"Right, so…If you'll let me," he drew away from her and gently turned her to face him, a hand on each of her shoulders, one still holding the sock. He then looked her in the face for a good solid moment before letting out a breath that she hadn't noticed he had taken, and glided down onto one knee.
"Kyo?"
All she could see was the top for that orange mop of hair as he bent over and firmly took up her foot from the floor. His fingers unclasped the buckle, pulled the leather strap loose, and he slid the bulky boot off her foot. He propped her foot on his raised knee, took the sock in both hands, and forced it on. He stilled for a moment and he raised his head the littlest bit, just enough for her to see those baked-clay eyes looking up at her. She swallowed nervously. He smiled and on the way back to her foot his eyes halted momentarily on her chest and his face took on a strange expression. Then he returned his gaze downward. Tohru glanced down at herself as well and saw that her front was completely covered in ginger cat hairs. Kyo reached into a leather pouch lashed to the belt around his waist. "Hope its okay without the silk cushion," he muttered and drew out a glass slipper. The glass slipper.
"I… I thought… Cinderella…"
Kyo shrugged, not looking up at her but staring fixedly on her foot, "I guess with that Rat Mage puffing his glitter and all I forgot to give it to her in the end." Tohru knew what was coming. It wasn't that hard to guess. But it was one thing to know, and another to have Kyo take her wooly-orange-clad foot in hand and press the glass slipper onto it.
They'd both forgotten to breathe now. He gently moved the slipper about. It held. "Thank God," he whispered, sounding exhaustedly relieved. "It was the thickest pair I had and I still wasn't sure…" he looked up at her. "It's a way to keep the shop 'in the family,' and you wouldn't be a 'commoner.'" There was that blissfully awkward smile. "Marry me?"
Tohru nodded, mutely, slowly, and then more and more fervently, until her head was practically quivering uncontrollably and she thought she was going to cry again, and she threw her arms around his neck and toppled both of them. Her fingers fumbled with the ribbon that kept that glorious orange hair tamed in a ponytail. She felt it come loose in her hands and tangled herself in it as she'd always wanted to do.
She was happy he was a man and not a cat, because no ordinarily cat would have stood for such an embrace, as if she would never let him go. And there was defiantly no ordinary cat in the world that would have kissed her as he was kissing her now as Shigure, Uotani and Cinderella, who had been waiting silently behind the door, poured in upon them, the mother being kept at bay Cinderella's electric shocks.
Tohru would have kissed Kyo as anything, because she loved the ginger, sultry cat; she loved the powerful, awkward man; and god forgive her but she felt so sorry for those sad relatives who only saw a monster and could not see the treasure among them! She loved him utterly and entirely. And even if it's just a weird fantasy idea, I love him, and that feeling isn't, and never will be, a fairy tale.
…
Illustration of the events in this chapter can be found on my Profile Page
