Alice Down the Rabbit Hole
Chapter 4 - Following the Balls to the Banquet

I hover around with Kyo for a bit until he snaps at me to leave him alone, so I do. And then I wander, equally alone. I wander until I find a garden and from there, landmarks start making a bit of sense again. There are lots of cats – which strikes me as odd until I realise they're only cat heads.

Real cat heads, unfortunately, which makes me freak out at first and then feel so sorry for them. So I try and bury the ones I find. Until I run into someone collecting the balls. Someone with white and black hair and who scowls, then grins, when he sees me.

'And who are you?' he asks.

'Honda Tohru,' I reply. 'I'm sorry, but I'm a little lost.'

'You're a lot lost,' the boy corrects. 'So you're the stray the cat dragged in?'

'Well, it wasn't Kyo-san per say,' I begin, before realising it probably wasn't a smart thing to say Kyo's name if this whole thing is supposed to be a secret I've stumbled into.

'So you know.' The boy shakes his head. 'I'm guessing someone thought there wouldn't be much harm since you'll likely lose your memories anyway.'

'What?' I squeak. Nobody mentioned that.

But the boy continues as if he hasn't heard me. 'But really, letting you wander around like this… if you'd wound up outside, you'd have skipped away with your memories intact –'

'Why will I lose my memories?' I interrupt again. 'I mean, it was just an accident I wound up down here – and a bit of curiosity as well, but Momiji-kun was really nice and so were the others and Kyo-san –'

The boy looks at me. 'Sounds like you've had an adventure.'

'Well…yeah,' I agree. 'Guess I kind of have.'

'Anyway.' He sighs. 'It's not your fault at all, but we have to keep these things top secret. There'll be trouble if anything gets out.'

'I won't tell anyone,' I promise.

He shrugs. 'They even wipe the memories of some of our parents, you know?'

'Our?' Then that particular piece clicks into place and I'm horrified. 'Your own parents?'

'Momiji's, for one,' says the boy. He doesn't mention his own…and I guess it's not my business anyway. It's horrifying enough that anyone's parents are made to forget their own kids. 'And Hatori's fiancé. And the kids Yuki used to play with… The list goes on.'

'That's…' My eyes sink to all the cat heads scattered about us. 'This is a nightmare.'

'Something like that,' the boy agrees.'

But I shake my head. 'It's not fair. It's not right… But that doesn't mean I should just forget about it and go on with my life.' It doesn't, because now that I do know, I can do something…can't I? Even if it's something simple, like giving Momiji-kun a hug when his own mother can't…but no, he'll turn into a rabbit again, won't he?

Well, if he doesn't mind getting turned into a rabbit when I hug him, I won't mind it either. And I could have sat with Kyo-san more and talked to him if he had let me… Maybe we just need to know each other better, and I'd love to. He's the cat of the zodiac after all and I'll love him as much as I love all other cats…

'You're crying,' says the boy.

'I'm crying because of the cats,' I say, 'and poor Kyo-san sitting in a lonely and empty field but not letting me stay with him, and this curse that binds you to something you don't want to be and makes you hide down here when there's a beautiful sun shining outside, and… and… even Akito-san who has to die early because he was born as the god of the zodiac and I guess he didn't chose that either, did he..?'

The boy stares at me, then his expression softens and he shakes his head. 'You're something else,' he says. 'But I'm afraid there's no compromising with Akito-san. As for the cats…' He looks a little abashed. 'We all hate the curse. But the animal we hate the most is the cat. It's part of the curse. And because we can hate the cat, we can feel a little better about ourselves. It's horrible, but it's the way for the rest of us to keep moving forward – and the cat bears all our hatred as well as his own. That's his curse. And the God's is to keep us all close and safe. That's why Akito-san's so strict. He has to be. As the head of the Sohma family. As the God.'

