DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura, Kadokawa Shoten, Madhouse Studios, etc., i.e., not me.
I'm just borrowing them for a while to spin a tale.
Written when I was still limiting myself to 300 Words fics.
Addictions
By firewolf
May 2008
Kou Reishin hadn't known one of his staff was an opium addict. After all, he was hardly interested in the personal life of his servants and retainers. However, he did notice when he stumbled upon Kou on the streets running an ingenious little lottery.
It came out then that the boy recognized the servant's addiction when they met. And the man sold him 'sweets' at a bargain.
Reishin refused to recognize the man's frantic claims that the boy was an addict before they met. Kou tried to speak in the man's defense and told Reishin that he was normally all right when his past owners gave him sweets before they'd play with him. The servant was practically crying in his denial that he had ever attempted to 'play' with Kou.
Fortunately, Youri hime was fully recovered from her brief illness, so she kept Kou away from the drama surrounding Reishin's disciplinary action and sat with the boy through opium withdrawal. She also drummed it into his head that opium was not a sweet, that it was not all right to take it, and that it was the drug which was responsible for how rotten he felt then.
Youri was glad Kou was too sick and miserable to worry about the fate of his 'sweets purveyor' because Reishin had too active an imagination. And he (unfairly) pinned on the man all his anger and fury for the abuse heaped upon Kou by his unknown previous owners. At the least, Reishin had the sense to have the man moved to where his screams couldn't drift back to reach Kou's ears.
Kou's family happily discovered later that the boy, once free of the opium addiction, truly had a brilliant mind starving for knowledge. Reishin gladly and generously fed Kou's new addiction to books.
owari
Thanks for reading.
Cheers, firewolf