'That's…' I sniff. It's still sad. Nothing this boy is saying is making it any less sadder. In fact, he's just making it sadder because the way Kyo-san talked about him made me mad and so do the cats, but hearing about how he has to die for just being born as the God is another thing. It's not fair for anyone to be born into this world just to die. Where's the hope in a life like that? Where's the future? And why wouldn't they take it out on others when all they had to look forward to was despair?

The boy sighed again and fished out a handkerchief. 'Here. Stop crying please. I don't want to be in the business of making people cry.'

I chuckled at that. 'You're not,' I pointed out. 'It's…well, the circumstances. By the way, I'm Honda Tohru.'

We've forgotten to introduce ourselves again.

'Sohma Hatsuharu,' says the boy, before glancing back. 'And that's Rin.'

Huh? Who? Then I hear someone making their way towards us – and then there she is. A girl with long (and beautiful!) hair and a stern expression. 'Hatsuharu,' she says, with crossed arms. 'Why are you dawdling?'

Then she sees me and frowns further.

'The stray,' Hatsuharu shrugs. 'You know, the one Momiji-kun tumbled down the rabbit hole with.'

Rin frowns harder, then shrugs and turns. 'The others are waiting,' she says, and walks back out.

'Don't mind Rin,' says Hatsuharu, looking after her. 'But I guess you better come with me. Pretty much the entire family knows you're here, after all.'

Sounds true enough. If the boar was one of the Zodiac members as well, I only haven't met two.

'Where are we going?' I ask.

'To the family. They're all together now anyway.'

So that means Shigure-san, the Hatori-san that's been mentioned a few times, and Akito-san as well.

I don't know if I should be relieved I'm getting somewhere now or absolutely terrified considering what I've heard of Akito-san.

But when I do catch sign of him – and it's easy to pick him out of a crowd even if there are more unfamiliar faces there than simply him – I can't help but pity him.

His eyes are exactly like I imagined: hollow and without hope.

He looks at me a moment – looks me up and down – and then he smiles. 'Welcome, Honda-san.' And he really does sound kind and welcoming except all the other things I've heard bubble up and shatter that image of him.

'I'm sorry for intruding,' I reply. It seems like a better response than "glad to be here"…especially since I'm not supposed to be.

'That's fine,' says the boy airily. 'It's not as though you meant to. A fly that passes by isn't something to spare more than a fleeting glance.'

Which means I'll forget all this and go on with my normal life after all, but…

'I don't want to forget.' I may as well speak plainly. 'I've seen so little…but so much as well. It's half-like a dream. But I've also seen shadow. The pain of the curse. The pain of the cat. And your pain as well?'

'My pain?' His face, handsome like all his relatives, twists into something frighteningly ugly. 'What can you possibly understand about my pain? You don't even know who I am!'

'Sohma Akito-san,' I reply. I know some, at least. 'The head of the Sohma family, and the God of the Zodiac – at least in this reincarnation of the curse.'

He is startled for a moment, and then he glares at his house-members. Some of them shrink back. Momiji-kun. Hatsuharu-san. And Kyo-san isn't here and he's told me a bit as well. But it doesn't matter. It shouldn't have to matter because I'm the one who chased. I'm the one who searched, and who asked.

'I've met almost everyone,' I say, 'except the…' I need to think about this. 'The rooster and the dragon and the horse? Though I guess Rin-san is one of them…' And I was also guessing Hiro-kun and Kana-chan were the sheep and the lion respectively, if only because Hiro-kun had looked pretty white and fluffy at that point and Kana-chan was smaller and I'd already met Ritsu-san by then and Kyo-san after…

'She's the horse,' Hatsuharu inputs helpfully, before quietening with dual glares from Rin-san and Akito-san.

'And I guess I didn't officially meet the boar…'

A brown-haired girl looking a year or two younger than me is looking sheepish. I guess that's her then. Which left the man standing beside Akito-san's chair and the one between Ayumi-san and Shigure-san who had one eye covered by his fringe as the other two.

And there was Yuki-san after all, standing on Akito-san's other side.